All You Create

What’s in a name? Depending on whom you’re talking to, everything or not so much.

When we were trying to pick out baby names, you’d think we were naming the Taj Mahal or Grand Canyon — something that would be around for eons and would have movies made about it. The meaning of the name, the number of syllables, the words it could possibly rhyme with, the ways it could be abbreviated — every little nuance was considered.

Many companies do the same thing when forming their names. And many add the tag Inc. to the name for legal reasons. But, concerning commas, how should those names be referenced in writing if it’s not for legal purposes?

My assumption would be to do as the company does. If ABC, Inc. wants a comma there legally, why not put it there all the time?

Crazy little assumption, but according to the AP Stylebook, that’s an assumption that can drive an editor nuts. The AP Stylebook folks have this to say:

Abbreviate and capitalize as Inc. when used as a part of a corporate name. It usually is not needed, but when it is used, do not set off with commas: “Time Warner Inc. announced ….”

And you know me. I’m not one to ruffle the feathers of the AP Stylebook gods — at least not on a regular basis.

In legal writing, I would absolutely follow the style of the legal company name. But in journalistic, advertising, marketing or PR writing, I’d eliminate the comma. It’s a space-taker-upper, and it separates the Inc. from the main body of the name, which in my mind goes against the purpose of having it there at all. If you’re going to separate the Inc. with a comma, that implies it’s not a mandatory phrase. And if it’s not mandatory, I can think of a graphic designer or two who would think that it’s fluff and that the space could be better used, so take that sucker out.

Happy trails!

SAK

Behold the power of the Internet.

A good friend Facebooked me about my post on how many spaces should really come directly after ending punctuation. And then I did an online search for this new-found information and found even more — albeit related — ammunition against anything more than one space after a period. Here goes.

My wise friend, a co-worker twice over, had this to add to the one-space-rules argument:

“Two spaces were for back in the day of printer block type and manual typesetting; it was considered the appropriate amount of block. Now in the modern desktop publishing days, our software programs adjust the “kerning” and tracking for us, so only one space is necessary between sentences.”

Aha! That makes sense. And all the research I subsequently did supports that statement:

• Most browsers today (2010) only render one space after a period, no matter how many spaces are entered in HTML code.
• Most fonts today are proportional — meaning that the characters are different sizes (primarily concerning width). Courier is the most widely used exception.
• Old-school typewriters used monospaced fonts, necessitating the use of double spaces for ease of readability.
• Designers, typographers and writers alike eschew double spaces because of the so-called “rivers” of white space created by this double-space convention.
• Designers, typographers and writers alike are aggravated by onscreen displays because they often automatically destroy any efforts at a good-looking piece of writing.

So there it is, folks — one space after ending punctuation, pretty please.

As a bonus in the readability department, studies have proven that applying the bold feature to small amounts of text helps with readability. Back in the day of typewriters, writers had to type over the words they wanted bold (or darker). Do you remember that? And in this age of scanning what is read and multitasking, bolding words to help the reader get the gist of what you want to convey makes even more sense. Just don’t go overboard with it.

Happy trails!

SAK

Below, the entry that spurred this updated entry:

Indeed, that is apparently the question that never gets answered.

As an editor, time and again I delete extra spaces after periods, much to the chagrin of the writer.

“Two!” they moan. “I was taught that two spaces follow a period.”

I feel for them. I really do. I was taught that same rule in school. The education system follows the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines, which stipulate two spaces after every period. Frankly, I’m not sure why two spaces are required. My guess is that those who made the rules back in the day thought that it helped the readability of the piece.

Once I graduated, though, the real world insisted that two spaces after any ending punctuation (period, question mark, exclamation point) was too much real estate. Space is, after all, at a premium across such mediums as newspapers and magazines, so that second space was a luxury that bit the proverbial dust.

