Word Wise

The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

• Newspapers have style guides that counsel their reporters in style and usage. (Not every publication relies on AP Style.) The New York Times, for instance, not only has an in-house style guide but you can buy it on Amazon or in your local bookstore. The Washington Times, with a new editor in the corner office, recently updated its style guide. Some of these updates include:

                        “Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual…”
                        “The quotation marks will come off gay marriage” 
                        “We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens”

            Welcome to the 21st century.

• Next Tuesday, March 4, is (apparently) National Grammar Day, sponsored by the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. Having just joined a group on Facebook called “I judge you when you use poor grammar,” which has 243,480 members, I’m kind of interested in this. Read a pretty funny story about it in the Chicago Tribune (the day's founder even dumps on Elvis Presley for singing "I'm all shook up" instead of "all shaken up"). By the way, I not only don't hate, but I don't judge others when it comes to grammar. Seriously, I'm not that kind of guy.
  

 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What it Means to Me

Accurately identifying a person’s race or ethnicity can be tricky. So it’s nice to know that our friends at the Associated Press not only make recommendations but update them as language, culture and sensitivities evolve. This past week AP sent out a slew of updates about a variety of topics, several of which addressed race and ethnicity. Each came in a separate e-mail update and the following are exact quotes. Notice the use of hyphens (“Asian-American” but “Native American”) and even capitalization.  Capitalize the proper names of nationalities, peoples, races, tribes, etc.: Arab, Arabic, African, American, Caucasian, Cherokee, Chinese (both singular and plural), Eskimo (plural Eskimos), French Canadian, Japanese (singular and plural), Jew, Jewish, Nordic, Sioux, Swede, etc. Asian-American: A person of Asian birth or descent who lives in the U.S. When possible, refer to a person's country of origin. For example: Filipino-American or Indian-American. Follow the person's preference. Chicano: Sometimes used by Mexican-Americans in the Southwest. Not interchangeable with Mexican-American. Use only if a person's preference.    Latino: Often the preferred term for a person from -- or whose ancestors were from -- a Spanish-speaking land or culture or from Latin America. Latina is the feminine form. Follow the person's preference. Use a more specific identification when possible, such as Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian or Mexican-American. Native American: Acceptable for those in the U.S. Follow the person's preference. Where possible, be precise and use the name of the tribe: He is a Navajo commissioner. In stories about American Indians, such words or terms as wampum, warpath, powwow, teepee, brave, squaw, etc., can be disparaging and offensive.  black: Acceptable for a person of the black race. (Use Negro only in names of organizations or in quotations.)    African-American: Acceptable for an American black person of African descent. Black is also acceptable. The terms are not necessarily interchangeable. People from Caribbean nations, for example, generally refer to themselves as Caribbean-American. Follow a person's preference.

Note: Not only should you have a relatively current AP Stylebook on your shelf, or on a colleague's shelf or in a common area, but it's very helpful to subscribe (which you can do here). Updates like I've just described are sent to you automatically and you can look up things in a split second on its Web site. (I'm not getting a kickback by making this suggestion.)

The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

• Whether he eventually becomes the 44th presidents of the United States or not, Barack Obama will be remembered as one of our generation’s greatest orators. Understanding what makes him so great can inform those of us who write speeches and remarks for clients. It’s more than his towering physical presence, after all, or the timbre of his voice or merely, as Cole Porter might have said, that he’s “got that thing, that certain thing.” Now Slate.com comes to the rescue with a piece that explores exactly what it is that Obama does that makes his words come so alive. If you can get over the author’s inclusion of the word “consilience” (act of concurring; coincidence; concurrence), it’s worth reading.*

• I once quoted Kurt Vonnegut referring to the semicolon as “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.” The New York Times’ Sam Roberts upped the ante Feb 18 by quoting Vonnegut, as well: “When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life,” said Vonnegut “Old age is more like a semicolon.” In a fantastic story, Roberts reports on the use of a semicolon in a sign he saw in the subway, unusually deft punctuation, he notes, for anything written by the marketing department of the transit system – and one worth taking note of. Read it here.

* By the way, no matter how great an orator a man or woman may be, without a great speechwriter behind him or her, it’s all for naught. Obama’s speechwriter? Twenty-six years-old Jon Favreau, profiled here in January in The New York Times. 26? Now that’s humbling.

Bio Logic

While “who am I?” may be one of the greatest philosophical (and unanswerable) questions of our lives, we’re still often asked to write up our life stories for new business presentations in about 300 words or less. This means that despite Auntie Mame’s comment that "life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death," your biography does not have to read as if it’s a buffet, full of fat and sugar. The order of things: Generally speaking, start with your current position and work backwards. Conclude with your education. Be judicious. Include professional experiences that relate to what your potential new client might care about. Update your bio to maintain its relevance. Naming names. Follow your company’s house style and refer to yourself by your first or last name. If your company doesn’t have a house style, decide for yourself and be consistent about it. Are you the “Mary” or “Osvaldo” type or the “Smith” or “Golijov” type? School zone. When referring to your academic degree in its entirety, capitalize but do not use an apostrophe (“Danielle has a Bachelor of Arts from Vassar”). When referring to your degree casually, use lowercase and make possessive (“Aleks’s bachelor’s degree is from Northwestern”). When referring to your degree using an abbreviation, always use periods (“Nancy has a B.A. from Georgetown”). Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials. If you’ve been out of college less than two years, it’s unseemly to have a bio longer than your CEOs. You do not need to beef up your resume by including the name of every single client to which you’ve charged time in six-minute increments. You graduated last May – we get it. Boomers. Likewise, if you’re an EVP who’s been working since you graduated Miami in ’78, edit, edit, edit. Your experience as an assistant account executive while Cap Weinberger was still Defense Secretary is no longer apropos. Family ties. No one cares that you live in the suburbs with your husband Roger and your three kids Binky, Bunny, and Burt, and that you enjoy tennis and guitar lessons. This isn’t a profile on Facebook or Manhunt. Err on the side of brevity. Despite what you may have heard, most of us aren’t that interesting.

