Farthermore

In 1997, Isuzu introduced the new tagline “Go Farther.” Last year, Ford introduced the new tagline “Go Further.”  So now I’m hopelessly confused (not that I wasn’t already). When should a copywriter use farther vs. further?

As usual, my muse, Grammar Girl, has the answer: “use 'farther' for physical distance and 'further' for metaphorical, or figurative, distance. It's easy to remember because 'farther' has the word 'far' in it, and ‘far’ obviously relates to physical distance.”

I should have been satisfied with GGirl’s explanation. But since I’m a person perversely driven to go farther, further or both whether I’m driving a Ford or an Isuzu, I couldn’t stop myself from clicking on the next Google result. At that spiffy little link, Merriam-Webster (a.k.a. m-w.com) really had its grammar jammer on:

            “Farther and further have been used more or less interchangeably throughout most of their history, but currently they are showing signs of diverging. As adverbs they continue to be used interchangeably whenever spatial, temporal, or metaphorical distance is involved. But where there is no notion of distance, further is used.”

That’s way too temporal for me, m-w.com. The farther I get away from that definition the better.

Which brings us to the issue of using the words “farthermost” and “furthermore.” Oh, please, MaliaMania,” I hear you begging, “don’t go there, spatially, metaphorically or otherwise.”

Words Gone Wild

After stuffing themselves on turkey and dressing yesterday on Thanksgiving, I bet some of your relatives headed for the couch and said they felt nauseous.

Many people think nauseous means to feel sick. It actually means to cause nausea.  So when people say they are nauseous, what they’re really saying is that they’re causing people around them to feel sick. Which, depending on your birth order or other factors, may be much more accurate in your family dynamic. But when you’re commenting on the state of your own digestive system, you should say, “I feel nauseated.”

Another commonly misused word is peruse. As I did for years, you might think peruse means to skim or glance over something. It actually means to review something carefully or in-depth. In other words, the perceived definition is actually opposite of the true definition.

Here’s one more before I go get a turkey sandwich for breakfast. Some people think bemused means amused or slightly tickled about something. What it really means is confused.

What other incidents of word confusion have you heard at your Thanksgiving table or elsewhere?

Straight Flush

The first time someone told me they wanted me to “flush” out an idea for an ad, I thought they were telling me to deposit said idea in the porcelain throne, shut the lid and tearfully wave buh-bye as it swirled toward the sanitary sewer.

It didn’t take me long to realize that they really wanted me to “flesh” out my idea, which may sound a little Dexter or Halloweenish, but at least it’s less scatological than flushing it out.  Note that I only used that $100 word here because no one will ever let me use it in an ad.

Over the years, I have amassed anecdotal evidence that indicates that between 49 and 58 percent of people in advertising use the word flush when they mean flesh, depending how much they’re into Mad Men and how many times they’ve watched The Crazy Ones.

Before I damage my current and future earning capability in the advertising industry by being an insufferable know-it-all, I will turn over the task of explaining the difference between flesh vs. flush to Merriam-Webster.

Colon-oscopy

Spoiler alert: this blog has nothing to do with your large intestine, so you can relax and stop clenching your gluteus maximus. Instead it is a brief examination of the most misunderstood and undervalued punctuation mark, the colon.

For decades, the colon was primarily used after the salutation in a business letter, for example, Dear Senator Sequestration: or Dear Representative Runamuck:

In the age of texts, many people have transformed the poor colon from respectable punctuation mark into a disturbing array of emoticons, such as :-(  or :-) or O:-) which stands for “angel: and :-# which stands for “braces.”

As a writer who uses real words, you can help return the colon to its former grandeur, just make sure you only use it after a complete sentence, never after a sentence fragment. Also keep this in mind: the information that comes after the colon should clarify or expand on the sentence that came before it. For example, Malia has two favorite ways to celebrate her birthday: hanging out in the waiting room of a geriatrician’s office in order to feel young, and throwing a party with a clown and a pony to feel even younger.

Some grammar experts suggest replacing the colon in your sentence with the word “namely” to mentally verify that you’ve used it correctly. Malia has two alternate ways to celebrate her birthday, namely, pretending she’s learning to ride a bike in order to feel young and sucking on a pacifier to feel even younger.

