November 29, 2021

Verbs easily confused in the past tense

TOPICS: COMMONLY CONFUSED VERBS, RANG RUNG

For some verbs, past tense forms are easy to confuse. Here’s a list of commonly misused past tenses and past participles. For some, Webster’s New World College Dictionary lists more than one correct options. In those cases, the dictionary often puts its preferred form first and uses "or" to introduce other acceptable.

 DIVE. Past tense: dived or dove. Yesterday he dived. Yesterday he dove. Past participle: dived. In the past he has dived.

 SPIT (meaning to eject from the mouth). Past tense: spit or spat. Yesterday he spit. Yesterday he spat. Past participle: spit or spat. In the past he has spit. In the past he has spat.

 SPIT (meaning to skewer on a stick). Past tense: spitted. Yesterday he spitted the roast. Past participle: spitted. In the past, he has spitted many roasts.

 SWIM. Past tense: swam. Yesterday he swam. Past participle: swum. In the past he has swum.

 GET. Past tense: got. Yesterday he got a lot of attention. Paste participle: gotten or got: In the past he has gotten a lot of attention. In the past he has got a lot of attention.

 RING. Past tense: rang or (now chiefly dialectical) rung. Yesterday he rang the bell. Yesterday he rung. Past participle: rung. In the past he has rung the bell.

 LIE (meaning to recline). Past tense: lay. Yesterday he lay down on the lawn. Past participle: lain. In the past he has lain down on the lawn.

 LAY. Past tense: laid. Yesterday he laid the book on the table. Past participle: laid. In the past he has laid the book on the table.

 LEND. Past tense: lent. Yesterday he lent me money. Past participle: lent. In the past, he has lent me money.

SHINE. Past tense: shone. Yesterday the sun shone brightly. Past participle: shone. In the past, the sun has shone brightly.

But: In one instance, Webster’s New World recommends shined. When you use “shine” as a transitive verb meaning to make something shiny or bright, the past tense and past participle are both shined.” Yesterday he shined his shoes. In the past, he has shined his shoes.

 TREAD. Past tense: trod or treaded. Yesterday he trod lightly. Yesterday he treaded lightly. Past participle: trodden or trod. In the past he has trodden lightly. In the past he has trod lightly.

 WAKE. Past tense: woke or waked. Yesterday he woke early. Yesterday he waked early. Past participle: waked or woken. In the past he has waked early. In the past he has woken early.

 HANG (meaning to suspend, as a door from its hinges). Past tense: hung. Yesterday he hung the picture on the wall. Past participle: hung. In the past he has hung pictures on the wall.

 HANG (meaning to kill by suspending someone from a rope around the neck). Past tense: hanged. Yesterday he hanged the bandit. Past participle: hanged. In the past he has hanged bandits.

 BRING. Past tense: brought. Yesterday he brought flowers. Past participle: brought. In the past he has brought flowers.

 DREAM. Past tense: dreamed or dreamt. Last night I dreamed. Last night I dreamt. Past participle: dreamed or dreamt. In the past I have dreamed. In the past I have dreamt.

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November 22, 2021

How to write better sentences

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, GOOD SENTENCES, PASSIVE VOICE, WRITING TIPS

There’s no formula for writing a good sentence. But over the years I've spent a lot of time fixing truly awful sentences and, in the process, I've learned some ways to make sentences better. These tips won’t apply in every situation. But they’re worth considering when you find your sentence is in trouble.

TIPS FOR IMPROVING SENTENCES

1. Identify all the clauses in the sentence.
The mayor went to Washington because he had a meeting with the senator.

2. For each clause ask: Could the subject or verb be more vivid or substantive?
Bob’s desire was that he would come to occupy the Lou Larson’s job.  --->
Bob wanted Lou Larson’s job.
Ask: Does the main clause convey the most important information?
Paris is a place that gets a lot of tourists.  --->
Paris gets a lot of tourists.

3. Look for “upside-down subordination,” where the most notable information is trapped in a subordinate clause by until, after, before, if, when, because, etc.
When suddenly Officer Miller shot the robber, he knew it was a good decision.  --->
Suddenly, Officer Miller shot the robber. He knew it was a good decision.

more

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November 15, 2021

'A historic' vs. 'an historic'

TOPICS: GRAMMAR

Why do some people say “an historic” but others say “a historic”? For a long time I thought it was because the “an” advocates were conspiring to annoy me. But it turns out there is, in fact, some logic to their choice.

