Bloody Well Write

Ah, grammar! Were it not for grammar — and good grammar, at that — the world would surely be a heaping, chaotic mess. For without grammar, how would we humans ever be able to order a cup o’ joe properly (especially the double-double light dolce iced latte variety) or be able to sue each other with such flourish? How would we know if we were being asked about which meal we would like to order, and if we would like fries with it? And how, for Pete’s sake, would we be able to communicate our every want, need and desire to those who may be able to provide it, were it not for good grammar etiquette?

Good grammar is the very foundation of our society, is it not? It helped our forefathers put down in black and white just how they wanted the United States of America to operate. And lawmakers and politicians ever since — with a few potatoe-flinging exceptions — have been trying to uphold the same kind of respect for the language.

Go ahead — you know you want to (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/3368018014)

Granted, the very nature of language is a morphing art form. The intelligentsia of yesteryear have given way to the whiz kids of the now. What was once imperturbable and phlegmatic is now cool; what used to be favored (or favoured) and marvelous is now hot, rad or boss.

And that change is, indeed, rad — even though the process of change sometimes raises several eyebrows.

So go ahead and celebrate grammar:

• Bake an ampersand cake or (for the baking-challenged) ellipsis cookies.
• Introduce the kiddos to “Schoolhouse Rock” and don’t feel self-conscious as you belt out the songs.
• Send grammar tidbits around the office via interoffice e-mail.
• Take a pad of sticky notes to dinner tonight, as it’s highly probable that your menu will have at least one grammar issue, and leave behind a sticky note that calls out the offending mistake — much more respectable than writing all over the menu with a red Sharpie®.
• Send a National Grammar Day E-card.
• Profess your undying love of the AP Stylebook guidelines.

Visit any of the myriad of sites online that celebrate language today and every day. Here are the sites of three grammar gurus (my faves) to whet your whistle:

Quick and Dirty Tips™ — Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl™ and the host of this year’s NGD)

The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG) — Martha Brockenbrough (founder of NGD).

The Slot — Bill Walsh (chief of the night desk — Washington Post)

And on that note (isn’t it fantastic that good grammar includes beginning sentences with conjunctions?), I bid you a happy NGD to you and yours.

Happy trails!

SAK

I recently went up to Kansas City to see some friends, have some amazing food, catch a few comfy Z’s and see a football game. I did all that, but I also came home with a nice little surprise: a new topic for a Bloody Well Write entry.

First, a quick mention about the food. If you’re ever in Kansas City and are looking for a fantastic Italian meal in a quaint, romantic little ristorante, look no further than Carmen’s in Brookside. Ask to sit downstairs — I prefer the intimate atmosphere — and request some Italian Butter to start; it’s their version of olive oil and herbs, but I tell you that it is absolutely like none you have ever had.

I order off the menu, à la “When Harry Met Sally,” combining the cheese ravioli from one dish with the vodka tomato cream sauce from another, with a little fra diavolo thrown in to spice things up a bit. And ba-da-BING! It’s the tastiest, smoothest Italian around. No lie.

OK, so back to the grammar bit of this entry. So I’m in the hotel room — the one with the lush, fresh-white bedding and soaps the shape of leaves, with the cool city view — and I am piddling around, waiting until it’s time to go meet our friends. And I pick up this water bottle hang tag, with one word on it, for emphasis: revitalize.

That’s pretty cool. Decent marketing, colors fading from blue to snow white (very spalike), with some smallish print across the bottom: Westin® Hotels and Resorts. Nice little water logo. Then more words:

Nestle Pure Life Eco Shaped Bottles
Less Plastic. Better Enviornment.

So — reread that. See how many mistakes you can find in those two little lines.

By my count, I’d say that there are, at the minimum, five mistakes. There are more if you want to keep the lowercase consistency set by the headline (revitalize). And the periods? Don’t get me started. (OK, get me started. the headline doesn’t use a period, and neither does the first line, but the second line has two. Go figure.)

So what are the five mistakes?

1. There is no ® after Nestle.
2. There is no hyphen between Eco and Shaped.
3. The S in Shaped, since it should follow a hyphen, should be lowercase.
4. If there are two periods in the second line, there is no excuse why there shouldn’t be one at the end of the first line. (None of those groups of words are complete sentences.)
5. Enviornment. Seriously? This is for a national chain, for Pete’s sake. I know that it’s a four-syllable word, but my silly spell-checker caught it, so come ON.

