Fritinancy

Starting Date: Yesterday

Job listing on Craigslist: 

Date: 2008-07-08, 5:25PM PDT

i can't spell and don't do grammer good and need a freelance. this will be an ongoing freelance gig.

Hat tip: CBrown.

 

Put Me In, Coach

I'm reading the sports section these days because the only sport I follow, swimming, is at last getting its quadrennial day in the sun. (And what a day it is! Two words: Dara Torres. Okay, two more: Michael Phelps.) Good news for me; bad news for newspaper sportswriters who regard swim-meet assignments as hardship duty. (Except for the ogling of the nearly naked bodies.) For four years they cover big-money sports that involve balls and the verb "to play," and then, just before the Olympics, they're shuttled off to some natatorium in Nowheresville--this year it's Omaha--and plunged into a weird subculture whose rituals include full-body shaving. They don't understand swimming technique or training, they can't tell the players even with a scorecard, and when they try to dash off some savvy-sounding copy they flail like beginning butterflyers.

I'm willing to overlook most of that. I'm grateful just to read names and race results. But I do get ticked off when I have to read painful usage errors that would have been caught by a copyeditor if all the copyeditors hadn't gotten the axe in the last round of layoffs (or been outsourced to India).

Here, for example, is the San Francisco Chronicle's Scott Ostler in this morning's paper with a wrapup of yesterday's Olympic trials.

Example #1:

Dara Torres isn't held together with bubblegum and bailing wire.

Dumb, dumb sentence, but what really made me cringe was bailing. It's baling wire, as in "wire that's used to tie bales of hay together."

Example #2:

[Amanda] Beard: "I can't get to sleep at night, so I take sleeping pills." Doesn't that make her loggy?

Loggy? No, logy--pronounced with a long o. ("Loggy" would necessarily be pronounced with a short vowel.) It means lethargic or sluggish.

Neither error was corrected in the online edition, by the way. Sigh.

A-One

This post is brought to you by the letter A and the number 1.

That's "a" as in "indefinite article meaning one." Watch out for redundancies when using "a" before a monetary amount beginning with "[symbol] + one."

Case in point, from a Deborah Solomon interview with the actress Cynthia Nixon in Sunday's Times Magazine:

It’s got to cost a $100 million.

Take out your blue pencil and delete that "a." Why? Read the sentence aloud: "It's got to cost a one hundred million." You wouldn't say it that way; you'd say, "It's got to cost one hundred million." Write it the way you'd say it.

(As a test, substitute another dollar figure. "It's got to cost a $200 million"? No.)

You would use "a" in two cases:

• When the dollar figure is used as a modifier: "I bought a $100 trillion war, and all I got were these lousy poll numbers!"
• When you're expressing the amount in words rather than numbers: "A hundred trillion? That's beginning to sound like real money!"

Another common redundancy: repeating "dollars" after "$100 million." The dollar symbol--$--is pronounced "dollars," and does not need to be spelled out.

May Linkfest

Lots o' links this month, so make yourself comfortable.

Haikuvies: Tell a movie's plot/In seventeen syllables/Spoilers? Sure--why not? (Actually, you get 17 times seven.)

It took about 24 hours for a meme called When Obama Wins to make the leap from Twitter to the whole wide web. Gather round, children, and hear Andrew Crow of Adaptive Path tell the origin story:

I'm never sure about how internet memes start, but this one started with a typo.

Dan was twittering something about Alabama, but wrote "Alambama". He joked that when Barack Obama wins the election, certain states will probably be renamed Alobama, Califobama, Nevama, Massabama, New Yobama. Of course, I thought that was hilarious and started thinking about other things that would change once Obama wins. So, a few of us started twittering silly little things, thinking of it as an inside joke.

Overnight, a few people caught on giving it a life of its own.

Jason Kottke took this and mashed it up to create this really cool microsite.

I think what interests me the most about these is how fast they spread. It's been less than 24 hours and there are already over 500 tweets about it. Certainly taken on a life of it's own.

Which is the perfect segue to my favorite WOW so far: "When Obama wins ... everyone will know the difference between its and it's." (By 111archeravenue.)

I considered saving this for Halloween, but death is always in season at Fatal Utterances, "a glossary of slang, jargon, euphemism, and cant as used by undertakers, criminals, consumer activists, and the ordinary people." Some favorite entries: bier baron (a funeral-parlor owner), Mrs. Z (a corpse), and Stare Number 12 ("the look that passes over a man's face as he regards another man as a meal").

