Conjugate Visits

Survey: How Satisfied Are You with Your Survey Experience?

2012-01-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

If you’re like a lot of business owners -- specifically, all of them -- you have at one point or another hired a survey company to plumb the fascinating depths of your customers’ or website visitors’ minds. Whether by robocall or in the form of one of those well-loved pop-up boxes, you’ve let another company’s machine ask your customers how much money they make, how they heard about your firm, and how they would rank your surly underpaid staff on a scale of “excellent” to “here’s your justification for not giving anyone a raise.”

But when the data came in and the check to the survey-taking company had cleared, something surprising happened: nothing. Contrary to the survey company’s sincere and absolute faith in surveys, no one was there surveying you about how you liked your survey.

Well, here’s your opportunity to make your voice heard! After all, survey-company-hiring companies are surveyable people, too! As they say, “Your opinion counts!” So please take this short survey:

HOW SATISFIED ARE YOU WITH YOUR SURVEY EXPERIENCE?

1. I hired a survey service because:

a. Asking questions then forcing people to put their answers in my words instead of their own makes me feel big.

b. I just naturally assumed that my customers/website visitors enjoy being badgered.

c. Spending profits on B2B services is just so much more fun than paying a dividend.

d. It’s a prestige thing -- it shows that you have so many customers you can afford to alienate thousands of them.

e. The survey company salesgirl was wearing a low-cut top.

2. The one thing I most hoped the survey would reveal was:

a. How I can get more money out of my customers.

b. How I can get more money out of my customers without actually interacting with them.

c. How my customers feel about my employees’ treating them like shit.

d. How I could use meaningless statistics to help me sound smart in staff meetings.

3. When you learned that the pop-up box announcing the survey would contain the phrase “We value your opinion!” you:

a. Laughed

b. Laughed contemptuously

c. Actually bought it for a second, then laughed at your own gullibility

4. Finish this sentence: “When I received my survey results, I immediately ...”

a. Planned to look at them in the future.

b. FedExed them to the department that deals with such things even though I’m not sure what department that is.

c. Composed imaginary arguments in my head with negative respondents, putting their stupid asses in place with my decisive, scathing rejoinders.

5. I would describe myself as a

a. Chump

b. Voyeur

b. Control freak

(Note, to answer “savvy businessperson,” select “a” above.)

6. How long did it take you to realize you were sold a completely worthless service?

a. Six months

b. One week

c. Till about the time the ink was dry on the 10-year, 20-survey contract

d. Say what?

6. The last time you actually listened, in person, to a customer’s opinion, you:

a. Left your body

b. Wished you had swine flu so you could cough on them

c. Coughed on them anyway

d. Suggested that the customer was the one who screwed up their oil change, gave your hotel bed bugs, or incited your customer-service rep to violence

When you have completed this survey, please e-mail us your Social Security Number, Visa and MasterCard number, mother’s maiden name, and name of your first pet, then collect your own responses and do with them whatever you did with your own customers’ responses.

Copy Edit du Jour

2011-12-15T16:27:00.000-08:00

"A display of the collection will be on site in the main pavilion"

Changed to ...

"The collection will be on display in the main pavilion."

How to Tell If You're a 'Real Writer'

2011-12-10T11:23:00.001-08:00

These days, everyone’s a writer. Advances in technology have allowed anyone with a keyboard and a traumatic childhood to claim the title of “published writer.” Of course, this has frustrated “real writers” who believe they shouldn’t be clumped in with the high school sophomore who made $11.50 in Amazon Associates income by blogging “gott my period 2day LOL.” But what, exactly, separates the “real writers” from heartsick middle-schoolers, illiterate manifesto writers, and Dean Koontz?

Prominent scienticians have recently isolated some unique characteristics of true wordsmiths. Based on their findings, here’s how to tell – once and for all –if you’re a “real writer.”

1. Your mother keeps mailing you study guides for the Civil Service exam.

2. You’re no longer slave to the arbitrary social constructs that separate pajama pants from real pants.

3. Your friends all know you mean it when you say, “Don’t get me started on Dan Brown.”

4. You’re out of cat litter (nonfiction writers).

5. You’re out of vermouth (literary fiction writers).

6. You’re out of Nicorette (crime fiction writers).

7. You’re never out of Paxil (romance writers).

8. Your creativity informs every aspect of your life, especially your tax returns.

9. You qualify as “extremely liberal” on free speech, deadlines, and food expiration dates.

10. You qualify as “extremely conservative” on speech in the form of Amazon user reviews.

11. You use the phrase “lost sense of community” a lot, but you’re usually talking to your dog.

12. Your pristine copy of The Collected Works of Shakespeare is prominently displayed on your bookshelf.

13. Your decaying, bathtub-splashed Stieg Larsson paperbacks are stashed under your futon.

14. You haven’t read a book since 1998 (screenwriters).

15. You have attempted to calculate J.K. Rowling’s royalty income.

16. Your math skills rendered this task impossible.

17. You’re trying to copyright your recipe for ranch dressing on stale saltines.

18. You have worked the word “factotum” into a conversation (literary writers).

19. You have worked the word “gams” into a conversation (noir writers).

20. You have worked the words “my place” into a conversation (romance writers).

21. You have worked the word “loan” into a conversation (all writers).

22. You laughed when a friend gave you scratch tickets for Christmas, then hastily disappeared into the bathroom with a quarter (a borrowed quarter).

23. You love the Kindle, you fear the Kindle.

24. You consider a shower to be foreplay.

25. You consider a wet washcloth to be a shower.

26. When you say “my doctor,” you mean Dr. Oz.

27. You feel closer to your protagonist than even to the girl across the street with the really sheer drapes.

28. You spend six hours a day tweeting about how you should spend more time blogging.

Copy Edit du Jour

2011-10-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

What's more -- aside from a specialized curriculum -- private schools are notoriously known for their smaller classrooms.

Changed to:

Private schools are known for their smaller class sizes.

(Other bad choices aside, I can't BELIEVE the writer used "notoriously known" -- and for something positive, no less. That's the kind of thing I might make up as a ridiculous example of a bad adverb/flabby writing.)

Copy Edit du Jour

2011-10-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

"Our office handles a full range of podiatric needs including sports medicine and deformities of the foot such as Bunions, Hammertoes and Neuromas."

Changed to:

"... bunions, hammertoes and neuromas."

Classic example of overuse of capitals. Though I almost like the idea of Hammertoes as a proper name - a former ballet dancer turned hard-boiled detective? (Couldn't be any worse that the current prime-time lineup.)

10 Signs the Online Article You're Reading Is Completely Devoid of Substance

2011-10-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

As you know, substantiveness is all about substance. And that’s exactly what we’re seeking every time we click an enticing headline from AOL News or Yahoo! Health or CNN Money – meatiness, meat, carne.

But too often, the popular online articles that lure us in with headlines promising interesting facts contain only facts that are kind of interesting or interesting things that are not really facts or factual things that aren’t terribly interesting or things we already knew but didn’t know we knew because they were presented to us as things we didn’t know. The result? We’re left disappointed by the articles’ utter insubstantiveness and shocking lack of substance.

I, for one, like many, for example, possibly you, have wasted many a half-hour chunk of time reading about how to pare down my leg-shaving expenses, interpret my cat’s nonverbal cues, and take 10 years off my earlobes. Luckily, the time wasted usually belongs to an employer and not to us. Nonetheless, it's time you could have spent learning how to gauge the power of your own handshake or channel Warren Buffet or paint on the perfect eyeliner “cat eyes.” So here are 10 surefire signs that the article you’re reading is a pile of hooey not worth the precious time you’ve stolen from your employer.

1. The article begins with “as you know.”
2. The article that begins with “as you know” follows up by stating something you know.
3. The bulk of the information is conveyed through images of beautiful married twentysomethings under the covers or Photoshopped blueberries.
4. The article’s best money-saving tip is “don’t spend money.”
5. The article’s best weight-loss tip is “don’t eat.”
6. A little math reveals that the article is telling you to eat 48 shiitake mushrooms and eight pounds of wild salmon a day and wash it all down with four gallons of green tea.
7. The sole source quoted in the article is credentialed as “resident” or “laid-off employment counselor” or “Fox News analyst.”
8. The article is written in the first person by someone you’ve never heard of but is proud she no longer spends $480 a month on NetFlix.
9. The article contains a numbered list.
10. The list of tips is a nice round number like 10, even though the writer clearly ran out of material at 9.

Wonderings and Googlings: Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them

2011-10-05T11:37:00.001-07:00

I'm no spring chicken = 647,000 hits
I'm a spring chicken = 18,000 hits

How to Speak Elevator

2011-06-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome, visitors to the United States! While you’re here, you’ll probably have lots of opportunities to ride American elevators. Don’t worry! Navigating them is easy with this handy guide:

HOW TO SPEAK ELEVATOR

1 =
Ground floor OR
The first floor above the ground floor OR
The first floor below the ground floor

2 =
Second floor OR
Second floor not counting the ground floor

14 =
14th floor OR
13th floor OR
Certain death

P =
Parking OR
Penthouse OR
Pool OR
Patio OR
Presidential suite OR
Parking level Pink OR
Parking level Purple OR
Parking level Pocahontas OR

P1 =
Up one floor to lowest level of parking structure OR
Up multiple floors to the highest level of parking structure OR
Down one floor to the highest level of subterranean garage OR
Down multiple floors to the lowest level of parking garage OR

G =
Ground floor OR
Garage OR
Goofy

GL =
Same as G

G1 =
Up one floor to lowest level of multi-story parking structure OR
Up multiple floors to highest level of multi-story parking structure OR
Down one floor to nearest level of subterranean parking garage OR
Down multiple floors to lowest level of subterranean parking garage OR
Lowest ground floor of a split-level area OR
Highest ground floor of a split-level area

B =
Basement OR
Balcony OR
Bar

B1 =
Highest underground level OR
Lowest underground level

R =
Roof OR
Reception OR
Rear door open OR
Restaurant level OR
Retail level

F =
Front door open OR
Fitness center OR
First floor OR
Faculty OR
Sound fire alarm

L =
Lower level OR
Lobby OR
Loge OR
Lower level of underground parking OR
Library OR
Lounge

LL =
Lower level OR
Lobby OR
Loge OR
Loge Lounge OR

M =
Mezzanine OR
Maternity ward OR
Men’s department

C =
Casino level OR
Conference center OR
Cosmetics department

Two triangles pointing away from each other =
Open door OR
Close door with a hollow gesture of courtesy to the sprinting passenger you’re slamming the door on

Two triangles pointing toward each other =
Close door OR
Feel like you’re doing something productive as doors continue to close at the same speed they would have had you not pushed the button

Telephone symbol =
Call for help OR
You better have a cell phone because it’s the only way anyone will ever know you’re stuck here

Framed elevator inspection certificate =
This elevator has been inspected for safety within the last 12 months OR
The city official who oversees elevator inspections is blowing his bribe money in the Caribbean OR
Thank you for buying this ACME elevator-ready frame. Place your own certificate here.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

2011-04-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

"I'm special" = 2,800,000 hits

Subject-Object Agreement? Don't Hold Your Breaths.

2011-04-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a headline from today's New York Times:

At Particle Lab, a Tantalizing Glimpse Has Physicists Holding Their Breaths

Breaths? Really?

I've written before about subject-object agreement, like "Users who experience dizziness should call their doctor."

The bottom line is there's no right answer in most of these situations. But I bet that about 99 out of 100 editors would have made "breath" singular -- a collective concept -- in that NYT headline. " Breath" isn't usually treated as a count noun. It's more of a mass noun. And if a nation can breathe a collective sigh of relief, can't breath be as collective as sigh?

