Saturday, December 05, 2009









Monday, November 30, 2009





Friday, November 20, 2009

more lowercase silliness

The lowercase 'f' in far is telling.
No, it isn't.


If you're going to be silly, at least be consistent.


Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Downs and Ups

This sentence from my own paper contains an obvious problem:






Well, yes and no.












Monday, November 02, 2009

You Can Write, but You Can't Edit


Off-topic, she has some truly amazing stuff.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

If You Libel, You May Be Liable






Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Say, Say, Say





Obama says Iraq bombings 'outrageous'
Obama calls Iraq bombings 'outrageous'
Obama calls Iraq attacks 'outrageous'
Obama calls Iraq bombings outrageous

Somali pirates say holding British couple
Somali pirates claim to hold British pair
Somali pirates claim to hold 2 Britons




Budget deficit intolerable, candidate says

Candidate calls budget deficit intolerable

Driver held blameless in Beltway crash


Candidate says budget deficit intolerable

Budget deficit said intolerable

Driver said blameless in Beltway crash


Farmers fear river is rising

Farmers fear rising river

Israelis feared PLO was infiltrating


Farmers fear river rising

Israelis feared PLO infiltrating



SE mother charged after girl is found stabbed and wandering


SE mother charged after girl found stabbed and wandering

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Wish I'd Thought of That








  • Tuesday, October 20, 2009

    How About It, Hyphen Haters?




    Monday, October 19, 2009

    Protest-Too-Much Department



    Friday, October 16, 2009

    Dictionary Dissents

    WNWReal life
    Sweat shirt Sweatshirt
    Sunbelt Sun Belt
    Tranquillity Tranquility
    Bootees Booties
    Seviche Ceviche
    Largess Largesse
    Hardworking Hard-working
    Workingman Working man
    Workingwoman Working woman

    Wednesday, October 14, 2009

    Tuesday, October 13, 2009

    Monday, October 12, 2009

    ¿Los Los Angeles Angeles de Anaheim?






    Sunday, October 11, 2009

    At Least They're Not Evildoers



    Well, that would explain it.

    Saturday, October 10, 2009

    Rounding Up: A Roundup



    You've now inserted an error.






    Friday, October 09, 2009

    Actual Newspapers on Google News




    Monday, October 05, 2009




    The 2009 winners are pictured above.


    Thursday, September 24, 2009

    You've Been Punc'd

    In observance of National Punctuation Day, I present seven punctuation mistakes that make you look stupid.

    1. Being outsmarted by "smart quotes."

    I'll look a little dumb right off the bat because I'm following the Web convention of using hash marks instead of "smart" quotation marks and apostrophes. Not all browsers and mobile devices can "read" the smart characters, as demonstrated by the strings of gobbledygook you'll sometimes see in forwarded e-mails. But let's assume you're working in an environment more friendly to these characters. The illustration above demonstrates some very common errors. Microsoft Word assumes that a single or double quotation mark immediately before another character is opening a quotation, and so class-reunion planners and political-campaign-sign makers everywhere blindly type in the apostrophe expecting it to show up as an apostrophe but instead it gets reversed and they look -- you guessed it.

    Even worse, the less-educated among us have gotten used to seeing characters that look vaguely like quotation marks, perhaps in some examples of the above error, and somehow absorbed the idea that that's exactly what they are. Greetings, Class of "80"!

    2. Using a hyphen as a dash or colon.

    We're talking about the em-dash here, not the esoteric little critter that is the en-dash. An em-dash can be "tight" (no spaces around it) or "loose" (a space on each side). It can consist of two hyphens, when technology makes a long character of that size problematic (as with smart quotes, not all Web browsers can display the real character). What a dash can't be is simply a hyphen. It isn't surprising, given that most ordinary Americans use the word "dash" to mean "hyphen," that these rogue hyphens appear on many a resume and curriculum vitae:
    GOAL- To optimize my potential using dynamic communications strategies.

    3. Using ellipses as a toy.

    Ellipses, of course, are used primarily to indicate the omission of material from a quotation. (In general they should not be used to indicate omission at the beginning or end of a quotation, as people tend to say and write things before and after the snippet we choose to pick out, but check out the advanced lesson before automatically following that advice.) Ellipses also may be used to indicate a trailing-off of speech or thought, or to separate thoughts in a piece of writing that consists of a series of unrelated thoughts, such as Larry King's old USA Today column.

    Less-educated people simply know that they sometimes see a bunch of pretty dots, and they imitate this with two or three or four or six or 12 dots randomly placed in or between sentences for no particular reason.

    An ellipsis consists of three dots (the word can refer either to one of the dots or to the whole unit). Because those three dots are often preceded by a dot that is a period, many educated people mistakenly think there are "four-dot ellipses." This has typographical implications. You should keep the three dots from breaking at the end of the line, either by simply keeping an eye on the line breaks; by making the spaces that separate the dots in a properly constructed set of ellipses "non-breaking spaces" or "thin spaces" or whatever your coding language, word-processing software or typesetting system allows; or by simplifying matters and dispensing with those spaces. But you should not extend that courtesy to the "fourth dot," the period that accompanies the ellipsis only coincidentally. Whatever solution you come up with for keeping the three dots of an ellipsis together, you should separate the first of them from any period that happens to precede it with a full, legitimate space-bar space.