Note: I’m happy to tell you that Michelle Vranizan Rafter, author of the WordCount blog (“Technology, industry and the news business”), and a former journalist who’s written for Reuters, the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, The Industry Standard, and other publications, named Word Wise one of the top best blogs for writers. I assure you, I’ve never met her and she’s not on my personal payroll (a distinction that belongs solely to my dog walker, Myron, of Cruisin’ Canines).

A Horse Is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course

Of course there are phrases that need to be set off by commas. However, "of course" isn’t necessarily one of them (out of neglect or habit writers often add the comma no matter what). If you intend "of course" to mean “by the way” or “as a matter of fact,” use a comma, as when Rudyard Kipling said “words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Skip the comma if you intend "of course" to act as an emphatic. “Of course I’ve played outdoor games,” Oscar Wilde told a friend. “I once played dominoes in an open-air cafe in Paris!”

The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

• While we all occasionally fall into the trap of using business-speak and of-the-moment jargon, here's an excellent and hilarious article from Lucy Kellaway at the Financial Times that should make anyone who thinks their private bloviations are private think again. I feel sorry for the guy - he obviously never thought his memo, an internal document, would be made public.

• If Hillary Clinton becomes president, how will the press refer to her – Mrs. Clinton? Ms. Clinton? The Wall Street Journal’s online Style & Substance column has an interesting bit about German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Apparently the paper had been referring to her as Ms. Merkel (when not referring to her as Chancellor Merkel) but at her request she will heretofore be known as Mrs. Merkel (oddly, Merkel is her first husband’s last name, not her current husband’s name, which is Sauer).

Punctuation Situation

Sometimes I’m embarrassed to write about subjects that seem sort of “English as a second language” because I’m afraid I’m insulting your intelligence. In the past I’ve written about how ellipses aren’t commas and commas aren’t semicolons and colons aren’t dashes. But things seem to be getting worse. Punctuation, while in some cases subjective, is in most cases not subjective at all. You don’t get to choose; the choice has been made for you by history. Here, then, are the basics (bearing in mind that entire books have been written about commas alone). Comma: Though I could go on and on and on about the use and misuse of commas (don’t try this at cocktail parties), in short, use commas to 1) separate elements in a series, 2) separate adjectives, 3) indicate a pause (after introductions, before conjunctions, or to set off a brief aside). Jeepers, don’t use a comma to separate a compound predicate, after a coordinating conjunction, or before the first item in a series (I see that a lot). Semicolon: Not a complete stop like a period or a colon, but more of a stop than a comma, the semicolon is used to connect two major and closely related elements of a sentence in lieu of a conjunction like “but” or “and.” Take out the semicolon and each part of the sentence could stand alone as a sentence itself. “Barack Obama may become president of the United States; Hillary Clinton has a good chance of it, too.” Similarly, both clauses could stand alone – "Barack Obama may become president of the United States. Hillary Clinton has a good chance of it, too" – or they could be connected by a conjunction: "Barack Obama may become president of the United States, but Hillary Clinton has a good chance of it, too." Puh-leeze don’t treat semicolons as in all cases interchangeable with commas; only substitute semicolons for commas when an item in a series contains its own comma, as in “I like Hillary, though I could do without Bill; Barack, who’s so inspirational; and John Edwards, for whom my mother, bless her heart, voted.” Colon: Colons introduce things (like the colon introducing this definition of a colon), usually lists or an announcement of some sort, and only after independent clauses (“Ariel only wanted three things in life: a man, a house, and a pair of Jimmy Choos”). Heavens to Betsy, don’t use colons willy-nilly after verbs or prepositions, as in sentences like “Ariel bought: a snake and patent sandal, a glossy flat, and a suede boot” or “Ariel went to: Prada, Tory Burch, and the new Marc Jacobs.”  Dash: Bookending the beginning and end of parenthetical information – sort of like commas but visually a stronger statement – dashes enclose information that could be deleted from the sentence and yet leave the essential meaning of the sentence intact. Dashes are also used at the end of sentences to emphasize a piece of information – to emphasize a point, as I’m doing here, or when what comes before in the sentence leads up to something, as in “I ate pie, a croissant, and a scone – and did I feel fat!” For Pete’s sake, don’t use a dash as if it was the last comma in a series: “I ate pie, a croissant – and a scone.” Ellipse: These little dots are a sign that words have been omitted in a sentence (use three dots) or at the end of a sentence (use three dots and a period). Oy vey, as with dashes, don’t use ellipses as the last comma in a series (“De Telegraaf, Le Monde … and The People’s Daily”). Apostrophe: It’s not that peeps don’t know that apostrophes create a possessive (Clementine’s clementine) or indicate missing letters (he’ll, wouldn’t, shan’t), but that in certain situations they’re unsure whether it’s “its” or “it’s,” “you’re” or “your,” or “Luis’s” or “Luis.’” This is stuff you just have to learn and memorize. For the love of God, don’t use apostrophes when making pronouns possessive, as in “it is your’s” or “it’s teddy bear.”