September 15, 2014

My Favorite E-mail Exchange of Late

Here's one of the most memorable e-mails I've gotten about my newspaper column, followed by my reply. You don't need to read the column that inspired it, but if you want to, it's here: http://bit.ly/1sYcTcV

Subject: You’re Very Disappointing

Dear Ms. Casagrande:

As a copy editor, you’re an embarrassment. You wrote “A group of university researchers working with some Facebook folks have recently determined that I’m not a dinosaur. Not yet, at least.”

Group is the subject of the sentence. It’s singular not plural. The verb should be “has.”  “Not yet, at least” is a fragment.

Your third paragraph starts with a sentence that begins with a conjunction. Your fourth paragraph ends with a sentence that begins with a conjunction.  Your tenth paragraph begins with a conjunction as does your twelfth. "Scooch" is slang.

You wrote “these memes mutate, but in the process they noticed” where the antecedent of “they” is “memes,” which can’t notice although you intended the antecedent to be researchers. You employed the same confusing word pattern in the last paragraph, which also began with another fragment.

Before you start criticism bad grammar in others, edit yourself.

Sincerely,

Paul S.

My reply:

Paul:

What a delight to open an e-mail with that subject line and see that the writer is wrong on every count. I make quite a few mistakes in my column and often get called on them. So your e-mail, in which you're wrong on every point, was a treat.

One at a time. You wrote:

<<Group is the subject of the sentence. >

Nope. When you have a noun modified by a prepositional phrase, there's no rule that says the head of the noun phrase is the subject of the verb. I explain in this link:
http://www.grammarunderground.com/a-flock-of-birds-flies-or-a-flock-of-birds-fly.html

<<Your third paragraph starts with a sentence that begins with a conjunction. Your fourth paragraph ends with a sentence that begins with a conjunction.  Your tenth paragraph begins with a conjunction as does your twelfth.>>

I'm afraid you've bought into an old superstition. There's no rule against beginning a sentence with a conjunction. Here's a column I did on that.

http://articles.glendalenewspress.com/2010-06-09/news/gnp-aword060910_1_sentence-rule-begin

<<Scooch is slang.>>

You're saying there's something wrong with that? 

<<You wrote “these memes mutate, but in the process they noticed” where the antecedent of “they” is “memes,”>>

After 13 years of fielding e-mails from people who, like you, are victims of grammar superstitions, I thought I'd heard it all. But this appears to be a new one: You seem to be under the impression that only the noun nearest a pronoun can function as its antecedent. That's just silly. I wrote, "The researchers were mainly interested in how these memes mutate, but in the process they noticed." The antecedent of "they" is the researchers.

<<edit yourself>>

Do you not know how publishing works? News media, etc., have editors, who read writers' work with the sole purpose of fixing errors. Had any of these things actually been mistakes, someone else would have fixed them (presumably).

You really should get your facts straight before you fire off e-mails with statements like "You're very disappointing" and "You're an embarrassment."

Best,

June Casagrande

P.S. If you're also under the impression that it's wrong to split an infinitive, end a sentence with a preposition or use "healthy" to mean "healthful" (common misconceptions among people like you), you should look those up, too.

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September 8, 2014

A Hyphen in 'Co-worker'?

Here’s a trend I’m not loving: “coworker.”

Perhaps it’s my AP Style background, but I greatly – greatly -- prefer “co-worker.” Without the hyphen, the first thing I see is “cow.” The whole word looks, at a glance, like it’s pronounced “cow irker.” I’ve worked with a lot of people over the years, and as far as I know, none of them has a history of harassing cattle.

Unfortunately, though both forms are correct, the one without the hyphen seems to be winning out. In fact, a few years ago, I specifically asked the copy editor of one of my books to keep a hyphen in “co-worker” and I even pointed her to a page in the Chicago Manual of Style that permitted it. But she overruled me.

The rules for hyphenating prefixes are different from general hyphenation rules. Basic hyphenation rules deal mainly with connecting two whole, distinct words like “good-looking.” “Co,” “anti,” “un” and a jillion other prefixes are not the same because they’re not words.

