All You Create

A Bloody Well Write reader sent in a request for a blog entry about one of the most-argued points in the history of grammar (perhaps I amplify just a smidge): the serial comma.

Eeeeeek!

But not just any serial comma — this reader called out the Oxford comma. The Oxford comma, people, was news to me. I had never heard of this thing. Or if I had, it was in grad school and I must have been staring into space, dreaming of just about anything else that wasn’t grammar-related. So I had to look the bloody thing up. Yay — research!

What I found out was this: The Oxford comma is the same thing as the serial comma, which is also the same thing as the Harvard comma:

Oxford = serial = Harvard

The serial comma (think generic when you hear serial) is sometimes called the Oxford comma because it is in the style guide of the Oxford University Press and has been for more than a century. Those who are less enamored with the grammatical styles from across the pond may refer to the serial comma as the Harvard comma. Since I went to KU, maybe I should coin it the Jayhawk comma. How ’bout them beans‽

So — back to the serial-Oxford-Harvard comma. It’s the comma that follows the penultimate word or group of words in a series. Look at these two sentences:

1. I had grapefruit juice, pears, and ham and eggs for breakfast.
2. I had grapefruit juice, pears and ham and eggs for breakfast.

No. 1 has the serial comma, which classifies ham and eggs as an integral thing (which, in North America anyway, it typically is) rather than two separate entries.

No. 2 does not have the serial comma, which just looks sloppy. If I had to edit this sentence, I would slap a serial comma after slices, no question, even though the AP Stylebook prefers no serial comma. How could I get away with it? Because the AP Stylebook also takes into consideration just such constructions that have an integral element of the series requiring a conjunction (i.e., and).

Now, being raised in an MLA environment, it took me a little while to get used to the usual elimination of the serial comma (except in cases similar to the above-mentioned sentence). And to this day, I think that the serial comma should be reinstated (did you hear that, AP folks?). But if that happens, we’ll still live in a gray world, b/c there’s an exception to the serial comma rule, as well.

Sonofa.

But it’s true. Look at these two sentences:

1. I had a dream about a chef, Tommy Flibberdygibbit, and Sierra Rock.
2. I had a dream about a chef, Tommy Flibberdygibbit and Sierra Rock.

In No. 1, tell me: Did I dream about two people (Chef Tommy + Sierra) or three people (a chef + Tommy + Sierra)?

In No. 2, it seems pretty obvious that I had a dream about three people. So No. 1 makes the argument that a serial comma (in No. 1) doesn’t always clear up the meaning, whereas a lack of one does (or may). Poo.

So there it is — clear as mud.

Happy trails!

SAK

I very well may be making an assumption here, but it seems to me that most education systems teach that the poorly constructed contraction ain’t isn’t appropriate to use in either its oral or written form. And yet ain’t has somehow managed to flourish in the English language. Ain’t is a contraction of not just two words, but any of — at minimum — eight combinations of words:

• Am not
• Are not
• Is not
• Have not
• Has not
• Do not
• Does not
• Did not

Ain’t is also entrenched in certain phrases that have become part of the modern-day lexicon:

• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
• Say it ain’t so
• Two out of three ain’t bad
• You ain’t seen nothing yet
• This ain’t no disco
  

Stemming from the mid-1700s, ain’t has made its way into popular songs (”Ain’t She Sweet,” Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Ain’t No Sunshine”), books (”If Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy!” and “Telling Ain’t Training”) and movies (”Love Ain’t Supposed to Hurt” and “A Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich”). It’s used in journalistic prose as an indicator of casual tone. And it’s used by yours truly on occasion — partly in rebellion, partly to show devil-may-care attitude.

My mother would be horrified.

But there it is. My suggestion would be to use it sparingly, rather than as part of every third sentence — and that ain’t no baloney.

Happy trails!

SAK

Ah, the AP Stylebook.

As a slightly OCD writer-editor-proofreader-blogger, I love it. Though some of its rules drive the masses wild — especially when I’m the messenger — I love it still.

