May 23, 2022

'The couple is' or 'the couple are'? Collective nouns

The couple is going to purchase the house? Or the couple are going to purchase the house? Even after all my years of editing, I can still get tripped up trying to make verbs agree with collective nouns like “couple,” “team” and “majority.”

Collective nouns are singular in form, “a team,” but refer to a group of two or more people or things. In other words, they’re singular and plural at the same time. And since verbs are supposed to agree in number with their subjects — one cat is, two cats are — the roughly 200 collective nouns in our language cause a lot of confusion.

Compare:

The family is gathering at the park.

The family are all accountants.

The staff is well-trained.

The staff are experts in customer service.

The choir is excellent.

The choir are arguing among themselves.

The majority is powerful.

The majority are enrolled full-time.

Sometimes collective nouns seem to make more sense as plurals, while other times they make more sense as singulars. When you’re trying to write grammatically, that seems like a problem. But it’s not, because the rule is: If you mean it as a plural, it’s plural. If you mean it as a singular, it’s singular.

In most cases, this hinges on whether the individuals in your collective are acting collectively — the orchestra is playing Tuesday — or they’re acting individually — the orchestra are tuning their instruments.

With collective nouns, consistency counts. “The main consideration in skillfully handling them is consistency in the use of a singular or plural verb,” writes Garner’s Modern American Usage. “If, in the beginning of an essay, the phrase is ‘the faculty was,’ then every reference to ‘faculty’ as a noun should be singular throughout the whole.”

Good advice in most cases, but this isn’t always practical. Here's everything you need to know in my recent column.

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May 16, 2022

Avoiding clichés is harder than it sounds

Any writing expert will tell you: If you want to get your message across, avoid clichés. The problem is, no one seems to know what, exactly, a cliché is. Is it an overused sentence like “The grass is always greener on the other side”? Is it a two-dimensional rendering like a mobster who wears a fedora or a private investigator who keeps a liquor bottle in his desk? Is it any needless phrase like “It is important to note that”? Can it be a single word, like “synergies”?

The answer isn’t clear, but the lesson is: If your words or descriptions are so overused that they’ve lost their impact, you should look for ways to rephrase them. Sometimes you won’t find a better alternative because that’s the nature of clichés: They get overused because they capture an idea or image exceptionally well. But if you make an effort to replace clichés, sometimes you’ll find a fresh new way of saying something that actually has an impact on your reader.

Every writing genre has its own clichés: fiction, journalism, marketing, business communications. So every list of clichés is different based on the list-maker’s own observations. My recent column looks at the following clichéd words and expressions: first and foremost, burst into tears, sweat profusely, bleed profusely, it’s a win-win, underscores our commitment, a perfect storm, think outside the box, decadent desserts, pop of color, break into a cold sweat, a bucolic setting. 
 

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May 9, 2022

Big words don't make readers think you're smart

It’s a question that has hounded us all: What are the consequences of erudite vernacular used irrespective of necessity?

OK, not really. That’s the ironic title of an academic paper published in 2005 by Carnegie Mellon psychologist David Oppenheimer that studied the effects of stuffy, reader-unfriendly language. The subtitle brought it back down to Earth: “The problems of using long words needlessly.”

Oppenheimer’s study turned up some interesting findings about academic writing that apply outside the academic world, offering lessons for business writers, essayists, bloggers, novelists and anyone who wants to write better.

The big takeaway: Highfalutin, fancy language doesn’t make readers think you’re smart. Quite the opposite.

For the study, the author manipulated the language in written works, leaving some pieces in simple terms and putting others in unnecessarily complex language. Then readers were asked how smart the writer seemed to them.

The results: “a negative relationship between complexity and judged intelligence.” In other words, the fancier the language, the dumber the writer was perceived to be. Read more about it here in my recent column.

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May 2, 2022

Italics or quotation marks for movie and book titles?

When you’re writing titles of movies, books and other compositions, you usually have a choice between using italics and putting them in quotation marks.

Associated Press style says to put movie and book titles in quotation marks. “Star Wars.” “Slaughterhouse Five.” That makes sense when you consider that AP is a news writing style and early printing presses could not make italics.