Both of the AP and Chicago style manuals say to use prefixes and suffixes as follows: Don’t hyphenate them, except when we say to. Then they go on to list tons of exceptions, many of them surprisingly sensible when you see them on paper. For example, “ex” is always hyphenated. And when you write out “exboyfriend,” you see why. It just looks bad. Proper nouns, numbers and terms that would put too many repeated letters in a row (antiinclined) take hyphens in AP and take either a hyphen or an en dash in Chicago.  

Plus, the style guides also include lists of exceptions, some of them quite detailed. Here’s AP on “co-“:

“Retain the hyphen when forming nouns, adjectives and verbs that indicate occupation or status: co-author, co-chairman ...

Use no hyphen in other combination: coed, coeducation, coequal, coexist.” more

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September 1, 2014

Good Verbs, Lame Verbs: A Look at Three Writers

Last week's podcast about action verbs was based on an old blog post I did examining pages from three books. The podcast generated an unusual amount of interest. So here, for a more thorough look at the basis of that podcast, is the original blog post. 

I got an itch to compare [Stieg Larsson's] verbs to some other writers’. Not that verbs are the biggest problem with Larsson’s writing. Far from it. Still, I was curious. So here is an inventory of verbs from a page of Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” a page of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” and a page of Stephen King’s “Just After Sunset.”

I list these verbs in their base forms -- i.e. “had been” and “were” are listed as “be.” Verbs forming independent clauses are in all caps. Verbs forming subordinate clauses are lowercase. Participial modifiers are not counted as verbs.

Larsson, page 414 -- 18 sentences:
1. BE
2. BE
3. RECALL, HAVE, be
4. BE
5. UNDERSTAND
6. BE, FIND, find
7. BE, gnaw
8. NOTICE, take, keep
9. BE, BE, summarize
10. HAVE, BE, clear out, throw
11. THROW
12. BE, FIND
13. SEE, remove, deal with
14. SPEND, MISS, COME, HAVE
15. FIND, contain
16. GO, try, find
17. BE
18. DISCOVER, GO, USE

McCarthy, page 136 -- 15 sentences
1. bend, see, FEAR, be, put
2. GO, CROSS
3. SET, TAKE, PUNCH, PUNCH, DRAIN
4. PULL, POUR
5. TWIST, MAKE, POUR, PUT, SHAKE
6. POUR, TAKE, STUFF
7. TAKE, GET, STRIKE
8. TRY, STOP, POUR
9. FLARE, say
10. NOD
11. RAKE, BLOOM
12. REACH, BLOW, HAND
13. SAY
14. TAKE
15. DO

King, page 61– 27 complete sentences
1. HOLD, LOOK
2. LOOK
3. cut, SAY
4. LOOK, CUT
5. CUT
6. TRY, scramble, go, thump
7. PIVOT, BE
8. SEIZE
9. DANGLE
10. GET, TURN
11. WAIT
12. BRING, WANT, MAKE
13. REMEMBER, choke up
14. BE
15. BE
16. BE, be, SOUND, slacken
17. HAPPEN, BEGIN
18. STARE
19. STARE
20. do, SAY, REACH, take
21. SAY, SWING
22. HAMMER
23. BURST, snap
24. RUN, PATTER
25. stop, SAY
26. LOOK
17. SAY, BRING

25% (ten) of Larsson’s verbs are “be.” Just over 25% (eleven) are nonphysical or mental actions like “recall, “understand,” “summarize,” “discover” and “find.”

2-1/2% (one) of McCarthy’s verbs are “be” and 2-1/2% convey a state of mind (“fear.”)

10% (five) of King’s verbs are “be” and most of the rest are actions.

The process I used to choose these pages probably wasn’t fair. I started with a Larsson page I had already noted as bad then flipped through McCarthy and King for pages that looked about as dense with narrative as the Larsson page (that is, pages that didn’t have much dialogue). Still, I bet that a fair and complete accounting of the verbs in all three books would show similar -- if not quite as marked -- tendencies. That is, McCarthy and King rely more on action verbs while Larsson’s work relies more on verbs that convey being, seeming, or thinking.

That’s partly why I prefer reading McCarthy and King.