Odd choice. Not wrong, per se. Just odd.

Women: What Your Favorite Classic Rock Band Says About You

2011-03-08T10:33:00.000-08:00

My friend, author Treacy Colbert, was inspired recently by a viral e-mail about classic rock bands to put a female spin on the subject. So we both chipped in ideas and came up with ....

WOMEN: What Your Favorite Classic Rock Band Says About You

Van Halen: You can play ping-pong with your hands tied behind your back.

Dan Fogelberg: You are sexually aroused by doilies.

James Taylor: You're appalled by how much the average consumer spends on shampoo.

Aerosmith: You can tie a cherry stem into a knot in your mouth.

Motley Crue: You can tie a cherry stem into a knot in someone else's mouth.

The Indigo Girls: You always cry at commitment ceremonies.

Gordon Lightfoot: The rose tattoo on your breast is now long-stemmed.

Air Supply: You have a standard poodle named Skyler.

Journey: You have a daughter named Skyler.

Spandau Ballet: You have a son named Skyler.

Celtic Woman: You’re on your third name change, first Summer, then Skyler, now Windstar.

Ronnie James Dio: You're on your third sloe gin fizz.

The Doors: You're on your third liver.

The Who: You have a “Teenage Wasteland” bumper sticker on your Rascal.

Boston: You can confirm the veracity of reports about the man from Nantucket.

Loverboy: You know a website that sells Bartles & James wine coolers.

Cyndi Lauper: You still bop even though it inflames your carpal tunnel syndrome.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Two words: government cheese.

Rolling Stones: You've said "Welcome to Walmart" so many times the words have lost all meaning.

Joni Mitchell: You have used a speculum as a roach clip.

The Beatles: Your hedge fund outperformed the S&P by three percent.

America: It has never occurred to you that “the heat was hot” is redundant.

Bread: You have satisfied the munchies by eating one of your scented candles.

Seals and Crofts: You own a large collection of mismatched, partially shredded knee-highs.

Al Stewart: You’re surprised when the bartender doesn’t know what a kir is.

Rod Stewart: You still own—and wear—the outfit you had on in the family photo taken in 1970.

Jackson Browne: Ativan is now your favorite controlled substance.

Grateful Dead: You slept with your son's roommates at Tufts.

Pink Floyd: You married your dealer, then dumped him to run off with his dealer.

Bob Dylan: Haybuh homa fleege, trumuh fleege, maddle flooge.

Sammy Hagar: You keep your G.E.D. certificate in the back of your Ford Maverick, along with all your other possessions.

Ozzy Osbourne: You campaigned for Lyndon LaRouche, but only because you had him mixed up with a cartoon skunk.

Allman Brothers Band: Your kids call the Health and Human Services outreach specialist “Uncle Greg.”

AC/DC: If you can read this, you don’t really qualify as an AC/DC fan.

Yes: Your subwoofers are the envy of your assisted-living facility.

Gaddafi: It only took me 20 years to look it up

2011-03-04T18:21:00.001-08:00

I took a year of Arabic in college. I'm not sure why. I didn't have much educational guidance up to that point, or education, for that matter. I had dropped out of school without completing the ninth grade. So by the time I found my way onto a college campus, I was just sort of running around pell-mell looking at every educational opportunity as unbelievably neato.

What's more, I'd never had a chance to learn about much about the world outside of my beach bum community in central Florida and, as a result, tore through the class catalog like an Adirondack lottery winner tearing through a Sharper Image catalog.

Anyone with even the slightest interest in the Arabic language knows Moammar Gaddafi as the quintessential example of confusing transliteration. It's been spelled with a G, a Kh, and a Q, with variations in the subsequent letters as well.

In the class I took, we followed a transliteration system that used Q to denote the Arabic letter "qof," which has no direct English translation because it requires a throat clucking we don't make except, perhaps, after a regrettable trip to Taco Bell. We used Kh to indicate the letter "kha," which is a throat-rasping K sound that seems to be a little more iconic to the language, at least among Americans. G we reserved for the letter "ghain," which sound almost as if it begins with an R and was described to us as the French R (voice a good, rich "au revoir" and that's the sound we were taught to make). And that's the closest to an English G as you'll find in Modern Standard Arabic.

I knew Gaddafi started with qof, so when I saw it spelled Khaddafi, I figured it was just some alternate transliteration system.

But then at one point, the media started leaning away from the Khaddafi and toward a version that started with a G. I was baffled. Why on earth, in an age where everyone follows the Q-for-qof system when writing Al Qaeda, wouldn't they use a Q for Gaddafi as well?

Finally, I looked it up. According to this article, it's a dialect thing. In Gaddafi's Libya, the qof sounds a lot like our G, so we write it that way. Ironically, finally finding an answer left me just as baffled as I'd been before. Here's why: The first thing they taught us in Arabic class was that different countries and groups have different dialects, but they all speak and understand a universal language, Modern Standard Arabic, which was the language used by the media. To claim to "know" Arabic, you had to know the universal media kind plus at least one dialect. And some dialects varied greatly from Modern Standard Arabic.

And that leads me to wonder why, if the Arab-speaking world can have a whole language that's universal and a perfect fit for mass media, why can't English-speaking outlets take a similarly universal approach to just the Arabic alphabet? If Al Jazeera broadcasts to Libyan viewers in something other than Libyan dialect, can't we all just qof alike?

It's National Grammar Day!

2011-03-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

Celebrate by not looking surprised if someone says, "Happy National Grammar Day."

Other ways to celebrate:

* Impress a friend by using "whom" in a sentence.

* Annoy a stickler by not using "whom" in a sentence.

* Spread the word that there's no rule against ending sentences with prepositions or splitting infinitives.

* Spread the word that Strunk and White didn't understand passive voice.

* Tell a friend who believes "between you and me" is wrong that it's actually better than "between you and I."

* Brush up on one grammar term you either don't know or have forgotten, such as object complement, predicate nominative, or subjunctive.

* Start a sentence with "and."

* Warn a school kid or college kid that even educators can sometimes spread bad grammar advice and that he can always check facts in a good usage guide like Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, Garner's Modern American Usage, or Fowler's.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

2011-02-02T13:31:00.000-08:00

I noticed recently that both major style guides' preferred dictionaries advocate the spelling "doughnut."

Merriam-Webster, which is followed by most book publishers says that "donut" is a variant spelling of "doughnut." Translation: Down with "donut."

Webster's New World, which is followed by most news media, says that "donut" is informal for "doughnut." Translation: We're down with "donut," too.

But the masses, it seems, beg to differ. Doughnut gets about 6.8 million hits on google. But donut gets about 9,830,000.

Usually, I'm pretty awed by lexicographers and how well they do their job. But every once in a while, I just gotta poke holes ...

Copy Edit du Jour

2011-01-05T11:38:00.001-08:00

The road leads you through flourishing rainforests, flowing waterfalls,
plunging pools and dramatic seascapes.

Changed to:

The road leads you through flourishing rainforests AND PAST flowing
waterfalls, plunging pools and dramatic seascapes.

Any road that leads you through pools isn't much of a road. (I'm still thinking on "flourishing" and "plunging." I'm not too keen on those, either.)

Enough about me. Let's talk about grammar.

2011-01-03T11:06:00.000-08:00

Today marks the launch of my new grammar tips site, Grammar Underground, at
http://www.grammarunderground.com/

It will have podcasts and blog posts on the topics people ask me about most, approaching the topic from a perspective that’s neither prescriptivist nor descriptivist and but instead focused on helping users blaze their own trail through these warring factions.

I'll continue to blog here the same type stuff I've been doing all along (the whatever-catches-my-fancy-and-hopefully-yours topics). The new site is instructive and focused more specifically on grammar, usage, and punctuation.

Podcasts and blog posts will be updated every Monday. (Yes, I take requests.) And “Snobservations” -- hilariously incorrect grammar rants -- will be updated periodically (I welcome all submissions!).

Grammar Underground is on Twitter at @grammarunder (twitter.com/grammarunder) and on facebook as Grammar Underground.

Yaaay!

No Mumbo, Plenty of Jumbo: Language in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

2010-12-29T18:31:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to doing something I’ve been meaning to do for over a year: look up the exact text of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which (among other things) repealed banking safeguards put in place by the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act.

I figured I’d be up to my armpits in unintelligible legal speak in which the actual “repealing” was couched in incomprehensible terms. Boy, was I surprised:

From the first section of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, titled “Glass-Steagall Act Repeals”:

Here’s the language:
“Section 20 repealed”
“Section 32 repealed”

Section 20 of Glass-Steagall said that banks can’t get involved in securities trading. (From what I understand, the authors thought banks’ playing with stocks and bonds was too risky and helped lead to the Great Depression.) Section 32 said that no bank officer could be officer in a securities-trading company.

In other words, leaders thought it was a bad idea to let banks, which hold depositors’ money, use that money to speculate on stocks and other yet-to-be-invented securities. By 1999, three congressmen -- Gramm, Leach and Bliley -- decided that, on the contrary, it was a good idea.

Some Bad Sentences Just Coming Lookin' for You

2010-12-28T11:56:00.001-08:00

I wasn't even reading this AP story about a derailed chair lift at a Maine ski resort. I was just skimming it when this sentence jumped out at me:

"Jay Marshall, hunkered down in a cold wind while on a lift next to the broken one, said that his lift was moving but that the broken one was not."

Um, if he's on a lift next to a broken one, do you have to tell us that the broken one wasn't working? For that matter, do you have to tell us that one that's not the broken one was working?

And isn't "hunkered down in a cold wind while on a lift next to" a little inelegant? Letting go of "hunkered down in" might have helped:

" ... enduring the cold wind as he rode a lift next to the broken one."

Then again, maybe not. It might be best to just cut the whole sentence. After all, who cares if a guy on a moving chair lift noticed that a broken chair lift wasn't moving?

But then you get to the next sentence and see you've been led down the wrong path.

"Jay Marshall, hunkered down in a cold wind while on a lift next to the broken one, said that his lift was moving but that the broken one was not. There was a 'loud snapping noise' after the lift restarted, he said, then screams."

Aha. So the we see that Marshall was talking about something that happened earlier. But the verb "was," written in the same tense as "hunkered," made it sound as though Marshall's lift was motionless as he was hunkered down and talking to the reporter. Shifting from simple past tense ("was") to past perfect (i.e. "had been") would have saved us the confusion: Hunkered down in a cold wind, Marshall said that the lift next to his had stopped working (at some point prior).

Skimming the rest of the article, I see it's quite well written. (Even good writers let a clunker slip in now and then. That's why they have editors.) But its lone bad sentence just reached out and grabbed me. I hope this isn't the start of a trend. I'd hate to think what would happen if bad sentences starting banding together and coming after editors.

More Parsing Larsson: A Revisitation

2010-12-24T13:42:00.001-08:00

I've been hearing from a lot of people interested in analyzing Larsson's prose, so I thought I'd share links to some blog posts I did a while back examining his writing.

This one inventories verbs on one page of a Larsson book and compares his verb choices to those of Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King.

This one looks at his characters' dialogue and throws in for good measure some sample dialogue from two writers who I believe do it better.

This one, actually my first blog post on the subject, contains a sample rewrite of a short Larsson passage.

