31 stray copyeditorial thoughts
[because, they tell me, people like lists]
[originally published October 4, 2024]
I invariably use the series comma (a.k.a. the serial comma or the Oxford comma; I’m informed that it’s also known as the Harvard comma, though I’ve never actually1 heard anyone refer to it thus, not even in Harvard Square at high noon). Some people, often journalists and/or Brits, do not invariably use it, and I wish those people well. No sentence has ever been harmed by a series comma, I’ve been known to intone in priestly fashion, and many a sentence has been improved by one. On occasion I’ve encountered writers who insist that they use the series comma when it’s necessary for clarity and skip it when it’s not; invariably these writers skip it when it’s desperately needed for clarity and use it when even I might concede that it’s not direly important (but would still use it anyway). Ultimately I think that time spent puzzling over whether one really, truly, absolutely needs a series comma in any given sentence is time wasted. Just set the bloody thing and move on.
Beginning a sentence with “And” or “But” is a perfectly OK thing to do, no matter what your fifth-grade English teacher told you. But it might not always be the best, strongest, most effective thing to do. Perhaps your “And”- or “But”-beginning sentence would be better joined to the previous sentence; perhaps you simply don’t need the “And” or the “But” at all. Give it a think.
Ending a sentence with a preposition is also a perfectly OK thing to do, particularly if in attempting to avoid it you wind up with a sentence that sounds as if it were written by a Martian who’d learned English from Duolingo. But, again, concluding with a preposition might not always be the best, strongest, most effective thing to do, as you may then wind up with a sentence that ends with a meandering dribble rather than with a bang. A bang is always more fun.
It’s always fine to split an infinitive—that is (to cite the classic example), to write “to boldly go where no one2 has gone before” rather than “boldly to go where” or “to go boldly where.” Again, rule of thumb: You want to avoid sounding like a Martian. (Unless perhaps you are a Martian, in which case: Sorry, no offense.)
Adverbs get a bum rap. Adverbs are lovely. And though I wield them far too often (one should always be aware of one’s tics, even if one ultimately chooses to indulge oneself in them), piquant and especially paradoxical adverb-adjective combo packs (improbably dull! frighteningly attractive!) can be real eye-catchers.
One simply shrugs. One does not shrug one’s unnecessarily mentioned shoulders. Neither does one nod one’s head. One simply nods.
A character who begins to do something or suddenly does something can, ninety-nine times out of ten, more effectively simply do that something.
Overuse of pronouns can lead to irksome reader confusion. Use nouns. Use and reuse (reasonably, everything within reason) the names of your characters. You will not bore your readers, I promise you. They won’t even notice.3 Using “he” or “him” (or “she” or “her” or “they” or “them”) to refer to more than one person in any given sentence (I might even extend that to any given paragraph) is a Supremely Bad Idea.
Go light on capital letters for Whimsically Comic Effect. You are not A. A. Milne.
Go light on emphatic italics. More often than not, if you’ve chosen the right words and set them in the right order, you do not need to lean on a particular word or words to make yourself understood. Also, readers don’t, I think, relish being repeatedly told how to read.
Go light on exclamation points. No, even lighter than that.
You could go the rest of your life never writing the word “actually” and you’d be OK. OK, you can write it, but, having written it, do seriously consider deleting it.
Unless you are an excited twelve-year-old, you probably don’t need to end a sentence with more than one question mark, more than one exclamation point, or, ye gods and little fishes, a combination of the two.
There’s no such thing as an interrobang.
Given the choleric distaste for them expressed in some quarters, one would be forgiven for thinking that we are a nation whose mothers were collectively frightened during pregnancy by semicolons. Semicolons are marvelously useful. The best defense I can offer semicolons is to note that Shirley Jackson used them. Brilliantly. So should you! (Also brilliantly, if you can manage it.)
The occasional sentence fragment isn’t going to kill anyone. That said, too many of them back to back to back (as I’ve particularly noted in, for some reason, science-fiction-type writing), though they seem to be intended to evoke a kind of muscular, hairy-chested, deodorant-eschewing virility, end up sounding like asthma.
“Discrete” means “separate” or “distinct”; “discreet” means “prudent” or “careful.” You lot seem to get that wrong a lot, I must note.
That which precedes thunder is not lightening (though “lightening” is a fine word, in its place) but lightning.
The thing at the beginning of a book generally written by a person other than the author is a foreword; it’s not a forward. You’d be shocked (or perhaps you wouldn’t be; I certainly got numbed over the decades) to know how many people who work in publishing never get that right.
The commonest error that makes it past editors, copy editors, and proofreaders is “lead” where “led” is meant. Keep your eyes peeled!
If you love something no end, you love it wholly, passionately, to distraction. (If you love something to no end, you love it hopelessly and pointlessly, I guess.)
A thing centers on another thing; it does not center around it. Even I, who understand spatial relationships and geometry about as much as I understand money, which is to say barely at all, know that.
