by Ben Yagoda
We brought wine, cheese and snacks to the party.
We brought wine, cheese, and snacks to the party.
That said, in order to prevent ambiguity, you sometimes need to use the Oxford comma.
The greatest singing duos in history are Simon and Garfunkel, Jan and Dean, and Brooks and Dunn.
I am thankful for my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.
The OC is also called for when the items in the list are independent clauses or are long.
Bill washed up, I took a shower, and we all went to sleep.
For furnishing his dorm room, he brought all his Boy Scout ribbons, the home-run ball Chase Utley personally autographed for him in 2007, and a refrigerator his mother picked out for him at Target.
5. ;
My initial thought is to limit this entry to one sentence: “If you feel like using a semicolon, lie down until the urge goes away.”
That is because when my students utilize this piece of punctuation, a substantial majority of them utilize it incorrectly. Just this past semester, a student’s article for a feature writing class had this: The Delaware Welcome Visitors Center is a sight for sore eyes; literally. What she needed was a dash or a colon—pieces of punctuation I have already employed three times in this entry. (For the other problems in the sentence, see ”Apostrophe” and “Literally.”)
But while it is tempting to outlaw semicolons and just move on, that would be too easy. For one thing, there is a particular circumstance when a semicolon absolutely has to be used. This is a series of three or more items, one or more of which contain a comma. Thus:
I’ve lived in Madison, Wisconsin; Wilmington, Delaware; and Toledo, Ohio.
You can see the confusion that would result if the semicolons were replaced by commas, or nothing. A semicolon is called for in only one other situation, and it really isn’t that hard to grasp. A semicolon can be used to connect two independent clauses if the clauses aren’t already linked by conjunctions (and, but, although, etc.).* This can be quite useful if the clauses are short, and a period would create an unintended Hemingway or See-Dick-Run sound:
I got home last night; Bill was already there.
A colon or dash could also be employed in such sentences, but these marks imply an “and therefore” or an “and here’s what I mean” connection between the two elements. A semicolon suggests a relationship as well, but a more subtle or complicated one.
John Updike wrote sixty-three books; I wonder how he found time to sleep.
I really like Sauvignon Blanc; Chardonnay is too oaky for my tastes.
Just remember: use this piece of punctuation in a series whose elements have commas, or a sentence consisting of two complete sentences. Otherwise, step away from the semicolon.
6. :
The colon presents two issues of correctness. The first is simple: do not use more than one of them in a sentence or you will seriously confuse the reader.
The second concerns capitalization after a colon. If what follows isn’t a complete sentence, do not capitalize (unless the first word is a proper noun).
The president listed three economic goals: lower taxes, increased trade and more jobs.
If what follows the colon is a complete sentence, follow house style; if there is no house style, follow your own lights, but be consistent.
I follow a simple principle: To thine own self be true.
I follow a simple principle: to thine own self be true.
7. “ ”
a. Doubling Down
With two exceptions, in the United States one always uses double quotation marks (“like this”) rather than the single quotes, or “inverted commas,” favored in the United Kingdom and the former and current outposts of the British Empire (‘like this’). Seems simple enough, but recently students have grown unaccountably fond of using single quotes, not so much for actual quotations but for ironic scare quotes and one- or two-word catchphrases. (Using quotation marks for anything other than quoting what someone said or wrote, or in rendering titles of books or movies and the like, is usually a bad idea stylistically, but that’s a topic for Part III). So:
[We’re devoting Friday to some serious ‘day drinking.’]
We’re devoting Friday to some serious “day drinking.”
The two exceptions: single quotes are properly used in the United States in newspaper headlines—such as ford to city: ‘drop dead’—and in quotes within quotes:
“When I walked in at three in the morning,” he said, “my mom was like, ‘You’re grounded.’”
b. Go Inside
[Tonight we’re seeing “My Fair Lady”.]
[“I feel like going to the beach this weekend”, he said.]
Students and other people seem to find it irresistible these days to place periods and commas outside quotation marks. And why shouldn’t they? The stuff inside the quote marks is a unit, and thus it would appear logical to put punctuation outside it. Indeed, doing so is correct, assuming that you live in the British Isles. But in America, we never put commas or periods outside quotation marks. And so this is an easy one to remember. Never outside, always inside.
Tonight we’re seeing “My Fair Lady.”
“I feel like going to the beach this weekend,” he said.
Bear in mind that this applies only to periods and commas. We in the United States are fine with putting every other kind of punctuation outside of quotation marks unless the punctuation is part of the quote. Indeed, I think I can say without fear of contradiction that semicolons and colons never go inside quotation marks.
I am so excited to be singing Rodgers and Hart’s “Have You Met Miss Jones?”!
Bob’s favorite word is “chillax”; isn’t yours “ginormous”?
8. ( )
There are three relevant rules for parentheses themselves:
If you set down an open one (with the outside of the curve facing left), you have to eventually set down a closed one, with the outside of the curve facing right. (Don’t laugh—I have encountered such orphan parentheses on lots of occasions.)