The Subtleties of Subject-verb Agreement

2010-12-23T08:38:00.000-08:00

An additional $18 billion in six-month bills was auctioned

or

An additional $18 billion in six-month bills were auctioned

Great discussion of this on an old Copyediting.com post.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

2010-12-21T14:40:00.001-08:00

Reading about creme fraiche today, I noticed that one website said it has a "nutty, slightly sour taste." Is it just me, or does it seem that every ingestible under the sun is, at times, said to have a "nutty" flavor?

I decided to find out. I did a Google search for the term "nutty flavor." Here are just a few of the foods that were described this way.

coffee
cheddar cheese
buckwheat groats
honey
fundamentalist Christians
tawny port wine
butterscotch pie
Peterson Gran Reserva cigars
red snapper
roux
farro
"strawberry fields" marijuana
brown ale
teff
spelt
parasitic grubs
soy milk
jicama
squash
caviar
green tea
asparagus bean
bread
parsnips
apricot jam
brown butter sauce
nutmeg
garlic
lecithin granules
two varieties of apples
sesame seeds
fungus
hemp seed butter
basmati rice
soy bean flour
Irish whiskey
lentils
whole wheat biscuits
broccoli raab
purple asparagus
El Tesoro anejo tequila
avocado
tahini
nicoise olives
processed lard
cabbage
cured raw ham
and, of course, the occasional nut

Checklist for Determining Whether Your Kid’s Picture Should Be on Your Christmas Cards

2010-12-19T15:14:00.000-08:00

True or False:

1. I always send out little Bobby’s picture because everyone oohed and aahed over how cute he was on our Christmas cards 15 years ago.

2. Childless people like looking at other people’s kids more, right?

3. My child has an Adam’s apple.

4. My child wears liquid eyeliner.

4a. My child’s eyeliner fully encircles her eyes, including around tear ducts. (+2 pts)

4b. My eyeliner-wearing child is a boy. (+3 pts)

5. As long as little Emma's face is out there, it's just a matter of time till she gets discovered.

6. Seeing my adorable kid could help my sister realize what she’s missing -- before it’s too late.

7. (New Englanders only) If we don’t send out our annual shot of Jimmy in his Red Sox cap, jersey, headband, and wristbands, how else will people know he supports the team?

8. If I have to look at my brother’s ugly kids every year, you better believe he's going to look at mine.

9. No one can tell that’s a booger hanging off his nose, right?

10. If you can think of a better way to show off her "Little House on the Prairie" costume, I’d like to hear it.

Scoring: Add up affirmative responses.
1 to 3: You’re the reason the rest of us own paper shredders.
4 to 7: Two words: tubal ligation.
8 or higher: Child Services is en route to your house.

Looks Like 'Seasoned' and 'Professional' May Be on the Outs Anyway

2010-12-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

Just saw a tweet from Ben Zimmer about a Google tool that lets you search book databases for keyphrases and keywords. So, with "seasoned professional" fresh in my mind, I did a search for it.

A chart of its occurrence shows a steady and marked increase in its use since the late 1920s until its sudden dropoff in the 2000s! I guess those two words are sick of each other, too.

I like this search engine. I like it a lot.

Words That Should Get a Divorce (One in an occasional series on words whose relationships have grown tired)

2010-12-16T10:29:00.001-08:00

"seasoned" and "professional"

"Seasoned professional" is one of those terms I've long relied on. I use it in my own writing and I'm sure I've inserted it into articles I've edited.

But something happened yesterday. I must have seen the pairing one time too many and I just snapped. Suddenly, "seasoned professional" ceased to be a familiar, easy, informative term and became instead droning, meaningless noise in my ear.

I guess I just reached my limit for seasoning my professionals this way.

Yes, these two words have had a great run. But it's time they went their separate ways.

Bad Introductory Phrase du Jour

2010-12-09T07:59:00.000-08:00

A real sentence (slightly disguised) that I edited yesterday:

"With the idea that instead of shopping all around New York, the attendees could have the city's best shops brought to them, retail outlets were set up with unique offerings of fashions, home decor, toys and cookware."

Even more than the two unnecessary passives that follow, it's the introductory phrase that floors me: "With the idea that instead of ..."

There was no coming back from that. I overhauled the whole sentence, making it something like:

"New York's top retailers set up boutiques at the festival, creating a one-stop shop for some of the city's finest fashions, home decor, toys and cookware."

Amazing how that tangible subject + verb formula can save a bad sentence.

What Was Stieg Thinking?

2010-11-30T17:21:00.000-08:00

In some blog posts I did a while back shredding Stieg Larsson's prose, I couldn't help but wonder what had gone through his mind and the mind of his editor. Some recently published e-mail exchanges shed some light on this very question.

Excerpted here by the Wall Street Journal, the back-and-forth between Larsson and his editor, Eva Gedin, include two points I find particularly interesting.

First, Larsson knew his prose needed editing. "My texts are usually better after an editor has hacked away at them," he wrote.

Second, his editor seemed to like his pre-editing writing. "I'm pleased to hear that you think the books are well written."

Fascinating.

Apostrophe Song

2010-11-29T18:54:00.000-08:00

Why just wring your hands over apostrophe catastrophes when you can SING?

After-party or Afterparty?

2010-11-23T17:18:00.001-08:00

Today I edited an article that contained the word “after-party.” The writer’s choice to form a noun from the words “after” and “party” by attaching them with a hyphen seemed logical. But I wasn’t sure it was the best choice.

I checked our designated dictionary, “Webster’s New World.” It does not contain the word “afterparty” (or “after-party,” for that matter). But I still wasn’t satisfied. My thinking: Who says that “after,” in this context, is a word? Can’t it be a prefix?

In the online version of Webster’s, I couldn’t figure out how to find the prefix “after-,” so I checked the hard copy of the dictionary. There it was, the “after-,” which Webster’s said was a “combining form,” (meaning you just splice it right on to the front of whatever word you’re pairing it with).

I was pleased with that answer and made the change, even writing a note in the text to explain it to the sectoin editor. An hour later, the section editor came up to my desk. Long before I edited the piece, she had checked the archives of the publication that I work for and seen that house style demonstrates a clear house preference for the hyphenated form: after-party.

Had I worked just a little bit harder, I'd have gotten it right. Had I been lazier, I'd have gotten it right. But my half-baked efforts were just enough to assure I got it wrong.

I thought beefalo were nuts. Little did I know ...

2010-11-17T16:42:00.001-08:00

When I stumbled across the beefalo in the dictionary, I thought it was pretty wild.

I had no idea.

Check out the cama (camel+llama), zebrule (zebra+horse), geep (goat+shee), and coydog (coyotoe+dog) and other aberrations unto nature that Drew M. wrote about a while back.

Thanks for sharing, Drew!

Words I'm Accidentally Looking Up (One in an occasional series on words I stumbled across in the dictionary)

2010-11-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

beefalo

an animal developed by crossing the American buffalo, or bison, with beef
cattle (Webster's New World College Dictionary)

It's Been 'A While'

2010-10-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

Seems to me that not many people can tell you the difference between "awhile" and "a while." So it's surprising to me how often people seem to get them right anyway.

Today, someone at CNBC didn't:

Asset allocation strategists haven't had an easy time in recent years. They've grappled with deflation, recession, plummeting U.S. stock markets and surging
foreign economies. And for awhile they dished out bigger weightings to defensive plays-bonds, cash and commodities.

"Awhile" is an adverb. "While" is often a noun.

Prepositions like "for" take nouns or noun phrases as their objects -- not adverbs.

So after "for" you'd want the noun phrase "a while."

Here's how Webster's New World puts it:

Usage Note: Awhile, an adverb, is never preceded by a preposition such as for, but the two-word form a while may be preceded by a preposition. In writing, each of the following is acceptable: stay awhile; stay for a while; stay a while (but not stay for awhile).

So if CNBC can get it wrong, I guess it's still worth noting!

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-10-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

sybaritic pleasures

changed to ...
pleasures

Sybaritic was a new one on me. So I looked it up. It means "devoted to or marked by pleasure and luxury." Good word. I like it. Still, I couldn't justify keeping verbiage that means "marked-by-pleasure pleasures."

Tumbleweeds Can't Edit

2010-10-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

A day after I posted about an error in the Los Angeles Times, my friend Carolyn Howard-Johnson blogged about another error in the Times — a mix up of "descent" and "decent."

And that reminds me: A Times business story I was reading last weekend had "fun" in place of "fund."

The L.A. Times has laid off a lot of people in the last few years — partly out of necessity, partly to compensate for some bad business moves. The paper's downtown office, once bustling and exciting, now seems a prime location for tumbleweeds.

The inevitable result: typos.

Faulty Parallel in My Paper

2010-10-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's surprising how seldom I notice faulty parallels in print. But here's one from today's L.A. Times:

In animal studies, they have been shown to cause cancer, liver toxicity and
interfere with growth and development.

The list is set up as parallel items that attach to "cause": "... cause cancer, (cause) liver toxicity ..." But the third item in the list has its own verb, meaning it doesn't attach right: "... to cause cancer, (cause) liver toxicity and (cause) interfere with growth ..."

Oops.

Best solution is to break up the list form:

In animal studies, they have been shown to cause cancer and liver toxicity and
to interfere with growth and development.

(Side note: Sorry I've been absent lately. Crazy, crazy schedule stuff.)

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-09-20T12:18:00.001-07:00

While both Jane Doe and John Public grew up in South Florida, their love story
began in Los Angeles.

This writer managed to use two of my biggest peeves in the first two words of an article!

For one, I hate loose uses of "while." As a synonym for "though" or "although," it can be sloppy and confusing. As for "both," that's more a personal prejudice. Often it's just wasted ink. In the cases in which "both" is useful, like this sentence, writers often put it in a less-than-ideal location. Here's what I did to the passage.

Though Jane Doe and John Public both grew up in South Florida, their love story
began in Los Angeles.

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-09-16T11:48:00.001-07:00

Some proofreading catches send a chill down my spine -- usually because I almost didn't catch them at all. Only on a second reading did I notice the error in this passage. Even then it felt like a fluke that I caught it. Here's the sentence:

Guests sipped signature cocktails and nibbled hors d'oeuvres into the wee
hours until the evening winded down and they went home with gift baskets teeming
with treats from local merchants.

The catch ....

I changed "winded" to "wound."

"Winded," 99% of the time, means out of breath. The proper past tense of the verb "to wind" is "wound." Webster's New World does allow "winded" as a past tense, but calls it "rare." And in copy editing, we never opt for secondary dictionary choices, much less "rare" ones.

That was almost the one that got away.

Loopy Linguistic Logic

2010-09-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

Love this quotation from an Economist interview with Bernard Lamb, president of the Queen's English Society, which I learned about from Stan Carey's blog/tweet:

"If I see a correct semicolon, that makes my day! They’re so useful!"

Um, dude: If they were so useful, sightings wouldn't be so rare.

As I mention in my new book, I'm an antisemicolonite. In-the-trenches copy editing can do that to a person. Once you've seen enough writers composing ridiculously long and awkward sentences solely to create opportunities to show off their semicolon prowess, you see how semicolons can do more harm than good.

Stan makes some great counterpoints to the English-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket coalition. But, to me, the most striking thing about their mentality is this: The Chicken Littles bemoaning the decline of English never seem concerned that, if there is evidence that English is in decline, that could be a sign that education is in decline across every discipline.

Increased ignorance about "affect" and "effect" is, to me, much less alarming than a decline in the number of students qualified to become engineers, physicists and mathematicians. Yes, these skills may go hand-in-hand with language learning. But that's the point: If they do, why are the Chicken Littles concerned only about the language part?

By emphasizing only language and by failing to put alleged language skills declines into context with possible declines in math, science and history, the English alarmists tip their hand. They're not about concern. They're about control.

