September 18, 2017

Some Thoughts on Semicolons

I've gone soft on semicolons. For years, my position on these strange little squiggles has been as follows: I hate them.

I have good reason.

Semicolons don't come up much in my editing work. Most writers don't bother with them. Perhaps they understand how useful semicolons are not. Or maybe they're unsure how to use them and figure, "Hey, I've gotten this far without using semicolons. Why learn now?"

But the writers who do use semicolons — well, they're the reason I hate semicolons. Here's an excerpt from an article I edited in which the writer quotes a therapist at a spa. "'Now shower; and your skin will feel like new,' she said."

In that sentence, you could replace the semicolon with a period and start a new sentence. Or you could use a comma. Or you could use nothing. That raises the question: Why did the writer use the semicolon? I explore that question in full here.

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September 11, 2017

A Simple Rule for Hyphenating Prefixes

Rules for hyphenating prefixes are all over the map, and they vary for prefix to prefix and from style to style: a pre-2010 preapproval for a coauthor and his co-publisher was nonbinding for non-natives. Those are all right. Unless your document is going to be published in a book, news media, or some outlet that aims to emulate one of those, you don't need to check a style book for every single prefix. Instead, here's a simple guide: If it looks okay without a hyphen, don't hyphenate it. If it looks funny without one, then hyphenate.

Pre1950? Of course not. You'd hyphenate that.

Exboss? Looks weird without a hyphen.

Copublisher? You could do that, I suppose. But it looks so much like the first syllable would be pronounced "cop" that a hyphen is a good call.

Sometimes it's a matter of opinion. I don't like "coworker" without a hyphen, so I hyphenate it. Others disagree, and that's okay, too.

Think of the closed form as your default. Use the hyphen only when that seems too odd. You'll be hyphenating prefixes as well as anyone.

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September 4, 2017

A Case Study in Ugly Sentences

A recent column of mine turned into a case study in ugly sentences. Here's the sentence that inspired it, plucked from none other than the pages of the New York Times. (Yes, they're good. But no one's so good they don't crank out a stinker every once in a while).

“That a hacking operation that Washington is convinced was orchestrated by Moscow would obtain malware from a source in Ukraine — perhaps the Kremlin’s most bitter enemy — sheds considerable light on the Russian security services’ modus operandi in what Western intelligence agencies say is their clandestine cyberwar against the United States and Europe.”

When you're confronted with a sentence this bad, you can either do the sane thing and just move on to the next sentence. Or you can do the insane thing and stare at it transfixed till you've come to understand what makes it so ugly. Guess which one of those two things I did.

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August 28, 2017

A Quick Reminder about Compliment and Complement

It always surprises me when longtime writers don't know this one: a nice wine complements a meal. It doesn't compliment it.

I understand the attraction of using "compliment" here. Something that goes well with something else kind of flatters it. And flattery is akin to paying someone a compliment. But that's not what people mean when they talk about foods that go well together or furniture or colors.

The complement with the e in the middle is actually an extension of the idea of completing something. So a nice wine completes the meal and a nice piece of wall art completes the room. Yes, they flatter them, too. But just remember that if they go well together there's an e in the middle: The rug complements the room. If one says something nice to another there's an i in the middle: Beth complimented Erin's haircut. And two things that go well together are complementary while something given for free is complimentary.

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August 21, 2017

Are Typos Getting More Common?

This sentence appeared on the New York Times website a few weeks ago: “In interviews with potential witnesses in recent weeks, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have spent hours pouring over the details of Mr. Flynn’s business dealings with a Turkish-American businessman who worked last year with Mr. Flynn.”

Oops. There’s a typo in there — one of three I saw in major news outlets over the course of one day.

“Tesla is averaging around 1,800 orders a day for the Model 3 since it’s launch in late July,” a Yahoo Finance article reported that day.

“Chief of staff trying to reign in Trump in one major way,” an AOL headline announced.

Are typos getting more common? I explore the possibility in a recent column.

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August 14, 2017

Adjuncts, Disjuncts, and Conjuncts

A reader wrote to say he prefers “I hope that” to “hopefully.” The reason, as he put it: “Hopefully, the train will arrive on time” makes him think of “the brave Little Engine that Could pulling into the station filled with hope.” That's a common misperception: That "hopefully" can modify only a verb and not a whole clause or sentence. It's not true. But it afford us a good opportunity to learn about the three types of conjunctions: adjuncts, disjuncts, and conjuncts. Here's my recent column on the subject.

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August 7, 2017

Irregardless

Here are some things you can say about irregardless, if you're so inclined.

Irregardless is terrible.

Irregardless sounds uneducated.

Irregardless contains a redundant prefix.

But here's the one thing you cannot say about irregardless.

Irregardless is not a word.

Here's my recent column in which I explain how and why irregardless, for all its flaws, is most definitely a word.

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July 31, 2017

The Possessive of Jr. Through the Eyes of the New Yorker

The New Yorker has a policy of putting commas around Jr., as in Donald Trump, Jr., met with Kremlin proxies. So how do they make that possessive? Do they do what any sane copy editor would do and drop the second comma? Nope. Here's what they do.

Donald Trump, Jr.,'s meeting with Kremlin proxies.

Repeat: Jr.,'s

Here, at some length, are thoughts on the subject.

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July 24, 2017

Forgo and Forego

I don't know if I've ever seen anyone use the word forego correctly. Most of the time, it's used to mean "to do without," as in, "He'll have to forego using his washing machine for a week." They wanted to write forgo. But instead they chose a word that is at best a "variant" spelling of the word they wanted.

The past tense of forego—forwent—crops up from time to time. The male pioneers forewent the women and children settlers. But that's pretty rare, too. 

For the record, unless you want to settle for the variant spelling, the word that means to do without is forgo. No E. With an E, forego means to go before—a job we usually just give to precede.

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July 17, 2017

Passive Voice: It's Not What You've Been Told

A few weeks ago, one of the copy editors in my social media feed stumbled across a blog post by a writing coach offering tips and insights about passive voice and when and how to avoid it.

Here are the examples the writing expert offered. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” “The noise was terrifying.” The verb structure “was walking.” Sentences beginning with “it was” or “there were.” And “she made her way.”

My online editor friends had a field day. You see, none of those examples is passive. Here's my recent column explaining where the blogger went wrong.

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