Word Wise

Slash and Burn

Why/Wherefore? Because I'm seeing/reading and/or editing/rewriting more/additional documents in which slashes are being used/abused often/throughout and they're rarely/never necessary/important for clarity/style and, in fact, often/sometimes serve merely to baffle/perplex/mystify/creep out the reader since slashes likely/always obscure/abase your text. Slashes, technically called virgules and defined as slanted strokes "used between two words to show that the appropriate one may be chosen to complete the sense of the text," are, as the definition itself implies, the lazy writer's out. They indicate to readers that writers are unsure of what they want to say - virgules leave it up to the reader to choose whether the slash means "or," "and," or "both," or is meant to indicate a hyphen, act as a list separator, or something altogether that the writer assumes the reader will implicitly know. Virgules tell readers that the words are related in some manner, but not how they're related, which leaves room for misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or worse. Don't rely on your readers' patience or on their ability to decipher what you want them to know. Be clear. Choose the right words and choose them carefully. And next time you're tempted to use a virgule remember this conversation from Through the Looking Glass: "There's glory for you!" "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" said Alice. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less." So say what you mean and mean what you say by avoiding virgules.

Note: While we're on the subject of virgules, "and/or" deserves special mention. For all of the reasons stated above, avoid using this construction. It's simply unnecessary and really makes your prose choppy, sloppy, and ploppy (like Humpty Dumpty, I assume you know what I mean by ploppy). "And/or" usually means either "and" or "or," so use one or the other.

• "Confidential information can only be given to patients and/or their close relatives" may mean that such information can be given to both patient and relative or only one or the other. But since we know "and/or" here means "and," why not just use it?   
• "Consult your doctor if you become sick and/or disabled" obviously means consult your doctor if you become sick or disabled (even in our era of lowered health care expectations, waiting until you're both sick and disabled to consult your doctor seems like too much to ask). 

Subject to Change

In a recent discussion about e-mail subject lines I was asked by a colleague if she should always put the client’s name in it. “I want the recipient to know it's about my client,” she said. “No,” I snapped a bit too tartly, “you want the recipient to open the e-mail.” After all, the message isn’t going to matter if the e-mail isn’t opened in the first place. E-mail subject lines are the subject of great interest. Google “subject lines,” in fact, and in .22 seconds 981,000 results appear (including one from the Romance Writing Book Club message board - for them, however, even subject lines are all about love, decolletage, long walks along the beach, and square-jawed studmuffins on white horses). Like love and romance, though, subject lines are worth struggling over because the potential payoff is so big. Here’s some advice for the subject linelorn among you, in no particular order: Write it after you’ve composed the body of your message – Even if you know what you’re going to write about, after you’ve completed the text the tone or viewpoint may be different than what you’d planned. Waiting to write the subject line allows you to be more specific and nuanced. Summarize the thrust of the message. Example: Cocktails resched to Friday 7 p.m. Focus on what’s in it for the reader: Example: Here’s the data on Iowa you wanted Keep it short. A study conducted last year by e-mail monitoring company Return Path showed that subject lines with 49 or fewer characters had click-through 75 percent higher than for those with 50 or more. Be specific – Not “Newsletter #4” but “Newsletter #4: Tips for spring cleaning” Avoid words that “sell” like “free,” “buy,” and “call now” – they’re like flares to spam filters. Have someone else write it – You’ll be surprised at how effective this can be. Avoid dates in case it gets cut off – March 26 could appear as March 2 depending on the recipient's setup. Avoid: “Hi” and “FYI” Don’t let your subject line be your message – It’s confusing to recipients because they think something’s missing (it’s like when someone says something is attached and there’s nothing there, you're, like, huh?) Change the subject line if the topic of the e-mail itself has changed, though include the original subject line in brackets if you can. Example: "Here’s your mtg info [Re: We won the account!]

Note: Did you get the "subject linelorn/lovelorn" play on words? I had to look it up, but "lorn" means "pitiable in circumstances." I like knowing that.

