A bunch of baloney!!

Hey folks. I guess it's been awhile since something urgent in the grammar world caught my attention. I recently started a new book, The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. It's delightful and country, but I've come across a few instances of—gasp—incorrect word choice!

Here's an example:

"I ate a baloney sandwich." Well, if that were true, you'd just be eating a really weird, fake sandwich. Here, the author has confused baloney (phony) with bologna (a large, smoked sausage). That particular word is used more commonly if someone says something, perhaps, that you find a little questionable. "What a bunch of baloney!"

Here's another example:

"I felt a little badly about foisting her on Lou Ann ..." See the problem here? This is one that's commonly confused. Has someone ever asked how you're doing, and you were unsure of whether to say "I'm good" or "I'm well"? Same thing here. The culprit of the confusion is the lowly, misunderstood linking verb. A linking verb simply calls on you to redefine the subject (he is, feels, seems, appears), whereas an action verb describes an action that's taking place (he runs or he paints). Following a linking verb, you use a predicate adjective (good)—not adverb (well). If you were to say "I'm well," you'd be referring to your health—literally, how you are feeling. "I am good" refers to your overall disposition, which is usually what people are asking for in that instance. Good is how you are—you're not really taking action to be that way.

So back to the first example. Bad vs. badly. Feel can be both a linking verb and an action verb. In this sentence, by using badly (adverb), she's saying she literally feels poorly—not very well. I always imagine hands trying touch something, but not having a good sense of touch. What she means to say is that she feels bad (adjective)—she's experiencing guilt. This is because feel is used as a linking verb here, connecting the noun (she) to the predicate adjective (bad). You could just as well say "She is bad." Doesn't make sense to say "She is badly," does it?

Wow, long explanation for two simple words! Now, though, you can confidently respond to someone by saying "I'm good." Just don't say you did something good.

One or Two Spaces?

So I finally got an answer to the question I know you've ALL been wondering about: how many spaces after a period?? Thank you, Grammar Girl. You wanna know? I'll tell you in a minute.

See, I always thought the two spaces thing was so weird. I didn't even find out until about a year ago that people did this. I never learned this, but apparently people everywhere were taught growing up to put two spaces between sentences. Like this. Weird. And it's not even a generational thing necessarily, because my mom was taught to do it, but so was my ex-boyfriend. Somehow I missed the boat.

Stylebooks (AP, Chicago) say not to do it. And Grammar Girl told me why this morning (I read her daily devotionals). She says that when you're using a typewriter, go ahead and put two spaces. This is because typewriters use monotype font, where each character is the same width (i and m take up the same space, for example, because all the letters have serifs). On computers, however, i and m are proportional—fontmakers have made up for this width difference, so two spaces are not necessary.

Long explanation, short answer. I feel validated. Cheers all around.

Style

I've been thinking a lot lately about the style I use when I'm writing personal things (e-mails, Facebook posts, this blog). Do I use Chicago style? AP? Should I even care? Of course I think about this kind of thing—I'm an editor. Every serial comma or lack thereof invites discussion. Every spaced ellipses makes a blip on my radar. Each errant "comprised of" makes me wonder what went wrong.

So where does that leave me, a lowly blogger? When I was editing solely at a publishing company, I stuck with Chicago style. Easy enough. I really like Chicago. But now I've got another job, one that defers to AP. OK, so I edit with AP at one job and Chicago at another. I can handle that. But when I'm writing things like this, I'm obsessive enough to still want it to be perfect (even though it's just a silly blog post).

Create my own style? Mix of both? That makes me think about what would be a really fun job: working for the University of Chicago Press (or any company like it), sitting around all day debating grammar rules. Deciding what style rules to keep and what to get rid of. Long live the en dash, for example! Go ahead and change Web site to website. This is getting me excited . . . (or should it be ... ?)

Our Evolving Language!

It's interesting the way language changes. If you talk to a child under the age of nine, he will probably tell you he lost the remote control "on accident." If you talk to someone over the age of thirty-five or so, that person will probably use the phrase "by accident." For anyone in between, you could get either one.

A lot of the time language changes because we simply hear things wrong, and we repeat it, and on and on. Some of these are things I've been guilty of. For example, my whole life I said "All the sudden ..." (the correct phrase is "All of a sudden").

Here are some common errors in English—things you probably don't even realize!

* ATM machine (--> ATM)

* beckon call (-->beck and call)

* butt naked (--> buck naked)

* card shark (--> card sharp)

* case and point (--> case in point)

* center around (--> center on/revolve around)

* cohabitate (--> cohabit)

* heart wrenching (--> gut wrenching/heart rending)

* in shambles (--> a shambles)

* just assume (--> just as soon)

* neck in neck (--> neck and neck)

* one of the only (--> one of the few)

* once and a while (--> once in a while)

* plays a factor (--> plays a role/is a factor)

* prophecize (--> prophesy) Sorry, Bob Dylan!!