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-09-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

From an article I'm editing:

Santa Cruz also offers year-round golf, riding the dunes in a four-wheel ATV, horseback riding, surfing, body boarding or fishing from its 1,100-foot pier.

There's an issue here that's cropping up so much lately I'm starting to wonder: Is it happening more? Or did I fail to notice it before?

The issue I'm talking about: "or."

The town doesn't offer surfing, body boarding or fishing. It offers surfing, body boarding and fishing. I wonder whether this happens because the list got so long that the writer forgot how the sentence was structured.

Just an interesting little mental blip is all. I changed "or" to "and."

LA Times: Electrodes Translate Brain Waves into Words

2010-09-08T09:34:00.001-07:00

Researchers from the University of Utah recently made strides toward helping severely disable people communicate. They placed some electrodes directly onto the brain tissue of one subject, had him speak some simple words, and interpreted the data from the electrodes.

Researchers reading the brain waves were able to identify some of the words.

Pretty cool.

The story's here.

Form Letters for Dealing with Unwelcome Facebook Friend Requests

2010-09-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Dear ____

Thank you for writing to me. I do not hear from many friends since my brain problem. Im feeling alot better, even though I don’t remember too good what all happened that night. Hey, now that I hear from you I think I remember: Weren’t you driving my car that night? Please give me your phone number so my mom can call you and ask what happened that night and if you were drinking.

Also, come over for fluffer nutters.

Dear _____

It’s wonderful to hear from you, though I cannot say it was a surprise. I knew that one day Jesus would draw you close enough that I could help you find his light and help guide you toward His one true church: Uniscientarianism, which teaches that the one true path to God is through overseas missionary work combined with a carb-restricted diet, door-to-door testifying and shedding yourself of all your material shackles. I look forward to helping you come into his light over the months and years to come!

Dear _____

What a trip hearin’ from you. Man, if it weren’t for this Facebook stuff I tell you I’d go nuts in this place. By “this place,” I’m sure you know I’m talking about the San Tancredo State Correctional Facility, where I’m stuck serving fifteen to twenty just for downloading a few hundred pictures “the man” says I shouldn’t be allowed to have.

Having someone like you on the outs can definitely make my life in here a lot easier. And if you can follow my directions for baking me a very special kind of birthday cake, maybe you can help me make my time here a lot shorter, too!

Write back soon. I mean it.

Dear ______

How are you?!? It’s great to hear from you! I guess you found my Facebook page through the dating site where I linked it. I bet you were surprised to see me on a site that hooks up people who don’t meet society’s standards of beauty. But, as I’m sure you saw in my photo spread, I’ve let myself go these last few years. But, hey, you were never one for dentists, either, now were you!?! And we unattractive folks enjoy discreet encounters, too. After all, that’s what the Bumping Uglies website is all about!

Please write and let me know where you’d like to meet and what you want me to wear.

Dear ______

Thanks for friending me! I’m doing good -- really excited about getting started with Amway. Do you know about Amway? Well, it works like this …

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-09-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

I came across this sentence (which I slightly disguised here) in an article I'm editing.

The popularity of fashion eyeglass frames began to spread, becoming so popular
in the late 1920s that the Sears catalogue dedicated an entire page to them.

I'm still noodling over it. Does popularity spread? Or is it more idiomatic to say it grows or perhaps increases? And I almost overlooked that dangling participle, which seems to suggest "popularity became so popular."

Here are some alternatives I'm toying with.

The popularity of fashion eyeglass frames grew. By the 1920s, the Sears
catalogue dedicated an entire page to them.

The popularity of fashion eyeglass frames grew so much that in the late 1920s
the Sears catalogue dedicated an entire page to them.

Fashion eyeglass frames started to get popular. By the late 1920s the Sears
catalogue dedicated an entire page to them.
Fashion eyeglass frames became so popular that by the late 1920s the the Sears catalogue dedicated an entire page to them.

Hmmm. I think I'll go with that last one.

Words that Should Get a Divorce (One in a continuing series on words whose relationships have grown tired)

2010-09-02T09:18:00.000-07:00

for and naught

Poor naught. While its partner, for, runs around with every other word under the sun, naught can't find a single other preposition that will give it the time of day.

You'll never see from naught, to naught, with naught, or at naught. And no way will naught ever get to strike out on its own, heading up a sentence like "Naught is what you've got."

Nope, naught is hopelessly codependent.

What Part of Speech is the "Due" in "Due To"?

2010-09-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

Came across this interesting usage note at Webster's New World's online dictionary. I hadn't realized that "due to's" function was disputed. Here's what I learned.

due to preposition: Because of

Usage Note: Due to has been widely used for many years as a compound preposition like owing to, but some critics have insisted that due should be used only as an adjective. According to this view, it is incorrect to say The concert was canceled due to the rain, but acceptable to say The cancellation of the concert was due to the rain, where due continues to function as an adjective modifying cancellation. This seems a fine point, however, and since due to is widely used and understood, there seems little reason to avoid using it as a preposition.

Copy Edit du Jour: Breaking up isn't hard to do

2010-08-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I showed a writer friend this passage* from an article I was copy editing about a young couple's courtship:

Supporting each other through their education and in their career dreams has been a vein running through their 10-year relationship that continues today as Jones pursues her dreams of becoming a licensed psychiatrist.

After graduating from the New York-based Cornell University where Wilson earned a degree in chemistry and Jones earning multiple degrees in accounting, mathematics and psychology, Wilson realized that he did not want to pursue a career in chemistry. He enrolled in NYU to earn another bachelor degree in civil engineering. During this period, Jones decided that she wanted to enter medical school and thus began taking pre-med courses at Princeton.

My friend was shocked. "You really have your work cut out for you," she said. On the contrary, I said. Fixing troubled prose like this usually means just 1. looking for ways to break up unwieldy sentences, 2. looking for unnecessary information that can be cut, and 3. cleaning up wrong verb tenses and awkward constructions. Here's how it looked when I was done.

Throughout their 10-year relationship, the two have supported each other’s education and career goals. Both graduated from Cornell University, Cosby with a degree in chemistry and Jones with multiple degrees in accounting, mathematics and psychology. Soon after, Wilson realized that he did not want to pursue a career in chemistry. He enrolled in NYU to earn another bachelor’s degree, this one in civil engineering. Jones decided that she wanted to enter medical school and began taking pre-med courses at Princeton.

Here, bit by bit, is what I did and why.

Supporting each other through their education and in their career dreams has been a vein running through their 10-year relationship that continues today as Jones pursues her dreams of becoming a licensed psychiatrist.

The main clause of this sentence says "supporting each other has been a vein." Gerund subject, bland verb, abstract complement. I liked what the writer was trying to say here, but she failed to pull it off. So, rather than structure the whole sentence in service to the "vein" idea, I figured it was better to make "supporting" an action instead of a subject: "They have supported each other."

The clause "... that continues today as Jones pursues her dreams of becoming a licensed psychiatrist" contains some worthwhile information -- Jones is working toward a new goal and Wilson's still supporting her. But all that will become clear in the sentences that follow. And in an already unwieldy sentence, the clause was doing more harm than good. So I cut it and let the facts speak for themselves.

The next sentence was a mess:

After graduating from the New York-based Cornell University where Wilson earned a degree in chemistry and Jones earning multiple degrees in accounting, mathematics and psychology, Wilson realized that he did not want to pursue a career in chemistry.

The tense shift is the most glaring problem: "where Wilson earned and Jones earning." But the structure here is bad, too. There's a ton of info crammed into that subordinate clause "After graduating ..." The sentence is supposed to be about Wilson, but writer also used this "after" clause as a place to cram in some info about Jones. It's just too much. So I broke it up into two sentences, one about their education (Both graduated from Cornell University, Wilson with a degree in chemistry and Jones with multiple degrees in accounting, mathematics and psychology) and the other sentence about Wilson's decision (Soon after, Wilson realized that he did not want to pursue a career in chemistry).

The next sentence was almost fine:
He enrolled in NYU to earn another bachelor degree in civil engineering.

I changed bachelor degree to "bachelor's" -- mainly because that's our style. But there was a logic problem, too. "Another bachelor's degree in civil engineering" suggests he already held a civil engineering degree. That wasn't what the writer meant, so I inserted "this one in" for clarity, ending up with: He enrolled in NYU to earn another bachelor's degree, this one in civil engineering.

The final sentence was structured okay, but contained some lard:

During this period, Jones decided that she wanted to enter medical school and thus began taking pre-med courses at Princeton.

"During this period" is unnecessary -- not worth the extra words. And "thus," in my humble opinion, has no business in a feature article. Out it went.

Little fixes aside, this passage mostly needed its sentences broken up. And when you see how making a gerund like "supporting" into a real verb like "support," and when you see how information in an "after" clause can be made into a separate sentence, breaking sentences up is very easy to do.

* I disguised the passage by changing some details.

Words I'm Accidentally Looking Up (First in a series on words I stumbled across while looking for other words)

2010-08-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

hagridden

adj. 1. (obs.) ridden by a hag

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional, cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

2010-08-23T12:17:00.001-07:00

attire

This sentence is from an article I'm editing: "The groom was attired in a '50s-era linen suit."

In my little world, attire always shows up as a noun. "The attire is formal." If I've ever heard it used as a verb, I don't remember it. So I looked it up in Webster's New World, which is the designated dictionary for the publication I'm working for. Lo and behold, it lists attire as a verb first (transitive) and a noun second.

Attire me embarrassed.

Changes to the Chicago Manual: Bad News for All You Xerxes Bloggers and Euripides Reporters

2010-08-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Manual of Style's new 16th edition is out, complete with updated style rules for book publishers and anyone else who follows this style. Some major style changes are here.

Per Chicago,

* web now takes a lowercase W, even though Internet and World Wide Web are still treated as proper names;
* you now capitalize the S in street when writing "at the intersection of Maple and Main Streets";
* iPod now gets a lowercase I when it begins a sentence; and, my favorite:
* "Names ending with an 'eez' sound - Names like Xerxes or Euripides now form the possessive in the usual way—with an apostrophe s. (When these forms are spoken, however, the additional s is generally not pronounced.)"

Again, that's for people who follow the Chicago Manual. All you AP Stylebook devotees can go back to puzzling over why Chicago continues to put so much focus on Xerxes and Euripides.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

2010-08-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

chaise longue = 984,000 hits
chaise lounge = 1,430,000 hits

"Chaise lounge" is one of those terms that gets sticklers up in arms. It should be "chaise longue," literally "long chair" in French, they say. And dictionaries clearly prefer "longue."

Under the entry for "chaise" alone, Webster's New World mentions the "longue" option, but does not mention "lounge." Under its listing for "chaise longue," this dictionary doesn't even mention the "lounge" spelling.

But if you look up "chaise lounge," it's in there as a term meaning "chaise longue."

This is on my mind because I came across a "chaise lounge" in an article I was editing yesterday. I changed it, of course. And I'll continue to do so. But it looks like the tide is turning.

'Each of Whom Visits' or 'Each of Whom Visit'?

2010-08-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

Came across this in a USNews & World Report online article today:

The retired couple has a maid and a gardener, each of whom visit once a week.

