Word Wise

It's About Time

For reasons unknown to humankind, many of us – even those of us who consider ourselves nimble typists with gazelle-like speed and unerring accuracy – are (much to our chagrin) prone to two particular mistakes: typing it’s when we mean its and you’re when we mean your.   Maybe it’s the pleasant physical flair that it takes to pinkie-plink the apostrophe, maybe it’s just inattention, but whatever the reason, it’s a noteworthy yet easily corrected slip-up. But because it’s and its and you’re and your are homonyms – words that are pronounced or spelled the same way but have different meanings – spell-check doesn’t catch them. That means we have to do so manually (eye-ually?).   Take an extra few seconds to check your work for every instance of it’s, its, you’re, and your to ensure that the right word is being used at the right time.   This is easier to do than it sounds. Here's what to do: in Word 2007, click control-f where it says "find what," type the word you're looking for click "reading highlight" click "highlight all" Every instance of that word will be highlighted, making it easy for you to scan your document to ensure you've typed the right word. It's incredibly simple and fast.

The Wednesday Word Wise Round Up

• An interesting article on Poynter.com today about the big difference in meaning little words (like a and the) can make. “Articles are slippery,” it says. “You might be fooled into thinking that a can only be used in the singular and that the carries the plural until you read ‘A million dollars will get you the rarest baseball card in the world.’” Read it here.

• As I’ve mentioned numerous times, despite my overpriced education, career as a writer, editor and all-around word guy, and avidity for crossword puzzles, I still do not really, in my heart of hearts, understand the difference between effect and affect. Apparently, I’m hardly alone, if the Confusing Words blog is correct (and God I hope it is). Affect/effect are the second- and third-most “popular” confusing words of the 3,210 included in the database. Have a word that confuses you? Look it up here – the blog provides very clear explanations and examples of use. It’s greatly effected me – er, uhm, affected me.

 

Gov 101

Whether you’re an Obamaniac or still supporting Hillary for some reason or you're McCuckoo for McCain, here are a few tips that (assuming you're neither nihilist nor anarchist) we can all agree on no matter our political persuasion: political parties: Capitalize their names, including the word “party” when applicable. Smithers belongs to the Democratic Party, though his wife Daphne is a Republican. political affiliations: Capitalize the names of political affiliations when they refer to a specific party or its members, but not when they refer to political philosophies (unless it comes from a proper noun). Daphne  was a Libertarian when she was younger, but today she disavows libertarianism. Smithers, a Democrat, is relieved. Their son Bink, however, is a Marxist, yet his leftist beliefs have not stopped him from becoming an investment banker. “federal”: It is not capitalized unless part of an entity’s formal name. A person is a federal judge and we live under a federal government; some people work for Federal Express or the Federal Trade Commission. “congress”: Capitalize the word “congress” when referring to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives (technically speaking, you may recall from fourth grade civics class, in the U.S. the Congress is composed of both the Senate and House of Representatives, not solely the latter). Lowercase the word “congressional” unless it’s part of a proper noun, as in the publication Congressional Quarterly. “senate”: Capitalize if it’s referring to a governmental legislative body – the U.S. Senate, the Senate, the state Senate, etc. departments, councils, et al: Capitalize the proper name of entities, such as the Department of Transportation and the National Security Council. If you condense the name on later reference, do not capitalize. Smithers’ daughter, Mercedes, works for the Department of Labor. She’s been with the department for a year. “first lady”: This is not a formal title and is therefore never capitalized, even when it precedes the first lady’s name, as in first lady Laura Bush. (One day soon – though apparently not that soon – we’ll  be able to say the same thing about “first gentleman.”) "lame duck": Walks like a lame duck, quacks like a lame duck, and acts like a lame duck - yet still not uppercased. George Bush is a lame duck. 'Nuff said. “president”: Just because somebody happens to be president of the United States – like, big whoop – doesn’t mean he or she is above the rules of grammar. The word “president” is only capitalized when it directly precedes a name. When we wake up Nov. 5, 2008, will it be President Obama or President McCain? Whoever is elected president has a big job ahead of him!

The Wednesday Word Wise round Up

• A worthwhile article on Poynter.com headlined “Hey Kids, Got a Grammar problem? Let’s Take a Vote!” profiles the results of the American Heritage Dictionary’s Usage Panel, "a group of 200 professional users of language, who are consulted to discover their language opinions.” As the piece notes, “In simple terms, the editors of the AHD poll the panel of critics to get a sense of their preferences. Writers can then make informed judgments about choosing one word over another.”