Now, raise your hand if you’d rather have the lining of your intestine examined with a long, flexible, tubular instrument instead of learning any more about proper use of colons.

Corporate Circumlocution

Yeah, I know. Seeing the word “circumlocution” probably made you want to run away from my blog like it was chasing you with a butcher knife in the opening scene of a crime show. I only used that highfalutin’ word because I saw it in this other nerdy-cool blog. I won’t tell you what other nerdy-cool blog until you suffer through reading mine.

Circumlocution is using a slew of words when one will do. I’ve done it before, and probably will again. But if I do, I expect one of you to call me on it in order to afford me an opportunity to utilize a different approach in the event that someone has a requirement for writing in the near future.

Whew. I should have ended that sentence after “will call me on it.” At the very least, I should have written it like so: But if I do, I expect one of you to call me on it, so I’ll consider a different approach next time.

Circumlocution shows up most often in corporate, legal and academic writing. I give the lawyers a break because (a) they have to put up with a lot of lawyer jokes (b) starting a war of words with a corporate legal department never ends well. For the rest of you, heads up. Even if you’re not a writer, everybody writes something from time to time. The six rules below will help you choose words that get to the point in business letters and emails.

-Never use utilize. Use “use.”

-In a timely manner? Think “quickly” or “promptly.”

-Aforementioned, thusly, and “that being said?” Don’t even go there.

-With the exception of?  Use except.

-Carry on a conversation? Talk.

-At this point in time? Would “now” work instead? Or you can at least drop “in time.”

You’ll find other good examples of circumlocution and a fun graphic in this article in PR Daily.

What other cumbersome or convoluted phrases do you often see in business letters? 

Passive Aggressive

A professor once told me in a moment of frustration, brought on by reading too many English 101 papers, that freshman “don’t know their passive from a hole in the ground.”

I can still see her scrawling across the paper she was grading, “For clarity in your writing, focus on using active voice instead of passive.” When the student got the paper back, he probably took one look and went out for a beer. After all, the whole passive/active thing is hard to wrap your head around when you have no fermented barley and hops in your bloodstream.

Because I was young and impressionable, I latched onto the professor’s outrage and developed a tendency to be passive aggressive. By that I mean I get a little aggressive when someone changes my copy from active voice to passive voice.

This is active voice: Malia adores her husband Steve.

This is passive voice: Steve is adored by Malia.

Malia is the actor or agent in this sentence, the person/subject doing the action, so the initial emphasis should be on her. Steve is the object or recipient of Malia’s action, so to speak. Hubba, Hubba

This is even worse passive voice: Steve is adored. It’s worse because it begs the question by whom?

This is still passive voice: Steve is adored by many women.

This is active voice: Many women adore Steve. It also begs a question, but not one related to grammar: Does Malia know and is she OK with it?

If, unlike me, you are a big fan of passive voice, you might have a future in the Oval Office. Wikipedia says the passive phrase “Mistakes were made” was used by* Ulysses S. Grant in 1876, by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and by Bill Clinton in 1997, inspiring the labels “past exonerative tense” and “past evasive tense.” Clearly, using the passive voice comes in handy for acknowledging error, but deflecting responsibility for having made a mistake.

As American journalist Sidney J. Harris was once quoted as saying, "We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice--that is, until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'"


Whew, that's some heady stuff. Is it time for a beer yet?

*"Used by," as used here, is also passive.

Who's That

It seems to be a trend that has reared its ugly head on Fox News and NPR alike, so it can’t be blamed on America’s great political divide. I don’t know where it came from or whether the cat dragged it in, but I do know that hearing this particular verbal faux pas is as grating to me as a knife being handle-dragged, blade down and screeching through a metal sharpener.

I’m talking about the propensity of reporters and pundits these days to use “that” when I think they should use “who.” I’ve always believed you should use who when you refer to people and that when you refer to objects. Just the other day, I heard someone on a network who shall remain nameless casually say this: “The people that are responsible for this are never around to accept blame.” Horrors. Referring to people as “that” and not “who” seems to relegate them to having the humanity of a cold, damp concrete wall.