The Chicago Manual of Style, which is followed by book and magazine publishers, says to use italics for book and movie titles. Star Wars. Slaughterhouse Five.

Neither style says to underline titles, which throws off a lot of writers who remember doing so in school. But that convention of some academic styles isn’t really followed in professional publishing.

As for those ALL-CAPITAL TITLES THAT SEEM TO SCREAM AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS, those are common in marketing writing. But you won’t find titles written that way in newspapers or books. In fact, even proper names that are supposed to be in all caps, like the entertainment complex L.A. LIVE, don’t stay all caps in many newspapers. This one, for example, becomes L.A. Live.

Both AP and Chicago have special rules for song titles, magazine titles, composition titles, poem titles, and just about anything else that a writer has given a name to. There are too many to commit to memory. If you absolutely need to get them right, consult a style guide. Otherwise, don’t sweat these too much. It’s probably fine to just choose one style — quotation marks or italics — for all. No one will think less of you for not knowing every little rule. After all, even editors often have to double-check.

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April 25, 2022

'A historic' or 'an historic'? 'A FBI agent' or 'An FBI agent'? 'A AAA-rated hotel' or 'an AAA-rated hotel'?

English has just two indefinite articles and the choice between them is usually easy. “A” precedes a consonant sound: a cat, a truck, a man. “An” precedes a vowel sound: an idea, an octopus, an intelligent octopus.

Usually, a word starts with a vowel sound because it starts with a vowel — an umpire —or it starts with a consonant sound because it starts with a consonant — a referee. But not always. The word “university,” for example, starts with a consonant sound: Y. That’s why you say “a university” and not “an university.”

Even in these cases, “a” and “an” are easy for native English speakers.

Sometimes an indefinite article that comes naturally when you’re speaking can make you second-guess yourself when you’re writing. For example, some struggle with the question of which article to use before an abbreviation like “FBI.” F is a consonant and it stands for a word that begins with a consonant sound, “federal.” But when you say the letter F, you start with a vowel sound: “eff.” That’s why when you’re speaking, you say “an FBI agent” and not “a FBI agent.”

Whether speaking or writing, the rule is based on pronunciation. So you’d write “an FBI agent.”

People disagree on how to handle “historic.” But there’s no wrong answer. If you treat the H as silent or nearly silent, you can use “an historic.” People who prefer this method point out that, because “historic” puts the stress on its second syllable, “stor,” the first syllable is all but lost without “an” in front of it. People who pronounce the H use “a historic.”

The Associated Press Stylebook, which I follow in my editing work, says it’s “a historic.” So that’s how I do it. The guide for book and magazine publishers, the Chicago Manual of Style, is less rigid: “The word ‘historical’ and its variations cause missteps, but if the H in these words is pronounced, it takes an A (an hour-long walk at a historical society).”

The oddest case of all is the abbreviation for the American Automobile Association. Is it “an AAA” or “a AAA”? The answer in my recent column.

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April 18, 2022

Sometimes 'me' is better than 'I'

For people who want to speak and write “properly,” the most basic, possibly most important issue to master is illustrated in the following sentence: “Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with Bill and me.”

When you’re aiming to use the language well, the temptation to change that “me” to “I” is strong. For most of us, this urge is rooted in childhood. Every time we said, “Stephanie and me are going to school,” we were corrected. It’s “Stephanie and I,” we were told. After hearing that a thousand times, we were left with the impression that “I” is always the proper choice.

Not true. “Me” is often the best choice and, if you’re aiming for “proper English,” it’s often the only correct choice.

The trick is to figure out whether your pronoun is an object or a subject.

Subject pronouns perform the action of a verb. They are: I, you, he, she, it, we, they and who. I made coffee. You work hard. He walks fast. Who did this? In every case, subject pronouns do the action.

Object pronouns receive the action of a verb or serve as the object of a preposition. They are: me, you, him, her, it, us, them and whom.

In “Maggie shot Mr. Burns,” Maggie is doing the action. So she’s the subject of the verb. Mr. Burns is on the receiving end. That makes him the object. So when we replace his name with a pronoun, we use the object pronoun “him” instead of the subject pronoun “he”: Maggie shot him.

Objects of prepositions aren’t as widely understood. Here's my recent column explaining how they work with object pronouns.

