Word Wise

Commasutra

I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out. -- Oscar Wilde As a blogger who blogs about writing, I try my damnedest to stay away from referring to grammar geek favorites like attributive adjective, future perfect progressive, and reflexive pronoun on the theory that once you’ve graduated eighth grade, references to terminology like this can cause a person to lose all interest in becoming a better writer. So it pains me to have to refer to a compound predicate, but refer I must because it's the cause of one of the most common errors I see. Listen up. A compound predicate occurs when two or more verbs share the same subject. Usually they’re connected with the word “and.” In such a case, the phrases, the two predicates, are not divided by a comma. The way I see it a lot: Silas ambled through the Greek and Roman galleries, and scrutinized the statue of Dionysos. The way I wish I saw it more often: Silas ambled through the Greek and Roman galleries and scrutinized the statue of Dionysos. While it’s true that you might pause for a sec after the word that comes before “and” (in this case, “galleries”), that doesn’t mean it requires what Washington Post grammar guru Bill Walsh calls a "take a breath" comma. Both the verbs, “ambled” and “scrutinized,” refer to Silas, so no comma needs to divide them. Even sentences like this that are much more complicated don’t take a comma: Jose clapped his hands as Lucia, the singing waitress, started to serve his dinner of minestrone, carpaccio, and a glass of rare Vallana Spanna del Piemonte and joined with her in singing “Fin ch'han dal vino” from Act I, Scene V of “Don Giovanni.” No doubt you took an eencie-beencie teeny-tiny breath between "Piemonte" and “and,” and I’m glad you did, since, as my grandmother Dora would have said, I want you should be happy. But what you don’t need to do is add a comma there. Jose is the subject and “clapped” and “joined” are the verbs. Watch out for this common sentence construction and help prevent me from ever again having to use the phrase compound predicate!

The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

• A few years ago I was assigned to rewrite the employee manual for a Fortune 500 company so that it read as if an actual human being wrote it (so actual human beings could understand it) – a 30,000-word task that took months and ended splendidly. So I was especially interested in this article in the Los Angeles Times Jan. 17 about the Tribune Company’s new employee handbook. Recently bought by real estate mogul Sam Zell, who the Times called “blunt and innovative – some might say abrasive,” the Tribune Company’s new handbook’s includes rules like “If you use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated. … Coming to work drunk is bad judgment” and “If you do not use or abuse alcohol or drugs and fail to perform the duties required by your job acceptably, you are likely to be terminated." It’s down to earth, compelling, and a great example of not writing down to people.

• Two new updates from our friends at AP Style (you can subscribe and it’s worth it):       

1. A new entry on the use of the terms heart attack, heart failure and cardiac arrest: “A heart attack (myocardial infarction) occurs when one or more arteries supplying blood to the heart becomes blocked. Heart failure is a chronic condition that occurs when a weakened heart can no longer effectively pump blood. Cardiac arrest, or sudden cardiac arrest, occurs when the heart suddenly stops beating. It can be due to a heart attack, a heart rhythm problem, or as a result of electrocution or other trauma.”

2. An entry has been added on the spelling for noncombat/noncombatant.

Passion Jumps the Shark

While the fashion for "passion" is still in style, we need a new way to talk about it. After all, once we declare that we're passionate about everything, what power does the word "passion" - let alone the emotion - still hold? As professional communicators, let’s express our passion through our work, through our words, and through our ideas and intellectual capital instead of merely stating our passion as a matter of fact. An all-too-common sentence like “we’re passionate about your business” – which ends up somewhere in every new business presentation these days – expresses about as much sincere passion as a soap opera character on her deathbed. It’s rote, it’s expected, it’s meaningless. We owe it to ourselves and to the clients for whom we claim to feel so passionately a more genuine emotion, one that we can honestly express. Words, after all, have power. “Passion” no longer does. Words can empower, too. “Passion” no longer does. We’ve used it, overused it, and abused it. We’ve hyped it and typed it. “Passion” has become so popular it’s come to mean its opposite – it no longer telegraphs a robust, compelling enthusiasm; instead it's become a word to use when we don't know what else to say or do. It’s a lazy-man’s-out, a boring word describing a feeling instead of the feeling itself.  Along with you, I want to feel good about what I do (and I do) and I want to believe in what I do (and I do) and write with passion (without, from now on, using the word itself). We shouldn't have to say we feel passionate about our clients for our clients to know we're doing our best for them, that their money is money well spent. I don't think telling our clients we feel passionately about their business wins business. Good ideas, well written, win business. Proven track records, well described, win business. Innovation, well demonstrated, wins business. Integrity wins business. I don’t want to just function. I want to feel passion, not just write that I feel it. I want to act passionately, not just label myself that way. Let’s revive real passion by being passionate about thinking of new ways to write about how we feel and function. When we write about how we feel and what we do, let’s show, not tell.

