Author Archives: KSConlin

One Space or Two? Does It Really Matter?

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As a pragmatist, I shake my head at the ongoing “debate” over how many spaces to use after terminal (or “sentence”) punctuation. Those of us who learned typing (as on a typewriter) as opposed to word processing generally learned to press the space bar twice after a period or a colon. Times change, and spacing changes too. These days, it’s generally accepted that one space is all you need. I’m continually amazed at the anguish evinced by those who cling to the old ways, as if being asked to use only one space were akin to being asked to cut off their dominant hand.

Really? Is it all that big a deal?

I don’t see it. I honestly don’t. Use two spaces if that’s what you want to do. Hell, use five if it makes you happy. The only time you’ll run into trouble is if and when your work goes to an editor to be prepped for publication. You’ll need to be ready for that editor to remove all the extra spaces, because three of the four most commonly used style guides in the US—the Chicago Manual of Style, the Modern Language Association style guide, and the Associated Press style guide—all specify one space following terminal punctuation. (The fourth major guide, that of the American Psychological Association, specifies two spaces. However, I will point out that for most writers looking to publish fiction or nonfiction, that won’t be the style guide in play.) If that editor is working for a publishing house, I feel secure in stating that there won’t be any negotiating on this point.

“But Karen, I’m an indie author and I’m self-publishing!” Hooray for you. If you contract with an editor (as I hope you will), you need to be prepared for that editor to ask (or perhaps tell) you what style guide will be used. It’s in an editor’s sphere of influence, as it were. And perhaps you and that editor can agree that your personal “house style” will be two spaces after terminal punctuation. Bully for you both.

The history of spacing is interesting, to be sure. Movable type. Typewriters. Word processors. Fixed-space fonts versus variable-width ones. That’s all interesting, yes. Ultimately, however, for my job as a copyeditor, none of it matters. The why’s don’t matter. The how’s don’t matter. What matters is what the style guide says is to be done. I don’t get paid to agree with the decision. I get paid to make the text fall into line with the style guide. Whether I’d be amenable to the two-spaces question remains to be seen, and depends a lot on the author’s attitude. Someone who blusters in and demands that they be left or else is someone I’d prefer not to deal with, thanks. I prefer the look of one space in this day of variable-width fonts and automatic kerning and all those other wonderful technological advancements, and apparently I’m far from being in the minority on that. I happen to have three pretty important authorities on my side. Bully for me. All it means is that I agree with what those authorities have to say on the matter, and that I will cite them whenever someone asks the oft-repeated question.

There’s no good reason for it, nor is there a good reason against it. It’s not a moral decision. It’s a stylistic one, and one that is addressed in every major style guide in use today. It’s about appearance on the page or the screen, not about personal preference or how you were taught in 1980. It’s about guidelines (not rules, notice—guidelines). There is no rule. There are, however, multiple guidelines, most of which are in agreement.

So you all go ahead and debate this point however you like. I know what my job is, and I know how to do it well. If that makes me someone you don’t want to work with, that’s perfectly all right with me. I’m not here to make your life miserable; I’m here to whip your writing into shape, make sure it’s grammatically and syntactically correct in whatever way is required by the style and the intended audience, and see that the final product adheres to an accepted style guide (whichever one we agree to use), perhaps with a few minor “house style” exceptions. That’s what I’m paid to do.

And I might even let you have your two spaces—if you comport yourself like the professional you want to be.

FOUND: The Lost Chord, masquerading as a cord on a bus

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I wrote a usage tip last week about “cord” and “chord.” One of the commenters, Miaka Kirino, told me of a sign on a bus window that misused “chord” and she was kind enough to snap a picture and post it over on G+. With her permission, here it is: a truly cringe-worthy typo in the wild.

CORD! CORD, you fool!

