Bloody Well Write

A Bloody Well Write reader sent in a request for a blog entry about one of the most-argued points in the history of grammar (perhaps I amplify just a smidge): the serial comma.

Eeeeeek!

But not just any serial comma — this reader called out the Oxford comma. The Oxford comma, people, was news to me. I had never heard of this thing. Or if I had, it was in grad school and I must have been staring into space, dreaming of just about anything else that wasn’t grammar-related. So I had to look the bloody thing up. Yay — research!

What I found out was this: The Oxford comma is the same thing as the serial comma, which is also the same thing as the Harvard comma:

Oxford = serial = Harvard

The serial comma (think generic when you hear serial) is sometimes called the Oxford comma because it is in the style guide of the Oxford University Press and has been for more than a century. Those who are less enamored with the grammatical styles from across the pond may refer to the serial comma as the Harvard comma. Since I went to KU, maybe I should coin it the Jayhawk comma. How ’bout them beans‽

So — back to the serial-Oxford-Harvard comma. It’s the comma that follows the penultimate word or group of words in a series. Look at these two sentences:

1. I had grapefruit juice, pears, and ham and eggs for breakfast.
2. I had grapefruit juice, pears and ham and eggs for breakfast.

No. 1 has the serial comma, which classifies ham and eggs as an integral thing (which, in North America anyway, it typically is) rather than two separate entries.

No. 2 does not have the serial comma, which just looks sloppy. If I had to edit this sentence, I would slap a serial comma after slices, no question, even though the AP Stylebook prefers no serial comma. How could I get away with it? Because the AP Stylebook also takes into consideration just such constructions that have an integral element of the series requiring a conjunction (i.e., and).

Ham and eggs with a side of toast (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreyww/5533239258/)

Now, being raised in an MLA environment, it took me a little while to get used to the usual elimination of the serial comma (except in cases similar to the above-mentioned sentence). And to this day, I think that the serial comma should be reinstated (did you hear that, AP folks?). But if that happens, we’ll still live in a gray world, b/c there’s an exception to the serial comma rule, as well.

Sonofa.

But it’s true. Look at these two sentences:

1. I had a dream about a chef, Tommy Flibberdygibbit, and Sierra Rock.
2. I had a dream about a chef, Tommy Flibberdygibbit and Sierra Rock.

In No. 1, tell me: Did I dream about two people (Chef Tommy + Sierra) or three people (a chef + Tommy + Sierra)?

In No. 2, it seems pretty obvious that I had a dream about three people. So No. 1 makes the argument that a serial comma (in No. 1) doesn’t always clear up the meaning, whereas a lack of one does (or may). Poo.

So there it is — clear as mud.

Happy trails!

SAK

Short-and-oh-so-sweet headlines take a bit of effort and magic, all in one fell swoop. They also must follow certain rules and, yes, break a rule or two on a rare occasion. This one, though, is a no-brainer.

When you write (or edit or proofread) a headline that contains a colon, the word following the colon must be immediately preceded by a single space, and that word must begin with an uppercase letter. Examples:

• Dog and butterfly: Puppy chase ends in highway tragedy
• The race is on: Presidential hopefuls Bachmann, Romney, Pawlenty hit the road
• Summer recipe tips: Fresh vegetables, home-grown herbs

It doesn’t matter whether or not what comes after the colon is a complete sentence. The point is that the word following the colon must start with a capital letter. I can’t think of a single instance in which this is not the case (which means that you’ll find it and send it to me, yes?).

One note: The automatic formatting that takes place with the template I’ve chosen for this blog does NOT follow this rule, and it does bug me, but some things I let slide. C’est la vie.

Simple does it.

Happy trails!

SAK

Happy Friday to all the women out there who have ever visited an OBGYN.

Or would that be Obgyn? OB-GYN? OB/GYN? Or obgyn? or ob-gyn?

Ah, the waiting room (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29233640@N07/5368501799/)

Well, according the AP Stylebook, it should be ob-gyn.

I know — not what I was expecting, either. But there it is.

And that, my friends, is it for this entry. Makes you wish your ob-gyn visit were as short as this post, yes?

Happy trails!

SAK

The simple, AP Stylebook-approved answer is this:

Do not encase (or embrace, as your mood strikes you) the title of a newsletter in quotation marks.