I just checked out Nestle’s site to make sure that it uses a registered trademark (®) and, unbelievably, the site does not have one on the main page, even though products (such as Nestle® Cheerios®) have one next to the name. That sort of thing happens all the time. It blows my mind, especially on these enormous accounts.

I’ll end this little study in proofreading by saying that, despite this crazy hang tag, I had a really, really good time in Kansas City. And I’d even recommend the Westin Crown Center hotel to any friend or acquaintance. Just don’t plan on any solid ultra-light reading in the room.

Happy trails!

SAK

So I’m a word gal; this much is true. I find it quite difficult to read books (adult books, anyway) for relaxation or enjoyment because the majority of my day is spent either writing my own words or editing someone else’s words, so I don’t think reading a few chapters at night sound like a whole lot of fun. I guess I’m not the typical word hound, then, since most do tend to like, um, books and, er, reading.

Fine. I’m OK with that.

I do, however, enjoy reading to my two kids at night. Their books are fun, rhyming, colorful short (short!) stories with cool illustrations. And since it’s the holidays, we’re reading a few books that I grew up with — “Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer” and Christmas in Many Lands” — as well as a few new ones, such as “Elf on the Shelf” (we named ours Leo and today he’s perched on top of our refrigerator) and “Olive, the Other Reindeer.”

Ah, Olive. If only your creators knew the difference between every day and everyday, reading would be ever-so-slightly more enjoyable for me, the word dork.

You see, “Olive, the Other Reindeer” starts out by botching the very first word, which means that I have to put on my tattered editor hat throughout the rest of the reading. It’s just innate for me. I can’t get through the book now without cringing on the very first page.

(Technically, it starts off even earlier than the first page: The title has punctuation in it. Ugh. A period is tacked on. Not sure why, it just is. Weird.)

Anyway, the story begins, “Everyday, Olive took her daily dog walk ….” In this instance, everyday should take the adverb form (two words) because it is expressing a manner of time. Were it meant to be an adjective, it would be modifying a noun of some sort. Alas, that is not the case at the beginning of this story.

To keep the adverb-adjective relationship straight, I like to (still) think of the Schoolhouse Rock snippets:

• Adverb — “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here. … How, where or when, condition or reason — these questions are answered when you use an adverb.” If it ends in ly and the ly isn’t a regular part of the word (as in family), then it’s probably an adverb. The phrase every day answers the question of when, so it’s an adverb.

• Adjective — These handy, little words “describe the people, places and every last thing” and “are often used to help us compare things. … We hiked along without care. Then we ran into a bear. He was a hairy bear. He was a scary bear. We beat a hasty retreat from his lair.”

Cool, huh?

Back to “Olive, the Other Reindeer” for just a second. The book, written by Vivian Walsh and J. Otto Seibold, is a fun children’s book. The story is cute; it’s about an industrious little dog who thinks that she’s a reindeer, so she goes to the North Pole to help Santa out. The pages are filled with quirky, fun illustrations by Seibold; I especially love the two pages that show the reindeer navigating around the Eiffel Tower. Despite the everyday blunder, this book’s worth the read.

Happy trails!

SAK

Jenny, I got your number.

Here’s how the AP Stylebook folks would like to see telephone numbers in print: 123-456-7890.

Ah, hyphens. Hey — at least they dropped the parentheses around the area code. Be happy.

Now, I know this doesn’t jibe with all the designers out there. And you know what? It doesn’t necessarily jibe with me, either. I’m a fan of dots (er, periods). I would rather see this: 123.456.7890.

So I guess what I’m promoting is this:

• If you or your company says that AP rules the proverbial roost and there should be absolutely no deviation, use the hyphens in your phone numbers. (And I’m so completely OK with that, as I do believe that AP has your back nearly every time, grammatically speaking.)

• If, on the other hand, you have a designer itching at the keypad to produce funky (or just non-hyphenated) art with numbers, use periods, stars, squares or whatever else floats that designer’s boat.

Just make it readable. After all, if you’re putting a phone number in print, you probably want people to be able to decipher that number and then call it, correct? Correct.

Happy trails!

SAK

Today is Thursday, September 24, 2009 — the sixth annual celebration of National Punctuation Day (NPD). Punctuation ensures that groups of words make more sense and take on more meaning than you can shake a stick at.

Hooray for punctuation!

In 2004, NPD was founded by Jeff Rubin, a former newspaper guy. In 1981, Rubin started The Newsletter Guy, a newsletter publishing firm. Rubin is also a public speaker, addressing effective writing and marketing techniques. I bet that he also addresses the importance of proper punctuation — but that’s just a guess.