Bus window sign “Pull chord”

The Pragmatic Grammarian

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If you have any familiarity with grammarians, you probably know there are supposedly two types: prescriptive and descriptive. The former is obsessed with knowing all the rules and exceptions, and with forcing all writing and speech into compliance with those rules and exceptions. The latter is also obsessed, but not with rules. Rather, the descriptivist focuses on usage in the living language, which is always in flux. Rules? Bah. How people use the language is more important than whether they follow the rules. Reductionist thinking, you cry. Yes, for my purposes that is exactly how I’m describing the two types. Keep reading, okay?

Therefore, I posit a third type: the pragmatist. You may ask, What does that mean? And well you should. It acknowledges that most grammarians, whether they care to admit it or not, blend prescriptivist with descriptivist and make the writing or speech fit the purpose, the audience, and the subject matter as required. I know the rules. I am quite fond of most of them, actually. I also know how “real people” use the language. I am often less fond of this, but as I am also one of these “real people” I try to cut some slack, as the saying goes. If someone’s speaking casually to a friend, I won’t leap in to correct their subject-verb agreement or their use of a reflexive pronoun instead of a simple objective one. It’s just not that important under those circumstances. It’s really not. However, if I’m asked to copyedit someone’s work, you can bet your boots I’ll take at least these three things into account: the type of work, the subject matter, and the intended audience. Once I’ve determined those things, and the extent to which I need to mold the work into a particular shape, I’m off to the races.

This poses a problem for new writers who ask grammatical questions in an open forum where I am far from the only professional editor. At times I simply don’t answer. My views are sufficiently fluid that I can easily cause more problems than I solve with my “well, it depends” answers. If I can tell that the questioner is more likely to be confused than helped by my answer, I withhold the information. I wait, instead, to see how the others respond; I watch the interactions, watch the wording and the behind-the-scenes body language (c’mon, you can tell when someone’s hunched over the keys stabbing at them with pudgy—or bony—fingers while blood drips from their brow), and take my time deciding whether I need to interject my opinion. Often the answer is no. When the answer is yes, I take even more time and care crafting the response. I’m not out to denigrate any of my fellow professionals, nor am I out to make a new writer feel stupid for asking a grammar or usage question. (They’re pretty good at doing that to themselves, from what I can tell, without help from anyone.)

Things become muddier still when the question is about US vs. UK conventions. I have a very basic working knowledge of UK grammar, spelling, and mechanics. That doesn’t make me an expert on it, but it does provide a basis from which I feel mostly safe answering simple questions (which tend to be about terminal punctuation with quotation marks). Even so, my simple answers—which I self-edit to remove words and concepts that tend to answer unasked, tangential questions—usually invite others to chime in with “But she forgot this” and “Of course, there’s also this over here” and the occasional “Yeah, what she said.” From my pragmatic grammarian view: If you’re writing for the US market, use US grammar/spelling/usage/mechanics/style. If you’re writing for the UK market, do what’s expected from the UK. Don’t fuss over which one’s better, or more correct, or easier, or looks prettier to you, or whatever. Just don’t. Write using the rules for the market you’ve chosen. And if you don’t know those rules, guess what? I’ll tell you not to write for that market. That whole debate (US vs UK style and whatnot) grates on my editorial senses, frankly. There’s nothing to debate from where I sit. Use the rules for the country where you grew up, or use the rules for the country’s market you’ve chosen (after you’ve learned them or teamed up with someone who can guide you through them), but don’t trouble your pretty or handsome head over which set is superior. The answer is both and neither. They are what they are, for the reasons they are, and that’s really all you need to know. It’s what I will tell you if you hire me to work on your project. And I will ensure that your work conforms to US rules to whatever degree is expected.

I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground with this pragmatic grammarian stance, except perhaps by naming it. I know prescriptivists who sometimes relax the rules, and descriptivists who break out in hives when someone says “Anyone can do whatever they want.” All I’m saying, folks, is let’s be honest about the situation. Let’s admit that neither approach can stand entirely on its own. People aren’t going to speak to their friends and family in the formal language of a doctoral dissertation. They’re not going to write their dissertations with contractions and dialectical figures of speech (unless the dissertation’s on linguistics, focusing on dialects, and they’re providing examples).