Larsson structures a lot of his sentences like this:

“The reason for her visit to the crime scene was to get two pieces of information” and “Second was an inconsistency that kept gnawing at her.” (p. 414)

Notice how, in both, he hangs the main clause on “was” and crams the more interesting stuff into less-prominent parts of the sentence. Imagine he had written them:

“She visited the crime scene to find two pieces of information.”
and
“An inconsistency kept gnawing at her.”

See how the noun “visit” can be made into an action? See how “gnaw” can be made the main action in the sentence instead of just part of a relative clause in a sentence whose main verb is the ho-hum “was”?

I think there’s a lesson in here …

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August 25, 2014

Can 'Wrong' Be an Adverb?

A reader named Ed e-mailed me recently with this question:

"In the column that ran this past Sunday ... the following sentence/ phrase appears:  "thanks to all the horrible people... who just won't stop using the word 'over'  wrong. "

Isn't the last word of that sentence intended as an adverb and shouldn't it then be "wrongly" ?

Just a thought!

Is it just me, or is it astounding that someone would think this. Unless Ed travels in some truly unusual circles, I'm guessing he never hears "wrongly" modifying verbs: You're doing it wrongly. I answered the test question wrongly. And so on.

"Wrong" is so standard in these situations as to be nearly universal. Yet while reading a grammar column, taking a moment to focus on all things grammar, we can start to second guess our understanding of our own mother tongue. And of course, when we get the answer to Ed's question, we see once again that, in language, first instincts are usually better than trying to apply the incomplete education on grammar most of us got in school. By that I mean that, though Ed learned well that adverbs modify actions, no one taught him that adverbs aren't just words ending in "ly." Nor did anyone teach him where to find answers to questions like these. All he had to do was open a dictionary and he could have seen that "wrong" isn't just an adjective. It's also an adverb.

Here's what I told Ed:

Actually, "wrong" is an adverb, as well as an adjective and a noun. So is "right." So it's 100% acceptable to say stuff like "You're doing it wrong" and "You're doing it right." 

True,"ly" forms are often adverbs and if you drop the "ly" you often end up with an adjective, but that's not universal. Sometimes there's redundancy in the language, giving us "wrong" and "wrongly" both as adverbs. Of course, over time, the uses often sort of differentiate themselves. And nowadays, "wrongly" more commonly modifies adjectives and participles: wrongly accused, wrongly imprisoned.  So what you're observing is one of the many interesting quirks of the language!

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August 18, 2014

Letting Go of Bad Teaching -- Or Not

The people who read my column tend to be older than the people who read this blog. Just today I got an e-mail from someone talking about what he was taught in school in the 1940s.

So perhaps that sheds a little light on a very common dynamic that occurs between me and my column readers.

I’ll write a column saying something like, “A lot of people are taught that it’s wrong to (blank),” with “blank” being any of a hundred different grammar issues, “However, it’s not wrong to (blank), as evidenced by X, Y, and Z sources and also by A, B, and C sources.”

Then, very often, I’ll get an e-mail that basically says the following.

“I was taught that it’s wrong to (blank).”

No kidding. It happens a lot. They’re not writing to argue the rule or to challenge my sources or to question the wisdom of choosing to blank. They state only that they were taught that blanking is wrong. As if this were news to someone who just wrote a column about how people were taught it’s wrong.

It’s interesting. It’s as though they’re so steeped in an idea they were taught long ago -- so invested in it -- that their only response to learning they were taught something wrong is to say that they were taught it.

I guess I can relate to how hard it is to let go of ideas. But it’s interesting to get these e-mails because they suggest the possibility that the longer you’ve held an idea the harder it is to even hear the position of someone who disagrees.

Readers of this blog often disagree with me, too. But when they do, they construct rational arguments or cite sources or point out some aspect of the situation I may have overlooked. They never say simply, “I was taught that blanking is wrong.”

Could be as simple as the difference between blog readers and community newspaper readers. Still, it’s interesting ...

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August 11, 2014

An Apostrophe in 'Couple's Massage'?