But before we get to that, let’s get the big question out of the way first: Which one is right? Is “an historic” more proper than “a historic”? Is it the other way around?

Good news: The choice is up to you. The bad news: If you want to look professional or even reasonable, your choices narrow greatly.

People who prefer “an” before historic do so despite the rule that requires “a” before a consonant sound. They say that “an historic” is an exception to that rule because the emphasis in “historic” is on the second syllable. This, they say, causes a speaker to bulldoze right over the first syllable, so the N in “an” helps the first syllable of “historic” stand out.

That’s why these folks also put “an” before “heroic.” If you think the “an” sounds better or if you think it makes the following word easier on the ear, by all means go ahead and use “an.” But before you do, you should note who’s not on your side.

Authorities that prefer “a” include the Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press Stylebook, Bryan Garner, R.W. Burchfield, Bill Walsh, Theodore Bernstein, Eric Partridge and, perhaps best of all, Mark Twain.

That’s the company I want to keep.

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November 8, 2021

Can you start a sentence with 'it'? Of course. Do you want to? Maybe not.

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, PRONOUNS

Here’s a question a professional editor asked me a while back: “Is it true you can’t start a sentence with “it”?

We were at a conference, standing in a busy hallway among other people waiting to ask questions. So I didn’t have the time to ask: Where’d you hear that? What’s the thinking behind it? Have you actually followed that advice in your editing work?

There are a lot of people who’ve heard you can’t start a sentence with “and,” and many who’ve heard the same about “but” and “so.” Those prohibitions are fictional (In fact, “Garner’s Modern American Usage” calls the idea that you can’t start a sentence with “and,” “but,” or “so” a superstition). But the alleged “it” rule was a new one on me.

My answer was short: “It’s fine,” I said, not realizing until afterward that my answer was an example.

“It” is a pronoun, like “he,” “him,” “we,” “us,” “they,” “them,” etc. Pronouns head up sentences all the time. She is in the yard. I am in the yard. They are in the yard. It is in the yard.

So the answer was easy. But a few hours later I was thinking about the question and had a realization: The supposed rule, though wrong, might actually be rooted in a useful idea.

Look at the sentence, “It is John who ate the last piece of cake.” This is perfectly grammatical. The main subject is “it,” the main verb is “is.” The “Oxford English Grammar” calls this “the cleft it,” in which “the sentence is split to put the focus on some part of it.”

Compare that sentence with the simpler “John ate the last piece of cake” and you can see how “it is John” adds a different emphasis. But that emphasis comes at a price: extra words and the loss of vividness you get every time you replace a tangible subject and action-oriented verb like “John ate” with more the abstract “it is.”

In news writing especially, “John ate the last piece of cake” is considered better form than “It is John who ate the last piece of cake.”

I bet that’s the origin of the myth that plagued our editor friend.

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November 1, 2021

Please Don't Do This to Your Reader (PDDTTYR )

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR

Pretty much every writer I’ve ever edited has one habit in common: Every time they mention an organization, be it a company, a nonprofit, or a government department, they immediately insert its initials in parentheses.

 The Student Resource Research Center (SRRC) works with the National Association of Educational Consultants (NAEC) to help freshmen locate tuition resources such as for California State Department of Educational Assistance (CSDEA), the nonprofit League of Catholic College Charities (LCCCP), and United Minority and Financially Disadvantaged College Fund (UMFDCF).

 After that, the initials may reappear later in the article — on the assumption that the reader should have memorized all these nicknames on command. Or, weirder yet, the organizations are never mentioned again, meaning there was no reason whatsoever to “teach” this abbreviation to the reader (other than to simply point out that the organization has initials).

 I understand why writers do this: We’ve all seen it done a thousand times. It seems standard. Yet it never fails to blow my mind. It makes me want to call the writer and say, “Hey, real quick, if I told you the SRRC and the NEAC work with the CSDEA, LCCCP and UMFDCF, could you off the top of your head give the full name of even one of those organizations? No? Then why do you expect the reader to know them?”

 True, for a lot of publications this is simply how it’s done. But Los Angeles Times style sees it differently, and their way seems to make much more sense than this force-feeding of alphabet soup.

In this editing style, if an initialism is already known to the reader, you can use it freely on second reference without cramming it in after the first reference. “Investigators from the Defense Intelligence Agency said that DIA operatives are already in place.”