• “England and America are two countries separated by a common language,” George Bernard Shaw famously said. Since I’ve never lived in the UK and really only have one friend who’s British – and he lives in New York and over time sounds vaguely like he’s from Brooklyn – I’m hardly an expert on the difference between American English and British English. But fortunately for us, M. Lynne Murphy, senior lecturer in linguistics and English language at the University of Sussex is. Though obviously living in the UK now, she was educated at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, so her background is impeccable, as is her blog, Separated by a Common Language, “Observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK.” Check it out if for no other reason than you’ll get to see her use the phrase “post-rhotic British colonialists.”

• Several people sent me a link to a story in today’s Chicago Tribune about the “grammar vigilante” I mentioned a few weeks ago, when he was profiled in the Seattle Times. I said then he was traveling across the country correcting grammar as he went and apparently he was here. Even more apparent, he’s good at attracting attention from local media. The story is longer than the one that appeared in Seattle and also includes vigilante Jeff Deck's partner-in-crime, fellow Dartmouth grad Benjamin Herson. It has a terrific headline, too: "Typo Personalities.”

Note: My bad: Not long after I posted this, I received a nice comment from M. Lynne Murphy informing me that, in fact, she didn't write "post-rhotic British colonialists" - it was her quoting Mark Liberman from Language Log. Click comments below to read her note in full.

Right of Way

Sometimes it’s the simplest words that trip us up the most. Is it health care or healthcare? Web site or website? Top-10 list or top 10 list? Unfortunately, there’s often no rhyme or reason behind their proper spelling or style, so it’s a matter of memorization through use and habit. Or, you can clip ‘n’ save this list of frequently used words and their correct spelling, style and appearance. healthcare or health care? health care – two words policymaker or policy maker? policymaker (and policymaking) – one word in-house or inhouse? in-house – two words, hyphenated downturn or down-turn? downturn (and upturn, and hopefully soon) – one word daylong or day-long? daylong (and monthlong and hourlong) – one word, even if Word disagrees start-up or startup? startup – one word googled or Googled? Googled – uppercase even when used as a verb, a perfectly acceptable usage soundbite or sound bite or sound byte? sound bite – two words, and yes, I see sound byte regularly top 10 list or Top 10 list or top-10 list or Top-10 list? top 10 list – no capital T (unless starting a sentence, of course) and no hyphen web site or Web site or website? Web site – two words, uppercase W groundbreaking or ground-breaking? groundbreaking – one word best-seller or bestseller? best-seller – two words, hyphenated citywide or city-wide? citywide – one word, no hyphen work force or workforce? work force – two words fundraiser or fund-raiser? fundraiser (and fundraising) – one word timeframe or time frame or time-frame? time frame – two words, no hyphen non-profit or nonprofit? nonprofit – one word (yet for-profit, two words with hyphen, because "non" is a prefix and so wouldn't take a hyphen but "for" is a word, not merely a prefix, so it does require a hyphen) wiki or Wiki? wiki – lowercase w, from wiki wiki, Hawaiian for “hurry”

The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

• A lot of people whine about other people who treat e-mail so casually they stop using uppercase letters altogether. It says something about that person, these latte-sipping uppercase-using people think. In the case of Jerry Yang, chief executive at Yahoo!, it definitely does. He wrote an all-staff e-mail the other day using no uppercase letters whatsoever to make a point after recent talks with Microsoft fell through. The grand panjandrums of grammar political correctness took notice, and then the Chicago Tribune took notice of them.

• Maybe it’s because of Hillary Clinton's shameless comment to USA Today about “hard working Americans, white Americans” or the now-infamous, spot-on “Saturday Night Live” sketch depicting her as morally degenerate, but yesterday several people sent me a link to a blog called “Stuff White People Like,” which, while funny, also made me a bit uncomfortable (they sent it because one of the things white people apparently like is grammar). Then I saw that yesterday John McIntyre, assistant managing editor for the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun and writer of the excellent “You Don’t Say” column, also took note of the site. “In fact, one of the greatest joys a white person can experience is to catch a grammar mistake in a major publication,” the SWPL blogger wrote. “Finding one allows a white person to believe that they are better than the writer and the publication since they would have caught the mistake.” McIntyre’s response? “The greatest carriers-on often seem to be older white guys, their vermilion wattles trembling with rage as they inveigh against the shoddy education of the younger generation(s), the abysmal decline in literacy and the criminal disregard of English grammar as God intended it to be used.” Read more here, it’s worth it.