The title should have initial caps on first and major words (e.g., HGTV Ideas, Dine Without Whine™, Skinsights, Yoga Tree), but that’s the extent of the homage to the name of the newsletter.

Happy trails!

SAK

Found this little gem of a billboard online and decided to write a quick (!) post about it.

Great message, not-so-great delivery (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alamosbasement/3282927001/)

This goes with my previous how-to-write headlines entry — except that there’s more wrong with this billboard than just the headline. My thoughts:

• An ellipsis should not find its way into a headline. With extraordinarily few exceptions, this is writing gospel.
• I would have liked to see “Failed. Failed. Failed. And then —” instead of employing commas.
• Not a fan of mixing quite so many fonts in a medium with so few lines of copy. Consider it driver’s-eye overload.
• “Pass It On.” OK, so why does the first line have only an initial cap on the first word in the sentence, when the fourth line has Every Word Initial-Capped?
• I do find it a little funny that a billboard with Abe is supported by a billboard company called “Reagan.”

That’s it for this ad. Any other comments?

Happy trails!

SAK

Short and sweet for your April 1:

Note the placement of the apostrophe — it’s April Fools’ Day and April Fools’. Not April Fool’s Day nor April Fool’s.

What's not to love? (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uberculture/2676303273/)

Why? Because it’d be a good wager to take that there are more than just one fool on this — or any other — day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Happy trails!

SAK

It’s a crapshoot, I tell you.

I had just started in a new position at a new agency and was excited to start things off right with an updated AP Stylebook. Makes sense, I thought, since my own copy of the veritable writer’s bible was the 2007 version. Staying current with the 2010 version (even though it’s already 2011, thank you very much) seemed like a grand idea, especially since the 2011 version wasn’t going to be published for a few months yet.

The 2010 version, for those with inquiring minds, is the first book put out by the AP folks with website spelled as one word and all lowercase. That, my dear readers, was a monumental advancement. Ask any writer or editor you know (hell, you can even ask an opinionated designer or two — they’ll freely offer their belief system on the now-antiquated two-word Web site); he or she will probably be able to explain in four-part harmony the beneficial or detrimental nuances of using one word or two, depending on his or her preference.

So — back to the crapshoot.

As a writer and editor in my new digs at Armstrong|Shank Advertising, I thought it appropriate to get my hands on the latest AP Stylebook. The office manager said, “Hey! No problem. We’ll order one of those suckers right away.”

Cool!

It arrived lickety-split and I set to work, prepared for whatever odd grammar question could arise.

Those progressive heart candy makers must've known that the AP Stylebook editors would cave sooner or later (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trmarch/3240265590/)

Then, just a few short days ago, the AP Stylebook folks threw a grammar wrench in my well-laid plans. They decided to cave under the pressure of the masses and allow email to take the place of e-mail.

And that, my friends, is huge. Even bigger news than Web site to website. It’s so huge because, in the history of the English language, no compound noun that starts with a single letter has lost its hyphen. For example:

• A-frame
• G-string
• S-curve
• T-ball
• T-shirt
• U-turn
• X-ray

It seems odd to me that the hyphen isn’t there, too, because for the two people who don’t yet know what electronic mail is, reading the word sans hyphen could theoretically make it sound like ehMAIL. And that, as the rest of us electronic whiz kids know, isn’t how it’s supposed to sound.

Why should e-mail lose its hyphen? My best guess is because the masses, in all their texting and tweeting and e-mailing (er, emailing) glory, decided that it’s just too darn difficult to add the hyphen to a word that gets typed or written on such a frequent basis, and those masses revolted to the point of forcing the hand of the AP Stylebook editors.

So — lazy wins.

And you know what? I’m sort of OK with that. I don’t really think it’s the wisest decision based on correctness, but I’ll be a much happier — and faster — tweeter with this new rule in place.

For the record: Email is correct to start a sentence; email is correct in all other sentence locations. Fun times.

Happy trails!

SAK

Thinking back to my youth, I fondly remember watching cartoons on Saturday mornings and holding a mug of milk with powdered Nesquik® slightly stirred into it — just enough to leave a big, bubbled glop of thick chocolate in the bottom of the mug, ready to be spooned into my eager mouth once the chocolate milk had been consumed.