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April 11, 2022

Words I change even though I don't have to

Language is ever-evolving, and “loose” usage isn’t wrong. But as an editor, I often opt for traditional, stickler-approved uses just because they seem more appropriate to published works. Here are some of the terms I change even when they’re not technically wrong.

Peruse. If you’ve ever talked about casually perusing titles at a bookstore, you’ll be surprised to learn that you were probably offending traditionalists. The primary definition of “peruse” isn’t to read casually or passively. It’s to study closely, with plenty of attention to detail. Its secondary meaning is, in fact, to skim or read passively. But in my work, I like to steer clear of offending tough audiences.

Towards. This word is perfectly fine with an s at the end — unless you’re writing in Associated Press style. In that case, “toward” is the only correct option.

Adverse. If you say, “I’m not adverse to that idea,” you’ll raise eyebrows. In strict usage, if you dislike something or find it repugnant, you’re “averse” to it. “Adverse” means harmful or unfavorable, like adverse effects from a drug. I stick with this distinction when I’m editing.

Myriad. There’s an old myth that “myriad” isn’t a noun, it’s an adjective. If that were true, you couldn’t say “a myriad of styles” because there it’s a noun. You’d have to say “myriad styles,” using it as an adjective. Though I’ve since learned better, I once fell for this myth. So I got in the habit of avoiding “myriad” as a noun. Bonus: This cuts down on wordiness.

Since. “Since” can mean “because.” But this can be a little confusing: “Since you met Steve, you know he’s nice.” For the first half of that sentence, it’s unclear whether you’re talking about the period of time since you met him. Swapping out that “since” for “because” eliminates that chance of confusion.

There are more. Read about "enormity," "that vs. who," "that vs. which" and "sex vs. gender" in my recent column.

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April 4, 2022

Hyphenation: Are you attaching a suffix or a whole word?

Would you write “a county-wide event” or “a countywide event” and, more important: why?

Anyone who knows the basics of using hyphens knows they connect two words that together modify a third. The word “county” and the word “wide” can be joined with a hyphen and thereby work as an adjective to describe “event.” So “county-wide event” is consistent with hyphenation rules.

I see forms like this all the time in the articles I edit – often in articles so clean and error-free that there’s no doubt the writer ran spell check. Yet, every time I see “county-wide” or “office-wide” or I change it to a one-word form: countywide, officewide. And I do so even when spell-check disapproves.

My reason: Even though hyphens can combine whole words like “county” and “wide” those rules don’t necessarily apply here because, depending on how you look at it, this “wide” isn’t a word. It’s a suffix.

Look up “wide” in Webster’s New World College Dictionary and you’ll see lots of information about the word itself. But toward the end of the definitions you’ll also see “-wide” with a little hyphen on front. The dictionary calls this a “combining form,” meaning you combine it with another word. And though Webster's doesn’t specify  whether you’d combine it with or without the hyphen, many editing styles say that, in general, you not use a hyphen to attach a suffix. (There are lots of exceptions, of course, but the style guides list those individually.)

So while the word “county” with the word “wide” would be “county-wide,” with the suffix “-wide” they combine to become “countywide.”

It’s not always that simple, though. Some terms are common enough to have their own dictionary entries, and when they do, those usually take precedence. For example, “storewide” is listed in Webster’s New World as its own word. So when you're writing "storewide," you're not combining two words or a word and a suffix. You're using a single word.

The guideline that says not to hyphenate most suffixes gets complicated when you start looking at longer words: university, community, corporation, etc. These don’t look so great with “wide” tacked on the end: “universitywide,” “communitywide,” “corporationwide.” So in these cases, there’s nothing to stop you from interpreting this “wide” as a whole word an not a suffix: university-wide, community-wide, corporation-wide. It’s a judgment call.

Just remember that anytime you want to combine a word with another that could be a suffix, first check a dictionary to make sure the compound isn't already listed as a single word, then check to see whether your second word is a suffix. If not, hyphenate away. If so, you can use your judgment and knowledge of combining forms to make the best decision.

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March 28, 2022

Borne Of vs. Born Of

Here’s an interesting word-choice conundrum I came across in my copy editing a while back: “A completely retooled Buick borne of German design.”