Check out the official Web site. It offers some of the standard stuff (e.g., definitions of each punctuation mark, examples of punctuation gone awry, a resources section); most notable, perhaps, is the information concerning the baking contest. Send in two photos of your masterpiece — one of it going into the oven raw and one of it coming out, all warm and yummy — and you may win a bunch of non-edible NPD stuff. How cool is that?! Very, I say.

Doesn't a bake-off seem like a better idea?! (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/3367193003)

OK, stop messing around here and go bake something with meaning, such as a semicolon or em dash. You know you want to.

Happy trails!

SAK

This gorgeous, little punctuation mark is currently making a name for itself in grammar circles and, hopefully, beyond.

“But what the heck is it‽” you exclaim (and rightly so, as it is an unusual beast).

The interrobang shows surprise and question

The interrobang is a nonstandard punctuation mark that represents the colliding of a question mark and an exclamation point (?!). Rather than having two — or more, if over-the-top form is your M.O. — punctuation marks next to each other, the interrobang gives the whole shebang in one, well, bang of the keypad.  Yet it’s an elusive cat.

Try finding the symbol for the interrobang on your keyboard. Not there, is it? The unfortunate thing is that, so far, the interrobang hasn’t come into its own, typographically speaking. Very few fonts include it and no shortcut keystroke(s) exists that I know of to easily insert one into copy. You have to click Command+Option+T on your Mac and then find the symbol and insert it. (PC lovers: I apologize, but I got nothin’ for ya.)

But hey: I’m glad that it’s available at all.

Martin K. Speckter invented the interrobang back in 1962. As the head of his advertising agency, he offered up the idea of a single punctuation mark to take the place of the albeit short string of question marks and exclamation points. Speckter collected possible names and chose interrobang (interro from the question mark’s other name, interrogative point, and bang from printers’ jargon for exclamation point).

The irony mark

The interrobang is sometimes used to imply irony or sarcasm. These uses are fine, I suppose, since no other well-known symbol comes as close to representing them as does the interrobang. However, one mark — the irony mark — has been put out there for evaluation. It is, in essence, a backward question mark. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of takers; the irony mark is even more obscure than the interrobang. I think it would be über-cool, but no one’s asking my opinion. Sniff. Regardless, I’d say to go ahead and use the interrobang for a hint of irony or sarcasm if you wish. At least until the grammar police come knocking.

Happy trails!

SAK

Back in the day when “back in the day” wasn’t a grossly overused phrase, English teachers taught their students that every sentence ends with some form of punctuation: a question mark, an exclamation point, a period. And that punctuation necessarily is followed by two (count ’em, two) spaces before the next sentence officially begins.

That’s how I learned it.

That period-double-space thing was for school term papers, tests and such. And it was for the birds. Why in the world would we knowingly force our thumb to do the unnatural act of pressing down on the space bar twice at one shot? We were told that it helped the reader by providing more of a visual stop. Really? That black spot at the end of a decently written sentence isn’t enough of a clarification that the sentence is done, so a little extra white space should do the trick? Hmmm. Suspect.

In today’s fast-paced, cram-it-all-in society, that white space has been nudged out. And I, for one, am happy about that.

Although I do see a lot of period-double-space configurations in my editing work, the publishing tool that I currently work with mysteriously (and thankfully) eliminates one of those spaces — I don’t care which one, just that one is, indeed, obliterated, thank you very much.

Just remember that the English language morphs as it goes along, so it’s now OK to throw caution to the wind and only include one space after the ending punctuation. And if you happen to run into your middle school teacher, smile sweetly and say that you have fond memories of those days.

Happy trails!

SAK

Those fancy initials at the end of your doctor’s name make your doc seem more valid somehow, more intelligent, don’t they? They make you trust your physician more than if you were talking colon issues or dermatological concerns with, say, your best friend’s kid brother. Well, your doctor had to put forth a lot of effort to get those little tagalong letters at the end of his or her name (in most cases, anyway). Universities made a pretty penny off of those med students, and many a textbook had coffee stains on them while your physician was struggling to get through med school.

But wait. What about the Ph.D., M.A. and B.G.S. recipients who are not medical doctors? They, too, lost countless hours of sleep cramming for exams, just so they could add a couple of cool letters to their names. (OK, so that’s not the only reason they went to school, but you get the drift for this discussion.) Somehow, though, these folks often get mocked for trying to tag their academic degrees to their names in any public forum — which, in my opinion, is too bad. They worked just as hard for their degrees — no matter that it was in history or English or mathematics — so why shouldn’t they get the recognition, as well?

