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Text of the page (random words):
here she has distilled punctuation guidance from the chicago manual of style the associated press stylebook the publication manual of the american psychological association and the mla handbook for writers of research papers into one small volume it s a sight to behold i tell you it will be interesting to see what s changed for the new edition for book news and science styles guidance also comes from their preferred dictionaries merriam webster s collegiate dictionary for book and scientific and webster s new world college dictionary for news there is no single preferred dictionary for academic style so guidance is often omitted from part ii the alphabetical list of entries often queried by writers and editors sorry research writers how do you form the plural of denny s the restaurant franchise it s in here the answer is the singular name with no modification per the punctuation panel i m very interested to see who s on the panel for this edition given the death of henry fuhrmann in 2022 anyway there s not much more i can say until i have my copy if you have never owned this book before i suggest preordering it if you like me have a well used copy i also suggest preordering it just do the thing preorder your copy of the best punctuation book period revised edition by june casagrande i promise you won t regret the purchase https www penguinrandomhouse com books 224059 the best punctuation book period revised edition by june casagrande by grammargeddonangel in punctuation reference materials self publishing uncategorized writing april 13 2026 351 words 1 comment lord grey s lisp or how to write speech impediments or not readers of dorothy dunnett might already know where i m heading with this for them i say stop now if you wish nothing new to see here for the rest of you current common practice in the copyediting biz is to minimize representation of speech impediments this purpose is twofold it simplifies the reading and it avoids stereotyped speech however as they say twas not always thus in 1961 specifically in the first book of the lymond chronicle the game of kings we encounter lord grey and his lisp indeed we cannot avoid it as every word containing an s is spelled with a th in its place more s s more th s like this bit following an especially s filled rant ith there no word in the englith language wanting an eth and my personal favorite if i may be allowed to have one athathinth i hope you can see how distracting it is to decipher the actual words of our poor lord grey whose lisp is a temporary issue following a battle wound it disappears later on in the book my initial reaction was to wonder why this choice was made and retained a moment later i realized i m looking at words written and published 65 years ago when the business of copyediting was quite different social sensibilities were not what they are now less attention was paid to negative representations of speech whether they be from physical difficulty or social status or nationality it isn t difficult to find other examples of currently questionable mechanics in dialogue representation but i m not taking the time to do so if you re curious i suggest looking at your own bookshelves or visiting the local library were this being copyedited today i like to think that some tactfully worded queries would be passed along to the writer in hopes that the reader s enjoyment might be increased current practice has us narratively explaining the speaker s issue and perhaps using a sentence or two with the representative misspellings after which things return to normal a reminder every so often is acceptable and perhaps even called for depending on the situation if it were my job i d argue to keep athathinth because well it s amusing to see and not that hard to parse but i would fight to eliminate the bulk of the other th spellings telling readers that the speaker has a pronounced lisp and supporting that with the occasional written reminder is preferable as we think today to thpelling every thingle eth word with the thubthitute th you thee what i m thaying in amy schneider s the chicago guide to copyediting fiction 2023 university of chicago press she gives the following advice which i m happy to say i was doing before i read her book skilled authors provide descriptive hints vocabulary choices and a few creative spellings to suggest the flavor of the character s speech rather than phonetically spelling every accented word i would use affected in this specific example as it s not about accent but you get the gist i am not daring to suggest that dorothy dunnett is not a skilled author far from it however as i said at the start the work of copyediting has changed with time and i strongly suspect that were this work being done today we would see far fewer th s in the text while still being aware of lord grey th lithp by grammargeddonangel in craft dialogue editing language spelling style january 6 2026 559 words 1 comment born in the 1900s or how old am i really i m seeing this a lot of late and it bugs me it bugs me enough that i got out my trusty chicago manual of style 18th edition and looked up decades and centuries sections 9 34 and 9 35 for those playing along at home to see whether i m totally nuts i m not at least not on this particular matter setting aside the question of words versus numerals which is strictly a style issue and not relevant to what bugs me when one says the 1900s not every reader will take away the same sense