The journalist’s bible provides the grammatical and editorial guidelines that allow creativity to flow between, to bounce off of, to knock over said rules as need be. How else could all of those ruffian writers out there prove that they’re outside of the establishment if there were no establishment to rail against? Editors know of these ruffians. And editors and writers often have a love-hate relationship. (OK, hate is a strong word. Sometimes.) Lots of AP haters are out there, though, let me tell you.

I fight the good fight daily and trust that my 2011 AP Stylebook will not steer me wrong — even as it insists on my putting a period at the end of every bulleted sentence or phrase, no matter how brief it may be — crazy.

So what else came out of the last round of changes to the AP Stylebook? Here are a few changes, short and sweet:

One-word changes:

• Cellphone
• Checkout
• Email (only an uppercase “E” if it starts a sentence)
• Filmgoer
• Firsthand
• Geolocation
• Handheld (noun)
• Nonprofit
• Postgame
• Pregame
• Serviceman, servicewoman (but still service member)
  
• Smartphone
• Soundstage
• Tipoff
• Unfollow
• Videotape
  

If you’re a wordsmith at all, you’re probably already aware that the hyphenated “e-mail” fought hard but bit the dust. That one change alone made a gajillion people very, very happy. The others, such as cellphone and postgame — going from two words or hyphenated words to one word — didn’t cause as much of a ruckus. But there they are.

Happy trails!

SAK

Here’s one for my main man.

As with everything in life, I’m no expert at language. I may have been trained in English this and grammar that more than the average bear, and I may write a silly but fun little language blog here and again, but I absolutely claim no expert affiliation where language is concerned.

Why? Because I have a hard time with the word expert. In a black-and-white, absolute world (the kind of world that surely would clear up a few things), an expert is supposed to know everything there is to know about a certain subject, right? Well, I may know a decent amount of tidbits, but I positively don’t know everything. Not even close. And I am wary of those professing to be experts in their chosen field unless they have a ton of experience and positive results, plus a lot of positive feedback from those who have dealt with them. And even then, I have one eyebrow raised. Fair? Perhaps not. But that’s my thinking. Beside the fact that I’m no fan of braggarts, if someone claims to be an expert, well, I have some reservations.

Anyhoo — I got that view on experts from an English professor I had once, one whom I was not even that crazy about. She once told me that I reminded her of her when she was younger (and thus less wise than she had learned to become, bleh). So why do I even bother to keep that slant on expert alive? Good question.

Regardless, the term expert is not the point of this post; indict, indicted — they are the point. I cannot get it straight in my head how to read those words aloud, even though I know how to spell them and I know how to pronounce them. Anytime I see them in print, I want to say in-DIGHT or in-DIGHT-ed. Ugh! Talk about feeling like a dope. I was reading an article to my other half awhile back and just read those words without skipping a beat. My husband stopped me and said, “What did you just say?”

Caught in the act of mispronunciation! So I looked up the word indict and found out where this crazy spelling came from, the spelling that has a silent ‘c’ in it. Double-ugh! In my defense, this is what I found out:

• Webster’s New World College Dictionary says that indict is a bastardization, if you will, of the Middle English term enditen, which meant “to accuse” or “to write a document.”
• Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary adds that enditen is from the Anglo-French enditer, which meant “to write or compose.” It stemmed from the “Vulgar Latin indictare, frequentative of Latin indicere,” which meant “to make known formally, proclaim.”
• The word indict held onto its French pronunciation after the spelling was re-Latinized in the 1600s.

So I’m not completely crazy, after all. That third bullet made my day. It’s not my fault that I can’t pronounce it correctly; it’s the bloody Latinization of yet another word that is causing all the hullabaloo.

Happy trails!

SAK

Oh, my. This is what I’m talkin’ ’bout — writing and editing information about recipes and food! How’d a girl get so lucky?