Those were the days.

And in between watching “Scooby-Doo,” “The New Zoo Revue,” “The Secrets of Isis,” “Shazam!,” “Pink Panther,” “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “SuperFriends,” “Land of the Lost,” “Fat Albert” and “Hong Kong Phooey,” I’d learn some stuff.

Huh?

Yep. Thanks to “Schoolhouse Rock” — a fantastic collection of animated, musical, educational short films that would individually play after the cartoon was over — I learned all sorts of things: American history, science, math (egads!), politics and, of course, grammar. One of my favorite “Schoolhouse Rock” films was (and still is, btw) on interjections.

Several of my favorite Saturday-morning cartoons used interjections visually on the screen: “Boris and Natasha” and the classic “Batman” sound effects (Bam! Klonk! Ker-POW!). And one of my favorite interjections was often used in the cartoon (and live-version) “Pink Panther” — aha! As a form of discovery, aha! offers comedic gold for those who can deliver it on target. None was better at delivering that one-liner than Peter Sellers as Jacques Clouseau in the live-action “Pink Panther” films.

Every once in a while, I like to use aha! in my writing. But recently it struck me that perhaps I didn’t know how to spell it correctly. I waffled between the plain, old aha! and the hyphenated a-ha! But which is correct?

According to the online dictionaries Merriam-Webster and Webster’s New World College, the no-hyphen aha! wins. Webster’s New World College does list the hyphenated version as a secondary possibility, but secondary doesn’t cut it in this burg. So my recommendation is to go with the simpler aha! spelling.

A last note: Although neither dictionary lists the word aha with an exclamation point permanently attached to it, I have done so in this post — reason being that aha is almost never used without the exclamation point. I suppose it could be used with a period to imply sarcasm or a dead-pan delivery or a question mark to imply inquisitiveness, but those are rare beasts, indeed. If you know of other punctuation that could work, send the examples my way.

Happy trails!

SAK

When I don’t have quick inspiration for a new blog entry, I do what any decent writer needing a boost would do: I flip through my AP Stylebook for ideas.

Today, I came across a little snippet of information that had slipped right on by me.

Hey, cows — home's that-a-way! (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chelseagirlphotos/242492087/)

Did you have any idea that the AP Stylebook folks frown on using the abbreviated ’til in place of until? I surely did not. They do write that the non-apostrophed till is a perfectly acceptable substitution. But not ’til (no sirree, Bob). You write ’til and you’ll look a fool in front of all your cohorts — a fool, I tell you.

I’ve been doing it all wrong for a very long time. Poo. Fool me once ….

So — Until is good. Till is OK, too.

Happy trails!

SAK

What’s in a name? Depending on whom you’re talking to, everything or not so much.

When we were trying to pick out baby names, you’d think we were naming the Taj Mahal or Grand Canyon — something that would be around for eons and would have movies made about it. The meaning of the name, the number of syllables, the words it could possibly rhyme with, the ways it could be abbreviated — every little nuance was considered.

Many companies do the same thing when forming their names. And many add the tag Inc. to the name for legal reasons. But, concerning commas, how should those names be referenced in writing if it’s not for legal purposes?

My assumption would be to do as the company does. If ABC, Inc. wants a comma there legally, why not put it there all the time?

Crazy little assumption, but according to the AP Stylebook, that’s an assumption that can drive an editor nuts. The AP Stylebook folks have this to say:

Abbreviate and capitalize as Inc. when used as a part of a corporate name. It usually is not needed, but when it is used, do not set off with commas: “Time Warner Inc. announced ….”

And you know me. I’m not one to ruffle the feathers of the AP Stylebook gods — at least not on a regular basis.

In legal writing, I would absolutely follow the style of the legal company name. But in journalistic, advertising, marketing or PR writing, I’d eliminate the comma. It’s a space-taker-upper, and it separates the Inc. from the main body of the name, which in my mind goes against the purpose of having it there at all. If you’re going to separate the Inc. with a comma, that implies it’s not a mandatory phrase. And if it’s not mandatory, I can think of a graphic designer or two who would think that it’s fluff and that the space could be better used, so take that sucker out.

Happy trails!

SAK