Let’s be pragmatic, shall we?

In the Beginning . . .

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This isn’t my usual kind of post. Let me give you some background and you can decide whether you want to read it or go do some laundry.

I’ve been a member of a private interfaith forum for nearly 15 years. Discussions there lean toward debate of a scholarly and academic nature. It’s common to see posts with footnotes and citations. Late last year, one of the members posited a world where Christianity never caught on the way it did in our reality. While many responses to this concept discussed socioeconomic or cultural changes, my brain went immediately to the immense pool of phrases that would be nonexistent because the King James Version of the Bible would never have been created. I started poking around the internet for source material.

That’s how I found this blog. Whaddaya know; Erin Roof already wrote this post for me. (Well, no, not really, but yes, it’s this post. Just that she wrote it. Already. ::coughs:: )
I hope you’ll click through and read her entry, because I honestly can’t say it much better than she. Differently, sure, but not better. I will, however, give you a sampling of what we’d be missing if there were no KJV in our world.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. (Admit it. You thought this came from Abe Lincoln, didn’t you.)
Out of the mouths of babes.
Cast not your pearls before swine.
Walk on water.
Blessed are the peacemakers. (I ask you, where would “The Life of Brian” be without the KJV? “Blessed are the cheesemakers?”)
Beat swords into plowshares.
Good Samaritan (Think of all the hospitals that would have to be renamed!)

Ms. Roof also points out in her blog entry that no less prestigious a periodical than the National Geographic has printed an article about this subject (December 2011). And here I thought I was really onto something unusual. Not. Heh. That’s okay. It was still a very enlightening rabbit hole to explore.

Besides, there are so many related issues to the non-importance of Christianity. Take the printing press, for example . . . well, that’s really another blog type entirely, isn’t it.

To every thing there is a season. (No, the Byrds didn’t write that lyric.)

Proofreading and Perception

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I’d like to have a chat with you, my good reader (I know there’s one of you out there), about perception and how it relates to proofreading. More precisely, I want to talk about how it relates to the lack of proofreading. I even have a concrete example. Shall we?

This restaurant in Rockford IL is offering a “Final Feast” on the supposed last night of our lives, December 20, 2012. For $180 per person one can enjoy a nine-part dinner (an amuse bouche, courses one through three, an intermezzo, courses four and five, a cheese course, and dessert, each with wine pairings) including foie gras, caviar, Dungeness crab, Dover sole, filet mignon, and a chocolate cake adorned with edible 24k gold leaf. Pretty classy, right? Really upper crust, right?

Can someone please explain to me why no one proofread the menu? For that matter, no one proofread the webpage it’s on, either. Nor did anyone proofread their lunch menu, where one can get salad with “musclen,” or “mesclin,” or the actual “mesclun” blend. Yes. All three versions on one page, like some kind of bonus package. But I digress.

For a feast costing $180 a head, featuring such a five-star lineup of dishes and wines, I expect the printed menu (either online or on paper) to be error-free. I expect a high standard for the food AND for the written word in such an establishment. This ain’t EAT AT JOE’S with the one burned-out letter in the vintage neon sign. It’s a place run by an award-winning chef with a stellar reputation. Pity the printing on his menus didn’t receive the same level of attention as his dishes do. There is simply no excuse for “pared” instead of “paired,” or for “chives organic scrambled egg” (I’m pretty sure there should be a comma after “chives,” don’t you think?), or for “Tequilla.” And that’s only in the menu proper. There are also the errors in the text at the top of the web page, where we see that the staff is “exited to show off their . . . talent” and that the wines and liquor choices “will be announce closer to the dinner.”