The idea behind Brand Tags is that a brand is whatever people say it is. Go there and give your one-word impressions of brands like Gap, Starbucks, Yahoo, Greenpeace, Whole Foods, and many more. (It's all over Twitter now, but I heard it first from Rowland Hobbs, whose tags I follow on Del.icio.us.)

The Big Word Project is selling words at $1 a letter. "Search for your word and link it to your website. Your website is then the new definition." Started by a couple of graduate students in Northern Ireland.

You probably know about Stuff White People Like, which reportedly is being turned into a book. (What do white people like? Coffee, Asian girls, Ivy League schools--stuff like that.) Now Andrew Hammel, an American in Germany, offers Stuff White Germans Like: #3 Balkan disco music, #5 custom-designed bookshelves, #11 Paul Auster. (Really? Paul Auster?)

Roy Peter Clark is serializing his next book, The Glamour of Grammar, on his Poynter Online blog (Poynter's slogan: "Everything You Need to Be a Better Journalist"). He's inviting readers to make suggestions and correct errors. His goal is to present "not a comprehensive grammar, but an essential grammar: those elements of language that the reader and writer can use today and every day." Even if you groan at the mention of grammar, read this series: it's lively and engaging and wildly informative. (Yes, glamour of grammar. You knew the two words were related, didn't you? Roy explains in his first installment)

Mike Pope on the seven stages of being edited:

3) Anger

I'm starting to get irritated. What the -- ? That's a stupid edit. And so's that one. Ha! That's just wrong! Smartypants editors, think they know everything! Well, let me just set that editor straight ...

And speaking of anger, here's the Baltimore Sun's John McIntyre on "Those Damn Copy Editors," in which he addresses the complaint of "someone named Seth Godin"¹ that a copy editor "totally wrecked" his work:

Unfortunately, Mr. Godin does not supply a single instance of the copy editor's destructiveness, so it is up for discussion whether he is an injured author or a fulminating boor. (The other texts at his blog do not suggest that revision of his prose would be a cultural catastrophe.)

Catching his breath, McIntyre offers some very sensible suggestions for improving relations between writers and copy editors.

___

¹ Guru Supremo of hip marketing manifestos and, according to one of McIntyre's commenters, "author of the most popular ebook ever."

Please Don't Dangle

An acquaintance who used to do copyediting and résumé writing is trying to get back into the editing game. She's worried that her grammar skills are rusty, so she asked me for some tips. I'm not a grammar scholar--in fact, I immediately directed my pal to Grammar Girl's podcasts--but I did offer to share a few of the more common errors I see in my own work: comma splices, that/who confusion, incorrect capitalization of titles.

Everything was going smoothly until we got to Topic #4: dangling clauses.

She'd never heard of them. What's more,when I showed her examples, she couldn't spot the errors. This sentence, a blatant dangler--

After reading the original study, the article remains unconvincing.

--looked perfectly OK to her. She saw the words "After reading" but understood them to mean "After I read," inventing a subject for the dangling first clause in order to make the logical jump to the object in the second clause ("the article").

I'll get back to exactly what's wrong with that sentence (and how to fix it) in a bit. But I want to digress for a minute to talk about why my friend didn't see a problem: it's because the misuse is everywhere. In blogs and e-mails, it goes without saying. But also in publications that supposedly employ copyeditors and proofreaders.

Here are two examples of dangling clauses that I spotted in a single day.

When Tomas Young saw President Bush on television speaking from the ruins of the Twin Towers, he responded to the call to defend his country by enlisting in the Army. But rather than being sent to Afghanistan to rout out Al Qaeda and Taliban warrors, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq and everything changed. (From a Landmark Theatres synopsis of the new film Body of War. Offending sentence in boldface.)

Written by Michael McCullers and co-starring Amy Poehler, both of whom worked with her at "SNL," Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a career-minded single woman with fertility issues who hires a seriously mismatched surrogate to carry her child. (From a San Francisco Chronicle interview with Tina Fey.)

And here's one from the Chronicle article about Babette that I blogged about last week:

Originally used by the now-defunct Koret company, one the [sic] California's largest apparel manufacturers, Pinsky says she believes it may be the only one left.

