I’m going to go ahead and swipe this right out of Harper’s. First of all, it’s the lazy thing to do. Second, they swiped it from the Chicago Manual of Style Online—specifically the section that’s a sort of “Dear Abby” for copyeditors. I happen to have been one, and like they say,* once a copyeditor, always a coypeditor. (Never did like proofreading, though.) And I also “learn[ed] English grammar from the nuns.” So I find this stuff riproaringly funny.
Q. When I began learning English grammar from the nuns in 1951, I was taught never to use a comma either before or after independent clauses or compound sentences. Did the rules of English grammar and punctuation change while I was in that three-week coma in 1965, or in the years that it took to regain my basic and intellectual functioning before I returned to teaching?
A. I’m sorry, I can’t account for your state of mind, but standard punctuation calls for a comma before a conjunction that joins two independent clauses unless the clauses are very short. I would go further and suggest that it’s a good idea to reexamine any rule you were taught that includes the word “never” or “always.”
Q. Is there an acceptable way to form the possessive of words such as Macy’s and Sotheby’s? Sometimes rewording to avoid the possessive results in less felicitous writing.
A. Less felicitous than “Sotheby’s’s”? I don’t think so.
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*Do not bother to tell me it should be “as they say.” Tell me anything else, but not that.
Q. The menu in our cafeteria shows that enchiladas are available “Tues.–Fri.” When I ordered one on a Wednesday, I was told that enchiladas are available on Tuesday and Friday, not Tuesday through Friday. When I informed the cafeteria manager that this was incorrect, she seemed shocked and refused to change the sign. Please help determine who is correct.
A. Although the sign was incorrect, I’m not sure you should annoy the person who provides the enchiladas.
Q. Is there any standard for the usage of emoticons? In particular, is there an accepted practice for the use of emoticons that includes an opening or closing parenthesis as the final token within a set of parentheses? Should I incorporate the emoticon into the closing of the parentheses (giving a dual purpose to the closing parenthesis, such as in this case : - ); simply leave the emoticon up against the closing parenthesis, ignoring the bizarre visual effect of the doubled closing parenthesis (as I am doing here, producing a double-chin effect : - ) ); or avoid the situation by using a different emoticon (some emoticons are similar : - D), placing the emoticon elsewhere, or doing without it (i.e., reword to avoid awkwardness)?
A. Until academic standards decline enough to accommodate the use of emoticons, I’m afraid CMOS is unlikely to treat their styling, since the manual is aimed primarily at scholarly publications. And the problems you’ve posed in this note give us added incentive to keep our distance.
Q. My friend and I were looking at a poster that read “guys apartment.” I believe it should read “guys’ apartment.” She claims that it should read “guys’s apartment” and that the CMOS specifically gives the example of “guys’s” to make “guys” possessive. I looked through every section on possessives and did not find the word “guys’s” or any rule that would make this correct.
A. “Guys’s” is acceptable in the way that “youse guys” is acceptable; that is, neither is yet recognized as standard prose, and if your friend can find it in CMOS, I’ll eat my hat. And shame on your friend. It must make you wonder what else she’s capable of.
Q. O English-language gurus, is it ever proper to put a question mark and an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence in formal writing? An author is giving me a fit with some of her overkill emphases, and now there is a sentence that has both marks at the end. My gratitude for letting me know what I should tell this person.
A. In formal writing, we allow both marks only in the event that the author was being physically assaulted while writing. Otherwise, no.
And here’s one I found on my own (and it took a lot of work, believe me):
Q. As an editor of regulatory documents, I routinely come across sentences in which the subject is an inanimate object but the verb denotes something only a person can do. Examples are “this document analyzes the hazards” and “the analysis considers the environmental impacts.” Does this type of thing have a name? Inappropriate anthropomorphism or personification? Is there a rule I can cite when explaining to the author why I have suggested rewording the sentence?
A. Why reword it? Documents do analyze and present and consider. They discuss and bemoan and mangle and make mockeries of things. There’s no rule that restricts writers to using the literal meanings of words. If it gets to the point where the documents are ordering in pizza, consider rewording.
Isn’t it refreshing how flexible these folks are? You read CMOS and it feels like a 700-page straitjacket. I remember feeling a pang when I first allowed such constructions as those quoted above to pass, but a copyeditor won’t last long without a cheerful willingness to bend even one’s own most cherished rule.
Shouldn’t that be “Do not bother *to* tell me”? (ducks)
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Indignantly: I am a person, not a spam script!
No need to duck—I said I didn’t like to proofread! Thanks for doing it for me. Henceforth I’ll think of you as a benign proofreading spambot that is also smart enough to decipher antispam thingamajigs. I’ll draw a picture someday.
And I’m going to fix the typo “silently,” as they say. So don’t get on your high horse about that, okay, Mr. Proofreading Spambot? (I’ll have to remember to include the horse in the drawing.)
BTW, how do you keep your blog so shiny and typo-free?
I guess I’m a good speller — Oak Ridge, TN spelling bee champ in 7th grade, as I always point out in my resume. (Misspelled “opportune” in the regional round — still mad about that.) I also rewrite/revise things a lot before and sometimes after publishing them; so by sheer ‘natural selection’ the result is generally halfway grammatical. Fascinating, eh?
Well, belated congratulations! My current boss was also a spelling bee champ, but in Youngstown, OH. The word he’ll never forget is “grosgrain.” (I thought I’d never forget it either, but I had to ask Laura what it was just now.)
When I’m being paid for it, I can proofread tolerably well. I find it’s easier when it’s someone else’s writing. After I’ve wrestled some thoughts to the ground, I’m in no mood to check and make sure their socks are still pulled up.
But here’s the fascinating part: for some reason your last comment was caught in my blog’s spam filter. No joke! I was the one saying spambot this and spambot that in my comment, and you get nabbed for some unknown reason. Oh, what a wicked world!