Should that visit be visits? Well, yes. Each has a singular meaning, so the verb should be singular as well. But in the process of researching this, I found some interesting stuff about each and when it might not be singular. It's a usage note from American Heritage Dictionary:

The traditional rule holds that the subject of a sentence beginning with each is grammatically singular, and the verb and following pronouns
must be singular accordingly: Each of the apartments has (not have) its (not
their) own private entrance (not entrances). When each follows a plural
subject, however, the verb and subsequent pronouns remain in the plural: The
apartments each have their own private entrances (not has its own private
entrance). But when each follows the verb with we as its subject, the
rule has an exception. One may say either We boys have each our own room or We
boys have each his own room, though the latter form may strike readers as
stilted. The expression each and every is likewise followed by a
singular verb and, at least in formal style, by a singular pronoun: Each and
every driver knows (not know) what his or her (not their) job is to be.

We readers have each her own opinion on this ...

Editors and Their Heart Attack

2010-08-09T10:23:00.001-07:00

Imagine you're writing about a gathering of parents of one-child families -- a support group, maybe, or perhaps some kind of political movement. Would it be better to write, “Six hundred parents brought their child” or “six hundred parents brought their children”? The former seems to suggest that six hundred people all share just one kid. The second could be interpreted to mean that some or all of them had multiple kids.

This is not a new issue by any stretch, but it’s one that continues to drive me nuts in my editing work.

Another example: “About two dozen customers had their car serviced” or “… had their cars serviced”?

Another: “Flood victims should read their homeowner policy” or “policies”?

Obviously, you can often sidestep this problem, especially with the word “each.” Six hundred parents attended, each with his or her child in tow.”

But what about when you can’t or just don’t want to?

In theory, I prefer the plural object. Six hundred parents don’t share one child. True, “Six hundred parents brought their children” does not make it clear that each had only one. But at least it doesn’t say all those parents possess a singular child. In other words, it doesn’t explain how the kids are divvied up. But at least you know you’re not divvying up just one.

But then I come across stuff like this Los Angeles Times excerpt, and see it’s not so simple: “The drugs help patients who have had heart attacks” really does sound like each patient had multiple.

The editor in me wants a precise way of dealing with this. The rest of me knows better.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

2010-08-05T09:02:00.001-07:00

Came across this sentence in a personal finance article today:

One way crooks steal your name is by swiping preapproved credit offers from your mailbox to open an account.

I haven't heard "swipe" used to mean "steal" in so long I had almost forgotten about it. So I Googled it.

In the first two pages of hits returned, I saw a lot of references to credit cards, a few dictionary and wiki definitions referring to taking a swing at someone, physically or verbally. And even: "The Swipe is one of the most recognizable power moves in breakdance. The breaker leans back, whips his arms to one side to touch the ground, and his legs follow closely behind, twisting 360 degrees to land on the ground once again." (I would have called that the "Not Tonight I Have a Headache," but what do I know?) But not one reference to stealing.

So I guess thieves have had their word stolen from them.

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional, cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

2010-08-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

bade

I know what bade means. It's the past tense of bid. Today I bid you farewell. Yesterday I bade you farewell.

That's not why I was looking it up. I looked it up because I wanted an official ruling on how to pronounce it.

On the rare occasions when I hear people use this word, they always pronounce it "bad." Seemed like a bad call to me. If they would pronounce it as ryhming with "made," there would be less chance of confusion. After all, "bad" is a very common word but "bayed" is pretty rare (despite the sudden emergence of werewolf chic).

So, at long (long, long) last, I looked it up.

"Bad" news. I was wrong.

Dictionary.com and Webster's New World College both said it's pronounced "bad," not "bayed."

Makes me wanna howl.

My Computer's (Lack of a) Way with Words

2010-07-29T17:24:00.001-07:00

At my freelance job, I used to be able to double-click the time on the task bar to call up a monthly calendar. Once launched, that calendar let me change the computer's date and time. But I never did. I just used it as a plain-old calendar.

A few months ago, my work computer got a security upgrade. Now when I double-click the time, the computer tells me, "You do not have the proper privilege to change the System Time."

You've won this round, rude, belittling, inarticulate computer ...

Fun Stuff Shamelessly Pilfered from Twitter

2010-07-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

Bryan Garner, author of "Garner's Modern American Usage," tweeted this morning:

Two of my favorite words: "ultracrepidarian" and "mumpsimus." They're closely related.

ultracrepidarian = one who pretends to greater knowledge than he or she actually possesses; esp., a know-nothing know-it-all.

mumpsimus = one who persists in error despite irrefutable correction. President. G.W. Bush was a mumpsimus when it came to saying "nuclear."

Neither Webster's New World College Dictionary nor Merriam-Webster contained either word. But Dictionary.com had 'em: ultracrepidarian

mumpsimus

My New Book's Out Today!

2010-07-27T09:45:00.001-07:00

It's called It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences.

It teaches how to improve writing at the sentence level. I based it largely on the writing problems I see in my copy editing work. It talks about upside-down subordination, passives, weak verb choices, weak noun choices, how to pare down flabby prose, how adverbs can backfire on a writer, and more issues that make good writing go bad.

I also use real-life examples of badly written sentences (many of them by professionals) and show how to break them down into parts and rebuild them better.

Here are links on Powell's, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Borders, and IndieBound.

It Was the Best of Sentences scored back-cover endorsements from literary agent and author extraordinaire Donald Maass (author of The Fire in Fiction), Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty (author of Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing), and Elizabeth Little (author of Biting the Wax Tadpole, which, by the way, is a fascinating read for anyone interested in foreign languages).

I really hope It Was the Best of Sentences will help some struggling writers become great writers!

More Parson Larsson: Million-dollar Dialogue – Five Cops, a Killer and a Here’s How It’s Done

2010-07-26T18:09:00.001-07:00

Here are some dialogue excerpts from Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest." The first five are cops -- all different cops, believe it or not -- and the last is a thug who runs a sex slavery ring talking to someone he’s about to kill.

After that, for contrast, are dialogue excerpts from James Cain’s “Double Indemnity” and from my friend Christa Faust’s novel “Money Shot.”

* * * * *

“He made it very clear that this was a matter that required the greatest possible discretion and that we should get as few people involved as possible. Bjurman should never have had anything to do with it -- it was way above his level -- but since he already knew what was going on it was better to keep him on rather than bring in somebody new. I assume that the same reasoning applied to a junior officer like myself. (Officer Bjorck, “Fire” p. 527)

“Salander has been subjected to a number of infringements on her rights, starting when she was a child. I do not mean for this to continue on my watch. You have the option to remove me as leader of the investigation, but if you did that I would be forced to write a harsh memo about the matter.” (Officer Bublanksi, “Hornet” p. 27.)

“His injuries seem to be similar to those of a car crash victim -- it's hardly credible that anyone could do such damage with his bare hands.” (Chief Spangberg, “Hornet” p. 29)

“I have met Mikael Blomkvist on several occasions in the course of this investigation. I have found him quite likeable, even though he is a journalist. I suppose you’re the one who has to make a decision about charging him. All this stuff about insults and resisting arrest is just nonsense. I assume you will ignore it.” (Officer Modig, “Hornet” p. 31)

“I agree with Sonja. I too think Blomkvist is a man we could work with. I’ve apologized to him for the way he was treated last night.” (Officer Erlander, “Hornet” p. 31)

“You set up your observation post on precisely the spot where we’d positioned alarms. It’s the best view of the farm. Usually it’s moose or deer, and sometimes berry-pickers who come too close.” (Organized crime boss/pimp Alexander Zalachencko, “Fire” p. 599)

“If they called us up, we’d cancel on him wouldn’t we? You bet we would. We’d return his unused premium so fast you couldn’t see our dust, and he knew it. Oh no, he wasn’t taking a chance on our doctor going out there to look at his leg and tipping things off. That’s a big point.” (Insurance inspector Norton, “Indemnity” p. 58)

“I had an aunt named Lia. But she was a fat, religious woman with eight kids and more hair on her chin than I have on my pussy.” (Porn actress Tabitha Moore, “Money Shot,” p. 116)

More Parsing Larsson: Querying the Great Beyond

2010-07-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

Below is the first page of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Below that is the same page with the copyedits and queries I would have made had it been my job to do so. Below that is a sample rewrite.

The edits are similar to what I do to some of the feature articles I work on. The difference is that, with a full-length novel, no one really has the time to do the detailed, extensive line-editing Larsson’s work requires. (I base that on the first two books in the Larsson’s “Milennium” series, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” which I recently finished reading.) In the book world, most editors would simply reject the manuscript with a note like, “Good story. But the writing’s not quite there.”

Yet an editor acquired Larsson's three manuscripts, and the series became one of the biggest blockbusters in years. (This is where my explanation would go if I had one.) Here’s the page, the edited page, and the sample rewrite.

****************************************************************
Friday, April 8

Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. It was just before 1:30 in the morning.

“What? he said, confused.

“Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Two patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The woman has gunshot wounds.”

“All right,” Jonasson said wearily.

Although he had slept for only half an hour, he felt groggy. He was on the night shift in the ER at Sahlgrenska hospital in Gotegborg. It had been a strenuous evening.

By 12:30 the steady flow of emergency cases had eased off. He had made a round to check on the state of his patients and then gone back to the staff bedroom to try to rest for a while. He was on duty until 6:00, and seldom got the chance to sleep even if no emergency patients came in. But this time he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he turned out the light.

Jonasson saw lightning over the sea. He knew that the helicopter was coming in the nick of time. All of a sudden a heavy downpour lashed at the window. The storm had moved in over Goteborg.

He heard the sound of the chopper and watched as it banked through the storm squalls down towards the helipad. For a second he held his breath when the pilot seemed to have difficulty controlling the aircraft. Then it vanished from his field of vision and he heard the engine slowing to a land. He took a hasty swallow of tea and set down his cup.

Jonasson met the emergency team in the admissions area. The other doctor on duty took on the first patient who was wheeled in -- an elderly man with ….

***********************************************************************
Friday, April 8

Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. (PROBABLY NOT A GOOD IDEA TO START WITH TWO PASSIVES IN THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE. PLS REVISE.) It was just before 1:30 in the morning.

“What? he said (ASKED?), confused. (IS THERE SOME SIMPLE WAY TO SHOW HIS CONFUSION?)

“Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Two patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The woman has gunshot wounds.”

“All right,” Jonasson said wearily. (HAVING HIM SAY “ALL RIGHT” SEEMS UNNECESSARY. WOULD IT BE MORE INTERESTING TO SAY WHAT HE DID RATHER THAN WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT?)

Although he had slept for only half an hour, he felt groggy. (ALTHOUGH? SEEMS TO ME THAT SLEEPING FOR JUST A HALF HOUR COULD BE WHAT MADE HIM GROGGY.) He was on the night shift in the ER at Sahlgrenska hospital in Gotegborg. It had been a strenuous evening. (VAGUE. SHOULD WE THROW IN A DETAIL OR TWO ABOUT THE EVENING AND PERHAPS ABOUT THE HOSPITAL, TOO?)

By 12:30 the steady flow of emergency cases (SEE NOTE ABOVE) had eased off. He had made a round to check on the state of his patients (DELETE “THE STATE OF”) and then gone back to the staff bedroom to try to (DELETE “TRY TO”) rest for a while. (I’VE NEVER HEARD OF A “STAFF BEDROOM.” ANY WAY TO MAKE THIS MORE VISUAL?) He was on duty until 6:00, (DELETE COMMA) and seldom got the chance to sleep even if no emergency patients came in. (WHY NOT? WHAT OTHER WORK WOULD KEEP HIM SO BUSY ON THE GRAVEYARD EMERGENCY ROOM SHIFT?) But this time he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he turned out the light. (“BUT THIS TIME” DOESN’T MAKE SENSE HERE. YOU’RE CONTRASTING A SENTENCE ABOUT NEVER HAVING THE CHANCE TO LIE DOWN WITH ANOTHER THAT SEEMS TO SUGGEST THAT LYING DOWN AND TURNING OUT THE LIGHT IS COMMON AND THE ONLY THING DIFFERENT IS HOW FAST HE FELL ASLEEP. PLS. FIX.)