But as it usually happens, just when I find another reason to preen and glow over being so indisputably right, someone comes along to broom-slap me off my pedestal. Today that someone was my idol Grammar Girl. She quotes this from the American Heritage Dictionary:

            “It is entirely acceptable to write either the man that wanted to talk to you, or the man who   wanted to talk to you.”

Apparently, even Chaucer flagrantly (at least in my book) used "that" when referring to people. But even though I may stand corrected, that doesn’t mean I still won’t secretly smile whenever someone uses “who” the way I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Changing the Definition of Dictionary

A dictionary used to be the definitive definer of words for writers like me. Printed, unabridged, hardcover versions had jackets the size of bath towels, and were heavy enough to be used as murder weapons and cause hernias and sciatica. The worse thing you could say about a word someone used to insult you on the playground was “That’s not even in the dictionary.”

So you can imagine my surprise this week when I read that venerable purveyors of news, ranging from BBC News to Reuters to the Chicago Tribune, allegedly reported that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) had just added the words twerk and selfie. That was so not true, slate.com said. Yes, they were added, not to the hulking Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that I once rented a U-Haul to transport during career moves, but to the Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO), also from Oxford University Press (OUP?).

According to OUP, which sounds like something you’d exclaim while potty-training a two year old, the hipper ODO focuses on current English and includes modern meanings and uses of words. The OED, on the other hand, is a historical dictionary with core words and meanings in English that earned their place over more than 1,000 years, including many that are now obsolete and historical. Which makes me ask myself or anyone else who will listen: 1) Why should something that was “not even in the dictionary” yesterday be in it today? 2) Why did I have to haul around 1,000 years of words for years? (3) How long will it take for twerk, twerking and twerkalicious to become obsolete enough for the OED? (4) Do I need to write another diatribe about acronyms?

Search Engine Style Guide

Ever since I graduated from the J-School and started writing for a living, I’ve been walking around with a library of style guides in my brain. I’m surprised I can still hold my head up, or that I haven’t succumbed to spontaneous mental combustion.

Good news, Internetlings. Apparently, we’re on the cusp of a paradigm shift that will enable me to hit delete and clear my brain of everything I ever learned about words and how to spell and use them from the plethora of style guides and manuals that have festered in our society. The principle of collective collaboration is about to prevail.

Spell checker was the first slide down the slippery slope. Although, you’ll find that relying too heavily on its bodacious cerebral brawn will cause you to end up with sentences such as, “The team razed the school mascot under the setting son.”

An even newer brave new world entered my orbit the other day when I mentioned to a client that the editors of the 2013 AP Stylebook had decided the right way to write “healthcare” is “health care.” The client was having none of that, primarily because the content in question was for a website, sometimes written Web site or web site depending on whom you choose to Like or Follow. “In a case like this,” she said, “we defer to which search term is more popular among online users.” Survey says? Healthcare, one word – take that, loser AP!

“You know what this means,” my evil twin (ET) whispers. “If everybody who’s online right now writes something and spells dog as dawg, or cat as kat, the new spelling will become the most popular, and we can collectively, like, band together, and, like, totally change the English-speaking world.”  Better yet, ET continues, “Let’s really stick it to the man and all spell website as websyte.” Who’s game?

Symbol-lism Generation

The words I work with on a daily basis have developed anger issues. Much to their dismay, they are being replaced by a horrifying array of symbols. My precious words have come to grips with their domination by symbols in tweets and web addresses. But they’re prickly mad when they are casually dismissed and replaced in regular writing, not unlike the blindsided employees of a newly acquired company.

According to an informal poll of words, the biggest culprits are the evil “a” symbols -- & (the artist formerly known as and) and @ (at).

The other day, I saw an article in which bacon and eggs were described as turkey bacon & egg substitute. I have no problem with those alleged healthier options to the old standby. It’s the ampersand that’s just wrong. People worth their salt and pepper take the time to link any pair with “and.” It’s only two more keystrokes, and you don’t even have to use the shift key like you do with &.