The newest incarnation of the AP Stylebook has a section dubbed Food Guidelines. It’s not long at barely two pages, but it’s a great addition to the guide. The majority consists of rules to follow for recipe writers and editors. So I’ll mention a few of these rules now and throw in a summertime (really, anytime) recipe for your eating pleasure:

• Recipes are to start with a title in all caps.
• Follow the title with a start-to-finish timeline (as in how long is it going to take before you can actually eat the thing you’re preparing).
• How many servings your dish makes is next.
• List your ingredients in the order used (makes sense) and spell out all measurements (e.g., teaspoon (not tsp.), cup (not c.)).
• If you have an atypical ingredient, you can add clarification (e.g., ghee (clarified butter).
• Use numerals in all cases (i.e., measurements, times, temperatures) except for two numbers that are next to each other. In that case, spell out the first number and use a numeral for the second number (e.g., two 14.5-ounce cans).
• Write the recipe instructions in short, clear sentences.
• If your recipe calls for an oven, add something like “Heat the oven to 400 F” at the beginning of the recipe unless the recipe takes more than half an hour to complete. If that’s the case, either add that instruction in at an appropriate time or find a shorter recipe!
• Write sentences with equipment or technique at the beginning, followed by the ingredients (e.g., “With the hand mixer on medium, whisk the cake mix, egg and oil together for two minutes”). That seems a bit picky for my liking, but whatever.
• Any nutrition information that you’d like to add to the recipe, such as fat (!), calorie or sodium content, goes at the bottom.

Isn’t that fun? Now, for the really fun part: This recipe is something I created from memory. I had gone to a Kansas City Mexican restaurant that doesn’t exist anymore and tasted the most wonderful, flavorful, sweet guac imaginable. And the following recipe is what I came up with. The “secret” ingredient? Orange juice — it adds a hint of sweetness to this otherwise zesty appetizer. Please keep in mind that people who have sworn up and down that they are not guacamole people have tried this and loved it. They weren’t just being polite, either, so you should give it a whirl. I don’t have any nutritional information, but I do know that it’s a pretty healthy dish with healthy fats. Just as with everything, eat it in moderation — if you can.

9-INGREDIENT GUACAMOLE

Start to finish: 10 minutes

Servings: 3–5

• 3 ripe avocados, seeded and skinned
  
• 1/3 white or red onion, diced
  
• 1 hefty tablespoon minced garlic
  
• 1 handful fresh cilantro, chopped
  
• 1 jalapeño, diced (to taste)
  
• 3 squirts lime juice (bottled or fresh)
  
• 3 tablespoons orange juice
  
• Several shakes Lawry’s seasoned salt
  
• Ground black pepper (to taste)
  

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mash till slightly chunky. If too spicy due to jalapeño, add another avocado. Serve with tortilla chips, as an accompaniment to any Mexican meal or as a topper for grilled white fish, such as tilapia or halibut or orange roughy.

Now that’s a nice-lookin’ recipe.

Hungry for more information about this guac? Check this article out.

Happy trails!

SAK

Short-and-oh-so-sweet headlines take a bit of effort and magic, all in one fell swoop. They also must follow certain rules and, yes, break a rule or two on a rare occasion. This one, though, is a no-brainer.

When you write (or edit or proofread) a headline that contains a colon, the word following the colon must be immediately preceded by a single space, and that word must begin with an uppercase letter. Examples:

• Dog and butterfly: Puppy chase ends in highway tragedy
• The race is on: Presidential hopefuls Bachmann, Romney, Pawlenty hit the road
• Summer recipe tips: Fresh vegetables, home-grown herbs

It doesn’t matter whether or not what comes after the colon is a complete sentence. The point is that the word following the colon must start with a capital letter. I can’t think of a single instance in which this is not the case (which means that you’ll find it and send it to me, yes?).

One note: The automatic formatting that takes place with the template I’ve chosen for this blog does NOT follow this rule, and it does bug me, but some things I let slide. C’est la vie.

Simple does it.

Happy trails!

SAK

One of my favorite quotes from the comedic genius otherwise known as “Wayne’s World” is Garth’s exclamation: “Live in the now!” OK, who am I kidding? That movie has about 180 quotes that keep me rolling almost 20 years (!) later. But I digress.