All of these sentences are like derailed trains. They start down one track--"But rather than being sent to Afghanistan..."--that suggests only one possible destination: in this case, Tomas Young and his fate. But--whoops! The train jumps to a new set of tracks leading in a completely different direction. ("Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq.") Now we've abandoned poor Mr. Young, presumably in boot camp, while we zip over to the battle room of the White House. Mr. Young? Left dangling.

In the second example, something has been written by Michael McCullers. The co-star of that something is Amy Poehler. What is that something to which our little train is headed? Not "Fey," the subject of the second clause. No, it's Baby Mama (or "the film").

In the third example, the sentence starts out by telling us about something that was originally used by the Koret company: an autoclave from the 1940s, identified in the previous paragraph. But instead we're derailed to "Pinsky" (who owns a company that has never been owned by Koret or anything else). Here's an easy fix that smooths out the grammar:

Originally used by the now-defunct Koret company, one of California's largest apparel manufacturers, it may be the only one left, Pinsky says.

(You can get rid of "she believes" because you already have a sense of the conditional from "may be.")

Here's yet another example, taken from an otherwise very touching death notice. (Yes, I'm a compulsive reader of death notices. And yes, I feel sort of mean picking on a grieving family. But all's fair in the public domain.)

A beautiful woman at all stages of her life, her beauty secrets sadly passed with her, except for her famous lagoon-mud and seaweed facial paste.

My first response: what a gal! I wish I'd known her. The sentence, however, is a classic case of derailment. The first clause--"A beautiful woman..."--describes the dearly departed, not "her beauty secrets." This is really two sentences:

Suz was a beautiful woman at all stages of her life. Sadly, her beauty secrets passed with her, except for her famous lagoon-mud and seaweed facial paste.

If you feel strongly that starting with a dependent clause is the only way to go, here's how to clarify it:

A beautiful woman at all stages of her life, Suz kept her beauty secrets a closely guarded mystery--except for her famous lagoon-mud and seaweed facial paste.

Dangling modifiers often come at the beginnings of sentences, but not always. Here's an example of an end-dangler from Paul Brians's Common Errors in English Usage:

The retirement party was a disaster, not having realized that Arthur had been jailed the previous week.

Brians comments:

There is nobody here doing the realizing. One fix: “The retirement party was a disaster because we had not realized that Arthur had been jailed the previous week.”

So: back to that unconvincing article in the first example. How can you rewrite it to make it more logical and grammatical? At least a couple of ways:

1. After I read the original study, I remained unconvinced by the article. (Takes it out of the passive voice and switches the emphasis to "my" experience and "my" response.)
2. The article remains unconvincing in light of the original study. (No dependent clause. This is one solution offered by the Purdue University grammar tutorial. I'm not crazy about it, though: it sounds stiff, especially "in light of.")

If you're still feeling uncertain about dangling clauses and other misplaced modifiers, here are three four good resources:

• A succinct summary from eHow
• Examples and fixes from Bill Walsh of Blogslot.
• A playful approach from Grammar Girl ("Of all the writing errors you can make, misplaced modifiers are among the most likely to confuse your readers, but they're also kind of fun because misplaced modifiers can give your sentences silly meanings that you never intended.")
• Examples of "outlaw" sentences and how to rehabilitate them, from Acadia University in Nova Scotia. Includes a link to a quiz.

Quote of the Day

All languages have dialects, and the dialect with which I concern myself at work is the one called formal written English. I may cringe at the way bureaucrats talk, or swear at the writing in the instructions for U.S. Form 1040, or walk away from people who have incorporated text-messaging abbreviations into their speech; but those are all matters of personal taste and preference. Not my job. You want me to clean up your prose, hire me, and I’ll tell you what I think works and what I think doesn’t work.

But you won’t wind up in the slammer.

-- John McIntyre, assistant managing editor for the copy desk at the Baltimore Sun, on the distinction between editing and police work.

Good News, Bad News

Good news: the San Francisco Chronicle's meaning-packed headline on this morning's story about the Olympic torch's surprise route change in San Francisco (print edition only--aha! print isn't dead yet!):

TORTUOUS JOURNEY

In just two words, the headline writer conveyed the route's unexpected detour (tortuous: twisting, circuitous) and punned on torch's. And if readers also heard an echo of "torture"--as in, what's happening in Tibet, Burma, and Darfur; or as in, "I traveled for miles to witness this historic event, and all I got was this lousy blister"--well, that was probably not unintentional.