As far as I can tell, there are only two instances where you should use an ampersand in place of “and” in sentences:

--When two screenwriters collaborate on a script, meaning they are a writing team, the Writer’s Guild of America says you should link their names with &, the symbol, in the credits.  But if the writers wrote separately, and may not have even consulted with each other, you join their names with “and.”

--If you’re using a company name, such as Smith & Wesson, whose brand name or trademark uses an ampersand, instead of “and.” Note that some brands have gotten even trickier and replaced the & with a + such as Bausch + Lomb.

As for @, the only time you should even think about using it instead of the word “at” is in a web address, twitter handle, tweet or maybe a text. Cautionary note: I’ve read that writing the sentence “I’ll meet you @ the store” will clog your arteries faster than bacon and eggs. Okay, it won’t. I made that up because I dislike @ so much.

What say ye web developers and designers who love brevity and are always pressed for space? Is it acceptable to use &, at least in menu headers and page headlines? Speak now or forever hold your piece, which is not the same as ☮.

Trademark Trashing

Part of my job as a copywriter is to take what other people have written and make it better.  One of the things I see most often is an inadvertent tendency to turn trademarked words, which need initial caps, into generic words, which don’t. 

Some of these words have slipped into our language and lost their trademark value, such as old-school linoleum, thought to be the first product name that became a generic in the early 20^th century. Others like aspirin, is still a trademark of Bayer in dozens of countries, but considered a generic term in the U.S.

Many trademarks should not be used alone, but paired with a generic product descriptor.  For example, never write “The house has a jacuzzi,” but rather “The house has a Jacuzzi® whirlpool bath.”

Here are the Top Seven trademarks I often see used incorrectly:

Jacuzzi® is owned by Jacuzzi Brands. The brand should always be used with a generic descriptor, such as Jacuzzi® hot tubs. Never add an ‘s to make Jacuzzi possessive.

Jet Ski® is a trademark of Kawasaki. The generic term is “personal watercraft.”

Bubble Wrap® is owned by Sealed Air Corporation. Don’t use it alone ‒ always say “Bubble Wrap® cushioning material.”

Popsicle® ice pop, Creamsicle® cream pop, Fudgsicle® fudge pop, etc. are all part of the SICLE™ trademark. Always use each with the applicable “pop” descriptor.

VELCRO® closely guards its trademarks. At last count it had 29 of them. Always use the word “brand” and a descriptor. If it’s not a VELCRO® brand fastener, use the generic term “hook and loop fastener.”

BAND-AID® brand is often incorrectly written as bandaid, but as far as I can tell, BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages is still a trademark of Johnson & Johnson.

Weed Eater® is a Husqvarna Consumer Outdoor Products brand and should never be written as weedeater.

If you’ve used dumpster like many of us, you’ll be glad to know the "trademarked and uppercased" Dumpster has been trashed. Earlier this year, the AP Stylebook officially sanctioned dumpster as the generic term for any large metal trash bin. Other long-time brands you may be tempted to use without their trademarks include Plexiglas®, Xerox®, Hula Hoop® Kleenex®, Ping-Pong®, Frisbee®, and Styrofoam®. Newer brands include Post-It® Brand Products and the TASER® conducted electrical weapon. Never write taser in lowercase. 

What other trademarks do you see misused and abused in marketing? Has anything else you see here become generic? What about in magazine writing and fiction? Are caps enough, with no registration mark needed?

Comma Sutra

If you thought this post would be about Kama Sutra, the Hindu art of marital pleasure, I guess I’ve misled you into reading another of my diatribes about punctuation, a significantly less scintillating topic. Sorry, but copywriters are all about hooking people with headlines. We just can’t help ourselves, even when we assume the Lotus Position or fetal position, and then fervently meditate, suck our thumbs or both, none of which is a scintillating practice at all. That last sentence apparently sent me into a comma frenzy, which I already regret.

 “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.”

                                                                                                        — Oscar Wilde

 "I can definitely relate to that kind of productivity problem, Oscar baby."

                                                                                                        — Malia Kline

Since my beloved AP Stylebook and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style didn’t come out until the 1950s, I’m sure it was tough back when Mr. Wilde wrote Lady Windemere’s Fan, since all he probably had to guide him was this 1838 grammar book by Robert Lowth as uncovered by Grammar Girl.