A co-worker who was editing a travel article asked me the other day how to write about a massage for couples. Is it a couple’s massage, a couples’ massage, or just a couples massage, he wanted to know.

He had come to the right place. I spent quite a bit of time researching this very subject for my punctuation book. So, from that on-high position of authority, I was able to tell him with great authority and absolute certainty that I don’t know.

Okay, that’s overstating it a bit. I do know what to do in these situations. But issues like “couple’s massage,” “couples’ retreat,” “shopper’s paradise,” “chocolate lover’s package,” “teachers college,” and “farmers market” are anything but straightforward. In fact, when I surveyed working copy editors to include their opinions in the book, they split on how to handle a lot of these. So not only are the rules unclear, but they’re open to the full range of interpretations.

For certain terms, like "teachers college," style guides have specific rules. AP says no apostrophe in "teachers college." "Farmers market" often has no apostrophe. "Couples’ retreat" might be plural possessive whereas "couple’s massage" is often singular possessive.

At the heart of all these issues are two questions that will lead you to the best choice: 1. Is the emphasis on the singular noun or the plural? 2. Is actual possession emphasized? 

If you’re talking about “a shopper’s paradise,” it seems to me that you’re emphasizing a singular fictional individual who serves as a sort of representative: the shopper. If you’re talking about a “couples’ retreat,” to me that sounds like it’s emphasizing multiple couples at once. Thought it’s sort of a toss-up whether it’s possessive or not. It would make just as much sense to think of “couples” as an adjective here: couples retreat.

If you disagree, your opinions are valid, too. But if you want to know mine, here are the picks I’d probably make:

farmers market

chocolate lover’s package

couples’ retreat

couple’s massage

shopper’s paradise (especially if it began with “a” – a shopper’s paradise. Not because the “a” necessarily modifies “shopper.” It could be modifying “paradise.” But because its presence there creates that singular vibe anyway.)

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August 4, 2014

The Difficulty with Danglers

Danglers are easy to spot but can be surprisingly tough to fix.

As a working mom, finding time to get enough sleep is difficult.

Technically, this is a dangler because the modifying phrase -- the stuff that begins with “as” -- isn’t right next to a noun or pronoun it should be modifying. The whole dangler concept, in fact, is based on the idea that any phrase that functions like an adjective, modifying a noun, should be right next to the noun.

As a working mom, Jane finds it hard to get enough sleep.

Here, the modifying phrase “as a working mom” is right next to the noun it modifies, Jane. So this sentences does not containa dangler. But in the prior example, that same phrase is positioned next to the word “finding,” which is clearly not the noun that we’re describing as a working mom. That’s the difference.

This one was easy to fix because we made up a person and rejiggered the main clause so that her name would be the first thing to come after the modifying phrase. But what if we don’t want to get specific about the working mom in question?

As a working mom, a woman finds it hard to get enough sleep.

Awful, huh?

A working mom finds it hard to get enough sleep.

Here we dispensed with the modifying phrase altogether and pilfered its noun to make it the subject of our single-clause sentence. That’s okay, I suppose. But this sentence now seems lacking.

On option, of course, is to just ignore the fact that our first sentence contained a dangler. After all, the whole point of all this grammar stuff is to ensure clarity. And that sentence was pretty clear from the get-go. Still, it lacks precision, which I value a lot. So I would definitely look for ways to improve the sentence before throwing my hands up.

When a word or phrase that’s dangling is a participle, the error is called a (wait for it) dangling participle. This can either mean progressive participle like "walking," "knowing," "realizing," or "yelling," or a past participle like "surprised," "shaken," "hired," or "thought." And it can mean either a lone participle like “Surprised, Roger jumped sky high,” or a longer participial phrase like, “Surprised by screams of his friends and family, Roger jumped sky high.”

But even noun phrases can dangle:

A man of great courage, the steps John took were impressive.

The steps aren’t a man. So this is a dangler, and it’s definitely one I would fix: John was a man of great courage, and the steps he took were impressive.

But, in my experience, sometimes it's best to let a dangler slide.

