Experts share writing tips

Dear Twitter, Please Take Bonehead English

Every time we get an email notification from Twitter informing us that some new, smart, sentient human being is now following us, Twitter bots CAN'T GET IT RIGHT! We're instructed:

"You may follow (person's name) as well by clicking on the 'follow' button on their profile."

Jesus H. Christ! Hey, Biz Stone, (btw, I'm blogging on one of your earlier creations, thank you) 99 percent of the people who follow other people are people (or more precisely a person). That takes the SINGULAR PRONOUN. Please change your email notifications so that it reads

"You may follow (person's name) as well by clicking on the 'follow' button on his or her profile."
Or
"You may follow (person's name) as well by clicking on the 'follow' button on the user's profile."

We're cutting back on education funding in these dark economic times, Biz. Don't contribute to the dumbing down of America with one of the most popular social media features of the day.

A handy guide to dealing with apostrophes

Almost a year ago, I posted a couple of times about the Apostrophe Catastrophe over in Merry Olde England.

Just came across an amusing and graphical rule on apostrophe's from theoatmeal.com.

Cute and it comes as a poster. Schools should buy these by the truckload. No child should be allowed to move on from grammar school unless he passes a test that includes getting the right forms of "it's" and "its" correct.

Oxford University Press' Word of the Year was...

..."unfriend."

"It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

(I don't know about you but I get a kick out of "lex-appeal.")

In any case, the pace of language change seems to have ramped up in recent years thanks to inventions emanating from the technology world (Google as a verb, for instance, meaning to search). Being the pseudo-snob I am when it comes to language I once that that trend was dreadful, but I've changed my tune. With technology changing the world so fast, language must keep up.

In fact, it seems people are just as passionate about language as ever, judging by the comments on the Oxford blog referencing one of the finalists in the judging: Tea-bagger. Scores of commenters weighed on on the term, which has both political and sexual definitions (although Oxford avoided publishing the latter definition).

(P.S. None of our words of the day entries made the list, but then again, all of those are already in the dictionary).

Happy New Year: Now Pronounce It Properly

"Two-thousand and ten" or "twenty-ten"... how shall we pronounce it?
Tom Torriglia says it's the latter.

Torriglia, the public face of the National Association of Good Grammar (NAGG), told the San Francisco Chronicle:

" 'Twenty' follows 'nineteen.' 'Two thousand' does not follow 'nineteen.' It's logical."

But George Lakoff at U.C. Berkeley responds:

"It's not wrong to say 'two thousand ten.' And it's not like 'twenty ten' is the right way."

My wife and fellow wordsmith, The Screaming Lady, ponders the debate over a cup of New Year's Day coffee.

"Technically it should be 'two-thousand ten' because that's how you'd pronounce it if you counted upwards from year one. I think we're just lazy."

But if we went that route, Zager and Evans would never have had a hit song in the '60s, or at least one that had a decent meter.

I resolve to keep it simple and give my lips a rest whenever I can.

The "Natinal" Pastime

The team off to the worst start (3-10) in Major League Baseball also employs a vendor with the worst spelling habits.

The Washington Nationals use Majestic Athletic uniforms and, as part of the deal, they get Majestic's crackerjack copy desk too. Nationals players Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman played three innings of a game last week wearing home jerseys that read Natinals.

It took a few days, but Majestik officials finally got around to apologizing.

Uniform typos aren't uncommon, unfortunately. Joe Carter of Toronto (below) was an earlier, famous example. And it took him six innings to figure it out, according to Paul Lukas, who compiled a nice list of jersey injustice two years ago.

By the way, for those of you keeping count, the Nationals lost the Typo Game in extra innings, 3-2. Zimmerman was 2-5 and Dunn 0-3.

Word of the Day: Chthonian (gesundheit!)

Occasionally, I come across a word I couldn't even imagine existed, have never heard and couldn't make up if my life depended on it. Today was such a day.

Chthonian (tho' ne un): Pertraining to the deities, spirits and other beings dwelling under the earth.

