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October 22, 2009: Issue 311

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October 29, 2009: Issue 312

Negative constructions are OK—sometimes even preferable. They often help us strike the conversational tone we want, especially in imperative sentences.

acceptable: Rather than trashing that old chair, take a paintbrush to it.
preferred: Don’t trash that old chair. Take a paintbrush to it.

acceptable: You can still have chocolate even though you have diabetes.
preferred: You don’t have to give up chocolate just because you have diabetes.

Before you edit the word not out of a sentence, think about whether you’re really improving the sentence.

Winners: Last week we asked you to name fictional Halloween recipes. For Most Likely to Be Developed as a Real Recipe, the winner is Gobblin’ Ghoulash, submitted by Jody Sanders. In the Made the Judges Laugh category, the winner is BBQ Bug Livers with Presto Sauce, submitted by Larry Erickson. We’ll deliver your frightful prizes today.

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October 8, 2009: Issue 309

The preferred past tense of the verb sneak is sneaked:
Even on a budget, they sneaked a few luxuries into the kitchen.

Same for the past participle:
She discovered that dodder had sneaked into the garden and strangled the dahlias.

Don’t say snuck unless you’re trying to poke the language purists.

By the way, a milestone sneaked up on us last month. Jill Abeloe Mead closed the 10,000th session in the SIM Publication Schedule Database. She received a commemorative plaque and a box of goodies. Congratulations, Jill!

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August 13, 2009: Issue 301

When you tack a postscript to the end of text, introduce it with the abbreviation “PS” and a colon. No periods. No dashes.

PS: Find a stunning example of postscript dysfunction.

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August 20, 2009: Issue 302

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July 30, 2009: Issue 299

This week’s “On Language” column in The New York Times Sunday Magazine surprised us. While the NYT has a reputation for stodgy style rules (“the actor George Clooney” on first reference, followed by “Mr. Clooney,” for instance), this column suggests that grammarians are too prickly about the words they and them.

Purists—count us among them—will tell you these are plural pronouns, not to be used as singular in an attempt to head off sexist interpretations of he and him. But the “On Language” column attributes this rule to one overreaching 18th-century grammarian, and it points out that writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens felt free to ignore the rule. We, however, will continue to follow it.

Why? The NYT devoted more than 900 words to this discussion. A usage note in Web 11 reaches a similar conclusion—but the note is longer than any definition on that page. When you need that much space to explain that something should be common usage, it clearly hasn’t reached that status.

“On Language” offers this challenge: How do you quickly and clearly say “A texter worships his smart phone” in a nonsexist way? Our favorite dodge is to make the entire sentence plural: “Texters worship their smart phones.”

Read the entire “On Language” column (or pick up a hard copy in the CE department).

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July 9, 2009: Issue 297

Keep it short and tweet

When you tweet, 140 characters is the absolute maximum, not a recommended length. Stay well below that count if you can—you’ll leave room for hashtags and for the extra characters added every time someone retweets.

Everything counts toward that total: letters, spaces, punctuation, and URLs (which typically run about 20 characters).

If you can get your message across in 60 characters, do it. There’s no reason to pad. Tight writing has never been more important.

Move over, Mamma Mia! Check out this Broadway-style look at Twitter and other social media.

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July 16, 2009: Issue 298

As managing editor Kathleen Armentrout prepares to leave us, let’s take a look at how to spell and punctuate some terms of farewell:
adios
arrivederci
au revoir
bye-bye
ciao
Godspeed
good-bye
sayonara
shalom
ta-ta

And then there are these three, which rarely confuse anyone but still apply today:
good luck
thanks for everything
we’ll miss you

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June 11, 2009: Issue 293

Dear Style on the Go,
I must say I’m in a tiz-woz. Cheeky copy editors keep changing the spellings of perfectly good words:Moulding becomes molding. Theatre becomes theater. My spellings are in the dictionary, so why must the CEs be such smug buggers?
Signed,
Gobsmacked

Dear Gobsmacked,
We don’t want to insult you or any other Anglophiles, but we don’t use British variations (indicated in Web 11 by “chiefly Brit var”) because most of our readers don’t. So it’s analyze, not analyse. When two spellings are listed with an entry, we use the first. So it’s catalog, not catalogue. We’re sorry if you think that takes the biscuit. Maybe you can corner us in the lift or in the loo to give us an earful.

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June 18, 2009: Issue 294

New media bring up an interesting pronoun issue: How do we refer to readers when we don’t know their sex?

example:
DaffodilLover99 sent us these beautiful photos from _____ garden in Roca, Nebraska.

What possessive pronoun do you use?

Their is tempting, but it’s grammatically incorrect. (Their must refer to a plural or compound noun.)

His/her is grammatically acceptable but hardly conversational.

Our suggestion is to recast and avoid the issue:
DaffodilLover99 of Roca, Nebraska, sent us these beautiful garden photos.

Remember, we still identify readers by full name and city in our print products. But we realize that standards and expectations are different in the Web world. There, a screen name will suffice.

Speaking of new media: Are you our fan on Facebook yet? Once you are, be sure to check out the CE rap from our annual conference.

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