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July 28, 2014

Drive Safe vs Drive Safely: Another Flat Adverbs Question

I’ve written a lot about flat adverbs in the past. But the subject still generates a lot of reader questions. So it's always worth revisiting. Here's an e-mail I got recently on the subject, followed by my reply.

Hi June,

Just read your column in the Burbank Leader and I have a question.  I've been telling our chauffeurs to always "Drive safely" while others tell them to "Drive safe".  As an instinctive grammarian, I feel comfortable saying safely, but am I right?

Thanks,

Gary

Here's how I replied to Gary:

"Drive safely" is more proper. You use an adverb because you're actually modifying the action -- describing how the driving is to be done. (In other words, "drive" is not a linking verb. It's a garden-variety action verb.)

HOWEVER, there exist things call "flat adverbs" -- adverbs without the ly tail -- that are also acceptable. So "Drive safe" is arguably okay. Though personally, I don't recommend it in formal contexts. A lot of people think it's an error and so it may not be worth the grief!

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July 14, 2014

Periods and Commas with Quotation Marks

In the past, I've written about one of the red flags that alerts me that something I’m reading may not have been edited by professionals: an absence of commas after years, dates, and Inc. As in It was March 14, 2008 when Widgets, Inc. moved from Flint, Mich. to India. If that were professionally edited, 2008, Inc., and Mich. would all have commas after them.

But the other common thing I see that makes me question the professionalism of something I’m reading is a comma or a period after a closing quotation mark.

The company’s slogan was “Think different”.

She hates it when people say, “My bad”.

Known as “quantitative easing”, the process has its critics.

Assuming I’m not reading something edited in British style, when I see this, I know the text wasn't edited professionally. That's because, in American editing styles, a period or comma always comes before a closing quotation mark.

The company’s slogan was “Think different.”

She hates it when people say, “My bad.”

Known as “quantitative easing,” the process has its critics.

People who aren’t professional editors wouldn’t guess this because it makes no sense, especially in light of how question marks and exclamation points are handled. They can go inside or outside a closing quotation mark, depending on whether they pertain to the whole sentence or just the portion in quotation marks.

I used to watch “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

Did you see “Last Comic Standing”?

The American rule for periods and commas is based on aesthetic considerations. Style makers decided a long time ago that it’s easier on the eye to just put the period or comma inside, even though it’s less logical and even though it contradicts the rules for question marks and exclamation points.

That’s the kind of thing you just have to know. In the Internet age, more and more of the writing we see online is produced by people who don’t know that. And chances are that, by not knowing the rules, they're slowly changing them.

But until that change is official, I’ll continue to consider a comma or period outside a closing quote mark as an indication that whatever I’m reading isn’t as professional as the writer might like me to think it is.

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July 7, 2014

Longtime and Long-term

Some writing mistakes are worse than others. If you were to write “I should of applied for the job,” that little “of” will reflect pretty badly on you in some people’s minds. It’s “should have” or “should’ve.” The preposition “of” doesn’t work that way. It can’t be used as an auxiliary verb.

On the other hand, if you were to write, “General Washington lead his troops into battle,” word-savvy readers might give you a pass on using “lead” when you meant “led.” After all, the metal is pronounced just like the past tense of the verb. And because it’s spelled just like the present tense of the verb (to lead), this mistake doesn’t necessarily mean that the writer doesn’t know the difference. It could just as easily happen to someone who does know the difference but isn’t paying close enough attention.

But there’s another class of mistakes: errors that aren’t really bad, but that peg the writer as someone who’s not a pro.

I’m thinking of the adjective “longtime,” as in a longtime companion or a longtime policy. It’s easy to assume that, like “long-term,” the adjective “longtime” should be hyphenated. And in fact, there’s nothing stopping you from doing so. Hyphens allow you to invent your own compounds. So you certainly can attach “long” to “time” this way if you want to. But doing so instantly pegs you as someone who doesn’t know that, unlike “long-term,” the adjective “longtime” is a closed form recognized by dictionaries as a single word.

It’s one of those facts that editors tend to know and non-editors don’t. So getting this one right can add a subtle touch of professionalism.  

Again:

long time = noun phrase: I haven’t see you in a long time.

longtime = adjective: They are longtime friends.

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