A little harsh, don't you think?

While inserting 'up' as a sloppy way to help verbs is well established, it's still wrong. Unless you're writing this sign. And in that case, make the error, because cleaning your dog's euphemistically describe poop seems unnecessary.

OK, now what?

Tip: Add copy to explain new business model or be courteous enough to provide link to the tabloid story that led to the posting of this notice.

Experts share writing tips

Paging New York Times' Copy Chief

The headline on Billy Preston's obituary in the renowned New York Times:

Obituary: Billy Preston, 59, reknowned keyboardist

Yes, it seems we all knowed Billy Preston.

P.S. Preston died in 2006, and if memory serves, The Times hadn't gutten its staff just yet.

Are stripper-linguists getting a raw deal??

The question is, are strippers Alexia Moore (left) and Falynn Rodriguez better lap dancers or linguists?

That's what put-off prosecutors are wondering in New York this week after the two gyrating gals fought a prostitution charge.

In trying to have the charges dropped on a technicality, the pair argue that language is paramount (and we could argue no more vociferously).

According to the New York Post (and check out the lede):

The purportedly glitchy grammar in the charges against the pair alleges that they "did engage, offer and agree" to acts of prostitution with an undercover officer at Big Daddy Lou's Hot Lap Dance Club on West 38th Street in July 2008. That differs from the wording in the state penal code, which specifies "engage, offer or agree," the gals argue.

This just goes to show that some people can dance and parse language at the same time.

God Bless America.

(Tip of the fountain pen to Duffy Moran for bird-dogging this gem).

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.

Death of the written word? Hardly

We worry in these precincts about the death of the written word. But people actually read more today than in years (perhaps ever). True, "writing" has been redefined as more digital belching in many cases. But the immense amount of new information created every second of every day is written. Just spend a few minutes with a good real-time search site like Collecta and you see how much is bubbling up--some of it banal, but much of it worth a read and your valuable time.

HubSpot bird-dogs a study from the University of California at San Diego that bolsters the argument that the written word is thriving. Here's a link to the complete study.

Researchers Roger Bohn and James Short point out that reading as a percentage of our information consumption has actually tripled in the past 50 years if we use words (on printed page or digital screen) as a measurement. The chart shows the transformation of reading in the past 50 years.

So, those of you with a passion for writing, fear not. There's plenty of upside in our world. And given the vast amount of information that's produced every second in printed form, there will always be a demand for those who can write clearly, concisely and cleverly.

Where Have All The Editors Gone?

There once was a time when if you wrote a headline like this for a wire service, a grizzled vet across the newsroom who edited your copy would explode in laughter or rage. If you were a greenhorn, it would be the latter rather than the former. Either way, the vet's coffee would be spilled all over the desk, ashtray knocked to the floor--such would be the umbrage taken at the headline and story description of this suspect.
The editor would stand and hitch up his pants over his pot belly and question the writer's manhood, intelligence and college pedigree in language that would peel paint. (At least mine did).
Now pictures may be deceiving, and John Floyd Thomas Jr. could be eight feet tall, but he doesn't look like he weighs 800 pounds. Either of those physical features would qualify Thomas as the "largest ever" serial killer.
Instead, he's suspected of being the most prolific killer in L.A.'s history, a fact that Thomas Watkins notes in his lede. So why does the headline quote robbery-homicide Capt. Denis Cremins bludgeoning of the language?

"If he turns out to be the guy, he probably would be the largest ever (serial killer) in the city of Los Angeles."

We may never know, just as we may never know why serial killers are "prolific," "indefatigable," hardworking," "dedicated," "diligent" or "tireless."

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!

Copy Editor's Lament

A lovely mixture of melody and lyric brings the tragedy of the dying copy desk home at Christopher Ave's site, Music for Media.
"Copy Editor's Lament" makes you laugh and cry at the same time, especially if, like the protagonist, you've been laid off! (And, if you're like me, you met your future wife on the copy desk in college).

An excerpt:

"I'm a human safety net...I can provide punctuation, appropriate for publication, make the capitalization right. I was there to fix your grammar when you thought it wouldn't matter, cut all your extraneous blather down."

Copy editors are among the tens of thousands of reporters and editors who have been cut loose in the past year or two in North America. As Ave puts it in the song, "with only Web sites and TV, nothing really there to help you see."

Yeah. Good luck with that.

In any case, here's to Christopher Ave and all of you who understand the difference between a colon and a semicolon.

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 Art of Editing

Our son, a high school sophomore, demonstrated over breakfast today why that adage about jazz is just as true about writing: Often it's what you leave out that resonates more than what you put in.