* Scotch free (--> Scot free)

* simplistic (--> this is kind of derogatory, you usually just mean simple)

* step foot (--> set foot)

* supremist (--> supremacist)

* safety deposit box (--> safe deposit box)

* unthaw (--> thaw)

Careful with Quotes!

I've got a new tip. This one is about when to use quotation marks. This is one of those things that the Chicago Manual of Style is very wishy-washy about, so this is what my boss and I decided: if your reader will get your message (irony, sarcasm) without the quotes, leave them off. So often they're unnecessary, and that can get annoying.

Here's an example. I recently edited a story for someone I know, and I got an e-mail afterward that said, "Thanks for your 'expert' help!" OK. It's possible this person has a weird sense of sarcasm, but it's more likely she's just quote happy. Those quotes there imply that she doesn't trust my judgment, and that she most certainly does NOT think I'm an expert--a slap in the face. Thanks.

So please, save the quotation marks for irony and sarcasm. Reread your sentence, and consider striking them whenever possible. Your reader is probably more clever than you think!

Bad Grammar for a Rainy Day!

I guess you should brake, instead of driving into the fire ...

I don't even know here. It's not your, and it's not you're. It looks Swedish.

What kinds of kids are they selling?

Will they lock me up if I show up?

Is it a trap door?

In Celebration of National Grammar Day ...

So it's official: I'm a freelance editor.

Brown Books called me the other day with a job: a cookbook. Now that things are picking up, they're outsourcing more material. Good news for me! The first thing I did? Bought a red pen.

When it came time to write the invoice, I was at a loss. Do I keep it simple? Make it decorative? That's more my personality. I Googled freelance invoices and stuck with something pretty basic. To be honest, it felt weird demanding payment like that ... on paper ... almost self-indulgent. I'll need to get over that.

In ever cooler news, yesterday was National Grammar Day! I'd love to know how others celebrated. I visited grammar blogs ... nerd alert! For your enjoyment, I'm including some of my favorite PDBG (public displays of bad grammar).

My Top Five Grammar Pet Peeves

OK admit it—you have your own list!

The curse of being an editor is that you can't read (or hear) anything without recognizing things that are wrong. You blow most of it off though because you know that most of it is based on obscure rules. Still, there are some things that make me cringe!

1. Overuse of myself

* Example: Jill and myself will be attending the book signing. UGH. Whenever I hear this, I think it makes the speaker sound self-involved. Why? Because myself is a reflexive pronoun, meaning it should only be used when the subject is referring to itself. A good memory tip? Only use this pronoun (or the others, yourself/himself/themselves) if the subject is the same as the object, i.e., he did it to himself.

2. Not putting a subject in the second half of a compound sentence

* Example: Jacob went to the zoo with Sophie, and played with the monkeys. This is one of the most common things I see, and it drives me crazy. This is a compound sentence, so each side needs a subject. The first half is good; Jacob is doing the action. What about the second half? What's going on? Who is playing with the monkeys? Not only does it sound weird, but it can be misleading. The way to fix this is to remove the comma or to add something like he or they before the word played.

3. Misuse of dashes

* That guy has nice eyes. Trust me-they're deep hazel.

* I read pages 25-34 for class last night.

All right. Now this pet peeve comes from one of my senior year journalism professors. She demanded that we be correct in our dash usage. So, here ya go: hyphen (-), en dash (–), em dash (—). The first example above needs an em dash. These are used like semicolons, but more emphatically; they connect a clause to another clause or phrase. The second example needs an en dash. These are used in "from/to" situations, most commonly in ranges of numbers. Hyphens, believe it or not, are rarely necessary, except in things like phone numbers or connecting words.

4. I versus Me

* Between you and I ...

This is a common overcorrection, because people are taught early on that I is always right (as a subject, at least). In this case, though, the two pronouns follow a preposition, so the pronoun me is actually correct.

5. Heterographs

* They're/their/there, our/are, here/hear, your/you're

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one annoyed by this. Come on people—first grade spelling?

Thanks for reading my rant! Hope you learned something :)

Resolution

I'd seen it coming, so my heart didn't skip a beat this time when I saw his name.

I opened his public profile page, and next to his name it said, aggiungi agli amici, "add to friends." For the last six months, it had been telling me that my friend request was awaiting his confirmation. But now there was no request, no nothing. We clearly weren't friends anymore, so this could only mean one thing: he'd kept me in limbo for six months, through a few drunken and pleading e-mails and a not-so-ingenuous atonement on Yom Kippur, just to delete me from his cyber world on New Year's. It made sense: he always did everything purposefully.