The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

Mary Schmich, one of the Chicago Tribune’s better writers (and who once wrote a commencement speech that somehow got attributed to Kurt Vonnegut who, in turn, told The New York Times, "What she wrote was funny and wise and charming, so I would have been proud had the words been mine”) had a terrific piece in the paper today about the losing crusade (which she blames on yoga instructors) to distinguish between "lay" and "lie." Schmich noted that the confusion is so pervasive that she even quoted the online American Heritage Book of English Usage: "What if Bob Dylan, in a fit of zeal for correctness, had written 'Lie, Lady, Lie/Lie across my big brass bed?' Somehow it's hard to imagine the lady sticking around."

Note: In the original of this post I incorrectly attributed the line about Bob Dylan to Schmich. As she pointed out to me today (Feb. 2, 2008), she found it in the online American Heritage Book of English Usage and quoted it. My bad and lesson learned - I need to read more carefully.

There is Nothin’ Like a Name, Nothin’ in the World

Until I graduated college, I was known as Danny – that is, except for three years during which I decided, because there were two other Dannys in my class, to spell my name Dannye (here’s how faulty memory is: in my head these three years were junior high, but my dog-eared copy of Anna Karenina, which I read in Russian lit my senior year of high school, says “Dannye Santow” on the inside cover, so I guess I can’t really blame the Dannye years on my tween-age angst). I’m telling you this because today you can no longer assume traditional spellings of names. At my office we have an Abigail and an Abigayle. Down the hall is an April and an Apryl. I know a Cori, Correy, and a Cory; an Aleks and an Alex; an Amy, Aimee, and an Amie; a Kristen and a Cristen; a Susanne and a Suzanne; a Jennifer and a Genifer; a Carlisle and a Carlyle; a Sara and a Sarah. My nephew is named Eli and I have a friend whose middle name is Ely. I know a Jeff and a Geoff. And don’t get me started on how many Jon and Johns I know. I even know an Ed and an Edd. When I was in graduate school in journalism way back during the second Reagan administration, I quoted a woman who told me her name was Susan, which I assumed was spelled S-u-s-a-n. She saw the article and called me up to tell me her name was spelled S-u-z-a-n and what the hell kind of reporter was I that I didn’t spell her name right? She had a point. I learned then and there when you’re crafting a document and quoting someone – a spokesperson or a district manager or the VP of sales or a registered dietician or whomever – don’t assume anything. Just as you’d automatically ask for the spelling of their last name, even if their first name is a common one, always ask how it's spelled.  And now that you know I was Danny – and Dannye – forget I ever told you that.

Ten to One

It’s so ingrained in us that numbers below 10 are spelled out (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine) that we sometimes forget it’s not a rule so much etched in stone as it is in aspic (for those of you lucky enough not to know what aspic is, click here).    The proverbial exception to the rule includes: Per chance, Percent: Use numerals 100 percent of the time when referring to percentages, whether you have 1 percent, 9 percent or 99 percent Million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, etc.: Use numerals when referring to less than 10 of any of these big-ass numbers, unless casually referring to “a million” Act your age: For kids and other things under 10 don’t complicate matters – it’s a 2-year-old girl, a 7-year-old-dog, a 9-year -old cottage, etc. Common cents: If you’ve less than a dime’s worth of money, you’ve got 6 cents, 9 cents, etc. Dimension comprehension: A pencil is 6 inches long, a photograph is 3 inches by 5 inches Speed demon: Slowpokes drive 5 mph; this year’s model gets 9 miles per gallon more than last year’s (but I drive the four miles from here to there) Baby, it’s cold outside: Brrrrr, it’s only 6 degrees out today; tomorrow it’s supposed to be a more temperate 9 degrees

The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, released its 33^rd annual list of “Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness,” Dec. 31, which it culled from more than 2,000 nominations. What’s great about the list is that included with each banned word or phrase is commentary and explanation (so skip the AP article and read the actual list here). Among others on the list are “Webinar,” “sweet,” and “back in the day” – this last is especially disappointing to me since I’m finally old enough to use that phrase and really mean it. You can also check out all 33 years' worth of lists here (in 1976 it banished "macho," also disappointing to me somehow).