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

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

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

“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

]]> http://www.bloodywellwrite.com/2009/07/29/the-interrobang-say-what%e2%80%bd/feed/ 2 http://www.bloodywellwrite.com/2009/04/10/going-postal/ http://www.bloodywellwrite.com/2009/04/10/going-postal/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:36:24 +0000 bloodywellwrite http://bloodywellwrite.com/?p=301 Art imitates life. Or is it the other way around? Or maybe both, depending on the day? Today’s entry developed directly from one of my work experiences yesterday.

A few of us went to the main post office here in town to learn a bit about mailpiece design. (Yes, the one-word mailpiece is, according to the post office, a legitimate term, and since I’m discussing postal issues, I’m deferring to its spelling preference.) We even scored a tour. The bummer was that we were there during off-peak hours, so all the belts were stationary, no whistles were toot-tooting and no one was shouting orders to and fro. In fact, there were very few folks around. But there were some chicks (dyed bright green and orange, no less) in cartons, chirping their little lungs out, waiting to be shipped out in time for Easter.

But I digress.

We learned about acceptable sizes for letters and postcards — including the “official” tapping-an-envelope-through-a-slot-to-see-if-its-size-is-legit method — and whether or not we should design an envelope out of metallic paper (not recommended); but what really caught my attention was the shtick about addressing a letter or parcel, particularly the punctuation (or lack thereof) within an address.

USPS-approved address format

The United States Postal Service® (USPS) prefers no punctuation in an address. There are always exceptions to rules, and its listed exception is that it is OK with the hyphen in the ZIP+4 Code (64110-7346). It’s unofficially OK with apostrophes in, for example, a city’s name (Lee’s Summit) or other such necessary punctuation (Stratford-upon-Avon). But commas and periods are unnecessary and clunk up the system. That means no periods in PO Box, no periods with N or S Broadway and no comma between the city and state. That’s right: It’s Lawrence KS and New York City NY.

You might have noticed in the above example that the USPS really, really likes uppercase letters. Now, there are those of us who think that a lot of uppercase letters makes it look like the author has some serious anger-management issues that need to be addressed. But try to think like a postal machine — the monstrosity that sucks in your little hand-written letter with fancy calligraphy, tries to interpret your fancy curly-cue p’s and twice-crossed t’s and then spits it into the correct bin that sends said letter to exactly where you want it to go. That’s a lot of work for that hunk of metal to accomplish, all for the cost of your 42¢ stamp. (Is it still 42¢?)

The point is, if you absolutely need your letter/note/package to get to its destination, try to write legibly. That fancy USPS machine is somehow able to read handwriting as easily as the printed word, but it would appreciate your effort at making its job easier. You don’t have to write in all caps unless you want to, but at least make sure that the address is easy to read. And if you can stomach the style, choose sans serif over serif fonts.

The machine reads the address from the bottom up. And frankly, what I got from the information segment of our field trip was that the mail gets delivered based on the last two lines; everything above that is fluff. Make sure that the very last line has the correct city, state and ZIP code (with +4 Code if you have it, but no worries if you don’t). And make sure that the second-to-last line (that’s penultimate to you word nerds) has the correct address.

If you have a P.O. Box and a physical address, use only one — and, again, please remember to lose the periods in the P.O. If you feel as though you absolutely must put both addresses on the letter or package, then place the one you really want the package to go to on the line directly above the city, state and ZIP information, because that’s the line the machine will read.

One last thing to keep in mind is placement of the address. The USPS machine reads a certain area of each letter, post card, flat or package. For example, if you have a letter, don’t let your writing slip into the furthest-right ½ inch or below the bottom 5/8 inch of the envelope; the machine’s reader will not pick any information up in those areas and your thank-you note will not get to Aunt Gurtie in time to make her an auntie proud of her young relative’s manners.

For more details, straight from the USPS, check this site out.

Happy trails!