A variation was used in Meghan Cox Gurdon's brilliant essay in today's Wall Street Journal on eco-propaganda in children's literature (Carl Hiaasen being her poster boy in this case).

If you have somehow missed the fact that April 22 is Earth Day, it's probably because you are grown up. Were you a child, there's not a chance you'd be allowed to miss the urgent chthonic nature of the day -- nor the need to recycle, to use water sparingly, to protect endangered creatures and generally to be agitated about a planet in peril.

This weekend in the mountains, as I lay down on the ground to sleep under the stars, I will no doubt listen for faint chtonic sounds emanating from below me, maybe from the goddess pictured here.
And it'll probably keep me awake all night!

New Gig, Old Books

So what's a fellow to do on Day One of his work in the Gig Economy? Unpack reference books from the old gig.
That work, which I did first thing yesterday morning, may be akin to a soldier checking, oiling and testing his weapon. I felt a granite sureness in pulling out Webster's Unabridged, The Chicago Manual of Style, Follett, Fowler, Strunk and White and the AP Stylebook. Weapons and ammo. Check. Ready to go to battle.
I mentioned this in a Tweet and got an interesting response from an old colleague, an award-winning wordsmith in his publishing days.

Strunk and White? Are you kidding? The days of having 30 minute arguments of serial commas and whether one means anticipation or simple expectation are days of yore, old friend.

I understand where he's coming from, in an era of 140-word Tweets and IM slang that's, OMG, 2die4.But sunshine peeks through the clouds. His response coincided with a request from a colleague at Blanc & Otus. A client wanted to resolve an internal discussion about how to handle compound modifiers. He was wondering whether their copy was too hyphen-happy.
There, in the pages of those great language books, was the guidance we so often have trouble finding these days: Use the hyphen to avoid confusion. "Small-business owners" means something different than "small business owners."
So people still care. Are these people graying around the temples, raised at a time when we read books not screens, tapped typewriters not keyboards? Perhaps. But at the agency I got urgent questions from twenty-somethings (note the hyphen) about serial commas, about punctuation, about style. It matters.
People, like nature, abhor a vacuum.While the language evolves as it should, business communications, done well, will always adhere to rules.

In writing, measure twice, cut once

PR industry consultant Sam Whitmore has been tracking editorial accuracy (as if he doesn't have enough to do!). It falls loosely under the umbrella that smaller editorial staffs are doing more work and stress cracks are emerging. He used as an example an error in a Wall Street Journal story about an SAP product. His email blast today contained the following:

It turns out that the WSJ no longer has a copy desk per se. Senior editors still read and edit stories, but recent layoffs have decimated the layer of fit-and-finish wordsmiths -- copy editors and slot readers -- that reinforced the WSJ's hard-earned reputation for excellence. Also, WSJ production systems don't make it easy for reporters see a headline before it runs. This creates risk when stories are technical, like the SAP piece.

This anecdote illuminates a ignored problem within digital publishing: When a piece of content is published, regardless of when it's corrected, the original incorrect version not only can get into millions of hands quickly but can also exist in certain forms even after the correction.
The moral to the story? Similar to a carpenter (who should measure twice, cut once): edit many, publish once.

The Apostrophe Catastrophe Continues

Earlier this month I blogged about about the lingua lunacy that's infiltrated elected officials in Birmingham, England. In short, they're ignoring them on public signs.
An updated dispatch from the Daily Telegraph indicates the good guys are still losing the good fight.

Wakefield Council in West Yorkshire said that it did not include the punctuation mark on road signs "to avoid confusion", even where the name was intended to take the possessive.

One of the good guys turns out to be the uncle of an EE Times colleague of mine, David Blaza.

Allan Blaza of the Pontefract Civic Society accused the council of ducking its responsibility to maintain standards.

He said: "I think it's a cop out. I'm sufficiently rigorous when it comes to the English language, which is a magnificent language, to feel sure that all the grammatical necessities – not niceties – should be observed."

Here, here, Mr. Blaza. Now that said, check out the photos here. The upper photo is from the earlier coverage and shows no apostrophe. The lower photo is from the more recent story. It has an apostrophe but appears to be a different sign placed in a slightly different position near the church.
So there's hope.

