November 23, 2020

How to punctuate 'Hi, John' as an email greeting

Hi John,

How many emails and other correspondence are punctuated exactly that way, with no comma after “hi” but a comma after “John”? Most, it seems. This form is so common that it’s become acceptable. Use it if you like.

But if you want to get really technical, there’s a better way.

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, a “direct address” should be set off by commas. A direct address occurs when you call someone by a name or other term used like a name.

Goodbye, Norma Jean

Hey, dude

Listen, punk

Excuse me, ma’am

I swear it, officer

Chief, you gotta believe me 

Norma Jean, dude, punk, ma’am, officer and Chief – those are all direct addresses because they’re all things people are being called directly. When we say they’re supposed to be “set off” with commas, that means that when one appears in the middle of a sentence it should have a comma on either side.

Goodbye, Norma Jean, and good luck.

Hey, dude, that’s awesome.

If a direct address is at the end of a sentence, of course, the period at the end of the sentence precludes the need for a second comma.

Goodbye, Norma Jean.

But almost every time I see a direct address in my e-mail in-box, it has no comma before the name.

Hi John,

Usually, however, there is a comma after the name. But that doesn’t quite make sense, either, because it’s not in the middle of a sentence.

I think I know why people punctuate email greetings this way. It has to do with the common “Dear John,” greeting.

“Dear” isn’t the same as “hi.” "Dear" is a modifier, and you don’t use a comma to separate modifiers from the things they modify “lazy, cat.” They work as a unit: “lazy cat.”

A comma after "Dear John" makes more sense than a comma after "Hi, June." "Dear John," begins a thought — it’s just part of a sentence. "Hi, John." is a complete thought and a complete sentence.

So when I start an email with “hi” or “hey” or “hello” followed by a name, I set the name off with a comma and end the line with a period or colon.

Hey, John.

But if you want to keep using

Hey John,

no one is likely to have a problem with it.

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November 16, 2020

Can You Use 'That' and 'Which' Interchangeably?

Anyone who’s followed the Associated Press Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style has been told there’s an important difference between “that” and “which.”  The relative pronoun “that” is for what are called restrictive clauses while “which” is for nonrestrictive clauses. For example, “Hand me the pen which I like” should be “Hand me the pen that I like.”

But style guides aren't grammar books and the rules within aren't necessarily universal grammar rules. This is one of those rules.

If you’re writing or editing according to AP or Chicago style, you should observe their distinction between “that” and “which.” But if you’re not, well, then you don’t have to worry about it. Here is the difference.

A restrictive clause, also called an “essential” or “defining” clause, narrows down the thing it refers to. Compare:
The cars that have flat tires will be towed.

with

The cars, which have flat tires, will be towed.
In the first example, the “that” clause actually narrows down which cars we’re talking about. Only the ones that have flat tires will be towed. In the second example, all the cars will be towed. The “which” clause lets us know that they all have flat tires. But that in no way separates the ones to be towed from others. “The cars” will be towed. All of them. Period.

In other words, a restrictive clause restricts its subject. A nonrestrictive clause does not: It can be lifted right out of the sentence without losing specificity of your subject.
That’s the basic difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. But, despite what some style guides say, there’s no rule that says you can’t use “which” for a restrictive clause. British speakers especially do it all the time. “The teeth which are causing him the most pain will be extracted.”

If I were editing an article with that sentence in it, I would change the “which” to “that,” only because I work in AP style. But I certainly wouldn’t call it wrong.

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November 9, 2020

Season's, not seasons, greetings: Holiday terms to write right

Here come the holidays. Or as some might put it, the Holidays. Or, less commonly, the holiday’s. Either way, it’s a great time to make embarrassing errors in social media posts, emails, cards, business correspondence and marketing copy. Happy holidays. Season's greetings. New year, New Year's.

Here are some terms you’ll want to write right this time of year.

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November 2, 2020

With single quotation marks, ampersands and periods, follow the rules, not your instincts

Often, people assume they can know punctuation rules without looking them up — relying solely on their sheer powers of deduction. They assume wrong.

For instance, the phenomenon I call “quotation marks lite.” Here’s an example: ‘quotation marks lite.’

The single quotation marks in the second example — they’re wrong. Every credible punctuation guide says that, when you want to talk about a word or phrase, you use regular quotation marks.

Then there's the ampersand, which people assume works along with the word "and" to show different types of relationships between words, as in: Guests drank beer, wine and gin & tonics. The cafeteria’s sandwiches include tuna, turkey and ham & cheese.

Then there's the nearly universal assumption that you, the writer, get to decide whether to put a period before or after a quotation mark, as in: He called your story "hogwash".

All these assumptions can lead you to making very real punctuation errors. Here's my recent column explaining how to use these marks the right way.

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October 26, 2020

What's a declarative question?

Simple, declarative questions — that’s the best way to get answers from a Supreme Court nominee, a news commentator insisted recently. Just ask declarative questions.

I scoffed and filed the term in the corner of my mind home to “jumbo shrimp” and “military intelligence.” An oxymoron. A contradiction in terms. Nonsense.

But now, after doing a little research, I know better. “Declarative question” is neither nonsensical nor a contradiction in terms. Instead, it’s a mashup of two basic concepts: declarative and interrogative sentences.

All sentences come in one of four forms: declarative, interrogative, imperative or exclamatory.

A declarative sentence is a simple statement: You eat gluten.

An interrogative sentence is a question: Do you eat gluten?

An imperative sentence is a command: Eat gluten!

An exclamatory sentence is an exclamation: Gluten!

So if a declarative is a statement and an interrogative is a question, what's a declarative question? The answer is in my recent column.

