Tag Archives: rules

5 things every editor should remember

Editing, , ,

Editing advice 1

 

Not an exhaustive list, of course, but some good things to remember:

1. No one will ever complain if something is too clear.

2. It’s not about you. Just because you don’t like the way something’s written doesn’t mean it’s wrong. As I’ve said before, have a good reason for any change you make. The writer’s voice should be left intact so long as it does not impede clarity or distract from the information.

3. Don’t be a slave to the rules. Think of them as guidelines, and remember that clarity is always more important.

4. Trust, but verify. Always check names, dates, places, times, superlatives — anything you can check, check it. Anything that seems strange or off, check it. For that matter, even if something doesn’t seem strange or off, check it.

5. Math is your friend. Numbers are facts too, and should be treated with the same amount of care and scrutiny.

Next up, because what’s good for the goose, etc.: 5 things every writer should remember.

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“Playing” English: Grammar rules and when to break them

Grammar, Language, , ,
One of last year's free National Grammar Day wallpapers from WinePress of Words.
One of last year’s free National Grammar Day wallpapers from WinePress of Words.

Writing can be like playing the piano. To get good at the piano, first you need to learn scales and chords and technique. Then you learn how notes fit together and form compositions. Then you can experiment and play and create — and break the rules if you need to in order to get a good sound.

To get good at writing, first you need to learn what words do and how they work. Then you put them into sentences and put the sentences into paragraphs. Then you can experiment and play and create — and break the rules if you need to in order to make a point, convey an idea or just make the language sing.

But those first steps are crucial for both writing and music. Just as a jazz pianist improvising (usually) sounds a lot different from a child banging on a piano, a careful writer throwing out a grammatical rule for a reason “reads” a lot different from a novice writer who never learned grammar to begin with. One is effective, interesting, uplifting; the other is noise. For one, every note — every word — has a purpose, a reason to be there; for the other, notes — words — are used sloppily, randomly.

A good writer knows the rules and understands why they’re there. A good writer also knows when breaking them is effective, and when it’s just sloppy.

Happy National Grammar Day! And may all your rules be broken for a reason.

Let’s stop perpetuating grammar myths

Don't sweat it, Grammar, Language, , , , ,

grammar mythsI’ll admit, I’m an easy target for “grammar mistakes you need to stop making” lists, but they’re starting to get on my nerves.

The latest one I saw — 15 Common Grammatical Errors That Drive You Completely Insane (on Buzzfeed, of course) — started strong, with “your/you’re” and subject-verb disagreement. But then, at No. 3, was split infinitives — and what drives me “completely insane” is not split infinitives, but people saying that split infinitives are wrong. They’ve never been against the grammar of English; someone just decided that they shouldn’t be split and dictated that as a Law of English (Grammar Girl has a great summary of this).

In at No. 6 is punctuation outside of quotation marks, which is a style matter, not a grammar rule. People in other countries put periods outside of quotation marks and I’d guess our putting them inside drives them “completely insane.” Or not.

Nos. 11 and 12 are matters of grammar, but ones that are in transition: “who/whom” and “they” as a gender-neutral singular. I’ve said before that I wish “whom” would just go ahead and make its graceful exit from English, and that “they” is as good an epicene pronoun as any, probably better because we all say it already anyway. Since so few of us use “whom” in every object position (Who unironically says “With whom are you going to the movies?”) and most of us use “they” as a singular, do these two items really drive anyone “completely insane”? (And yes, “since” can be used to mean “because” and has for hundreds of years.)

Now, I’m an editor, and I teach editing, so I’m not saying let’s throw caution to the wind and just write whatever, however. There are conventions for professional English, and most of them are there for a reason: clarity, precision, accuracy, or all three. But lots of “rules” have crept in that have a) nothing to do with English grammar, and b) nothing to do with making writing clear, precise or accurate. (See over/more than, due to/because of and not using “that” for people as a few examples.) They’re shibboleths, or they’re outdated, or they’re simply misguided attempts at clarity that don’t, in fact, make writing clearer.

These need to go, and we need to stop putting them in lists — and stop sharing lists that include them.

Writing is hard enough without worrying about manufactured distinctions that add nothing to a sentence. Writers and editors, and teachers of writing and editing, need to focus on the grammar problems — and there are plenty — that can impede understanding, mislead readers, or simply make a writer look sloppy and unprofessional, instead of sending more grammar myths around the Internet.

Don’t sweat it: Due to / because of

Don't sweat it, , , , , ,
It's good enough for the University of Kansas.
It’s good enough for the University of Kansas.

Earlier this year, I gave a presentation called “Sweat This, Not That: Real Rules vs. Grammar Myths” at the American Copy Editors Society national conference. The point of the presentation was that it’s easy for editors to get hung up on “rules” of language that are nothing more than peeves, shibboleths or outdated rules – and that wasting time and energy focusing on these can distract us from spotting and fixing more serious errors.

By now we all know (I hope) that it’s OK to split infinitives, end sentences with prepositions, begin sentences with conjunctions, and use the passive voice and sentence fragments judiciously. But there are other oddly persistent language “rules” that editors need not worry about.

In this post I want to talk about “due to” vs. “because of” and why there’s no reason to rack your brain trying to figure out when to use which. This is where some of you may gasp and say, “but they’re NOT interchangeable,” and a few of you might even think that this is another sign of the Decline and Fall of the English Language. To address the first, they aren’t exactly interchangeable, but they are much more flexible than certain strictures would allow, and to address the second, people have been complaining for centuries about someone or other ruining the language, and English is doing just fine. Continue reading Don’t sweat it: Due to / because of →