January 11, 2016

Write Pretty

One of the biggest flags that writing wasn't professionally edited has nothing to do with correct grammar or punctuation. It's about looks.

A number of the style conventions that publishers follow exist purely for aesthetic reasons. In fact, that's why, in American English, a period or comma always goes inside a closing quotation mark:

Right: He loves the word "bodacious."

Wrong: He loves the word "bodacious".

This rule, which is universal among American publishers, came into being solely because the period after the closing quotation mark is an eye sore. (Here's more on using quotation marks with other punctuation.)

But that's just one of many rules and guidelines you can follow to make your writing look like a top pro edited it. From single spacing after each sentence to spacing around ellipses to keeping capital letters to a minimum, here are some tips for better-looking writing.

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January 4, 2016

How to Catch Your Own Typos

Anyone who's been writing for a while can agree that catching your own errors is tough, bordering on impossible. This is true even for people who are great at catching others' errors. In my copy editing work, that's my job. And I'm good at it. But my weekly column runs with more mistakes than I care to think about. Bad ones, like the time I wrote "the word 'is' is a vowel." (I meant verb.)

Here's a column I did recently about catching your errors. And are a few bonus tips to better catch your mistakes.

1. Sleep on it. You'll catch more errors with fresh eyes.

2. Change the font of your document, preferably to something really odd-looking, before your final proofread. This can shake up your brain's expectations about what the text will say, making it easier to pay attention to what it actually does say. I've been using this technique for a few weeks now and it seems to help.

3. Read each word out loud. This forces you to focus on every word rather than letting your brain "fill in the gaps."

4. Read the last sentence first, followed by the second-to-last sentence, and proceed backwards to the beginning. Again, this is about shaking up your mind's expectations about what's on the page.

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December 28, 2015

Whomever vs. Whoever

The biggest problem with “whom” is that, once you start using it, you’re signaling that you’re writing formally. So you have to keep using it. So you chug along, finding the choice pretty easy in most cases. But then you encounter a sentence where “who” or “whom,” or especially “whoever” or “whomever,” is positioned between two or more clauses. That’s where people lose their grip. Here’s what I mean:

Give the job to whoever/whomever you believe will do it best.

A basic understanding of object pronouns might suggest that “give it to” needs an object: “whomever.” But that would be wrong. In this case, the object of the preposition “to” isn’t a single word but a whole clause. So to know which is right, you need to consider how your pronoun fits in with the rest of the clause.

The easiest way to do that is to look only at the last part of the sentence and plugging in “he” and “him,” remembering that “he” like “who” is a subject and “him” like “whom” is an object.

You believe he will do it best.

You believe him will do it best.

Clearly, this calls for a subject, he. Why? Because the verb phrase “will do” needs a subject.

So our original sentence requires a subject pronoun: Give the job to whoever you believe will do it best.

If the second part of the sentence needed an object, that’s when “whomever” would apply: Give the job to whomever you want.

See the difference? That second clause, “you want,” already has a subject, “you.” The verb “want” takes an object like him or whom (you want him) and not a subject like he or who (you want he).

The simplest illustration I can think of is:

The man who marries me

The man whom I marry

Here the first one takes the subject “who” because he’s the one doing the marrying. But in the second, it’s “whom” because that verb already has a subject, “I,” so clearly what’s needed is an object (“I marry him,” not “I marry he”).

Tinkering this way can help you understand how the parts work together, which is the key to choosing your pronoun. But when in doubt, remember this: If a pronoun is in position to be the object of one thing and the subject of another, the subject form wins.

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December 21, 2015

Hit-and-run Hyphenation Tips

Want to hyphenate like the pros? Here are some quick tips.

-- Ask yourself what part of speech you're trying to hyphenate.

-- If it's an existing noun (like water ski) or a verb (like water-ski), the only way to know whether it's hyphenated is to check a dictionary.

-- If the compound term is working as an adjective or adverb to modify a noun or verb, first check the dictionary. If it's not in there, you can assemble it yourself using a hyphen: grass-fed beef, car-crazed Los Angeles, hit-and-run tips. But if the term is just as clear without the hyphens, you can skip them.

-- If it's a prefix or suffix you're wondering about, remember this: There's no overarching rule to say whether a prefix or suffix should be hyphenated. So if you need to get it exactly right, you must consult a stylebook like the Chicago Manual of Style or the Associated Press Stylebook. But if you just want to do well and not perfectly, here's a great guideline: Don't hyphenate a prefix or suffix unless the term looks weird without a hyphen. So coauthor but anti-American, ex-president and pre-1960.

-- Remember that the reigning aesthetic in publishing now is to opt for fewer hyphens. So if you're torn between a "well-dressed man" and a "well dressed man," know that either way is okay, but the latter might be a wee bit better.

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December 14, 2015

I.e. and e.g.