Jonasson saw lightning over the sea. (YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN THE READER ANY SENSE OF PLACE – MUCH LESS ONE THAT INVOLVES A STAFF BEDROOM IN A HOSPITAL WITH AN OCEAN-VIEW WINDOW. ONCE YOU’VE EXPLAINED THE PHYSICAL LAYOUT THAT MAKES THIS POSSIBLE, PLEASE PLACE HIM AT THE WINDOW BEFORE SAYING WHAT HE SAW THROUGH IT.) He knew that (DELETE “HE KNEW THAT.”) the helicopter was coming in the nick of time. All of a sudden a heavy downpour lashed at the window. (1. SO MAYBE THE HELICOPTER ISN’T COMING IN THE NICK OF TIME? 2. “DOWNPOUR” USUALLY REFERS TO A WHOLE STORM AND NOT JUST A WAVE OF RAINDROPS HITTING A WINDOW. 3. “LASHED AT” SEEMS LIKE THE RAINDROPS CAME NEAR THE WINDOW BUT DIDN’T ACTUALLY TOUCH IT.) The storm had moved in over Goteborg.(DELETE WHOLE SENTENCE.)

He heard the sound of the chopper and watched as it banked (WHERE IS HE? SEEMS AWFULLY CONVENIENT THAT HE CAN SEE BOTH THE STORM ROLLING IN AND THE HELIPAD.) through the storm squalls(THAT WAS FAST) down towards the helipad. For a second he held his breath when the pilot seemed to have difficulty controlling the aircraft.(WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT DID HE SEE?) Then it vanished(UNCLEAR. EXPLAIN.) from his field of vision and he heard the engine slowing to a land. He took a hasty swallow of tea (KIND OF WEIRD THAT A JUST-SLEEPING MAN HAD SOME TEA HANDY. ALSO, SHOULDN’T HE BE SCRUBBING UP OR SOMETHING?) and set down his cup (ON WHAT?)

Jonasson met the emergency team in the admissions area.(DETAILS?) The other doctor on duty(DETAILS?) took on the first patient who was wheeled in(MIGHT BE BETTER IF WE DID THIS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER: FIRST THE PATIENT WAS WHEELED IN, THEN THE DOCTOR “TOOK ON” THE PATIENT, BUT FIND A MORE SPECIFIC ALTERNATIVE TO “TOOK ON”—an elderly man with ….

*************************************************************************

Here is a rough sketch of how I suspect other authors might have approached the page:
************************************************************************

April 8

Nurse Helga Olsson placed a firm hand on the sleeping doctor’s shoulder and shook him gently.

“Chopper coming in,” she said. “Two patients. An injured man and a woman with gunshot wounds. They’ll be here in five minutes.”

Dr. Sven Jonasson sat up and looked at the digital clock on the steel surgical tray that served as a nightstand. It was 1:28 a.m.

He felt groggy. He had only slept for half an hour on a cot in the small room next to the doctors’ lounge. It had been a rough night. Sahlgrenska Hospital’s ER had treated two stabbing victims, a couple of broken bones, and a peanut allergy reaction so severe Dr. Jonasson had to insert a breathing tube in the patient’s bloated neck to save her life.

By 12:30 a.m. the emergency cases had eased off. Dr. Jonasson made a round to check on his patients then went into the small room and lay down. He had fallen asleep almost as soon as he turned out the light.

He stood and watched nurse Olsson leave, then he walked to the window and looked out over Dorn Bay. A flash of lightning illuminated the water and he could see the torrents moving in. Within seconds, rain was lashing the window.

He heard a chopper and watched as it slowly came into view over the water. It banked through the storm squalls toward the helipad at the north end of the hospital grounds. Suddenly, the copter dropped about thirty feet, then it wobbled back and forth. Dr. Jonasson gasped and then held his breath as the chopper leveled and headed toward the helipad, where it landed safely.

He reached for the cup of tea he’d left on the makeshift nightstand and took a sip. It was cold and milky. He grimaced and set down the cup.

He arrived at the emergency room the same time as Dr. William Sorli, a skinny, wide-eyed intern who had been working the ER for about six months. They watched as a breathless EMT wheeled in the first patient—a crumpled old man who …

Copy Editor Confessions

2010-07-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

It's tough to admit that I had no idea how to spell a word I've used all my life, but there I was sitting at my desk this morning wondering why my spell-checker wasn't questioning the word "temperamental."

I was also patting myself on the back for my eagle-eyed spotting of that little A before "mental," messing up a word that should of course be spelled "tempermental." Then I looked it up.

Ouch.

temperAmental

tempermental

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-07-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

At present, the university has 15 schools and 52 departments.

... changed to ...

The university has 15 schools and 52 departments.

Feels so good to do that ...

The ABCs of Editing: Always read at least the first sentence

2010-07-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Granny submitted this boo-boo she found here on ABCNews online.

President Obama took on House GOP Leader John Boehner’s call for repealing financial reform before it’s signed yesterday.

Never thought I'd see a boo-boo that made me long for a "t'were." I wonder if this was an editor-inserted error. (They happen. Take it from an editor who's inserted her fair share.)

Copy Editing Conundrum du Jour

2010-07-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

I'm still not sure what to make of this sentence I came across in my copy-editing work today:

Guests are given glowsticks to guide their way through the already freaky figures and dioramas—a gauntlet that’s pretty scary to run even with the lights on.

It's weird enough that it seems to be based on a metaphor mixing "run the gamut" (range, scale) and "throw down the gauntlet" (glove). But "a gauntlet that's scary to run"?

I changed it to "a course that's pretty scary to run." But it'll be a while before I'm confident about it ...

Call Me King Christie Dickens

2010-07-13T18:59:00.001-07:00

I just learned of a website that analyzes a sample of your writing to tell you which famous writer you write like. Supposedly it analyzes "your word choice and writing style" to make the comparison.

I have no idea how much effort the creators put into making it scientific, but it's definitely fun. A chapter from my last book in which I wax philosophical about pudding shakers was compared to the work of Agatha Christie. A sappy column I wrote after Vonnegut died scored me a Stephen King comparison. And two paragraphs from my brand-new book (which I just got in the mail today!) was written in the style of Charles Dickens.

But here's the funny thing: The book is called "It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences" -- a play on Dickens! And, no, the excerpt did not include those words or any other Dickens stuff. Spooky.

Here's the site: http://iwl.me/

More Parsing Larsson: Verb Inventory

2010-07-11T08:20:00.000-07:00

After yesterday’s post about Stieg Larsson, I got an itch to compare his verbs to some other writers’. Not that verbs are the biggest problem with Larsson’s writing. Far from it. Still, I was curious. So here is an inventory of verbs from a page of Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” a page of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” and a page of Stephen King’s “Just After Sunset.”

I list these verbs in their base forms -- i.e. “had been” and “were” are listed as “be.” Verbs forming independent clauses are in all caps. Verbs forming subordinate clauses are lowercase. Participial modifiers are not counted as verbs.

Larsson, page 414 -- 18 sentences:
1. BE
2. BE
3. RECALL, HAVE, be
4. BE
5. UNDERSTAND
6. BE, FIND, find
7. BE, gnaw
8. NOTICE, take, keep
9. BE, BE, summarize
10. HAVE, BE, clear out, throw
11. THROW
12. BE, FIND
13. SEE, remove, deal with
14. SPEND, MISS, COME, HAVE
15. FIND, contain
16. GO, try, find
17. BE
18. DISCOVER, GO, USE

McCarthy, page 136 -- 15 sentences
1. bend, see, FEAR, be, put
2. GO, CROSS
3. SET, TAKE, PUNCH, PUNCH, DRAIN
4. PULL, POUR
5. TWIST, MAKE, POUR, PUT, SHAKE
6. POUR, TAKE, STUFF
7. TAKE, GET, STRIKE
8. TRY, STOP, POUR
9. FLARE, say
10. NOD
11. RAKE, BLOOM
12. REACH, BLOW, HAND
13. SAY
14. TAKE
15. DO

King, page 61– 27 complete sentences
1. HOLD, LOOK
2. LOOK
3. cut, SAY
4. LOOK, CUT
5. CUT
6. TRY, scramble, go, thump
7. PIVOT, BE
8. SEIZE
9. DANGLE
10. GET, TURN
11. WAIT
12. BRING, WANT, MAKE
13. REMEMBER, choke up
14. BE
15. BE
16. BE, be, SOUND, slacken
17. HAPPEN, BEGIN
18. STARE
19. STARE
20. do, SAY, REACH, take
21. SAY, SWING
22. HAMMER
23. BURST, snap
24. RUN, PATTER
25. stop, SAY
26. LOOK
17. SAY, BRING

25% (ten) of Larsson’s verbs are “be.” Just over 25% (eleven) are nonphysical or mental actions like “recall, “understand,” “summarize,” “discover” and “find.”

2-1/2% (one) of McCarthy’s verbs are “be” and 2-1/2% convey a state of mind (“fear.”)

10% (five) of King’s verbs are “be” and most of the rest are actions.

The process I used to choose these pages probably wasn’t fair. I started with a Larsson page I had already noted as bad then flipped through McCarthy and King for pages that looked about as dense with narrative as the Larsson page (that is, pages that didn’t have much dialogue). Still, I bet that a fair and complete accounting of the verbs in all three books would show similar -- if not quite as marked -- tendencies. That is, McCarthy and King rely more on action verbs while Larsson’s work relies more on verbs that convey being, seeming, or thinking.

That’s partly why I prefer reading McCarthy and King.

Larsson structures a lot of his sentences like this:

“The reason for her visit to the crime scene was to get two pieces of information” and “Second was an inconsistency that kept gnawing at her.” (p. 414)

Notice how, in both, he hangs the main clause on “was” and crams the more interesting stuff into less-prominent parts of the sentence. Imagine he had written them:

“She visited the crime scene to find two pieces of information.”
and
“An inconsistency kept gnawing at her.”

See how the noun “visit” can be made into an action? See how “gnaw” can be made the main action in the sentence instead of just part of a relative clause in a sentence whose main verb is the ho-hum “was”?

I think there’s a lesson in here …

Parsing Larsson

2010-07-10T12:25:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played with Fire," though I don't know why. It's the second in a trilogy, after "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

The prose in "Dragon" was pretty bad. But the story was fast-paced enough to distract me from the writing. Not so with "Fire." As the story drags on, I've started noticing sentences and passages I want to fix. (It's a copy editor thing. A disease, really.) I started dog-earing examples of problem sentences and paragraphs, figuring I'd analyze them here. But soon, it seemed that every other page was dog-eared with examples too bad to pass up. And I could feel my chest tightening: It's too much. The writing's too convoluted. I can't possibly fix all this. But I can't just let it go, either.

So, in the interest of maintaining healthy blood pressure, I decided that I didn't have to fix all Stieg's problem passages. I could just share some here (tinkering only if it didn't seriously affect my heart rate). So here's an example of Stieg prose (which is also an example of how often huge sales success goes hand in hand with bad writing).

Larsson wrote in Swedish, was translated into English, and then the manuscript presumably passed through the hands of an editor and copy editor. I'm not sure where the blame goes. That said, here's the passage from "The Girl Who Played with Fire."