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October 19, 2020

'Every day' vs. 'everyday'

A while back, I saw written on a truck something like, “Delivering the best to you everyday.” I see that use of “everyday” a lot, which is unfortunate. The two-word version, “every day,” would have been a better choice.

According to a number of dictionaries, including Webster’s New World, the one-word “everyday” is an adjective. Adjectives modify nouns. “We offer everyday values.” Here, the one-word version is correct because it’s doing what an adjective should do -- modifying a noun.

But the message on the delivery truck didn’t call for an adjective. Try plugging in a different adjective, for example, “great,” in the example sentences above. You end up with “Delivering the best to you great.” If that were truly a sentence that called for an adjective, “great” would have worked fine, as it does in “We offer great values.”

So you can see that this usage actually calls for an adverb.

Adverbs answer the question when? where? or in what manner? The passage “Delivering the best to you every day” calls for an adverb because it needs something to answer the question “when?”

“Every day” is a noun phrase. It consists of a noun, “day,” and an adjective modifying it. Together, they work as a single unit in our example to function as an adverb: Delivering the best to you every day.

If that's more than you care to take in right now, just remember that the one-word “everyday” is an adjective and you’ll never have to worry about bloggers pointing out mistakes on your delivery truck.

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October 12, 2020

Lead, sneak peak, reign, eek and other words even smart people get wrong

In our tricky language, certain words are out to trick you. Sometimes, they succeed. It doesn’t matter how grammar-savvy you are or how many degrees you have in English lit. Some misused words can and will pop up in your writing. Vigilance won’t save you, but it can help. So watch out for these seven words that even smart people get wrong.

Lead. You may know all about the verb “to lead.” You may know that in the present tense it has an “a” but in the past tense it doesn’t: “He led them astray.” That knowledge is worthless if you let your guard down. The metal, “lead,” is lurking in your subconscious waiting to ambush your sentence. It’s spelled just like the verb’s present tense, but it’s pronounced just like the verb’s past tense. That’s why so many people who know better use the wrong form, as in “He lead me astray.” That should be “led.”

Sneak peak. In any other context, “peak” isn’t a problem. Most people know not to say, “I peaked out the window.” But, true to its name, “sneak” is trying to pull a fast one here. The human brain has a thing for patterns — and shortcuts. So when we see with our eye the spelling s-n-e-a-k and we hear in our mind the “eek,” our brain goes on autopilot and repeats the spelling at served us so well in our last “eek” sound, causing us to write “peak” instead of the correct “peek.”

Five more are here in my recent column.

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October 5, 2020

Media outlets flub the past tense of 'lie'

When plans were announced for late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state at the Capitol, no one seemed to struggle with the verb. But after the fact, editors and social media managers stumbled.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s trainer of 21 years, Bryant Johnson, paid tribute to her with a set of push-ups as she laid in state at the Capitol on Friday,” National Public Radio announced in a Facebook post.

NBC News tweeted: “The flag-draped casket of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lied in state at the US Capitol.”

For news folks, those are bad errors. Unlike casual users who have a lot of leeway in how they use “lay” and “lie,” news agencies are supposed to follow the strict guidelines for these words.

Present and future tenses don’t seem to cause too much confusion, but past tense forms trip people up — even pros. So for anyone who wants to master “lay” and “lie,” here’s my recent column offering a refresher.

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September 28, 2020

Apostrophe imposter: How your word processing software is sabotaging your punctuation

Of all the nitpicky tasks I perform while copyediting and proofreading, here’s the nitpickiest: You know how you use apostrophes when you write rock ’n’ roll or ’80s or  ’twas? Well, my job includes making sure that those apostrophes are actually apostrophes and not apostrophe imposters.

Type rock ’n’ roll into Microsoft Word, look at the marks around N, and you’ll make a shocking discovery: Your software is out to get you. If your program is set to its defaults, chances are that the mark before the N is not an apostrophe but instead an open single quotation mark. You know, the ones you use for quotations within quotations, as in, “I heard someone yell, ‘Wait!’”

The difference is that the open single quotation mark curves to the right, like the letter C. The apostrophe curves to the left, making it identical to a closing single quotation mark in most fonts.

Of course, some fonts and printers and computer programs don’t curve their apostrophes at all. In those programs, the apostrophe looks like a straight dagger. So does their opening single quotation mark. With those programs, you can’t go wrong. But most of the time, whenever you type an apostrophe at the beginning of a word or number, your word-processing software will assume you’re starting to quote something and turn your apostrophe into a single quote mark.

If you’re the kind of person whose socks usually match, you’ll probably want to keep an eye out for those and change them to real apostrophes.

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September 21, 2020

When you're smizin', it doesn't mean the whole world should smize with you

Attention denizens of the English-speaking world: Supermodel and television personality Tyra Banks would like a word.

That word: smize. Where she would like it: Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

Smize, a Tyra Banks original coinage, means to smile with one’s eyes. And it’s gained some traction, securing spots in several online dictionaries.

Merriam’s, however, remains a holdout. But Banks and her people aren’t relenting.

“We call them. We email them. We show them the cover of the Wall Street Journal,” Banks recently told National Public Radio.

“We show everything, all this stuff. And they’re just like ... ‘We’ve had our eye on smize for a couple of years.’ And I’m like, ‘You know what? Now you’re just hating.’”

And with that, Banks makes her second-most important contribution to the language, redefining “hating” to mean “practicing lexicography.”

Lexicography, the act of creating dictionaries, doesn’t work like the maître d’ at a fancy restaurant. Important people can’t strong-arm or cajole or smize their way to the front of the line. The process for adding new words to the language is far more democratic than that. Read how words really get into the dictionary in my recent column.

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