Of course, if it's very well known, like FBI or CIA, there may not be any need to spell out the name at all. On the other hand, if it’s a new one on the reader, here are some of the solutions Times style advocates:

1. After a first reference to an organization, refer to it with descriptive words the reader already knows. This can be a generic descriptor like “the association” or “the state assistance program,” or even a shortened version of its full name “the Catholic Charities.”  If there are multiple subsequent references, consider mixing one of these impromptu nicknames with occasional uses of the full name to remind readers of that name.

2. If no generic nouns will do the trick, on subsequent references, go ahead and refer to the organization by its initials — even though you never did that whole parenthetical cram thing at the first reference. The idea here is that when a reader sees UMFDCF and wants to know what it means, he’s going to have to go back to the first reference regardless of whether you cluttered it up with parentheses and unfamiliar letters. This requires no more work of the reader but cleans up a lot of the visual blight.

 3. When references to the organization are scattered far apart within the document, scattered initials or references may fail to remind the reader of what organization you’re talking about. In those rare cases, when there’s no other way around it, mention the initials — not in parentheses but in the sentence. "The Centers for Initialism Restraint, called the CIR, approve of this."

4. When none of those methods fits the bill, go ahead and insert the initialism in parentheses after the first reference then refer to the organization by its initials thereafter. In other words, this is a case in which the reader’s best course really is to learn the nickname. And those are the only times you should teach it to him.

 No matter what, there’s never an excuse to cram in the initials of an organization you refer to only once. This does nothing but break up the flow of the writing and drive certain copy editors nuts.

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October 25, 2021

Deleting 'and' at the beginning of sentences

TOPICS: COPY EDITING

Any discussion about starting sentences with “and” should begin by emphasizing that there’s no rule against doing so. A lot of people will tell you there is, but they’re misinformed. You can start a sentence with any conjunction including "and," “but,” and “so,” provided it makes sense.

I start lots of sentences with the word “and.” It’s how I think. One idea follows from the last, and the “ands” just pour out. But that’s when I’m writing. As an editor, I hack off at least nine out of 10 sentence-starting “ands” that cross my desk. And here’s why.

Especially in traditional news media, the more efficiently you can express an idea, the more professional the writing appears. Compare any school paper written by your college-age nephew to any article from a top news source and you’ll see what I mean.

“Economy of words” is favored because it’s clearer. But it’s also favored because it’s favored. A highly efficient style is a hallmark of certain big boys of the publishing world. So anything else comes off as not as good.

That's why, when you delete an “and” at the beginning of a sentence, the effect is often dramatic and immediate: The writing just seems more professional.

I do leave some sentence-starting "ands," though – the ones that, when I take them out, leave the passage somehow worse off than it was before. But those are the exception. As a rule, when I see an “and” at the beginning of a sentence, I take it out.

And so it goes.

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October 18, 2021

Singular 'they' has been around for centuries

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, PRONOUNS

When people resist changes to the language, I get it. Who wants to be told that the rules they learned in school — stuff they believed, like “healthy” can’t mean “healthful” — are obsolete, or worse, fictional? That the sweat equity they once invested in being right now renders them wrong? They wasted their time, bet on the wrong horse. Who wouldn’t push back?

This, in a nutshell, is why I haven’t written much about the Associated Press Stylebook’s 2017 announcement that it would begin allowing singular “they,” as in “They should move their car” instead of “He or she should move his or her car.”

People who don’t like this change argue that “they” is plural and, because just one singular person can move that car, you need the singular “he” or “she” instead. Anyone who has bothered to learn about pronouns could rightly be annoyed by AP’s new guidance — so annoyed that they might want to shoot the messenger who comes bearing that news: me. Hence my sub-courageous silence.

But there’s something people hate even more than changes to the language: changes to the language they believe are imposed on them by people with an agenda. I was reminded of this recently by a New York Times column on singular “they” by linguist John McWhorter.

So now, after several years of cowering and staying mum on advancements of singular “they,” I can finally be the bearer of good news: Singular “they” is not an artificial language change pushed by people who want to tell you how to talk. Instead, singular “they” has been evolving naturally for centuries.

Here’s my recent column explaining how this word has been evolving for centuries.