SAK

All sorts of stylebooks and writing guides have their own (slightly different) version of the comma rules. Since journalists tend to follow the AP Stylebook, and since most “ordinary” folks are familiar with journalistic writing (via newspapers and magazines), here’s the skinny on how to use the comma according to AP regulations.

Generally, commas correspond to the pauses we use in our speech to separate ideas and to help avoid ambiguity. Place a comma:

• Before a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, yet) that joins two independent clauses, unless the clauses are short or have no internal punctuation: John would have gone to the store, but he couldn’t find his pants. John would have gone to the store if he had his pants, for he was completely out of strawberry milk, but his car keys were in his pocket, and his boxers were a little too shabby to wear in public.

• Around a nonrestrictive phrase — a phrase that can be deleted w/o changing the meaning of the sentence: The power of any vampire, whether practiced or inexperienced in blood-sucking, depends upon an invitation into the victim’s home.

• To separate members of a coordinate series of words, phrases or clauses if all the elements are not joined by coordinating conjunctions*: To make a proper mud pie, you need water, mud, a bowl and a stick.

*Notice that there is NOT a comma directly before the “and.” This is in accordance with AP Stylebook regulations. If you ask me, though, I think the AP folks are out of their grammatical minds. MLA’s version (comma before the and in a series) is the right and obviously morally correct way to do things, in my not-so-humble and loudly typed opinion; always using the comma before the and clears up every ambiguous instance. But AP rules the proverbial roost, so I enforce the lack of the comma in my work. I’ve even stopped cursing the AP gods under my breath every time I see the situation in copy. Apparently, time is the ultimate healer.

• Before the concluding conjunction in a series if an element in that series includes a conjunction: Sue ordered a greyhound, a whiskey sour, a wheat beer, and a gin and tonic that night. (Some would argue that the second and, joining gin and tonic, should be changed to an ampersand (&). AP, and thus I, argues against it; the ampersand should only be used if it’s officially in the name of something, such as a company (e.g., Johnson & Johnson).

My parting gift to you: One way to tell whether or not you need a comma between adjectives is to consider the weight of each adjective. Try to add an and between the adjectives. If it works and still makes sense, the comma is necessary: a small, red dog = a small and red dog. If it doesn’t, the comma doesn’t belong: He went to a large public school (no comma after large).

And one last thing: Please don’t give me too much grief about the title of this entry. It is quite obvious, I know, but I couldn’t help myself. I grew up, in part, in the ’80s, so please don’t taunt me too much about my silly, nostalgic pun. My inner child will thank you for it.

Happy trails!

SAK

I’d hate to see that happen; it would be such a shame.

Let’s keep that sucker alive, shall we? Yes, indeed. But how? Well, here are a few pointers on how to correctly use a semicolon:

• The semicolon lies between the period and the comma in force (a stronger separation than a comma, but not as definitive as a period). Its use is limited but, at times, poignant as a transition.

• Place a semicolon between two closely connected independent clauses that are not joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, yet): My latest eBay purchase should have arrived last week; it arrived today.

• Use semicolons to separate elements of a series when individual segments contain material that must be set apart by commas: Included in the experiment were Janeane Garofalo, a writer, comedian, actor and political activist; Björn Borg, a former World No. 1 tennis player; Stephen Hawking, a scientist and mathematician; and Kermit, a hand puppet.

• The semicolon goes outside the quotation marks when separating two connected thoughts: He said, “I really want to lose weight and tone up”; what he really wanted was a full tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey and a can of whipped cream.

• The semicolon goes inside the quotation marks only when it applies to the quoted matter. Otherwise, it goes outside the quotation marks (when it applies to the entire sentence): She said, “I think I’ll have a cup o’ joe; it will solve all of my problems and I will be happy forever and ever.”

Easy as pie.

Don’t be afraid of the semicolon; it is your friend. Just remember that it is a friend you can handle for about an hour before it drives you up a freakin’ wall. Too much of a good thing is, after all, too much. Visit this friend, but limit each visit to a short span of time. Everyone’s sanity — including yours — is at stake.

Happy trails!

SAK