“Live in the now” is an appropriate concept to apply, I suppose, to captions and cutlines (which, coincidentally, are the same thing). The little line of copy that typically resides just below a photograph within an article is called a caption or cutline; the AP Stylebook folks prefer the term caption. No matter what you call that line, though, the cutline tells the photo’s story of who, what, when, where, why and how. If you think about it, cutlines are the most-read copy, aside from headlines; people tend to read the headlines and cutlines to determine whether to spend precious time reading the entire article. (Gasp — an entire article? The horror.) Although the second sentence is acceptable in either the present or past tense, the first sentence should almost always be written in the present tense.

Two questions arise:

1. Why the present tense? My best guess is that the photo captures a moment in time, and the present tense gives more oomph to the image — a feeling of immediacy that makes what happened in the photo seem more relevant than if it happened, let’s say, three days ago. Three days ago? That’s in the past, man. We want to know what just happened, man! We want to feel like we’re in the loop, man. Using past tense just may encourage the feeling of old news. And who wants old news? Not me, man.
2. What are the rare situations that would require a cutline to employ the past tense? Nuts if you’re thinking this, because I don’t have the answer to that one. I’ve checked out the AP Stylebook website and style guide and can’t find a reference to the past tense. Again, my best guess is that the AP Stylebook folks are not talking about the first sentence in a cutline, but the second. It’s apparently OK to write the second sentence in either present tense or past tense, depending on the publication’s or client’s preference. Wacky! So — if you have documented proof of a reason to use the past tense in a caption or cutline in the first sentence of a caption or cutline, please send it my way.

Perhaps this isn’t the most exciting example of a cutline, but it is accurate. And how cool would it be to have an avocado tree growing in your backyard? Sh’yeah!

Happy trails!

SAK

The simple, AP Stylebook-approved answer is this:

Do not encase (or embrace, as your mood strikes you) the title of a newsletter in quotation marks.

The title should have initial caps on first and major words (e.g., HGTV Ideas, Dine Without Whine™, Skinsights, Yoga Tree), but that’s the extent of the homage to the name of the newsletter.

Happy trails!

SAK

Found this little gem of a billboard online and decided to write a quick (!) post about it.

This goes with my previous how-to-write headlines entry — except that there’s more wrong with this billboard than just the headline. My thoughts:

• An ellipsis should not find its way into a headline. With extraordinarily few exceptions, this is writing gospel.
• I would have liked to see “Failed. Failed. Failed. And then —” instead of employing commas.
• Not a fan of mixing quite so many fonts in a medium with so few lines of copy. Consider it driver’s-eye overload.
• “Pass It On.” OK, so why does the first line have only an initial cap on the first word in the sentence, when the fourth line has Every Word Initial-Capped?
• I do find it a little funny that a billboard with Abe is supported by a billboard company called “Reagan.”

That’s it for this ad. Any other comments?

Happy trails!

SAK

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it more: It’s all in the details.

While recently writing a press release (er, make that a news release) for a client, I found out that the preferred term for a press conference is not press conference, but rather news conference.

Interesting.

Why news over press?

Because, as my agency’s director of marketing and public relations told me, a press (as in a printing press) is almost never at the conference. People waiting for news are at the conference. Whoever is holding the conference is delivering news. And in deference to electronic and other types of media, the term press is simply too exclusive. To top it all off, the AP Stylebook validates news conference as the preferred term. Thus, it should be news conference.

Makes sense, yes?

Then what about news release vs. press release?

For that, I turned to my AP Stylebook again. Blast it! Nothing — no mention of press releases, nor news releases, that I can find. (If you can, please send it to me.) But I dug a little deeper and discovered on the AP Stylebook website a little gem: It has a page dedicated to past press releases. YES — press releases! It almost leaps off the screen, it’s so clear and unabashedly straightforward: Press Releases heads the page in a lovely sans font. Granted, I would’ve lowercased the “R” in Releases, but the site’s editors didn’t ask me.

Anyway, there it is. News conference and press release. Long live the quirky English language!

Happy trails!

SAK