Honestly, there is no excuse for this kind of sloppiness. As much as I despise using software to do an editor’s or proofreader’s job, in this case I don’t mind saying I think it would have helped. When I first heard about this “Final Feast” I thought it sounded like something I would actually attend, had I the wherewithal to do so. My perception changed when I saw how poorly the menu had been prepared. Perhaps one might say “He’s a chef, not an editor.” True enough, but–he should care as much about the printed description of his dishes as he does about the dishes themselves. As it is, I find I don’t really care that I can’t possibly afford to attend this “Final Feast.” As sloppy as the menu is, part of  me wonders just how perfect the foods will really be.

Perception. It’s powerful stuff.

Who IS Chavez Cancer?

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This time I have to thank Steve Miller for posting about this headline on his Facebook wall. Because of that, I wound up searching for the exact wording and discovered the precise location of the travesty of usage that is

Cancer personified.

I don’t know how long the link will remain active, so: CHAVEZ CANCER RETURNS, NAMES SUCCESSOR.

What, now? Who is Chavez Cancer? (Steve has some ideas about that, apparently.)

Honestly, even had it read “Chavez’s Cancer” the result wouldn’t be much better. The cancer is still naming a successor. At least the original version has some black(er) humor. It’s headlines like this that make my editor-senses twitch fitfully, my fingers curl into claws, and my eyes narrow. My gaze becomes fire. Smoky tendrils waft up from my ears. Is it really that difficult to write a headline that doesn’t scream “IDIOT!”? What’s wrong with “Cancer Returns, Chavez Names Successor”? It uses all the same words, and makes the point without causing editorial rage. I think it’s a plot by the website to lure me there.

If it ain’t got style . . .

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“Style,” as I am using it in this post, refers to the standardization of word presentation. Some styles call for titles to be underlined; others call for them to be italicized. Some styles use what is termed “sentence case” (first word capitalized, all others lower case unless proper noun/adjective), others use “title case” (capitalize all words except articles and conjunctions, unless the title begins with one) for journal articles in a bibliography or a foot-/endnote. Readers come to depend on the style to give them clues about the nature of the work called out by title. I see italics, I assume the work is a book.  I see quotation marks, I assume the work is a musical piece or perhaps a film. (My intent here is  not to discuss preferring one style to another, as you will see shortly. It is to explain that style is needed for multiple reasons, of which one is contextual clues. Stick with me, please.)

My daughter is taking her English course online. One of her lessons last week dealt with analogies (presented in the common “A:B :: 1:2″ format). Here is the one that threw her (and me), as it appeared on the screen.

Romeo and Juliet : drama

No punctuation of any kind. No identifying clues whatsoever. Before you say “But Karen, that’s obviously a title!” let me continue with the first possible answer provided.

Zeus : mythology

“Hm. Romeo and Juliet are characters in a drama, and Zeus is a character in mythology. Given the other options here, that one seems pretty good. One of these down here farther is a title and a genre, but that title’s not set off in any way, either . . . so the best answer seems to be the first one, because we can’t know which meaning–characters or title–is intended, since there’s no style applied to the words Romeo and Juliet.”

This harks back to my rant about poorly written worksheets. There’s no excuse in my book for not setting off the title “Romeo and Juliet” in some manner, whether as I just did or in italics. (Remember, I’m not advocating for any particular style. I’m advocating for style, period. What I learned in junior high and high school isn’t the same as what I used on the job in educational publishing or the game-publishing field. The kind of presentation is not important. The existence of a consistent-within-the-work style is.) Had that been done properly (whatever was deemed proper in this instance by the writer/publisher of the electronic course), this high-school sophomore wouldn’t have been left guessing. She could have chosen the right answer the first time, instead of being made to weigh options. If the point of the exercise is to learn to choose the best answer, weighing options is a good thing. If the point of the exercise is to choose the right answer, that answer should be easy to choose from the list (assuming one’s been paying attention to the lesson, of course).

Here endeth today’s rant.

How do you plead?

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More apropos: “How have you pled? Or pleaded? Which one is it, anyway?”

The answer is: Both. Yes. Either. Doesn’t really matter.

