Word Wise

Today's Read & Other Stuff - Twitter Goes Ka-Boom?

Has Twitter “suddenly exploded”? And if so, what does it mean? This story in PR Week UK says it has; as for what it means, that’s less clear. But what matters more – the number of tweets per day a person tweets? the number of followers a person has (I only have 18 as of now; my colleague Steve Rubel has more than 18,000!)? or is it WHAT you actually tweet, uhm, you know, the content? One so-called expert PR Week quoted said “Fake Twitters don’t work.” I have no freakin’ idea what that means. Do you? (Help me catch up to Steve – follow me at SantowDan.)

The PR Week piece has gotten attention in the blogosphere. From sceptredyouth: “The biggest question is - how can what is essentially a big d*ck contest come off this impotent?” From The Register: “Writing about Twitter is the journalistic equivalent of eating the fluff from your navel. The posh papers love it. Menopausal middle-aged hacks love it. The BBC is obsessed with it ….The rest of the world, however, completely ignores it.” 

Gail Collins in today’s New York Times on the evolution of product placements: “Lines we never even bothered to think of as lines are being crossed. Last summer in Las Vegas, the anchors on the local Fox station started delivering the news with two prominently placed cups of McDonald’s iced coffee in front of them. … It’s only a matter of time before TV reporters conclude interviews with disaster victims by asking if they wouldn’t like a refreshing glass of V-8.”

Today's Read & Other Stuff - The Kindle Effect

Farhad Manjoo at Slate.com has a story today about how the new Kindle from Amazon is good for readers, but “bad news for the publishing industry.” Why should we (in marketing and PR) care? Because while we may be more concerned with the media than with book publishers, how Kindle impacts that industry may be a precursor of how it and other e-readers may impact other forms of communications, as well. Kindle allows you to read magazines and blogs, too, after all.

Not sure how I missed this, but The New York Times has a fantastic blog called After Deadline, which "examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times." If you're a huge nerd (and Times fan like me), this is fascinating insider-y reading. It's written by Philip B. Corbett, who oversees language issues for the newsroom; check out this Q&A with him from 2007.

Today's Read & Other Stuff - 24/7 24/7

Ok, so no one - especially me - is perfect. From a Word Wise reader about today's post, "Spokesfolks": Great post, Dan. With all due respect, I personally think it was ironic you used "24/7" in this post since it is one of the "10 Most Overused Expressions" you referenced last week. (Note to readers: Thank you for keeping me on my toes, 24/7.)

 

Spokesfolks?

You’ve finally landed the biggest name possible to go on a nationwide tour to talk up your client's product or service. What a relief. Now the hard part: Is he a spokesperson or spokesman? Is she a spokeswoman? (Maybe a spokeswomyn?) If there’s more than one of them going on tour, are they spokespeople? Spokespersons? Spokesfolks?   Ok, lose the last suggestion. It was just an idea.   AP actually weighs in on this, though its entry is too limiting. It says: "spokesman, spokeswoman But not spokesperson. Use a representative if you do not know the sex of the individual."   Sometimes, though, even if you know the gender, you want to be more neutral – maybe we're all just conditioned to be PC 24/7, but spokesman and spokeswoman somehow sound sort of sexist, like,  why am I specifying this person's gender? What then, AP person? Representative is OK, but in a press release or other media material, it may be misleading and vague.   I checked four leading newspapers – The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the (UK) Daily Mail – and found that while each uses spokesman and spokeswoman, even when the gender of the individual is obvious, they also use spokesperson and even spokespersons and spokespeople. Heck, The New Yorker, hardly loosey-goosey with the English language, uses spokespeople and spokesperson.   My rule of thumb in these matters is that if a word or phrase is good enough for these august publications, they’re good enough for you and me (and AP).

Today's Read & Other Stuff - Top 10 Lists

Read: Real Simple's March issue has a list of the top 10 "most overused expressions" from a new book called Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare. Nos. two and nine are my favorites. (If I was the headline writer at Real Simple, I would have hyphenated "most overused" since it's modifying "expressions," but alas, I'm not a headline writer at Real Simple.)

Harvard's business school posted its top "10 business words to ban" by David Silverman, author of Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars. I was heartened to see "and/or" on his list (though I would have moved it up from nine to three). It's one of my big pet peeves; I've written about it in a post called Slash and Burn.

Today's Read & Other Stuff - Thumbprints

Read: "The I's Have It," Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman, The New York Times: "When President Obama speaks before Congress and the nation tonight, he will be facing some of his toughest critics. Grammar junkies...."

I received an e-mail today sent from a BlackBerry that included this below the signature: "Sent via BlackBerry. All typos the result of uncoordinated thumbs." A poor excuse? What do you think?

Punctuation for $400. They are neither dashes nor ellipses.

Punctuation marks have distinct meanings, purposes, and intentions. Two marks in particular – dashes and ellipses – are often used in place of commas, but shouldn't be. Writers may think it looks relaxed or breezy to replace commas with these other punctuation marks, but to most people, when used in this way, they just look like mistakes.   Dashes aren’t commas:   No need to use dashes when setting off a dependent clause. His niece, Daisy, is making her debut on the operatic stage in "Pagliacci." Not His niece – Daisy – is making her debut on the operatic stage in "Pagliacci."   Neither are ellipses:   Use commas in a series. The “swag” bag included perfume, truffles, Vogue, and a gift certificate. Not The “swag” bag included perfume… truffles… Vogue… and a gift certificate.   Ellipses are used to indicate the deletion of one or more words: We the People of the United States. . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.   An ellipsis can also be used to create a trailing-off effect at the end of a sentence: This is a fine mess. . . . Why don't you do something about it? *   * Here's where it gets tricky. Note there are four dots in this example. The first dot is a period; the next three are the ellipsis.

Hanging Around, Typing too Fast

In the original of the post below, I typed "mushroom's" instead of "mushrooms." A faithful reader pointed it out to me; I'm sure many others noticed but were too embarrassed on my behalf to follow suit. This is a bad habit of mine - I type fast and for some reason I often add apostrophes where they don't belong. (In fact, I know I do this and check my contractions; after today I see I'll have to check every apostrophe, no matter its placement.)  

Hanging Around

Everyone knows the phrase “dangling modifier,” but hardly anyone seems to know what it means! (It’s right up there with “gerund.”) Usually found at the start of a sentence, a dangling modifier is a clause that appears to modify a word that it doesn’t logically modify and wasn’t by the writer intended to modify anyhow. As author Patricia O’Conner wrote, “Danglers are like mushrooms in the woods – they’re hard to see at first, but once you get the hang of it they’re easy to find.”   For example, "Sashaying down the street, my feather boa flapped in the wind." It kinda sorta seems right. But it’s not right. Read it again: it says that my feather boa was sashaying down the street (“sashaying down the street” is attached to “my feather boa”). Darling, I was the one sashaying. A better way to write this sentence: “As I sashayed down the street, my feather boa flapped in the wind.”   Some signs you might have a dangling modifier on your hands? Look for words ending in ing, especially if they’re in the beginning of a sentence. If you’re not entirely sure, ask yourself who is doing the whatever-ing. If it’s a feather boa, you may have a problem.   The takeaway here: Make sure that a clause meant to modify a word in a sentence is attached logically to that word.*     *As always, exceptions abound – phrases so common that they’re permitted to dangle. For instance, “generally speaking,” as in “generally speaking, blondes have more fun.” Blondes aren’t doing the speaking, but the reader gets the idea anyhow.