Regardless, the preferred way to mention someone’s credentials is not with abbreviations, but with a phrase, such as Dr. Sarah Sneed, a marine biologist or Dr. Evil, a mad scientist; the added language offers more description and less pomp. Sometimes, pomp is plenty good. And sometimes, pomp is just annoying. Use discretion.

One of my favorite "doctors"

The AP Stylebook recommends using abbreviations only when mentioning several people at the same time, making a phrase that describes each person’s credentials cumbersome. At that point, use the degree only at the end of the recipient’s full name on the first mention and drop it on subsequent mentions. Remember to set the degree off with commas:

• Marcus Welby, M.D.
• Bob Smith, Ph.D., presented his lecture. Dr. Smith received a round of applause.
• Dr. Sarah Sneed, a marine biologist, is a vegetarian.
• Oh, to write like the author Dr. Seuss — my writing, I fear, is much too loose.
• In attendance were Bill Black, Ph.D., Sherri White, M.A., Todd Green, D.D.S., and Erin Plum, M.D.

Note that when a title comes at the beginning of the person’s name, the degree does not follow. It’s Dr. Sarah Sneed, not Dr. Sarah Sneed, M.D.

I, by the way, am no doctor. I would’ve liked to have played one on TV, though.

Happy trails!

SAK

No contest on this one.

The term is proofread. One word. No hyphen. The same goes for other forms of the word: proofreader, proofreading.  Somehow, some way, the word gets split in two or includes a dreaded hyphen in lots of advertisements and employment requests — very uncool.

It's all in the details

Proofreading, by the way, dates back to the 1920s. And what does one of these rare breeds do all day? A proofreader reads and marks corrections on a typeset document. Note that the proofreader marks corrections, not makes corrections. That job is typically left to a typesetter or designer. What kind of corrections? If you want to be literal and stick to the official job description, the proofreader only looks for typos and formatting issues on one document compared with another. Sometimes a document has nothing with which to be compared; this is called a blind proof. Modern-day proofreading, however, has an extended job description, which includes checking grammar and consistencies, as well as looking over copy at several stages prior to its being typeset.

Fun stuff, eh?

Happy trails!

SAK

This little acronym gets thrown around a lot. Often, it is used (not utilized, ahem); sometimes, it is abused. Let’s investigate.

RSVP stands for repondez s’il vous plait, meaning respond if you please. It is the French way of someone politely asking you to contact him or her in order to indicate whether you will be able to attend whatever event he or she sent you an invitation for. NOTE: The acronym does not call for periods, despite what some calligraphers deem necessary for high style.

High-style RSVP, with unnecessary periods

Let’s say that your friend Frankie mailed you an invitation to her son’s birthday party. The invitation has RSVP printed in bold letters, with a telephone number and e-mail address below it. The polite (and expected) thing to do, as soon as you receive the invitation, is to check your availability and immediately call or e-mail Frankie to let her know that you can or can’t make it to the party. If you two regularly contact each other some other way, such as tweeting or texting, that would probably be fine, as long as you verify that she received your message; but since the invitation listed a telephone number and e-mail address, one of those options would have less chance of somehow not getting your RSVP to her. It’s your call — just verify.

The purpose of the RSVP, by the way, is to help the person hosting the event to plan said event more efficiently. If 30 invitations are sent out (with 30 invitees) with no RSVP, then the host is assuming that 30 guests will arrive; the host will have to prepare to adequately serve 30 guests, plus the host and any of the host’s helpers or family.

But if an RSVP is on the invitation, the host’s hope is that if not everyone can make it and if those folks notify the host by the requested date, the host will be able to adjust the event requirements in time to save money and supplies. So, for example, Frankie could plan on buying a smaller cake and fewer jugs of fruit punch because seven invited guests replied that they could not come to the party, while 23 guests replied that they would be there, with bells on. And in these interesting economic times (yeah, you try to avoid that phrase these days), saving a few bucks here and there is a very good thing.

So please, folks, follow RSVP protocol and RSVP on or before the deadline on the invitation. If you’re a friend of the host (and you presumably are, or else why are you getting an invitation?), help him or her out and say that you’ll either be there or you can’t come.

One other thing: Don’t write, “Please RSVP by xyz.” The please is redundant.
One last thing: Don’t write, “RSVP in advance.” Duh — you’re expecting them to tell you they’ll be there after the shindig’s over?

Happy trails!

SAK