And it was a hard habit to break — at least for me. But break it I did. So, while I understand the frustration of those who haven’t yet been influenced by the almighty AP Stylebook — the grammar bible of journalists, advertising agencies and professional writers — I also know that they can kick the second space to the curb as well as I did.

So when my writer friends hand me an article or ad or whatnot and ask me to edit it, I write “universal change” at the top of the page with “only one space after each ending punctuation mark.”

Aren’t ex-two-spaces-after-periods people the worst?

Happy trails!

Indeed, that is apparently the question that never gets answered.

As an editor, time and again I delete extra spaces after periods, much to the chagrin of the writer.

“Two!” they moan. “I was taught that two spaces follow a period.”

I feel for them. I really do. I was taught that same rule in school. The education system follows the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines, which stipulate two spaces after every period. Frankly, I’m not sure why two spaces are required. My guess is that those who made the rules back in the day thought that it helped the readability of the piece.

Once I graduated, though, the real world insisted that two spaces after any ending punctuation (period, question mark, exclamation point) was too much real estate. Space is, after all, at a premium across such mediums as newspapers and magazines, so that second space was a luxury that bit the proverbial dust.

And it was a hard habit to break — at least for me. But break it I did. So, while I understand the frustration of those who haven’t yet been influenced by the almighty AP Stylebook — the grammar bible of journalists, advertising agencies and professional writers — I also know that they can kick the second space to the curb as well as I did.

So when my writer friends hand me an article or ad or whatnot and ask me to edit it, I write “universal change” at the top of the page with “only one space after each ending punctuation mark.”

Aren’t ex-two-spaces-after-periods people the worst?

Happy trails!

SAK

You say to-MAY-to, I say to-MAH-to.

OK, I say to-MAY-to, too. But that’s the apparent difference between pronouncing the long form of P.J.’s (or jammies, if you ask my husband). The subject came up about the correct pronunciation of pajamas, so I followed my M.O.: I looked it up online. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary has two (count ‘em, two) sound buttons that play the preferred and secondary pronunciations of the word. But when I looked it up, the sound wouldn’t work.

That was last night.

So I checked out a few other sites that also have sound buttons. Webster’s New World College Dictionary, which the AP Stylebook prefers, has one button. And to my horror and my husband’s delight, it pronounced it pa-JAA-mas (the middle syllable sounds like the a in jam).

Ugh. My loving but woohoo-I’m-right husband thought the case was closed.

Today during a break at work, I polled co-workers about their pronunciation preference. Most agreed with my husband; one agreed with me. So I vowed to check out Merriam-Webster’s one more time, and it worked — on several levels.

P.J.'s, jammies, pajamas — Oh, my! (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/erix/4161088394/)

The first, most prominent sound button confirmed my suspicion: pa-JAH-ma (singular construction, mind you — the middle syllable sounds like the a in saw). The second, less-preferred sound button put forth pa-JAA-ma (again, sounds like jam).

One other tidbit I learned while researching the pajama dilemma: It can be a regional thing. My way (and the correct way, according to Merriam-Webster’s) is the Southeastern United States way to pronounce it. On the flip side, my husband’s pajama preference is popular in the Northeast U.S. and Great Lakes area, as well as the West Coast.

And that’s news to me, for sure. I wouldn’t have guessed that my preference is a Southern thing. Heck, lots of folks have mistaken me for an East Coaster, and I lived in sunny Cali for a spell. But after thinking about it, pa-JAA-mas does have a Southern ring to it. Interesting stuff.

Happy trails!

SAK

For all you lovers of all things short (and I’m referring to language, not to those under 5′3″, such as yours truly), here’s a short-but-oh-so-sweet entry about two abbreviations that are often confused with each other.

i.e., = in other words. OK, really it means id est (which roughly translates to that is) in Latin. Always (always!) use a comma after the second period and, yes, always use both periods (i.e.,). Use i.e., for anything that may need to be expanded upon in a slightly different way in order for your meaning to be clear:

Read the entire article.