This week's column is on the Latin abbreviations i.e. and e.g. People confuse these terms. But keeping them straight is easy if you use think of the "e" in e.g. as standing for "example" and the "i" in i.e. as standing for the "is" in "that is." Here's the full explanation of what these terms really mean and some examples of how to use them.

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December 7, 2015

Periods and Commas After Quotation Marks

Amateur editing has lots of tells. But in American English, none is more reliable than a comma or period after a closing quotation mark. Here's and example of the error.

John can't spell the word "embarrass", and he also has trouble with "supersede".

In AP, Chicago, New York Times, L.A. Times, MLA, APA and every other style in the country, both the comma and the period should come before the closing quotation mark, not after. No one other than professional editors seems to know that.

Exclamation points and question marks, however, follow different rules. An exclamation point or question mark could go before or after a closing quotation mark, depending on whether it modifies the whole sentence or only the quoted portion.

Alfred E. Neuman's catch phrase is "What, me worry?"

Is Bart Simpson's catch phrase "Ay, caramba"?

As you've probably noticed, though, amateur editing is winning. Thanks to the Internet, its far more prevalent than the professional kind. It's probably just a matter of time until the popular way becomes the right way. And Wikipedia is hastening the process because its style is to treat periods and commas the same way we treat question marks and exclamation points.

But until the rule books change, one of the best ways to set your writing head and shoulders above the masses' is by never putting a comma or period after a closing quotation mark.

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November 30, 2015

'Beckon Call,' 'All Tolled' and Other Misheard Terms

Here are a few terms people often mishear. Take care next time you want to use one of them!

Beckon call. When people say "beckon call,” what they really wanted to say was probably “beck and call.” A beck is a summoning gesture, and, yes, it’s related to “beckon.” Here’s Garner’s Modern American Usage: “‘Beckon call’ is an understandable guess at the phrase, since one would naturally call out to beckon someone. And ‘beckon’ is a more familiar term than its shorter sibling ‘beck.’”

All tolled. "All told" is sometimes used wrong as “all tolled.” It means roughly the same thing as “all said and done,” suggesting that once you have the whole story, something becomes clear. But there is a myth circulating out there — one I, myself, briefly fell for — that the correct form is “all tolled,” meaning all counted. Not so. “All told” is the original and proper form.

Bold-faced liar. Liars are often bold. But their faces aren’t. So a “bold-faced liar” is the misheard form of the original term “bald-faced liar.” Bald-faced means brazen, obvious and shameless — as many liars are.

Pawn off. “Pawn off” is an interesting mishearing of “palm off.” The original term with “palm” means to pass something off to some unwitting person — a usage Merriam Webster’s says is probably a reference to cheating at cards or sleight-of-hand tricks. Again, it’s easy to see where this one went awry. Pawn shops are at least as prevalent in the modern consciousness as card cheats.

One in the same. If you say that two things are really “one in the same,” you probably mean that they’re “one and the same.”

Baited breath. If you’re waiting for someone with “baited breath,” you might be inadvertently conjuring thoughts of worms and chum: The term is actually “bated breath,” whose first word is related to “abate,” meaning, basically, to stop.

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November 23, 2015

Mondegreens and Eggcorns

Here are two fun language terms to roll out at your next cocktail party.

A mondegreen is any misheard expression, lyric, catchphrase or slogan. The name itself is a mondegreen. For example, there's an old John Prine song called "That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round" with the lyric, "It's a half an inch of water and you think you're going to drown." As the Prine has repeated many times, a woman once asked him to play the happy enchilada song. When he asked her what she was talking about, she recited the lyric: "It's a happy enchilada and you think you're going to drown."

Related to the concept mondegreens are eggcorns, which are also misheard terms, including one derived from “acorn.”

The name mondegreen comes from a misheard lyric from the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Moray.” In the song are the words “laid him on the green,” which some people famously misheard as “laid him mondegreen.” The name eggcorn came into being exactly as you'd guess.

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November 16, 2015

Till vs. 'Til

One of the quickest ways to tell whether an article has been professionally edited is the word 'til. 

This contracted form of until correctly uses an apostrophe to indicate omitted letters. But though it's technically right, it's a dead giveaway that the writer or editor didn't know what he was doing.

Professionals, when they want a shorter form of until don't use 'til. They use till.

Anyone who hasn't studied a style guide might think this is an error. A till, in many cases, is a drawer in a cash register famously featured in the sentence "He had his hand in the till." So anyone with good language fundamentals but no editing training would logically conclude that till is the error.

It's not. The word till used to mean until actually predates until itself. Till is the original. That's why style guides say to use this original word and not a contracted version of a its younger cousin.

And while, technically, the contracted for 'til is legit -- you can, after all, contract anything you want -- it's a sure-fire sign that the editor doesn't know editing.

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November 9, 2015

Passives Fail

Here's a link to the 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article referenced in this week's podcast. In the article, linguist Geoffrey Pullum points out some problems with Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style," the most shocking of them being that Strunk and White didn't understand passive voice.

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