Thanks But No thanks

Of all the workshops I teach in my company’s in-house university, my e-mail class is most popular (despite the fact that one colleague fell asleep during it – you know who you are). The seriousness with which people view the class has never failed to impress me. Whether or not it’s due to the existential angst that accompanies the constant potential for embarrassing blunders or worse when hitting “send,” e-mail is a topic that’s more top of mind (as we say in the biz) than I would have thought. Yet one issue causes more discussion during class than any other, and that’s whether to send e-mails that merely say “thanks.” Such e-mails are increasingly reflexive but not necessarily reflective of anything special. I fall on the side of colleagues who say that sending “thanks” e-mails when only the merest wisp of effort has been exerted seems silly and time-wasting, not only to write but to open and read. (I’m slightly paralyzed by them, too, since I sometimes feel the need to thank the person for thanking me and then we get into a thank you war that, as Joni Mitchell sang about the seasons, go round and round and round in the circle game.) I’m not against thank yous always (I'm a big booster of civility in the workplace). But when all a person is doing is answering a question or sending you a document, the incessant thank you-ing diminishes the impact of the sentiment, rendering it less special, more “yeah, whatever.” And “thanks in advance” -- or pre-thank yous -- are even stranger considering the person hasn’t done anything yet. And anyhow, what, really (think about it), does "thanks in advance" even mean? Class discussion usually ends in a draw, with hard-core thank you-ers determined to thank their way through their days while the rest of us come off curmudgeonly and curt. But days and even weeks later I’ve been told by many in the former group that after giving it further thought they’ve stopped sending knee-jerk thank yous. They admit they’re saving time, no one’s feelings are hurt, and that the thank yous they do send are more weighted with meaning. So go ahead, send thank you e-mails when a thank you is really called for. But hold yourself back from writing thank you e-mails every time someone sends you an e-mail. They’ll thank you for it. And I thank you for reading this post. Seriously. Thanks.

The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

I’ve received e-mail from readers wondering why I haven’t posted a Wednesday Roundup in several weeks and I have no excuse but slothfulness, lethargy, and too much time taken up stressing out over the fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Now that the primary battle seems to be winding down – especially with you-know-who’s poor showing last night in North Carolina and Indiana – I’ll try to be more regular with these roundups.

· Princeton University Press is recalling all copies of a book from its spring catalog because  it had more than 90 spelling and grammar errors. As this story from the Chronicle of Higher Education notes, “The errors came to light when the author’s friends and family members began sending him lists of the numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes they had noticed.”

· The American Copy Editors Society named the winners of its 2007 headline contest, with the “Division 1” winner being “The Way of No Flesh,” which topped a review of a book in The New York Times called The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism. The headline is a play on words related to the novel The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler.

· Last month Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat profiled the “grammar vigilante,” whose goal is to “make the U.S. "’a safer place for spelling.’" The 28-year-old grammar vigilante himself has a blog in which he chronicles his adventures (if you can call traveling across the country trying to stamp out spelling mistakes and other abuses wherever and whenever he sees them “adventures”). It's more fun than you might expect.

Have you read an interesting, funny, or instructive article or blog post about writing, language or grammar you think I should post here? Let me know.