    4. The old half-a-paren trick.

    Parentheses come in pairs. Their usefulness for encasing the letters or numbers used to letter or number a list within running text has migrated into the odd but very common use of a single parenthesis after a letter or number used to letter or number a more formally presented list. A properly formatted list uses full sets of parentheses in the former case and periods in the latter case. Got that? Probably not. Allow me to illustrate.

    The ATP rankings at the end of 1977 stood as follows: 1) Connors, 2) Vilas, 3) Borg.
    The ATP rankings at the end of 1977 stood as follows:
    1) Connors.
    2) Vilas.
    3) Borg.
    The ATP rankings at the end of 1977 stood as follows: (1) Connors, (2) Vilas, (3) Borg.
    The ATP rankings at the end of 1977 stood as follows:
    1. Connors.
    2. Vilas.
    3. Borg.

    5. Using a comma between a label and a labelee.

    Pick up a yearbook from high school or college and you'll probably find this one in more than one photo caption.
    Sophomore quarterback, Tom Tunnicliffe, scrambles for a gain.

    Tennis player, Paul Chamberlin, returns a serve.
    He's just sophomore quarterback Tom Tunnicliffe. He's just tennis player Paul Chamberlin. These are labels being stuck before names; the names are not what you would call in apposition to the descriptions. For that you'd need some articles, at the very least:
    A tennis player, Paul Chamberlin, returns a serve.

    The sophomore quarterback, Tom Tunnicliffe, scrambles for a gain.
    It's not likely that anybody would want to write such sentences, but they're at least technically correct (the second one could be incorrect if the team had more than one sophomore quarterback that season, but that's a different lesson). You'd probably want a little more description if you're using apposition rather than just labels:
    The star of the men's tennis team, Paul Chamberlin, returns a serve.

    The Wildcats' record-setting sophomore quarterback, Tom Tunnicliffe, scrambles for a gain.
    Note again, the distinction between with article and without article when a caption lapses into labeling to save space:

    RIGHT: Mikael Pernfors and his wife, Kristina.
    WRONG: Mikael Pernfors and wife, Kristina.
    RIGHT: Mikael Pernfors and wife Kristina.

    6. Leaving the apposition door open.

    Speaking of apposition, this is perhaps the most common error I correct in reporters' copy. Observe:
    When voters in Appalachia, Va. went to the polls on Nov. 2, 2006 they found no functioning machines.
    Where, again, is the town I'm reading about? It's in Va., of course, but this sentence says it's in Va.-went-to-the-polls-on-Nov.-2-2006-they-found-no-functioning machines. Which Nov. 2 am I reading about? It's 2006, of course, but this sentence says it's 2006-they-found-no-functioning-machines. You indicate the beginning of a bit of apposition with a comma, but then you have to indicate the end of it as well. It's a Washington, D.C., man, not a Washington, D.C. man.

    7. Using a semicolon where a comma would do.

    If you're looking to graft two complete sentences together, you can reach for a semicolon or you can reach for a comma and the word "and." If you have the "and," you don't need the semicolon.

    RIGHT: We arrived at the airport early, and we made our flight easily.
    RIGHT: We arrived at the airport early; we made our flight easily.
    WRONG: We arrived at the airport early; and we made our flight easily.

    Sentences that are rather long but are essentially "a, b and c" series also tend to get unnecessary semicolons. My theory is that newspaper copy editors who have been trained not to use serial commas never stuck around for Day 2 of that lesson, in which they would have learned that it's no style violation to stick that comma in before "and" when a sentence gets unwieldy:

    WRONG (WELL, AT LEAST UNADVISABLE): The barriers to entry in this sector include higher-than-typical personnel costs, the need for thousands of square feet of space and a sea of well-established firms to compete with.

    WRONG: The barriers to entry in this sector include higher-than-typical personnel costs; the need for thousands of square feet of space; and a sea of well-established firms to compete with.

    RIGHT: The barriers to entry in this sector include higher-than-typical personnel costs, the need for thousands of square feet of space, and a sea of well-established firms to compete with.

    You'd also want to use the serial comma if one of the items in your series of sorts contains "and," "or" or "but":

    WRONG: She has worked at the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services.

    WRONG: She has worked at the departments of Labor; Education; and Health and Human Services.

    RIGHT: She has worked at the departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services.

    Think of the semicolon as the supervisor you ask for when you've done all you can with a hard-working but ultimately ineffectual comma. Semicolons are quite appropriate in these "a, b and c" sentences when a or b or c already includes a comma:

    RIGHT: The bathrooms feature stylish glass tile; deep, luxurious tubs; and heated towel racks.

    RIGHT: In the early 1970s, she worked at the departments of Labor; Health, Education and Welfare; and Housing and Urban Development.

    Note, however, that two items do not a series make. Our language can't solve all ambiguities, and its punctuation system doesn't provide a good solution when such an unwieldy sentence essentially presents a pair rather than a series:

    WRONG: She worked at the departments of Health, Education and Welfare; and Housing and Urban Development.