You can’t follow a set of parentheses immediately with another set of parentheses, unless you’re being cute. Being cute is a risky game.
If by any chance you feel you need to use a pair of parentheses within a pair of parentheses, first of all, see if there is a way to avoid this. If there isn’t, use brackets ([]) instead of parentheses for the interior pair. That reminds me that the only other common use for brackets is to briefly clarify something ambiguous or deleted within a quotation.
When Haldeman said that John Dean was about to testify, Nixon replied, “That’s a load of [expletive deleted].”
The content inside parentheses (TCIP) has to conform to a lot of rules, many of them relating to the relationship between the TCIP and the material that comes before it. If both are complete sentences (and remember that TCIP can be more than one sentence), follow this pattern.
I loved the play last night. (The rest of the audience seemed to feel otherwise. Or so it seemed.)
If TCIP is not a complete sentence, then:
Do not put any punctuation immediately before or after the open parenthesis.
Make the first word of TCIP lowercase, unless a proper noun.
No punctuation right before the close parenthesis, with the occasional exception, in informal writing, of an exclamation point or question mark.
Choose whether or not to use any punctuation after the close parenthesis based on the particular needs of the sentence.
Here are some examples, all of them in the form of song titles (parenthetical song titles being a splendid and underappreciated genre). The titles are given in lowercase so as to show proper capitalization, and closing punctuation is included.
(You gotta) fight for your right (to party).
There’s a kind of hush (all over the world).
You can look (but you better not touch).
I (who have nothing).
Don’t come home a drinkin’ (wit
h lovin’ on your mind).
Alone again (naturally).
If I said you had a beautiful body (would you hold it against me)?
What about punctuation when the parentheses come in the middle of sentence? Simply act as though the parens were not there, and put the appropriate punctuation at the end of the close parenthesis. (This is the opposite of what you do with em-dashes. Go figure.)
Weighing in on the question were Bernstein (against it), Gallo (for it), and Allenson (undecided).
C. Words
1. THE SINGLE MOST COMMON MISTAKE IS THE MOST EASILY FIXABLE MISTAKE
Simply put, this is to clean up after yourself. Writing on computers leads to a category of sloppy error that was rare in typewriter days and probably nonexistent when people used pen on paper: forgetting to delete a word.
[The president announced an initiative that would will create a new academic department.]
“Policing the area,” as it were, is an aspect of attentiveness or mindfulness, and it’s not hard to do. So do it.
2. SPELLING
a. Homophone-phobia
Spell-check programs are great. Spell-check programs are a disaster.
Let me explain.
Back in the old days, students would frequently make spelling mistakes like embarass (instead of embarrass) or influencial (instead of influential). No more. Modern word processing programs put squiggly red lines under misspelled words or, better yet, silently correct them (as mine just tried to do with embarass).
The programs are not perfect, even on their own terms. My version of Microsoft Word accepts miniscule unsquiggled, even though the correct spelling is minuscule, and alright even though all right is preferred by every authority I’m aware of. And although Word does in fact indicate that momento (as opposed to memento) is an error, many of my students apparently don’t believe it, because they go ahead and write momento anyway. I wonder about that, and sentences I get along the lines of:
“The [pengellem] is swinging fully against finance reform,” Vogel said.
It is actually quite rare for me to get an assignment with a word as badly misspelled as pengellum, but I’ll devote a minute to this example, because I feel for the student. She was reporting on Vogel’s speech, and rightly recognized that this was a good quote. There was this squirrelly word in it, however. She could sense it was an important word—it was what made the quote a good one, in fact—but she had no idea how to spell it. The only alternative offered by spell-check was entellus, which was surely wrong—and the dictionary didn’t seem to be any help, either. So she just left it. This is another example of the Blind Spot Problem (BSP), the dilemma of not knowing enough to know what you don’t know.
Even though I feel for her, and I recognize that the Blind Spot Problem is profound, I still wrote “NO NO NO” in the margin. What could she have done to avoid this fate?
Have read more. If she had, she would have come across and learned the word pendulum.
Pick up the paper dictionary and read the whole pen- section. There aren’t that damn many words in there.
Alternatively, seek out friends and keep asking, “What’s a word for something that swings, and starts with pen?” until you find someone who knows.
Back to the far more common spelling problems. Spell-check, in many ways a wonderful innovation, has caused spelling muscles—never especially robust to begin with—to atrophy to the point that they now have the firmness of mint jelly. Even worse, it’s inspired a false sense of confidence, so that students would never even think of checking the spelling of a word in the dictionary.
One major consequence is a sharp increase in the number of bungled homophones—homophones being a pair of words that sound the same but mean different things. A lot of times the mistakes create unintentional humor, and make me want to concoct snarky, New Yorker–style headings, as in:
HE JUST WANTED TO LEND DUDES MONEY
A self described loaner, he wasn’t given to hanging out and the male bonding.