Quotation Device

The rules regarding quotation marks are clear: Commas and periods go inside the quotation mark, regardless of, as The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage notes, "grammatical logic." "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” said Rick, “she walks into mine." Question marks, exclamation points, and dashes go inside the closing quotation mark unless they’re not part of the actual quotation. What’s the most famous line in “All About Eve”? “Fasten your seat belt, it’s going to be a bumpy night!” Colons and semicolons go outside the quotation marks. He finally learned the identity of “Rosebud”: a sled. In American English single quote marks are used in only a few instances - and the only one that most of us ever encounter is when a quotation occurs within another quotation. “Deborah Kerr said her favorite line was, ‘Years from now, when you talk about this, and you will, be kind.’"

Note: In England and other countries that adhere to British English, commas and periods go outside the quotation marks. "Jerry”, she said, “don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars". So remember, if you're inside the United States, in most instances punctuation goes inside the quotations marks.

Spaced Out

Despite what you learned in typing class, stop using two spaces after a period. It’s nothing more than a habit – one worth breaking. ("Curious things, habits,” Agatha Christie wrote in “Witness for the Prosecution.” “People themselves never knew they had them.”) The practice of double spacing after a period is a holdover from the days when typewriters had “monofaced” type, meaning fonts in which every letter had exactly the same width (in other words, “m” used the same amount of space as “i”). Because of the monoface font, two spaces after a period made it easier to see where one sentence ended and another began. Today, however, most fonts we typically use are proportionally spaced, meaning that characters take up an amount of space relative to their actual width (the “i” uses less space than the “m”), so that double spacing after periods is not only unnecessary, it mars the look of your text by scattering it with small gaps. Books, magazines, brochures, newspaper, desktop publishing, etc., use only one space after a period, as do both AP style and The Chicago Manual of Style. Courier is one of the very few fonts occasionally used today that is still monoface. This is Courier.  And, as you can see, its spacing does seem awkward, which renders it not as easy to read as the Lucida Grande font in which the rest of this post appears.  The characters all take the same amount of space.  That’s why two spaces between sentences made sense when Christie wrote “Witness” in 1933 but does not make sense for us in 2007.  Times change.  Technology evolves.  So should we.

 

Note: I know there are people and clients who insist on the two-space rule – arguments for doing so include “I’ve always done it that way,” “I’m still totally hot for Miss Shapiro, my 7th grade typing instructor,” and “I want to annoy Dan Santow” – but if for no other reason than it makes text harder to read, and so less advantageous to ourselves and to those our clients are trying to reach, it’s a practice worth stopping.

If for some reason you’re incapable of typing any other way, at least do a search and replace on documents when you’re done. In Word:

• click control/h
• click twice at “find what” and once at “replace with”
• click “replace all”

A Plethora of Plethoras

Make sure you choose words based on their meaning and appropriateness, not on how: they sound you think they’ll make others perceive you For instance, I see the word “plethora” used all the time. “A plethora of choices!” exclaims a press release. The writer chose “plethora” because she thought it meant “an abundance of” and, perhaps, that it would make her sound smart. But “plethora” doesn’t solely mean “an abundance of,” it means, according to these dictionaries, too freakin’ many. Encarta: a very large amount of something or number of things, especially an excessive amount Compact Oxford English Dictionary: an excessive amount of Merriam-Webster: excess, superfluity Cambridge International Dictionary of English: very large amount of something, especially a larger amount than you need, want or can deal with American Heritage Dictionary: A superabundance; an excess Even if you choose a word with the right meaning, though, what my third-grade teacher at Cleveland Elementary School in Skokie, Ill., used to call “$10 words” may, in fact, work against you. In the October 2005 issue of the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology, Daniel Oppenheimer, now at Princeton, published an article headlined “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly,” which explored students’ predilection for using big words to sound intelligent. He found that while this was common behavior, it wasn’t worth the time or effort. "Anything that makes a text hard to read and understand, such as unnecessarily long words ... will lower readers' evaluations of the text and it's author," he wrote, concluding, "one thing seems certain, write as simply and plainly as possible and it's more likely you'll be thought of as intelligent." And, if you are going to use a $10 word? At least look it up!

Note:
Daniel Oppenheimer won a 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for his Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology article; Ig Nobels  - ignoble, get it? – are  awarded to honor achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think."

By the way, when you do come across a word that you’re not familiar with, here’s an easy way to look it up if there’s no dictionary or computer nearby. Just text message Google at 46645, write “define:” followed by the word, and send (e.g., define:calyx). You’ll get the definition text messaged in return.