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.