I love reading to my kids. No matter what else happened that day — good or bad — and no matter how many times I reprimanded them throughout the day, at the dinner table or while getting ready for bed, that time spent snuggling head to head, cheek to cheek, shoulder to shoulder while flipping through a book that we’ve read 67 times before is, as they say, priceless.

And that doesn’t even include all the weird mistakes we find in said books. They’re real gems, those mistakes.

Tonight’s story was P.D. Eastman’s “Go, Dog. Go!” It’s especially fun for a word nerd like me because I get to point out three types of punctuation in the title alone, and I get such a thrill when my 4-year-old exclaims, “Explanation point, Mom! I found one!”

She makes me so proud.

But something always bugged me about the wording inside. There are two dogs, one male and one female, who periodically meet throughout the book. Both dogs wear various hats. The girl dog asks the boy dog if he likes her hat, and he always says some version of “No, I don’t like that hat.” So they part, the girl dog looking miffed and the boy dog looking oblivious. The last meeting ends amicably because the girl dog has gone all out — and I mean all out — in designing her hat; the boy dog finally agrees that her hat is pretty cool.

Do you like my hat? (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/table4five/4067671771/)

What got me, though, was how Eastman spelled good-by (without an ending “e”). It just doesn’t look right to me.

Read the entire article.

It’s a tough town, Los Angeles. Even for a famous and currently employed actor, it’s hard to catch a break in Hollywood.

Take Julia Louis-Dreyfus, for example. On Tuesday, May 4, CNN senior producer David Daniel walked by the newly embedded pink marble star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honoring Louis-Dreyfus and noticed that the actor’s name had two mistakes in it:
• The “o” in Louis was missing.
• The hyphen between Louis and Dreyfus was missing.

Daniel reported the gaffe to the Walk of Fame press rep.

Four hours later, Louis-Dreyfus arrived to receive her star — the 2,407th — and found a temporary chiseled fix of her name on the star.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/christianhaugen/3556803658/)

Her response?

Read the entire article.

Ah, grammar! Were it not for grammar — and good grammar, at that — the world would surely be a heaping, chaotic mess. For without grammar, how would we humans ever be able to order a cup o’ joe properly (especially the double-double light dolce iced latte variety) or be able to sue each other with such flourish? How would we know if we were being asked about which meal we would like to order, and if we would like fries with it? And how, for Pete’s sake, would we be able to communicate our every want, need and desire to those who may be able to provide it, were it not for good grammar etiquette?

Read the entire article.

I recently went up to Kansas City to see some friends, have some amazing food, catch a few comfy Z’s and see a football game. I did all that, but I also came home with a nice little surprise: a new topic for a Bloody Well Write entry.

First, a quick mention about the food. If you’re ever in Kansas City and are looking for a fantastic Italian meal in a quaint, romantic little ristorante, look no further than Carmen’s in Brookside. Ask to sit downstairs — I prefer the intimate atmosphere — and request some Italian Butter to start; it’s their version of olive oil and herbs, but I tell you that it is absolutely like none you have ever had.

I order off the menu, à la “When Harry Met Sally,” combining the cheese ravioli from one dish with the vodka tomato cream sauce from another, with a little fra diavolo thrown in to spice things up a bit. And ba-da-BING! It’s the tastiest, smoothest Italian around. No lie.

OK, so back to the grammar bit of this entry. So I’m in the hotel room — the one with the lush, fresh-white bedding and soaps the shape of leaves, with the cool city view — and I am piddling around, waiting until it’s time to go meet our friends. And I pick up this water bottle hang tag, with one word on it, for emphasis: revitalize.

That’s pretty cool. Decent marketing, colors fading from blue to snow white (very spalike), with some smallish print across the bottom: Westin® Hotels and Resorts. Nice little water logo. Then more words:

Nestle Pure Life Eco Shaped Bottles
Less Plastic. Better Enviornment.

So — reread that. See how many mistakes you can find in those two little lines.