It is no more incorrect—which is to say it is not incorrect at all—to write “The weather forecast is encouraging; hopefully, we’ll leave on our trip tomorrow” than it is to write “There was an accident; happily, no one was injured” or even (or even especially) “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Distaste for “hopefully” used as a disjunct adverb—that is, an adverb that modifies an entire sentence or expresses the mood of the speaker rather than modifies a particular verb—is irrational. Don’t be irrational.
It is incorrect to say that “irregardless” is not a word. Of course it’s a word. It’s a grisly buffoon of a word.4
The word “myriad” can be used as either a noun or an adjective, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. (Live by citing historical precedent, die by citing historical precedent, but I’d point out to the “‘Myriad’ is not a noun!” crowd that “myriad” was a noun well before it was ever wielded as an adjective.5)
“Until” is a word. “Till” is a word. “Till,” in the sense of “until,” is an older word than “until,” thus it is certainly not an abbreviated version of it. “Til” and “’til” are twee affectations, wielded by the fairies who live at the bottom of my garden, who also tend to write “mischievious.” And “’till,” which I’ve occasionally seen, is utter madness. [Confidential to the “A till is a cash register drawer!” crowd (which I think is the same crowd as the “‘Myriad’ is not a noun!” crowd): Wait till you hear about bows you wear in your hair, the bows of ships, and bows you make from the waist.]
It is not enough simply to know that you know the difference between “your” and “you’re”; “there,” “their,” and “they’re”; and “its” and “it’s.” You must pay attention when you are typing them and get them right.
“Work out” is a verb (“I’m going to work out”); “workout” is a noun (“I had a great workout”). The increasingly popular muddying of these two into a universal “workout” is as maddening to me as the use of “everyday” (a fine adjective, as in “everyday occurrences”) where “every day” is meant (as in “I will repeat this point every day till you get it right”).
The phrase “the fact that” can be edited out of nearly any sentence in which it appears, often by simply clipping it to “that.” But if you spend more than twenty-seven seconds trying to pry out a “the fact that” and it won’t sensibly pry out, leave it alone.
Neither Finnegans Wake nor Howards End is spelled with an apostrophe.
The most frequently misspelled famous name I can think of is Edgar Allan Poe’s. The bit in the middle is not Allen.6 Also, for some odd reason, Ian McKellen’s. His surname is not McKellan. The latter particularly is as easy to get right as it is to get wrong, so you might as well get it right.
Thirty-one things is more than enough for a list, don’t you think so?
Oops.
The Fine Print
Thank you for being here, thank you for following, thank you especially for subscribing. All of this substackery of mine is free and will remain that way, which means that if you have chosen to contribute to its and my upkeep,7 in larger or smaller ways, you are doing something you don’t have to do, which makes your generosity that much more resonant, and I am profoundly grateful. If you’re not yet part of that contributing crew and there’s a part of you that’s thinking “Who would have thought that apostrophes, commas, and ancient show business anecdotes could be so much fun?” and you choose to join the crew, I will be eternally (or at least monthly or annually) in your debt.
Benjamin
See no. 12. As I like to say: Rules are meant to be broken. By me.
Originally “man,” and what a fine improvement that improvement was. Also, as long as we’re down here, “to seek out new life and new civilizations” is a gorgeously phrased phrase, much better than “to seek out new life and civilizations” would have been. Repetition, thoughtfully and deliberately wielded rather than unconsciously, sloppily allowed to occur, can do great things.
Post-publication addendum: It was suggested to me that a problem with the alteration of “no man” to “no one” is that it negates the very lives and civilizations that already inhabit the strange new worlds the Enterprise is exploring in its ongoing mission. That is, I must admit, a good point.
As they won’t notice if you set off most of your dialogue with “said” rather than with fancyisms like “declared,” “averred,” “beseeched,” “importuned,” what have you.
The fact that—or do I just mean “That”?—the sort of word folk who champion words like “irregardless” wouldn’t be caught dead using them themselves might be taken as revealing.
Speaking of which, did you know that “uninterested” and “disinterested” each entered our language carrying the meaning that most of us now insist belongs to the other?
Edgar’s central name (it’s not really his middle name; he arrived in the world as plain old Edgar Poe, and the extra, euphony-establishing bit was bestowed on him by John and Frances Allan, who sort of kind of but not quite ever adopted Edgar after the death of his parents) is misspelled not once but twice in the credits of the 1963 Roger Corman film The Haunted Palace, which, as it happens, is based on a story not by Poe but by H. P. Lovecraft.
And Sallie’s!
I overthink my sentences when I post comments to your thoughts. I want to say how much I enjoyed this post and how it reminded me of Dreyer's English, which I read right through with like enjoyment.
I'm going to hit Post before I edit myself into oblivion.
I recently saw an example of the confusion of forward and foreword in the New York Times, and sent an email to the author. It was returned as undeliverable, presumably with no forwarding address.