Salander soon discovered that the person who had leaked the information to the media was Ekstrom himself. This was evident from an email in which he answered follow-up questions about both Salander's psychiatric report and the connection between her and Miriam Wu.

The third significant piece of information was the insight that Bublanski's team did not have a single lead as to where they should look for Salander. She read with interest a report on what measures had been taken and which addresses had been put under sporadic surveillance.

Note how the pivotal verb in three out of four of those sentences is "was." Here's one way that, I suspect, a lot of writers might have written it:

Salander skimmed Ekstrom's emails until she saw one with the subject line "Re: Psych report, Wu connection," addressed to a reporter at a local paper. She opened it. "No," the first line read, "Salander's doctors never used the word 'sociopath' in the report. But they did consider her violent. Re your other question: Miriam Wu admitted she and Salander played 'sex games,' as she called them."

So Ekstrom was the rotten son of a bitch who blabbed to the media.

Salander also found on Ekstrom's computer a list of the places police had been staking out to find her: her old apartment, Miriam's place, Mikhael's cabin. The condo wasn't on the list. They had no clue where she was hiding. Good.

Oy.

NY Times' Sassy Apostrophes

2010-07-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

I'll never stop marveling at NY Times' use of apostrophes to form plurals of initialisms. It's a valid choice. I just don't get the why.

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-06-25T12:09:00.001-07:00

Two major aspects of the infrastructure revitalization will include revamping education and healthcare systems.

Changed to:

The education and healthcare systems will be revamped.

In the last couple years, I've come to despise structures that say an "aspect" of something is something else: "One fun aspect of the day camp is getting to catch your own fish."

Why not just make the main clause a simple human subject+real action structure? "Kids get to catch their own fish."

The Worst Phrase I Never Fixed

2010-06-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Came across this in my copy editing today:

"Taking a leading role in putting a fresh face on this world-famous celebrity mecca ..."

Of the first six words, three are "ing" forms. Yuck, yuck, and yuck. And the utter hollowness of "taking a role in putting" deeply offends my editing sensibilities.

I thought about just chopping off the first five words and starting with "putting." That would make a better sentence, but it would also change the writer's meaning.

So, taking a leading role in holding my nose, I left the phrase untouched.

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-06-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

After a few less-then memorable dates ...

changed to:

After a few less-than-memorable dates

Whenever I see a "then" in place of "than," I like to give the writer the benefit of the doubt. If that makes me a chump, so be it.

The hyphenation is even more interesting: Writer made a compound to modify a modifier (memorable) instead of uniting them to modify the noun. Interesting choice, but, as everyone knows we copy editors are drunk with our own power, I changed it.

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional, cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

2010-06-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

rocket

Learning a foreign language is always trying. But learning from speakers of a foreign language that you're deficient in your own language is truly frustrating.

I recently began listening to Italian language lessons in my car. (It's part of my "stop saying we're going to Italy someday and just go, dammit" campaign, which has been dragging on for quite some time and will likely continue through at least the summer of 2011.) In one audio lesson, the sample dialogue had two Italian speakers listing toppings they wanted on their pizza: " ... funghi, capperi, rucola ..."

Then they translated into English. I already knew that funghi would be mushrooms. I wasn't surprised to hear that capperi meant capers. I was anticipating the last word to be arugula, but it wasn't. I couldn't make out what they were saying. It sounded like "ararahkt." So I looked it up online and saw that rucola in English means -- rocket.

Rocket?

Turns out it's a synonym for arugula.

So to learn an Italian word I had to learn an English word. That's a long way to go just to order a pizza.

What If She Really Meant 'Nerve Recking'?

2010-06-10T12:14:00.000-07:00

A story I'm editing says that weddings "can be nerve wrecking."

I figure the writer probably meant "nerve-racking," which I couldn't remember how to spell.

I thought it was "nerve-wracking," with "wrack" meaning "to torture."

But both dictionaries I checked prefer "nerve-racking," the the verb "rack" meaning "to trouble, torment or afflict."

It's one of those things I've learned, forgotten, and relearned who-knows-how-many times over the years.

So, while it's possible that the writer quite deliberately used "wreck," I couldn't let all that good research go to waste, now could I?

What's the Plural of Chili?

2010-06-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

I came across "chilis" in a document I was editing today and did a double-take. I could not, for the life of me, remember how it's usually written. So I looked it up.

Webster's New World says the preferred plural of chili is chilies, but also allows chilis.

And now, after a few minutes of staring at them, they all look wrong to me ...

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-06-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

The band has sold more than 20 million records and scored 12 American Top 40 hits during its career.

... changed to ...

The band has sold more than 20 million records and scored 12 American Top 40 hits.

And, Yes, You Can Start a Sentence With 'And'

2010-06-03T11:02:00.000-07:00

One of the students in my online copy editing course was taught -- straight out -- that it's wrong to start a sentence with "and." Whenever she did, a high-school teacher would say, "That's not right, dear." Several other students were under the same impression.

Who ARE these teachers who spread this stuff and why don't/didn't they ever check their own facts?

The Chicago Manual of Style, Garner's Modern American Usage, Fowler's New English Usage, the American Heritage Dictionary, and the simple logic of grammar and idiom all say it's fine to start a sentence with "and" (or "but" or "so"). I don't know of any real authority that disagrees.

It's a shame how powerful misinformation can be.

Words I Will Never Be Cozy With

2010-05-28T10:39:00.001-07:00

stanch

Stanch is one of those words that's always on copy editors' radar. Like "founder" (to sink) vs. "flouder" (to flail), the stanch vs. staunch issue seems to make itself known to copy editors early in their careers. So I've been aware of the word "stanch" ever since I first started reading style guides.

Today stanch is all over the news, as BP execs talk about how they can stanch the oil leak. It's the perfect word for the job. But, at the same time, it's one of those words that seems unnatural somehow -- maybe because it doesn't seem to come up in everyday speech.

It's none too easy on the ears, either.

I guess that's why I'll never feel like I have a relationship with "stanch."

Unclear Antecedents from a Cleary Questionable Source

2010-05-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

I clicked on a link to a personal finance article today and saw this:

They hid in the wrong stocks. They hid in the drug stocks. They hid in the medical stocks. It's where you are supposed to go in a slowdown. And they betrayed the hiders. I am talking about the big mutual funds and hedge funds that rushed into the big drug stocks like Lilly , Merck , Bristol-Myers , Pfizer , Glaxo , Johnson & Johnson , Sanofi and Novartis , and they hid in biotech like Amgen and Celgene . They figured people still had to take drugs, right? And they got betrayed twice.

It's from an article by Jim Cramer (yeah, that guy). I couldn't see the whole article because it's at a subscriber site of TheStreet, but I'm pretty sure this is the first paragraph. And the editing alone is enough to make me not want to subscribe. From what I can tell, the first three "theys" refer to mutual funds. But in sentence six, with no explanation, "they" appears to pair up with a different antecedent as "mutual funds" shed their "they" nickname to become "the hiders."

If I can't trust 'em with pronouns, I'm sure as hell not going to trust 'em with my money?

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional, cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

2010-05-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

predominately

Came across this recently in my editing work. I was editing marketing copy, so I just assumed the writer made a mistake. I started to change it to "predominantly," but then stopped and looked it up.

predominate

to have ascendancy, authority, or dominating influence (over others); hold sway
to be dominant in amount, number, etc.; prevail; preponderate

Related forms:
predominately: adverb

In other words, predominately is a lot like predominantly.

I changed it anyway.

Question from a Reader About New Yorker Style

2010-05-18T20:17:00.001-07:00

Abigail, commenting on this old post, asks: Does anybody know if The New Yorker has an editorial style guide that one could lay one's hands upon? As an editor myself-- known as The Comma Queen by some whose work I have put a pencil to-- I would be most interested in seeing it.

Me, too.

I Googled "New Yorker Style Guide" and found a third-party mention of it here

But I didn't look much further. Anyone know?

OED's Definition of 'Siphon'

2010-05-12T10:51:00.001-07:00

According to this article, the Oxford English Dictionary had a faulty definition of "siphon" for 99 years.

Having worked in publishing for so long, I don't think that's stop-the-presses surprising. If authors and journalists and highly regulated oil-extraction companies and everyone else can make errors, there's no reason that lexicographers responsible for the enormous OED should be any different.

What interests me more about this article is how it's written. The second sentence is "Siphons don't work, it turns out, because of atmospheric pressure, as the OED has been saying since 1911."

Here's another way to say that. "Since 1911, the OED has been saying that siphons work because of atmospheric pressure. That, it turns out, is not true."

But, no. The writer relegated the most important piece of information in the whole article to a subordinate clause: "AS the OED has been saying." That annoys me. The placement of "it turns out" annoys me, too. Usually, that phrase cues the reader that something they already know about "turns out" to be wrong. But in this article, you learn that something "turns out" to be wrong before you learn what that something is.

Maybe I've been copy editing too much lately, thereby focusing too much on little issues like this, but I find all this rather irksome.

Valuable Typos

2010-05-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

I always think of typos as bad things. But this AOL News story is a reminder that they can be valuable. The story lists nine published works that, in early typo-laden printings, are worth some money. They include old works like a 1600s Bible and newer stuff like an error-riddled early printing of "The DaVinci Code."

Fortune Cookie Misfire

2010-05-05T20:57:00.001-07:00

It was as fine a sentiment as any you'd get from a cookie: "You have good luck in your personal affairs."

Unfortunately, when my husband pulled the fortune out of the cookie, it tore in half. All we saw was, "You have goo in your personal aff."

We're just glad the last word wasn't "associations."

From the Department of Clever Wordplay

2010-05-05T11:19:00.003-07:00

A full-page ad in today's LA Times.

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional cleverly named series in words I'm looking up)

2010-05-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

acronym

I'm teaching on online copy editing course (or, as the school calls it, a copyediting course). This week, students are learning about "acronyms."

I've long had an issue with this word. People use it interchangeably with "initialisms." But not all dictionaries support that.

Webster's New World College Dictionary, which is the designated resource in the newspaper copy editing work I do, says that an acronym is a set of initials pronounced as a word: radar, NASCAR. Initials that are pronounced as individual letters are not acronyms but initialisms: FBI, FAA, CIA.

BUT, Merriam-Webster, which is the designated dictionary for the Chicago Manual of Style, which is what we follow in the course, does allow using acronym to mean initialism, albeit reluctantly.

The author of the textbook for the copy editing course mentions this distinction in a footnote, but adds that it's common to call initialisms acronyms -- then she proceeds to do so throughout the chapter. I couldn't leave it alone. I informed students that, according to another widely used dictionary, this use of "acronym" is an error and that, even according to our dictionary, it's questionable.

I recommended that, as copy editors, they observe the distinction.

I have no doubt that the dictionaries will soon be changed to reflect real-world usage of the word "acronym." But, until they do, I think that people who aspire to careers as copy editors should take the more conservative approach. (Or at least be made fully aware of the controversy.)

The Cosmos Were or the Cosmos Was

2010-04-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

A guy who reads my newspaper column wrote to scold me about using "the cosmos were" in the column in the sentence "I realized the cosmos were begging me to question 'beg the question.'"

The reader had "double-checked" a dictionary and saw that "cosmos" is singular. Therefore, it should have been "cosmos was."

After writing this column for nearly nine years, you'd think I'd be used to stuff like that. But I'm not. I always bristle and get defensive and run around my house looking for books that back me up.

I didn't like what I found. All three of the dictionaries I checked treated "cosmos" as, basically, a singular. There is a plural form, spelled the same way, but, as the dictionaries very briefly mention it, it seems to apply only when you're talking about two or more cosmos (cosmoses?). And who the heck ever does that?