By my count, I’d say that there are, at the minimum, five mistakes. There are more if you want to keep the lowercase consistency set by the headline (revitalize). And the periods? Don’t get me started. (OK, get me started. the headline doesn’t use a period, and neither does the first line, but the second line has two. Go figure.)

So what are the five mistakes?

1. There is no ® after Nestle.
2. There is no hyphen between Eco and Shaped.
3. The S in Shaped, since it should follow a hyphen, should be lowercase.
4. If there are two periods in the second line, there is no excuse why there shouldn’t be one at the end of the first line. (None of those groups of words are complete sentences.)
5. Enviornment. Seriously? This is for a national chain, for Pete’s sake. I know that it’s a four-syllable word, but my silly spell-checker caught it, so come ON.

I just checked out Nestle’s site to make sure that it uses a registered trademark (®) and, unbelievably, the site does not have one on the main page, even though products (such as Nestle® Cheerios®) have one next to the name. That sort of thing happens all the time. It blows my mind, especially on these enormous accounts.

I’ll end this little study in proofreading by saying that, despite this crazy hang tag, I had a really, really good time in Kansas City. And I’d even recommend the Westin Crown Center hotel to any friend or acquaintance. Just don’t plan on any solid ultra-light reading in the room.

Happy trails!

SAK

So I’m a word gal; this much is true. I find it quite difficult to read books (adult books, anyway) for relaxation or enjoyment because the majority of my day is spent either writing my own words or editing someone else’s words, so I don’t think reading a few chapters at night sound like a whole lot of fun. I guess I’m not the typical word hound, then, since most do tend to like, um, books and, er, reading.

Fine. I’m OK with that.

I do, however, enjoy reading to my two kids at night. Their books are fun, rhyming, colorful short (short!) stories with cool illustrations. And since it’s the holidays, we’re reading a few books that I grew up with — “Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer” and Christmas in Many Lands” — as well as a few new ones, such as “Elf on the Shelf” (we named ours Leo and today he’s perched on top of our refrigerator) and “Olive, the Other Reindeer.”

Ah, Olive. If only your creators knew the difference between every day and everyday, reading would be ever-so-slightly more enjoyable for me, the word dork.

You see, “Olive, the Other Reindeer” starts out by botching the very first word, which means that I have to put on my tattered editor hat throughout the rest of the reading. It’s just innate for me. I can’t get through the book now without cringing on the very first page.

(Technically, it starts off even earlier than the first page: The title has punctuation in it. Ugh. A period is tacked on. Not sure why, it just is. Weird.)

Anyway, the story begins, “Everyday, Olive took her daily dog walk ….” In this instance, everyday should take the adverb form (two words) because it is expressing a manner of time. Were it meant to be an adjective, it would be modifying a noun of some sort. Alas, that is not the case at the beginning of this story.

To keep the adverb-adjective relationship straight, I like to (still) think of the Schoolhouse Rock snippets:

• Adverb — “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here. … How, where or when, condition or reason — these questions are answered when you use an adverb.” If it ends in ly and the ly isn’t a regular part of the word (as in family), then it’s probably an adverb. The phrase every day answers the question of when, so it’s an adverb.

• Adjective — These handy, little words “describe the people, places and every last thing” and “are often used to help us compare things. … We hiked along without care. Then we ran into a bear. He was a hairy bear. He was a scary bear. We beat a hasty retreat from his lair.”

Cool, huh?

Back to “Olive, the Other Reindeer” for just a second. The book, written by Vivian Walsh and J. Otto Seibold, is a fun children’s book. The story is cute; it’s about an industrious little dog who thinks that she’s a reindeer, so she goes to the North Pole to help Santa out. The pages are filled with quirky, fun illustrations by Seibold; I especially love the two pages that show the reindeer navigating around the Eiffel Tower. Despite the everyday blunder, this book’s worth the read.

Happy trails!

SAK