“Borne,” in my mind, usually comes up in terms like “airborne virus.” I think of it as meaning “carried” or “transported.” So it seems to be completely distinct from “born,” which means “given birth to.” Babies are born, viruses are transported, and in my mind it was as easy as that

Of course, language is never as easy as that. So when I needed to get this right for the article, I looked it up.

“Borne” is a past tense of “to bear,” meaning “to carry.” But that got me thinking: This word isn’t quite as different from “born” as I had always considered it. After all, the very babies who get born are carried — borne — by their mothers. When I think about it this way, the distinction seems weaker.

What’s more, I’d never really thought much about the term “born of.”  I had always assumed it used “born” on purpose — the car is the offspring of such-and-such engineering tradition. But I was starting to have doubts. Couldn’t this car be carried — borne — by this engineering tradition? Could it have been, metaphorically speaking, carried on the winds of change to a dealer near you?

Technically, sure. So you can use whichever you mean. But presumably you’d want the reader or listener to be clear on what you wanted to say. Usually, the best way to achieve that is to use the term most familiar to the reader instead of your own spin on one. So to find out which is more common in the term “born/e of,” we turn to some reference works.

“Webster’s New World Dictionary” lists both “born” and “borne” as past participles of the verb “to bear.” And bear has a number of definitions, including “to carry” and even “to give birth to” (think “child bearing”). So Webster’s confirms that “born” and “borne” are both born of the same word.

When bear means to give birth to, Webster’s notes, “the passive past participle in this sense is born when by does not follow.”

A baby is born. A passenger is borne. But when followed by the word “by,” both take borne. “He was borne by her.”

"Fowler’s Modern English Usage" takes an academic approach to these words. It says that the past participle of bear “in all senses except that of birth is ‘borne’ (I have borne with this too long; he was borne along by the wind); borne is also used, when the reference is to birth, (a) in the active (has borne no children), and “b) in the passive when ‘by’ follows (of all the children borne by her only one survived). The [past participle] in the sense of birth, when used passively without ‘by,’ or adjectivally, is born (he was born blind: a born fool; of all the children born to them; melancholy born of solitude; she was born in 1950)

Of course, none of this tells us for certain whether our Buick was born of German engineering or borne of it. To find out which is the standard expression, I turned to the dubiously handy arbiter of all modern usage issues: Google. Searching for a famous line from an old Helen Reddy song, I tried “it’s wisdom born of pain” — 202,000 hits. Then I searched “it’s wisdom borne of pain” — 52 hits.

The widsom I gleaned: “born” is better. And, yes, it was painful.

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March 21, 2022

'Homo sapien forebears'?

“Scientists have unearthed startling revelations about our Homo sapien forebears,” CNN reported in December.

But is that true? I’d argue no because we don’t have Homo sapien forebears. In fact, there’s no such thing as a Homo sapien. It’s Homo sapiens.

So why did CNN use “Homo sapien” instead of “Homo sapiens”? Probably because it sounded right. And though about 99% of the time your ear is your best guide to good grammar, odd words and unusual forms are exceptions. This is one such exception.

“Homo sapien forebears” sounds better than “Homo sapiens forebears” for the same reason it sounds wrong to say you bought your loafers in a “shoes store” or you took your dog to the “pets hospital.” We know instinctively that “shoe store” and “pet hospital” are the preferred forms.

The more you think about this, the less sense it makes. There is no store that sells one shoe. They all sell multiple shoes. You’d be hard-pressed to find a veterinary hospital that serves just one pet. They all have multiple patients. So why do we use singular “shoe” when it comes in front of “store” and singular “pet” when it comes in front of “hospital”? And how is it even possible that “shoe” and “pet” can modify nouns since that’s the job of an adjective and “shoe” and “pet” are clearly not adjectives?

These are the odd properties of attributive nouns.

In grammar, a word that comes before another to describe it is called “attributive.” This usually means adjectives. In “the gray cat,” the word “gray” is an attributive adjective. But nouns can do the same job. For example, in “the cat toy,” “cat” is modifying a noun that comes after it, so it’s functioning attributively, making it an attributive noun. Here’s my recent column exploring how to use them.

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