Whoa! When the second sentence of a grammar text has eight commas, two semicolons, one colon, and the word “hath” twice in one sentence, you know you’re in big trouble, which brings me to something that hath been bothering me lately. 

Everybody these days starts emails by saying:

Hi Malia

What happened to the comma (Hi, Malia) that we always used back when people wrote letters and the punctuation rules of direct address applied. Maybe people have started dropping the comma because they think “Hi Malia” is like “Dear John,” even though it’s not. Hi needs a comma because it is an interjection like wow. Dear doesn’t need a comma because it is an adjective modifying John.

What do you think? Is "Hi Oscar" the way I should start my email to Oscar Wilde about commas and changing punctuation styles? Or should we just "Quija board" him and see what he spells out?

Hyphen Nation?

Maybe if I lived in a French-Canadian city, or somewhere such as Winston-Salem, Wilkes-Barre or even Fuquay-Varina, I might be natural fan of hyphens. As it is, I have to pause and cogitate every time I use one, fearful that I am making a punctuation faux pas. Judging by writing I see day after day, I just don’t think America is a hyphen nation. I’d go so far as to say that we seem to have a love-hate relationship with hyphens, and we aren’t too crazy about dashes either.

My beloved AP Stylebook describes hyphens as “joiners.” Lest you jump to the conclusion that hyphens like to be dues-paying members of clubs and associations like Hyphens without Borders, Habitat for Hyphens, or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Hyphens, AP Style offers this clarification: “Use hyphens only when not using them causes confusion.” Say what?

Here’s an example: you hyphenate small-business owner, because without the hyphen a reader might think you’re describing a business owner who is short. Got it. But there’s another rule that rightly confounds many people I know. You should hyphenate two words that express a single concept when used as a compound modifier in front of a noun. Before you flash back to your pimply self in middle school grammar class and quit reading, here’s a confusion-free example: you hyphenate fourth quarter when it describes a noun in a sentence such as this: “He scored a fourth-quarter touchdown.” Nix the hyphen if you write “He scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter.” For the same reason, you would write, “She is a well-known woman,” but also “She is also a woman who is well respected” (no hyphen).

I would like to cautiously reveal that if an adverb ends in –ly, you never hyphenate it in front of a noun. But if I add that tidbit, I’m afraid you’ll ride me out of town on a rail, straight toward frosty-cold Minneapolis-St. Paul. If your AP Stylebook happens to be at the cleaners, you can read more about hyphenation in the National Geographic Style Manual.

Acronym Angst Part II

When I first learned there’s a website called AcronymFinder that has more than five million acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms (say what?), I broke out in a sweat and stopped just short of losing my lunch.  I am not a big fan of acronyms, and I would never “friend” one, especially ACE which stands for 361 different things. Yikes!

At the risk of being labeled an acronymophobic (I just put that in to drive the spell checker crazy), I delved further into which parts of society tended to fall into the abyss of acronym abuse.  I was surprised to find that only five of the 361 meanings for ACE fell into the categories of “chat,” slang and pop culture. Organizations and schools had a whopping 159, military and government 91, business and finance 83, science and medicine 70 and IT 55. Don't tell AcronymFinder, but this breakdown doesn't add up to 361, which proves that staring at three letters too long makes your lose your bond with numbers.

I suppose ACE is clever, because it implies you are good at something, but even ASE stood for more than 100 things.  I was afraid to look up how many meanings there were for the acronym ASS.

There are actual whole words out there, people, not just capital letters, and they actually mean something without having to figure them out. If you’re not like me and like acronyms, I’d love to hear your favorites. I promise to keep an open mind. Yeah, right.

Acronym Angst

Maybe I’m suffering from a high BMI (body mass index), undiagnosed ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), or, heaven forbid, not enough HRT (hormone replacement therapy), but medical acronyms give me an unhealthy BP (blood pressure). 

There’s a number on the lab report from my last physical called BUN (blood urea nitrogen), which you’d think had something to do with the size of my spreading derriere, but is really an indication of kidney function. How can I remember if my HDL is too high or too low when I can’t even remember what HDL stands for (high density lipoprotein)?