    RIGHT BUT AMBIGUOUS: She worked at the departments of Health, Education and Welfare and Housing and Urban Development.

    A GOOD KLUDGE: She worked at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

    While I'm on the semicolon, allow me to point out that it should never, ever be the last character before an ending quotation mark -- the rules for quote-ending placement in American English call for periods and commas always inside and semicolons and colons always outside. Also, the semicolon is in no sense a sentence-ending punctuation mark; whereas there are instances in which you would capitalize the first word after a colon, you would never capitalize an otherwise lowercase word after a semicolon.

    (I have more than seven, but I'm a lazy, procrastinating bastard and National Punctuation Day is half over.)

    Thursday, August 27, 2009

    Murder Suspect or Columnist?

    The Sheridan Press does a decent job for a paper that small, but it has a really unfortunate style for laying out mug shots.

    Friday, May 29, 2009

    Tuesday, March 24, 2009

    Don't Be One of Those People

    The Post recently ran an article about controversy over the big spending bill's inclusion of a million bucks toward battling an insect called the Mormon cricket, and the headline was "One of Those Earmarks That Bug People."

    As surely as the chirping of a male cricket attracts female crickets, that construction attracted some raised eyebrows. It should have said "One of Those Earmarks That Bugs People," I was told. The predicate has to agree with the subject.

    Yes, the predicate does have to agree with the subject. But it has to agree with its own subject, and sometimes that's the subject of its clause and not the subject of the entire sentence.

    That's the technical explanation, but it's the technicalities that tend to lead people to make this common error. Forget all the times you were slapped with a ruler and think about the intended meaning of what you're reading; don't pull out your parts-of-speech flash cards and chant "Subject, verb, subject, verb" like a zombie.

    In that headline, it's "those earmarks" that bug people, and this is just one of them. Why would we have dragged those other earmarks into this if we were talking about only this one? Of those earmarks that bug people, this is one. The story is about one of [those earmarks that bug people], not [one of those earmarks] that bugs people. The verb has to agree with "those earmarks," not with "one."

    Friday, March 20, 2009

    Either Way, They Got Some Crazy Little Women There

    "Kansas City" alone is often ambiguous, and so I would not include it on a list of "dateline cities." For every person who thinks it's obvious that a reference with no state means the much larger one, in Missouri, there's probably, oh, I don't know, a third of a person who thinks it's obvious that it means the one in the eponymous state.

    But here's an example of why the dateline-city thing, like all style guidelines, is only a guideline:
    RAYTOWN, Mo. — Police say that the bodies of four people have been found in an apartment near Kansas City and that they suspect foul play. Police are trying to confirm the identities of the dead, including two preteen boys.

    No need to say "Kansas City, Mo." when (a) we already know the suburb is in Missouri and (b) if it's near the one in Missouri, it's also near the one in Kansas.

    Monday, February 23, 2009

    Idaho -- Alaska!

    Occasionally we old-fashioned newspaper people are asked what the heck the deal is with this Calif., Fla., Mich. business. Why don't we use the modern, streamlined, newfangled state abbreviations provided to us by the U.S. Postal Service?

    I usually don't like to answer a question with a question, but -- quick -- what's MI? Minnesota? Wrong. What's AK? Arkansas? Wrong! What's MS? Massachusetts? Wrong!

    Yeah, I know you didn't get any of those wrong, because my readers are sharper than that, but trust me: Ordinary people outside of Arkansas and Alaska (I'll let you fill in your own redundancy joke) would bat maybe .600 on the AK question. And just as AK could be Alaska or Arkansas, AL could be Alabama or Alaska; MA could be Massachusetts or Maryland; MI could be Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi or Missouri; MO could be Missouri or Montana; MS could be Mississippi or Missouri; and NE could be Nebraska or Nevada. I think that about covers it. Now, how many of the standard old-fashioned abbreviations used in Associated Press style run the risk of confusing people? Miss. and Mo. are the only ones that come to mind.

    We'd love the ink and the newsprint savings that the two-letter abbrevs. would provide, but, to the degree that these style decisions are more than just arbitrary rulings for the sake of consistency, clarity is Job One.

    Thursday, January 29, 2009

    Work at Home!


    United Press International seeks a speedy, eagle-eyed,
    English-language wordsmith with a strong journalism background to join
    its copy desk.

    The ideal candidate is an experienced grammar and style maven who
    thrives in a fast-paced news environment, works swiftly and
    Internet reference tools.

    You must have an innate enthusiasm for dictionaries and stylebooks; a
    proofreader's attention to the tiniest detail; a mastery of grammar


    -- Supreme command of the English language and a familiarity with
    government, politics, international relations, history, economics,
    current events and more.

    grammar and libel issues.

    -- Strong organizational, time-management and communication skills.

    -- Bachelor's degree in journalism or related field.

    This position does not include design work but requires strong
    computer literacy and familiarity with Outlook, Word and Mozilla Firefox.


    Salary determined by experience and performance evaluation.

    Reply here.