Catastrophe for Apostrophes

The people who invented the English language seemed determined to destroy it.
Birmingham, England, officials have decided it's okay not to have apostrophes.

Councilor Martin Mullaney, who heads the city's transport scrutiny committee, said he decided to act after yet another interminable debate into whether "Kings Heath," a Birmingham suburb, should be rewritten with an apostrophe.

"I had to make a final decision on this," he said Friday. "We keep debating apostrophes in meetings and we have other things to do."

Martin, why on Earth are you debating apostrophes? There's nothing to debate. They're a crucial part of understanding a written piece of communication.

Perhaps you should pass a law allowing people to spell Birmingham any which way they choose. Or renaming it. I'd vote for Mullaney's Folly.

Where have all the editors gone?

Sports writer Dave Albee writing in this morning's Marin IJ on local rower Mike Altman in the Olympics:

IN ROWING, the focus usually comes from within rather than from outside visuals. That's how it is when your back is always turned away from the finish line.

Funny, I thought in rowing your back was always facing the finish line.

S.F. Chronicle Science writer David Perlman had his own problems today. He wrote about rampant rumors of cover-ups over Mars research:

The latest heady rumor: that the spacecraft Phoenix now analyzing soil and ice on the arctic plains of Mars had discovered chemicals so startling and so relevant to the search for life on the Red Planet that the White House and the president's science advisers have been secretly briefed, even though NASA would not share the information with the public.

The logical structure of the last clause doesn't work. NASA's not sharing information with the public isn't at odds with the White House having a secret briefing. They're part and parcel of the same thing.

To the two Davids: We're concerned about your copy desks, but the good news is we're still reading.
(As for the photo, it's a beauty, and it's from a fine photographer, Kevin Sargent)

Gobbledygook

Gobbledygook means language characterized by circumlocution or jargon. The word seems to originated, according to Webster's, between 1940-45, which makes sense because World War II was in full swing, and the military is famous for gobbledygook.
David Meerman Scott writes this morning that authorities in England and Wales are trying to end its life span here and now. Across the pond, the Local Government Association is urging governmental officials to junk jargon.
Said LGA Chairman Sir Simon Milton:

"The public sector can not, must not and should not hide behind impenetrable jargon and phrases. Why do we have to have 'coterminous, stakeholder engagement' when we could just 'talk to people' instead?"

(Would you expect anything else from a Milton? Paradise may yet be regained!)
The list includes: coterminous, empowerment, stakeholder, slippage, synergies and best practice. If these were outlawed in the United States, business communications might come to a crashing halt.
Onward....
My ex-EE Times colleague Alex Wolfe suggests actor William Shatner is changing careers...radically.
His new autobiography is titled "Up Till Now," which suggests Shatner is telegraphing a move into farming. It's discouraging to see a book--presumably reviewed by editors--titled in thus, when it should be "Up 'Til Now."

The medium really is the message

Note: I hectored my former EE Times editorial colleague Jackie Damian into contributing her insights to Big Red Pencil. Herewith, her first entry!

By Jackie Damian

Everyone who writes – no wait, let’s make that everyone who reads (in other words, everyone) – should hie over to The Atlantic site and check out the July/August cover story, titled “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?”
Author Nicholas Carr pretty much answers that not-so-rhetorical question with a resounding yes, describing how the Internet – in the way it delivers quick snippets of info and discourages concentrated reading – is actually reshaping our brains and the way we think. “Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged,” Carr writes. He cites both anecdotal evidence from bloggers who can’t concentrate on any articles longer than a few paragraphs, to research on neural information processing: This is your brain on Google.

Conspiracy theorists, take note:

“The faster we surf across the Web – the more links we click and pages we view – the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link – the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interests to drive us to distraction.”

Perhaps the most subversive thing anyone who loves the written word could do this summer, therefore, would be to put away the laptop and open "Ulysses."