I told you you probably wouldn’t like the answer to that question in my last blog post. But did you read it? Did you listen? Do I sound like your mother?

This site provides an interesting perspective that, to me, cuts to the heart of the matter. It’s a legalese issue from my point of view. Think about it for a moment. What’s the real difference between “The mother pleaded for mercy on her child” and “The suspect pled not guilty”? The first one takes place outside the courtroom (one assumes, anyway), the second inside it. Dictionaries tell us that “pleaded” is the standard form, but we’re used to hearing “pled” because we’re addicted to courtroom dramas from “Perry Mason” to “Law & Order.”

Another site points out the poetic use of “pled” (citing Spenser, among others) over “pleaded,” and explains that while lawyers also tend to use “pled” over “pleaded,” they use “deeded” instead of the “unfortunate-sounding alternative” one would arrive at if following the same formula. (I’ll wait while you work that out.)

It would seem to me, based on these readings and several dictionaries, that “pleaded” is the standard form for the past tense of “plead.” It would also seem to me that if the writer prefers the sound of “pled” for some reason (be that poetic license or legalese), that is also acceptable in general. As always, check your preferred usage manual if you care about that sort of thing. (And you should care about it. If you don’t, why are you reading this blog in the first place?)

 

Past tense needn’t be tense

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I’ve been getting questions off-blog lately about simple past verb forms, most of which can be addressed via speaking to UK versus US usage. This subject has been addressed often elsewhere, but not here. I will suggest up front that if you want more information, by all means employ your own brand of Google-fu and go get it. It’s all out there, waiting for you. Meanwhile, I’ve distilled one small part of the gist of this subject for today’s post.

In general, a verb form ending in -t is indicative of UK usage. Likewise, one ending in -ed is indicative of US usage. Witness these examples.

dreamt/dreamed

leant/leaned

spelt/spelled

smelt/smelled

learnt/learned

I cannot stress enough that I am speaking in generalities. There are undoubtedly exceptions to what I’ve just said. If you feel the need to post them as comments, knock yourself out. I’m not trying for an exhaustive list, I’m just showing folks the way this works. (I’ll beat some of you to the punch. The past tense of “to deal” is “dealt,” no matter which usage you’re employing. There is no such word as “dealed.”)

“But Karen, I’ve used dreamt all my life and there’s no one British in my family!” Y’know, I believe you. I’ll tell you this much: You probably grew up/live in an area of the US with strong linguistic ties to England, which means that usage in your area leans toward the UK versions of things. I grew up in an area with strong Germanic/Dutch ties, so we had sayings like “The bread is all” meaning “There’s no more bread.” Linguistics are fascinating. Do some reading on the subject if you’re so inclined. Google-fu is powerful stuff indeed.

“But Karen, what about lent?” Well, I’ll tell you. Lent as a verb is the past tense of lend. Lend/lent, loan/loaned, lean/leaned. Lend and loan are mostly interchangable; the latter has the connotation of financial dealings, which is why we lend a hand, but loan a fiver. We lend an ear, because if we loaned one it would involve surgery. We can lend a bike, or we can loan one. Last week, I lent someone a book and I loaned my daughter a few dollars.  It’s all good.

That tree leaned the other way before the big windstorm. If I lived in the UK, I’d say it leant the other way.

I’ll point you to the Daily Writing Tips blog (see it in our blogroll) for this kind of information. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary is good as well; when applicable, it notes differences in US/UK usage clearly. Remember that the preferred form appears first in the listing; coming second doesn’t mean a form is wrong, it merely means it is not the preferred form. (And that usually means that copy editors like me will change the less-preferred form to the more-preferred one, without a compelling reason not to. And by compelling, I mean stronger than “because I like it better.”)

Watch this space for an upcoming post about those pesky -ou- spellings (also UK usage), and perhaps even one about the correct past tense of “to plead.” You probably won’t like the answer. I don’t care. Ha.