All Mail, All the Time

Readers around the world ask questions in Word Wise’s comment section and my colleagues around the world e-mail me with questions, as well. Here’s a smattering of some recent ones and their answers. Re: And Your Point Is? From JP: Which side are you on regarding the writing of the famous search engine as "Yahoo!" or "Yahoo" in journalistic stories? Me: I prefer it without the exclamation point, which is also how AP does it (though The New York Times disagrees, since a quick search shows it uses the exclamation point sometimes, though not in any consistent way as far as I can tell). Re: And Your Point Is? From Nicole: We call [exclamation points] exclamation marks in Australia - why the difference? Me: Not the answer you’re looking for, Nicole: I don’t know and I couldn’t find anything (at least online) that explains it. Re: R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What it Means to Me From Bbebop: Where's Hispanic? It would be nice to know if it's out of favor. Me: AP only capitalizes those words in its AP Stylebook that are supposed to be uppercase all the time, so it goes from “black” to “Black Muslims” to “blackout, brownout.” Also, that AP didn’t update the entry for “Hispanic” this year doesn’t mean it’s out of favor at all. Currently, the entry for “Hispanic” is as follows: “A person from – or whose ancestors were from – a Spanish-speaking land or culture. Latino and Latina are sometimes preferred. Follow the person's preference. Use a more specific identification when possible, such as Cuban, Puerto Rican or Mexican-American. See Latino, nationalities and races, and race entries.” Re: Punctuation Situation From Ragdoll: What is the rule when it comes to names that end in "s"? Me: If the word is a proper noun and ends in an s, just add the apostrophe. Charles’ book, Biff  Harris’ lake house, Dickens’ novel. AP says Jesus is no different than Charles when it comes to grammar (the great leveler); one exception, which may not impact you much unless you're a serious monarchist: when referring to the London palace commissioned by Henry VIII known as St. James’s Palace. Re: Commasutra From Patricia: What's the last word on serial commas? Me: Two schools of thought on the serial comma: AP, which says to use it only if by not using it confusion would follow, all hell would break loose, the end of civilization as we know it would ensue,  or if the items in the series are “a complex series of phases” (2007 AP Style, page 325). That all sounds pretty subjective to me. Then there’s the University of Chicago Manual of Style, with which I agree: “A comma … should appear before the conjunction. Chicago strongly recommends this widely practiced usage … since it prevents ambiguity.” That said, is it "the last word" on the serial comma? I fear not. Re: Ten to One From JP: Here's the classic consistency conundrum to these number-and-numeral rules: If you have a phrase such as "the guys brought home six trout, 11 bass and 14 catfish," do you go with the egregiously inconsistent "six" or the more proximity-related-consistent "6"? Any thoughts? Me: I can’t agree with your supposition that to write “six trout, 11 bass and 14 catfish” is “egregiously inconsistent” (“egregious” means “conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible”). You can disagree with the AP rules on numbers and style, but to follow them isn’t egregious or even inconsistent. Re: Ten to One From Bob: In writing: percent or per cent? Certainly in British English, we were encouraged to use the latter, i.e., use the symbol "%" or spell it out as it was designed. Me: In American-style English we use percent, though when it came into being, around 1568, it was per cent, an abbreviation of the Latin per centum (“by the hundred”). In the early 1880s Americans decided per cent was too fussy (that’s my interpretation, at least) and started writing it as one word. Differences between American and British English abound and I'm wary when it comes to writing about them since everyone in the UK (ok, maybe not everyone) seems so gosh darn touchy. Re: Composed, Comprised, Confused! From Ethan: I’m confused by what comprise means. Your two examples seems inconsistent. OPEC comprises 13 countries. Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Sergio Rossi, Boucheron, Bottega Veneta, Bédat & Co, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, and Balenciaga comprise the Gucci Group. In the first example, the  larger organization “comprises” the smaller ones. In the second example, the smaller organizations “comprise” the larger. However you have stated that “a whole comprises parts.” I would think the second example should therefore state “the Gucci Group is comprised of Gucci, YSL, etc etc” Me: My headline that week was pretty apt – it is confusing. Your initial comment is right, the examples are inconsistent. But your correction is off, as well. That sentence (beginning with Gucci) should have read “The Gucci Group comprises Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, blah-blah-blah” OR “Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Sergio Rossi, Boucheron, Bottega Veneta, Bédat & Co, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, and Balenciaga compose the Gucci Group." Re: Composed, Comprised, Confused! From Shona: Wouldn't you say "comprised of," as in X is comprised of a, b, c? Me: No, you’d say “composed of.” Saying “comprised of” would be the equivalent of saying “contained of,” which we wouldn’t do. As the excellent blog Mighty Red Pen noted last December, “At times like these, I like to end with the gentle wisdom of H.W. Fowler, who says sweetly, ‘This lamentably common use of comprise as a synonym for compose or constitute is a wanton and indefensible weakening of our vocabulary.’” Me: Keep those questions coming.

Note: Here are two questions I should have asked last week before I posted. First, what's the difference between "stationary" and "stationery"? And second, how does the author of Emma and Pride and Prejudice spell her name? In that post, about exclamation points, I mixed up the difference between standing still and the paper on which people used to write thank you notes and letters home from sleepaway camp (stationary being the former, stationery the latter) and I misspelled Jane Austen's name. Lots of you pointed out one or both these errors (which have since been amended) and like any writer, I appreciate your careful reading and gentle corrections.