Plus, none of the dictionaries I checked had any discussion/usage notes that you see with words like "politics," which can take a singular or plural verb depending on the sentence.

But, after fifteen minutes of scrambling for weapons with which to defend myself, I had a strange urge to check the original article I had turned in to my editors. Turns out, I had written "the cosmos was." An editor changed it "were."

Often, "gotcha" e-mails inspire columns. Whether I'm right or wrong, these correspondences with readers usually deal with issues that make good columns. I'm always more eager write about the arguments I win, of course. But I can sometimes man up enough to publicly admit when I'm wrong.

But this time is different. Neither the reader nor I was wrong, per se. If there was an error (and I find that highly disputable), it was an editor's. Even if it wasn't a language error, it's always an error for an editor to make a chance s/he hasn't researched.

Still, can you imagine a column in which a columnist whines about how an editor made her look bad in a prior column? Not cool.

Will the reader believe my reply of "It wasn't my fault. Honest! I was framed!"? Probably not.

I'm not sure why I chose the singular verb to go with "cosmos." I didn't put any thought into it. Still, I'm not sure where I stand. "The cosmos are cruel" sounds much better to me than "The cosmos is cruel." And I don't know if I agree with the interpretation that the dictionaries support only the singular verb.

I'm still too frazzled to make up my mind. But someday I'll be grown-up enough to handle these things better ....

Gallagher on Words

2010-03-31T10:51:00.000-07:00

Bossquez posted this link in a comment, but it deserves more attention that it can get there.

It's Gallagher talking about some language and logic issues. Made me laugh.

(Thanks, Bossquez!)

Worst Movie Word Ever

2010-03-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen it for years, but thinking about it still gags me to this day.

In "Revenge of the Sith," children in jedi training are called "younglings." When something bad happens to them, other characters exclaim in horror: Not the younglings! Not the younglings!!

How embarrassing for everyone involved ...

Commas, Commas Everywhere

2010-03-25T13:38:00.001-07:00

I've been buried under more work than usual lately, most of it deleting and inserting commas in long lists of stuff far too boring to waste your time with here.

The work is making me comma crazy. I finally take a 10-minute break to read a CNN article and see this:

(CNN) -- Acolytes of "Food Rules" guru Michael Pollan and other well-meaning foodies who've made corn a scapegoat for the nation's health crises, this week welcomed a new study from Princeton University that suggests high-fructose corn syrup causes more significant weight gain than table sugar.

Either that comma is an unwelcome intruder between the subject and the verb or, I'm, officially, losing, it.

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-03-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

Nurses are on hand to ensure patients stick to their treatment regimes.

Changed to "regimens."

I've never seen that mistake before. The word usually mistaken for "regimen" is "regiment."

More Words That Don't Belong in Feature Stories

2010-03-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

" ... which means that a hospital has demonstrated its commitment to providing excellence in patient care."

Even if a press release says "demonstrated its committment to providing excellence in," it doesn't mean that kind of language should be dumped onto readers.

Yikes.

A Phrase that Should Probably Never Appear in a Feature Article

2010-03-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

resulted in

As in, "The exhibit resulted in a proclamation of 'that's awesome' from my kids."

Yes, that's based on a real excerpt from a real article. I resisted the temptation to hack the whole sentence to bits and just changed "resulted in" to "earned."

There's a Word I Can't Remember -- And It's Driving Me Nuts

2010-03-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

Early video games were text games. They would say something like, "You see a rabbit," then you would type something like "chase rabbit," "kill rabbit," etc.

Your answers to questions would take you down branches predetermined by the programmer. I can't, for the life of me, remember the name for the branching quality of these and later games.

Kind of driving me nuts.

It's National Grammar Day!

2010-03-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty and Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier author Bonnie Trenga, with, I think, an assist from Things that Make Us [Sic] author Martha Brockenbrough, have cooked up some fun stuff to promote grammar at http://nationalgrammarday.com/.

Yesterday, I learned, was Girls Day. I learned about it at a bookstore appearance by friend and author Naomi Hirahara, who was at Vroman's in Pasadena celebrating the release of her newest Mas Aria mystery, Blood Hina.

My New Pet Peeve

2010-03-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

In a recent NPR segment, linguistic rock star Geoff Nunberg points out something I never noticed: people often apply the term "pet peeve" to things that are anything but "pets."

"Pet," in this usage, has traditionally implied something personal: "a tic or fancy that you nurture in your bosom and make your own." But, more often than not, the "pet peeves" people tell me about are more like mass peeves -- stuff like "irregardless" in place of "regardless."

That's a peeve all right. Just it's hard to call it any one person's pet.

I have a feeling that, from now on, every time I hear someone use "pet peeve" to describe a popular peeve ... oh, it's gonna peeve me.

One that Just Won't Die

2010-02-25T13:52:00.001-08:00

Grammar myths are notoriously impervious to truth. But one has a staying power that continues to amaze me. It came up again at a talk I gave today at Glendale Community College.

It's the idea that you can't use "more importantly" to start a sentence. The correct form, according to the folks who believe this is, "more important." It's the logic that's so fascinating.

Take the sentence: "More importantly, the mayor voted for the measure." Opponents of this "more importantly" say that this sentence suggests that the mayor's voting was done in an important manner -- that he puffed up his chest as he dropped his ballot in the ballot box, perhaps while wearing spats and a monacle or standing under a banner that says "mission accomplished."

Here's how I tackle this myth. I say, "Ironically, not all adverbs modify actions. Actually, there are things called sentence adverbs that are different from manner adverbs. Unfortunately, they're not as well known. Tragically, I'm not very good at coming up with examples. Happily, the last five sentences prove that adverbs don't have to modify actions."

Now, what's interesting to me is that the folks who oppose "more importantly" already know that "ironically," "actually," "unfortunately," "tragically," and "happily" can all work this way. But they never apply this knowledge to question the idea that "more importantly" can only be a manner adverb and not a sentence adverb.

I guess it's human nature to embrace ammo for playing "gotcha." But it's weird how we (I'm guilty, too) are so reluctant to question it.

And Now for Something Completely Unrelated to Language

2010-02-18T15:21:00.000-08:00

I got an e-mail from Hawaiian Airlines to enter a sweepstakes to win 1 million miles on that airline. The second prize is a five-night stay, sans airfare, at an Outrigger resort.

I would like either of those things very much. I entered. Then I read the rules.

The grand prize is valued at $25,000, on which the winner has to pay taxes. The e-mail said that 1 million airline miles could equal 25 round trips from the mainland. If you're in the 25% tax bracket and you use all the miles, each of those tickets valued at $1,000 costs you about $250. But instead of paying it a few months before you go and paying it directly to the airline, you're paying it to Uncle Sam, probably years before you'll ever cash in on the benefits.

From the West Coast, fares to Hawaii sometimes get as low as $280. Right now, Hawaiian Air has fares starting at $360. From the East Coast? Well, Hawaiian doesn't fly to the East Coast. So it's not like some lucky winner could be enjoying an $800 New York-to-Kona flight in exchange for a $250 tax burden.

The tax benefits for the airline, however, seem kind of sweet: an instant $25,000 write-off on earnings that would put (I'm guessing here) perhaps $8,000 or more directly in their pockets in return for just a commitment to sometimes let some winner occupy some seats on a plane.

Oh, and that five-night stay at an Outrigger Resort? Well, the official rules value that at just under $3,300 -- that's the amount you have to claim to Uncle Sam. That comes to about $660 a night. If you're in a 25% tax bracket, that's $165 a night you pay up front in the form of taxes.

Outrigger Reef on the Beach, one of their better properties and a place I'd very much like to stay, can be booked select nights in March for $169 a night.

So, when you take into account the taxes, neither prize seems like much of a prize.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not siding with that dude who flew his plane into an IRS building today. On the contrary, it seems to me that corporationsn with fancy accountants could be having a bigger impact on my bottom line than the IRS is. (After all, somebody has to pick up the tax slack to maintain all those roads that lead into and out of the airports served by Hawaiian.)

Of course, that's just from reading some of the fine print in one document. Maybe other documents affecting every other corporation's tax obligations don't contain anything so conveniently self-serving.

So what would I do if I won 1 million free miles on Hawaiian? I honestly don't know. It'd be hard to say no thanks. But it's quite possible I'd decline the second-place prize.

A Spelling Thing That Has Long Irked Me

2010-02-17T19:12:00.001-08:00

Kooky and Cuckoo. That's bothered me ever since I was a kid. I guess I thought that if kooky is with K's and O's, cuckoo should be kookoo.

Never looked it up till now, though. Sure enough, American Heritage supposes that "kooky" came from "cuckoo."

Nuts.

A Tip for Would-be Writers of Feature Articles

2010-02-16T08:56:00.000-08:00

There's something novice writers of feature articles do a lot. And once you've been editing their copy for a couple of mumble-mumble years, you start to see it as a red flag that the writer hasn't really mastered the craft yet. It goes a little something like this.

"Base-running is a really important skill for a player to have," Joe Lean, coach of the Terryville Tigers, said.

Marcus Markham, coach of the PS148 Panthers, agreed: "Every player needs to train hard for base-running."

A sentence that is sandwiched between two quotations and that says only that one person "agreed" shows that the writer was just pasting quotations together. It tells us that the writer herself didn't have any more solid information to share with readers. Or that she's not experienced enough to understand that you don't have to include every good quotation. She doesn't get that redundancy wastes the reader's time. And she's still too timid to say anything in a story that isn't clearly attributed to someone else.

I suppose there are some cases where this structure would be justified. But it's such a hallmark of inexperienced writers that it should only be used as a last resort.

What's worse is that, often, the second quotation is followed by solid and interesting facts.

Marcus Markham, coach of the PS148 Panthers, agreed: "Every trainer needs to train hard for base running." In fact, Markham is so convinced of this that he makes his players report to the field three times a day to run for five minutes.

All the info before "he makes his players report" is wasted ink. If the writer would have gotten straight to that interesting bit of info, the writing would be more like the stuff you see in top-quality publications.

The Fine Art of Headline Writing

2010-02-10T09:44:00.000-08:00

One of those words has to be the verb -- it has to be. I just know it! If only we could tell which one.

'Supposably' Is In the Dictionary

2010-02-03T10:22:00.000-08:00

Merriam-Webster says that the adverb form of "supposed" is indeed "supposedly," but the adverb form of "supposable" is "supposably."

Webster's New World is a little vaguer, noting "supposably" only as a "related form" of supposed. However, because WNW has a separate listing for "supposedly" and none for "supposably," there's no doubt which form they prefer.

So, what, exactly is the difference between the adverb form of "supposable" and the adverb form of "supposed"? In their adjective forms, they're clearly different. But as sentence adverbs, the distinction blurs.

I'm going to have to think on this one for a long, long time (after I stop retching, of course). Until then, I'll file this under "things I should have looked up a long time ago."

What I Hate About Whom ...

2010-02-01T13:59:00.000-08:00

Lately, every "whom" I see seems so unnatural to me. Right, wrong -- it doesn't matter. It still takes me out of the writing.

Of course, if I were the editor, I definitely would have used "whom" here -- just because you get so much guff if you don't. But still ...

Copy Edit du Jour

2010-01-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

The club's 40-foot-high ceilings provide ample room for dancing.

Changed to:

The club's 40-foot-high ceilings add to the spacious feel on the dance floor.

Then again, maybe I'm just stuck in the days when club-goers obeyed the laws of gravity.