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October 11, 2021

The do's and don'ts of apostrophes

TOPICS: APOSTROPHES, DOS AND DONTS

When it comes to apostrophes, there are a lot of do’s and don’ts. The least-understood and most crucial of all is: Don’t use an apostrophe to form a plural. One luau plus another luau is not two luau’s. It’s two luaus. One Roddenberry plus another Roddenberry do not make up the Roddenberry’s. They’re the Roddenberrys.

The same is true for decades. The period from 1980 to 1989 is not the 1980’s. It’s the 1980s. You can use an apostrophe to stand in for the dropped 1 and 9: ’80s. But it’s still wrong to write 80’s.

Simple, right? If you read fast through the first sentence of this column, it can seem that way. But if you did a double-take on “do’s and don’ts,” you know that apostrophe rules are anything but simple.

“Do’s” defies the rule because it uses an apostrophe to make a plural out of “do.” Plus, this expression contains its own double-standard: It uses an apostrophe to make “do’s” plural, but it does not add an apostrophe to make “don’ts” plural.

Makes no sense. If we’re following the rules, it should be “dos and don’ts.” If we’re going to defy the rules, we would have to make it “do’s and don’t’s,” with two apostrophes in “don’t’s,” for consistency’s sake, right? Yes. If logic reigned supreme, we couldn’t possibly use one rule for do’s then another for don’ts. Yet I do. Here's my recent column explaining why.

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October 4, 2021

Is 'irregardless' a word?

TOPICS: IRREGARDLESS

I don’t like to talk about my job at social gatherings. When I do, some people immediately assume I’m some kind of grammar nazi and that they have to watch every word they say around me. Others think I’m their kind of grammar nazi and start talking about how they support my crusade for good grammar.

I never said, mind you, that I crusade for good grammar. I never even said that advocate for good grammar. They just take the idea that I’m “into” grammar and figure I must be “into” lamenting how our language is going to hell in a handbasket.

Then they’ll start listing examples. And the first to come up is always “irregardless.” Their feeling is best summed up by American Dad character Steve Smith, who in a recent episode said, “Irregardless? That's not even a real word. You're affixing the negative prefix 'ir-' to 'regardless', but, as 'regardless' is already negative, it's a logical absurdity!"

And that’s when I have no choice but to alienate the only people at the party who thought they had reason to like me. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster’s, irregardless is a word. It means (drum roll, please) regardless.

That’s not to say that it’s a good word. All three dictionaries call it nonstandard. American Heritage even includes this usage note: “Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of 'irrespective' and 'regardless' and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.”

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not a word. It does, however, mean I don't get many repeat dinner invitations.

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September 27, 2021

Real editing notes I gave to real writers

TOPICS: EDITING NOTES

There’s a lot more to bad writing than missed commas and subject-verb agreement errors. In fact, most of the problems I fix in my editing work have nothing to do with grammar, spelling or punctuation. Instead, a huge number of the mistakes writers make involve things like logic, clarity and remembering the reader.

Here are some real notes I’ve given to writers in recent years, along with some disguised excerpts from the articles they wrote. Hopefully, these comments can give anyone a little added insight into their own writing.

“Avoid sentences with an empty main clause.” This note was inspired by a writer who penned a sentence like “The Acme Hotel is a nice hotel.” Strip that sentence down to its bare bones and you have “the hotel is a hotel.” Duh. Often, the solution for a sentence like this is to change the grammar so the structure isn’t “The noun is a noun.” In this case, the obvious alternative is “The noun is adjective.” In some sentences, this works great. Like “The hotel is a luxurious hotel” can be simplified to “The hotel is luxurious.” But that works only because “luxurious” has substance. “Nice” does not. So rather than changing this to “The Acme Hotel is nice,” the writer needed to find something substantive to say, like “The Acme Hotel offers spacious rooms with luxury linens and widescreen TVs.”

“Translate business-speak into terms meaningful to the reader.” If you’re writing for an airline industry trade magazine, it may be fine to say, “ABC Airlines’ SkySuite product is generally regarded as one of the best first-class products.” But if your reader is a traveler wondering whether to splurge on a first-class seat, this won’t fly. Travelers don’t think of their onboard experience as a “product,” and they may not get too excited about how it’s “generally regarded.” The fix here: Make it about the reader and give hard facts so they can decide for themselves how great it is. “When you fly ABC Airlines first class, you’ll enjoy a fully enclosed private bedroom suite, signature caviar service and meals prepared by a Michelin-starred chef.”

Here are more in my recent column.

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