Rita Moreno for president

College commencement speeches can be thumb-suckers highlighted by the occasional paper airplane drifting over bored, enrobed graduates. Rita Moreno, however, struck a blow for righteousness this weekend with her speech at Mills College in the East Bay. The only problem is the speech probably should have been given as the Class of 2008 entered Mills, rather than exited.

How we look is a matter of personal preference and is really rather easy to deal with, but — language, language — which is so central and important to one’s success is too often sorely lacking.

I am constantly saddened and dismayed by the way in which we have come to torture the English language. ... College students who use the term “he goes” in place of “he says” and whose sentences are riddled with “you know?” and who cannot complete a sentence without inserting the word “like” at least three times. ... My advice: Stop it this minute.

Write well, spell correctly, lawyer urges

Lawyers are often criticized for arcane and convoluted language. Not Andrew Berry (left), chairman of McCarter & English in Newark, N.J. He's interviewed in The Wall Street Journal Law Blog about the importance of clear writing and avoiding typographical errors. Says he:

“Do not ever for the second time give your senior (lawyer) a piece of writing with a typo or a grammatical mistake.”

Such errors, he says, derail the lawyer's stock in trade: A smooth train of thought.
In addition, Berry urges young lawyers to read Antonin Scalia's new book on advocacy, especially the parts about the importance of writing well.
The dynamics of today's communications (IM, email, Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, text-messaging) augur against this, but Berry and the rest of us can dream, can't we??

Bad grammar "Eccos" relentlessly

Ecco makes pretty good shoes. Their ad agencies writes pretty painful ad copy.
From the recent "My World My Style" print and online campaign:

"I will spend the entire day just walking on my feet. So for my shoes, comfort and styles have to go hand and hand. My Ecco is Yucatan."

Do advertising agencies no longer employ copy editors? Does the "feel" of the copy outweigh the value of the words that produces it?
"I will spend the entire day just walking on my feet"...???? As opposed to.... your hands?? That would be quite a feat!
And less obvious but still grating: "comfort and styles have to go hand and hand." I get it, but when the product is shoes, isn't there a better simile??

Word of the Day

Tergiversate: (v) to change repeatedly one's attitudes or opinions.
From the Latin tergiversatus, to turn one's back.

I haven't come across that word ever, and it's a beauty. Found it Joe Queenan's Wall Street Journal op-ed today on, who else? Hillary Clinton. Fits like a glove.

Jury rig

There's nothing like the wide-open spaces in the mountains to give one a chance to improvise when needed. I spent this weekend with (left to right) my buddy, Pat, my son, Malcolm, and my brother, Kirk, fixing a major problem near our cabin in the Coast Range. You can see a newly graded road running across the creek and out of the picture. That's on our absentee neighbor's property, up the creek from our place. That road hasn't been graded--or used much--since the 1970s, and the creek's comings and goings over the succeeding decades has made the creek ford impossible. It's not an important road, so no biggie. But they graded it this spring, which is nice. Except when that grading rips through your water supply line buried under the road.
To make a long story short, I asked the guy to dig us a trench so we could fix the situation, but he hasn't been back up, so we had to act to get in water for the summer (our barrel is a quarter-mile hike upstream from here).
So we dug. And dug. It's gravel--not easily worked. We dug as much as we could, and then, to protect the PVC line, we hauled an old iron pipe down the creek to slide over the PVC section to protect it (while buried) from trucks rolling over.
It wasn't pretty, but it'll get the job done.
That's the definition of jury rigging (not to be confused with bribing jurors to help one's client).
While now used to describe anything that's makeshift or temporary, it originally was used to describe the replacement of mast and yards in case of damage.
In our case, jury rigging was more fun, as they say, than humans should be allowed to have while standing.

Word of the Day

Don't know where he finds 'em, but he does. Oregon's favorite adopted son, Mr. B. Santo, forwards:

Graupel
Pronunciation:

\ˈgrau̇-pəl\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

German

Date:

1889

: granular snow pellets —called also soft hail

In Webster's, it appears derived from the Greek Graupel for hulled grain, which is coincidental since I spent last night reading about malting barley and the joys of the decoction mash in brewing.