He was reading a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about a trial of a man accused of shooting the bullet that paralyzed a young boy while he was playing piano.

Here's the lede:

(02-02) 17:58 PST OAKLAND -- The 11-year-old boy paralyzed by a gas station robber's bullet while taking a piano lesson in Oakland still plays music and basketball - but now, he does both from a wheelchair.

My son's suggestion: Replace "paralyzed" with "hit" or "struck" or "shot," and you have a better lede. The changed construction adds an element of suspense to the sentence because it leaves out the outcome of the shooting until the end of the sentence. The emotion-coaster that creates in a single sentence is breathtaking: He was shot! Oh, he survived! He can play basketball and piano! Oh! He's paralyzed and in a wheelchair!

Writing is just as much about engaging with readers as it is about the raw conveyance of ideas and information, even in the digital age. Whether it's in print or online or in an email newsletter, good writing engages the mind.
You do that, and the rest will follow.

Quote of the day

From Dr. Seuss:
"So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads."

Tip of the cap to Mighty Meredith for the Twitter Tip.

The Writer in Chief

It seems appropriate to re-energize this blog on Inauguration Day, as Barack Obama takes office as the 44th (and first African-American) president of the United States. It's not just about the theme of hope that we so dearly need right now, but it's, as Peggy Noonan points out, the theme of language.
Imagine that: A writer in the White House. It's a been a while. Maybe not since Kennedy (although Profiles in Courage was a bit of an outsourced endeavor).
Noonan wrote in this weekend's Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama is a writer, and he sees himself as a writer. It is an important part of his self-perception. He is the author of two books, the first of considerable literary merit. He loves words. It is in writing that he absorbs, organizes data, thinks his way through to views and decisions, all of which adds to the expectations for his speech.

I can relate to that.
On Greeley's Ghost last year, I wrote of Obama's muse, Abraham Lincoln and how gracefully he describes his favorite portrait of Lincoln.
Could it be that a writer--The Writer in Chief--could navigate our troubled waters? We've had a businessman, two career politicians and an actor in the Oval Office since 1980. We've had good times and bad. And, I'd suggest, we've been frustrated at one level or another.
We need someone who can articulate not only our troubles but the way forward. In an age of sound bytes, text messages and IM, the complexities of the world around us are lost, vaporized in unknowing, uncaring, inarticulate ones and zeroes.
With his savvy use of new media, it could very well be that Obama, the writer, is the right man at the right time, able to analyze, synthesize and articulate complex problems and bridge old forms of communications with new, while using language to inspire and lead.
There's hope yet.

Oh, the horror!

Joseph Califano Jr. leaps atop the language of Wall of Shame this morning in an article about kids raiding their parents' medicine cabinets to steal prescription drugs. Said he, in a statement:

Many problem parents become passive pushers by leaving abusable and addictive prescription drugs, like their painkillers OxyContin and Vicodin, around the house, making them easily available to their children.

Since Califano's organization, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, is located at Columbia University, I won't be passive about pushing this link to its English department faculty in case he has a hankerin' to double-check his language before his next public pronouncement.

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)

(A) wanker

In British slang, a wanker is a pejorative term for someone who plays with himself or is a detestable person.
One example would be Giles Coren, a restaurant reviewer in England, who went ballistic on newspaper copy editors ("subs" as they're called) for removing the article "a" from one of his reviews.
He picks it up from here, in all his foul-mouthed, verbose petulance. At the end of the day, he has a point that the deletion of that single letter ruined a good double entendre. But, really Giles, is it worth vaulting yourself into the modern Pantheon of jackasses to make a point? I guess it is.

(Tip of the fountain pen to my old colleague Paul Dempsey for the article reference).

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."

Oh so trendy

I returned today from a vacation of relaxin', readin' (Mark Helprin's "A Soldier of the Great War," for the second time) and writin' (notes for a novel that's beginning to congeal in my soupy head) to discover the editing business still needs editors.
I Googled the phrase "passing fad" to find 345,000 citations. That means that 345,000 times some writer didn't care enough to think before putting fingers to keyboard. While not strictly redundant, the word "fad" means a "temporary fashion," so a fad is, by definition, passing. Would that we should think as much before writing as we do before stepping off a city curb. By the way, I was moved to this demi-diatribe by a Moira Herbst's BusinessWeek article: Energy Efficiency: A Passing Fad?
On a different note, I've enlisted the help of a longtime editorial colleague of mine, Jackie Damian, to contribute to this blog from time to time. (I'd love for it to be daily, but she does have a real life!) Jackie is one of the finest editors I've ever worked with. I've seen her transform the unintelligible into the articulate and the workable into the insightful. Her first contribution comes later this week.