Bad news: The Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, lays off its entire copy desk. Editor Martin Berg told the blog L.A. Observed--stop me if you've heard this one before--"It will take some adjustments, but we're going to find ways to continue to serve our community with the resources we have." Yeah. Do more with less. Besides, automated spellcheck and grammarcheck always work perfectly, right? (Hat tip: Verbatim and Bill Walsh's Blogslot.)

It's Not As If It's Carved in Stone

Oh, wait. Actually, it is.

 

On Monday, opening day, the Chicago Cubs unveiled a new statue at Wrigley Field of the great infielder and slugger Ernie Banks, "Mr. Cub" himself, whose most famous quote is: "It's a beautiful day for a ball game. Let's play two!"

That's "two" as in two games, a doubleheader.

And "let's" as in "let us." The apostrophe pinch-hits for the missing "u."

Sculptor Lou Cella, a lifelong Cub fan, spent three and a half months making the clay sculpture for the statue, according to the Chicago Tribune. Then he oversaw the transformation of the sculpture into a seven-foot-high bronze statue and carved granite base. During that whole time, it seems that no one bothered to give him the correctly spelled quote. And no one--no one!--thought to hire a proofreader.

From the Tribune:

"I'm the sculptor, I'm not a writer," said Cella, sounding good-natured. "I just read it the way I heard it in my head."

The Cubs swung into action Tuesday. The Sun-Times reported that it took a stone carver "about 30 minutes" to insert an apostrophe into "Let's."

The result:

There is joy in Mudville.

And also kibitzers. Yale's Lawrence Horn quipped on the American Dialect Society's mailing list that "Mr. Cella and his staff no doubt obtained their apostrophe at cut-rate from a nearby statue promoting Taco's and Burrito's."

And Ben Zimmer, posting at Language Log, passes along an observation from graphic designer Andy Pressman: "That's still not an apostrophe--it's a foot mark."

It's true. You could look it up.

(More fun with punctuation at Apostrophe Atrophy.)

Who Needs Copy Editors?

I do. And so do you. Bill Walsh of The Washington Post lays it on the line:

Readers of top-flight publications don't get their copy directly from the reporters for the same reason that a stalk of wheat and a cow do not a hamburger make, for the same reason that fiancees don't have a freshly mined chunk of carbon, mounted on a sliver of ore, deposited on their fingers. We hire editors to make the writing presentable the same way we hire designers instead of letting the stories flow onto the page or the screen scroll-style, a la Kerouac. There is a certain level of refinement that the readers expect and deserve in the presentation.

Here in the non-journalism world, I frequently have to explain to clients that a copywriter is not the same as a copy editor (hint: one writes, the other edits). Most folks don't know the difference between copy editing and proofreading, either. For them, I recommend Sherri Schultz's definitions: copy editing (she spells it as one word, Bill Walsh spells it with two; it's a style choice, and to ensure that your own choice is applied consistently you really should hire a copy editor) and proofreading.

For more on the importance of editors, see this post by Nancy Nall, which includes a priceless example of unedited newspaper copy. Excellent comments thread, too.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Hyphens

Perhaps you heard the news last week about 16,000 hyphens "vanishing" from the newly published 6th edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Bill Walsh--blogger, Washington Post copy editor, and author of a couple of excellent books on punctuation and usage--explains why it's a non-issue, or even a nonissue:

Bill Hyphen Walsh must be aghast at this travesty, right? Well, no. Bill Hyphen Walsh issues blustery pronouncements about American English. These are British hyphens, hyphens as unnecessary and uninteresting as they are un-American, hyphens that link adjectives to the nouns they modify. The Brits get all worried that you might think a dressing gown is a gown that is dressing, and so they write dressing-gown to make it clear that it's a gown of the dressing variety. We'd never write dressing-gown, and not only because we have the superior term bathrobe.

Americans do use such hyphens, but only as a last resort, and often in terms most unsavory. There are giant-killers who are killers of giants as opposed to killers who are giants, and there are child-rapists who are rapists of children as opposed to rapists who are children. But we're sensible enough to know without the aid of a hyphen that a mountain climber isn't a climber that's a mountain.

Read the whole post, which features one of my all-time-favorite (yes! hyphenated in the all-American way!) headlines from The Onion.