March 4, 2018

National Grammar Day!

Sunday, March 4, is National Grammar Day.

The holiday was started 10 years ago by author, super-mom, and all-around cool person Martha Brockenbrough, Founder of Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, Brockenbrough started the holiday ten years ago as a way to help people focus on grammar learning. Organizations like ACES, the American Copy Editors Society, come up with creative ways to celebrate every year, like these fun punctuation cookies ACES aces showed off last year.

My personal recommendation on how to spend the holiday: Spend a little time thumbing through the front matter of a dictionary — especially the "How to Use This Dictionary" stuff. It helps you unlock mysteries like, for example, whether you can use "graduate" as a transitive verb or whether it needs a preposition "from" to connect it to an object.

Or, if that's not fun enough, go back to the cookies idea.

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February 26, 2018

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February 20, 2018

Taking Literally Too Literally

The city was brought literally to its knees.

When he heard the news, he literally flew off the handle.

She literally went ballistic.

If you like unambiguous communication, if you like logic, if you like having a word that means "take these words at face value and don't mistake them for mere metaphor," then you hate how the word "literally" is used in these sentences.

But what if you don't stop there? What if you hate, "It knocked him literally unconscious" when referring to someone who walked into a pole and fell to the ground, where he lay nonresponsive? What if you hate, "The business literally shuttered its doors" to describe a store where slats of wood were hammered over the entrance? What if you hate, "I'm literally freezing to death" spoken by a character in a novel right before he dies of exposure?

Then you just might be Trigger Smith, proprietor of a bar called the Continental in New York City's East Village, where a few months ago Smith posted this sign in the window in all capital letters: "Sorry, but if you say the word 'literally' inside the Continental, you have five minutes to finish your drink and then you must leave."

Here's the rest of my column on Smith's anti-literally crusade.

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February 12, 2018

And another thing about commas ...

A missing comma after "Inc." or a year is a dead giveaway that a document wasn't professionally copy edited. I call this mistake commas without partners. And if you don't want to fall into this trap, here are a few additional points to keep in mind.

* You don't need to put commas around Inc., but if you put one before it, you should put one after it as well. RIGHT: The job at Widgets, Inc., didn't offer good benefits. RIGHT: The job at Widgets Inc. didn't offer good benefits. WRONG: The job at Widgets, Inc. didn't offer good benefits.

* Complete dates use commas around the year — meaning a comma before and after. RIGHT: May 8, 1996, was the day she arrived in town.

* When you're talking about just a month and a year without a specific date, no comma. RIGHT: August 2004 was an unusual time for me.

* Same applies to seasons. No comma when combing it with a year. And by the way, seasons are lowercase. RIGHT: In spring 2021 the town will host its centennial celebration.

* Jr. and Sr. work the same way as Inc. No commas needed, but if you use one before you have to use one after. RIGHT: Morton Downey Jr. had a talk show. RIGHT: Morton Downey, Jr., had a talk show. WRONG: Morton Downey, Jr. had a talk show.

In every case, it should go without saying that if the comma would come at the end of the sentence, you omit it and let the period mark the end. We worked at Widgets, Inc. We watched Morton Downey, Jr. He was born April 3, 1998.

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February 5, 2018

Show Titles in Quote Marks on Steroids

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January 29, 2018

9 Finer Points of Punctuation

Punctuation basics are easy. A period ends a sentence. A comma represents a pause. A quotation mark indicates a quotation. An apostrophe shows possession. Most people get that.
But the finer points — well, those are another matter. Even super-smart wordy types who pay attention to this stuff don't necessarily know when to put a period before an ellipsis or how a comma can change the meaning of an entire sentence.

Here, in a recent column of mine, are nine finer points of punctuation you probably don't know.

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January 22, 2018

#SpellCheckCannotSaveYou

Sex clams. Fugitives on the lamb. Pigs with food pedals. They're all in my most recent column about the hilarious and enlightening errors reported under the Twitter hashtag #SpellCheckCannotSaveYou.

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January 15, 2018

Peeve Alert: Reflexive Pronouns

Reflexive pronouns can get you in trouble with nitpickers. Example:

I'd like to thank everyone on behalf of Robert and myself.

Here, the reflexive pronoun myself is being used in place of a regular personal pronoun: me. That's not exactly the job reflexive pronouns were born to do.

The main job of reflexives is to suggest the subject of the verb is doing something to himself.

I talked myself out of it.

She cried herself to sleep. 

He gave himself a raise.

If you want to stay in the lanes of what's considered proper reflexive pronoun use, here's a simple trick: Never use a reflexive where a regular personal pronoun would do.

Thanks for visiting Barb and myself can be Thanks for visiting Barb and me. John and myself will plan the party can be John and I will plan the party.

Language is flexible enough that you can sometimes get away with using reflexives as personal pronouns. But in formal situations, or anytime you're worried you're being judged, don't.

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January 8, 2018

Spell-Check Won't Save You

If you use Twitter and you're interested in real-world insights from working editors, check out the hashtags #SpellCheckCannotSaveYou #SpellCheckWontSaveYou and #SpellCheckCantSaveYou. They contain lots of real-world examples of writing mistakes that your spell-checker is powerless to prevent.

For example, if you searched Twitter today for #SpellCheckWontSaveYou, one of the recent posts you would see is from a user who goes by Mededitor, a professional medical editor whom I count among my online friends: “It is a principal that is understood by the companies.”

An extra hashtag he threw in, “#AmEditing,” tells you where he found this example sentence.

“Principal” is an error. The writer meant “principle,” which is a fundamental law, doctrine or assumption. Spell check didn’t save the writer. Mededitor did.

And there are plenty more. Here's a column I wrote about some more choice examples.

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January 2, 2018

A reminder about comma splices

I used to never notice comma splices. Now I see them everywhere.

It's not that I don't like cake, it's that I'm full.

It's easy to see why the writer of a sentence like that one didn't think to break it in two. It's common to put two complete ideas into a single sentence. But usually, that means inserting a conjunction.

I appreciate the offer of cake, but I'm full.

Without a conjunction to join them, two complete clauses separated by a comma create a comma splice, which is an error. But it's easy to fix. If a conjunction can play a logical role between the clauses, you can insert one.

He sings and he dances.

If not, you can break the comma-splice sentence in two.

He sings. He dances.

Or you can use a semicolon.

He sings; he dances.

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