I knew I was entering health care gobbledygook land years ago when I got my daughter’s immunization record from the pediatrician. When I finally got used to deciphering MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), along came HPV (human papilloma virus) to be immunized against.

Maybe my acronym angst is just the result of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) since it's been raining here most of the summer. All I know is that one time when I was overdosed on acronyms after reading too many news stories, I had to think hard to remember whether DNC stands for a political convention or a gynecological procedure. 

How about you? Does the insane proliferation of acronyms, in medical jargon, sports, texts and tweets, send you on a bullet train to crazy town too?

I Need Help

People often tell me I need help for a variety of reasons, but one in particular keeps rearing its ugly head. I know there are much bigger issues that deserve my righteous indignation, but I can’t help but have a mini melt-down whenever I see the “d” or “ed” carelessly dropped from adjectives. This perversion of the English language makes me want to cover my eyes before the error takes up permanent residence in my brain. But I’m often driving when I see the missing “d,” so I usually resort to just screaming loud enough to wake up the other slightly drooling people in the drive-thru (which is how AP Style says to spell it) or drive-through (if you believe Merriam-Webster instead).

Earlier today, there it was again when I pulled up and barked my order for a chicken sandwich – the biggest “d drop” offender of them all, at least in the South – “ice tea.” I’ve always thought it was “iced tea,” unless you happen to be writing about the American rapper-turned-actor, Ice-T.

After pulling out of the drive–thru back onto Hwy. 74, I got behind a U-Haul (at least YouTube knew how to spell “you"). This orange and white facilitator of a horizontally or downwardly mobile society boasted that it “holds a queen size bed.” Shouldn’t it be queen-sized bed? Or maybe even “queen bed” if you want to avoid the “d” issue altogether?

When I got home, I started worrying that maybe I didn’t know my iced tea from a hole in the ground, so I put “Strunk and White” into my favorite search engine. As fate, karma and SEO would have it, I got a page for “The Strunk and White Homeboys Tote Bag by CafePress. The promotional copy below this enticing item used the words “ice tea machines.” Oh, Strunk! Oh, White! Oh, anybody! Please help me by sharing your insights, rules and ramblings about the “d” dilemma.

Also, what about wax paper? That’s how the leading brand’s box reads, but I always thought it should be “waxed paper.” 

Good with Numbers

Before you panic and click “close,” let me clarify that even though the title of this post is “Good with Numbers,” I’m not talking about math here. Sure, math teachers say there are “rational” numbers, but writers know all numbers are irrational, even when they are properly medicated. And what’s up with that Pythagorean Theorem?

Anyway, as journalism students and writers of any ilk can tell you, AP Style has a passel of rules about numbers, some rational and some not so much. I started wondering why the AP Stylistas listed the rules for using what some might call “numbers” under the headline “numerals.” Ask.com, my go-to-source for rational and irrational information, described the difference this way:

“A number is an idea or a concept in the mind that answers the question “How many?”

Though this concept “in the mind” was getting too cerebral for me already, I bravely trudged on:

 “A number is not viewable or tangible, whereas a numeral is a name or symbol that represents a number. A numeral, unlike a number, can be written down and seen and physically manipulated.”  

Okeydokey, then. Glad we cleared that up. Here’s a quick overview of the numeral/number rules that seem to give clients and others in my world the most trouble:

·        Spell out numbers from one to nine, but use figures for 10 and above

·        Always use figures for ages: The boy is 8 years old. Use hyphens if you use an age as an adjective before a noun: A 5-year-old boy.

·        When you use a numeral as a plural, don’t add an apostrophe (as if it is a possessive). So it should be: The woman is in her 50s (not her 50’s). The crash happened in the 1930s (not 1930’s).

·        Use figures for percent, and note that it’s not per cent (two words). 1 percent, 50 percent off, 2.5 percent, 14 to 15 percent (not 14-15 percent).

*The spell-checker is freaking out about okeydokey, but that’s what Merriam-Webster says, so I’m going with it anyway. Take that, you spell-checking robatoid! So, has anybody got any talk-back or sass-mouth for me about how to write with numbers/numerals?