IF THERE IS A MOTE AROUND YOUR HOUSE, CASE IT OUT
These zoning codes might restrict a person from building a mote around her house.
But a little of this comedy goes a long way, and in any case doesn’t win your writing a great deal of respect. Here are some of the most commonly confused words; study them:
Don’t confuse this… with this…
Accept: Verb = approve of. Except: Preposition or conjunction indicating difference, as in everyone except Jon went to the party.
Allusion: reference, usually literary. Elusion: no such word.
Illusion: fantasy.
Allude: make reference to.
Elude: escape.
Illude: no such word.
Allusive: characterized by having a lot of references.
Elusive: hard to capture or pin down.
Illusive: no such word.
Alusory: no such word.
Elusory: no such word.
Illusory: having the qualities of an illusion.
Affect: Noun = in psychology, emotional display. (Accent on first syllable.) Verb = have an impact on. Effect: Noun = impact. Verb = cause, as in effect change.
Aisle: corridor or row. Isle: island; should be used only in proper names, such as Isle of Man and British Isles.
Bare: Adjective = naked. Bear: Noun = fur-covered animal. Verb = carry, as in a burden; withstand.
Bass: (rhymes with pass) a kind of fish; (rhymes with face) a low note or the stringed instrument that plays same. Base: Noun = a low common denominator; basis. Verb = establish. Adjective = low, vulgar, mean.
Capital: Noun = city that’s the seat of government for a state or country; money. Adjective = uppercase, as in letter; death, as in punishment; excellent, as in idea. Capitol: the building where a legislature meets; specifically, the domed building in Washington, D.C., that houses Congress.
Cite: Verb = attribute to a source. Noun (informal) = attribution. Sight: Noun = eyesight.
Site: Noun = place, frequently a Web site.
Cue: Noun = a stick you play pool with. Verb (can be followed by up) = prepare a record or other piece of music to be played. Queue (commonly British): Noun = a line you stand in. Verb (can be followed by up) = wait in line.
Complimentary: free of charge; characterized by or having to do with praise, as in a complimentary letter. Complementary: having the quality of going well together, as in complementary colors. (Extreme complications present themselves in the verb form. One would say, That lipstick compliments your eyes, even though lipstick and eyes may be complementary colors. Oh, well.)
Cord: string or thin rope; quantity of firewood; ribbed fabric, as in corduroy. Chord: a pleasing combination of musical notes; (metaphorically) a feeling or emotion. One strikes a chord, not a cord.
Faze: disconcert, disturb, or distract. Phase: Noun = period or stage in a process. (Interestingly, the Star Trek weapon is a “phaser” even though it presumably fazes its victims.)
Forward: every meaning (adjective, adverb, verb, noun) except for introductory material to a book, which is Foreword.
Hardy: able to withstand hardship, as in a plant. Hearty: vigorous and enthusiastic, as in a laugh.
Its: possessive of it. It’s: contraction of it is.
Lead: Noun = the element; rhymes with said. Verb = first-, second-, and third-person plural present tense of to lead; rhymes with heed. Led: Verb = past tense of to lead. (Note that past tense of mislead is misled.)
Naval: having to do with the navy. Navel: the belly button and the kind of orange, because the thing at the top looks like a navel.
Palate: roof of the mouth, or, metaphorically, sense of taste. Palette: tray on which a painter arranges colors, or, metaphorically, the techniques and ideas an artist draws on.
Pallet: a small platform usually made of wood.
Past: referring to former times. Passed: past tense of pass. On a related point, baseball is the national pastime, not the national pasttime.
&nbs
p; Principal: Noun = the head of a school or a key participant in an enterprise. Adjective = first or among the first in importance. Principle: Noun = a basic assumption or ethical standard.
There: used to indicate a place or pronoun used (with is or are) to begin a clause. Their: possessive of they.
They’re: contraction of they are.
Through: preposition indicating movement from one side of something to another. Threw: past tense of throw.
Waive: Verb = dispense with or put aside, as with a requirement or rule. Wave: Noun = that in which water, air, or light travels. Verb = move around in the air.
Who’s: contraction of who is. Whose: preposition denoting ownership or association.
Your: possessive of you. You’re: contraction of you are.
b. The Blind Spot, Yet Again
In a particularly sloppy sort of spell-check error, the writer knows very well that he or she has typed the wrong word—or would know if he or she took even a couple of seconds to look over the sentence. The words have completely different meanings and don’t sound exactly or sometimes even vaguely alike: thought instead of though, for example, on instead of one, or weird instead if wired. But the writer has come to rely on the squiggly red line, and the squiggly red line is no help. Some of these mistakes have become so common that I think the writers don’t actually realize they’re wrong. For example:
Advise (verb) instead of advice (noun).
Breathe (verb) instead of breath (noun).