some like me will understand that to be the first decade of the 20th century while others will wrongly in my opinion but what do i know understand it to mean the whole of the century beginning with 19 the imprecision is the problem context matters always and it s not always clear or logical most times but not always was i born in the 1900s not to my understanding i was born in the late 1950s my maternal grandfather was born in the 1900s in 1901 to be precise both of us were born in the twentieth century using words or numerals there is a matter of taste and thereafter one of consistency do as you please but don t switch back and forth sharp eyed readers will notice and be annoyed i purposefully chose to use one form in the previous paragraph and another in this one in order to make this very point here s where cmos addresses the meat of my problem in 9 35 the editors explain note that the first decade of any century cannot be treated in the same way as other decades though it commonly appears in journalism and may be clear from the immediate context the 2000s could easily be taken to refer not to a decade but to the whole of the twenty first century they suggest leaving the aughts for casual writing and the same for the teens in formal contexts the editors suggest the clarity of the first decade or the years 2000 2009 which may for some be 2001 to 2010 but i m not discussing that particular knotty issue here the lack of a year 0 not being a grammatical problem in any way the second decade or the years 2010 2019 and so on i will further suggest although it is not an issue of grammar but of historical perspective that the further from a given century the writer is the clearer the use of the xx00s becomes that is if i say chaucer wrote during the 1300s readers are unlikely to think i mean during the first decade of the 14th century however referring to the 1900s or heaven forfend the 2000s in this the year of whoever 2025 invites confusion here s where i admit i m unlikely to write what i gave as an example clarity is paramount for an editor and i would write the 14th century fun fact chaucer died in 1400 does that mean he saw the dawn of a new century or the sunset of an old one discuss amongst yourselves don t me in closing then i assure you that while i was born in the 20th century the years from 1900 to 1999 inclusive 1901 to 2000 if your horological leanings work that way i was not born in the 1900s but rather the 1950s i m old but not that old by grammargeddonangel in editing grammar style usage writing july 7 2025 558 words leave a comment follow me down a cornish rabbit hole in the series i m currently reading we are in 19th century cornwall one of the characters uses cornish words in her normal speech great characterization and i freely admit that i ve looked up more than one term which makes me happy i love bumping into unfamiliar words and learning about them that s why i don t fret if a client uses an uncommon term send the readers to the dictionary once or twice maybe more often than that in a book it s good for their continuing education however in this particular case with this specific word i puzzled a bit more than usual the term is pellar it s a cornish word for a witch sorcerer or wizard and according to some etymologists it comes from expeller for one who casts out evil but not as harsh or religious as an exorcist i gather so it s a noun cool why then does it also appear as pellar witch isn t that somewhat redundant we don t speak of exorcist priests so why would we say pellar witch this is the kind of problem that makes me stop reading and start thinking deeper what would i have done had i been the editor on this book well i certainly would not have said don t use this term it makes absolute sense for this character to use the old language and the one to whom she speaks isn t confused by it so there must be some familiarity there even though the listener isn t cornish that s where i stopped thinking deeply i want to keep reading not re edit the book it s this particular example that bothers me we wouldn t say exorcist priest so why would we say pellar witch earlier in the book the term pellar blood appears and that didn t tweak me in the least witch blood is a common concept in the kinds of literature i enjoy i went in search of this word pellar it s not in merriam webster s 11th collegiate dictionary it might be in the oed but i don t have a paid subscription and the app is limited in scope of course i have dictionary apps on my phone and tablet i m a copy editor it s not in my encarta world english dictionary i cast my net over the unknown waters of the internet as i have no cornish dictionary it s a failing i know this comes from wikipedia i have left the internal links and reference numbers in place the terms cunning man and cunning woman were most widely used in southern england the midlands and in wales 9 such people were also frequently known across england as wizards wise men or wise women 9 or in southern england and wales as conjurers 9 or as dynion hysbys in the welsh language 10 in cornwall they were sometimes referred to as pellars which some etymologists suggest originated from the term expellers referring to the practice of expelling evil spirits 9 nineteenth century folklorists often used the term white witch to refer to cunning folk although this was infrequently used amongst the ordinary people themselves as for them the term witch had general connotations of malevolence and evil 8 did the author research this aspect did the editor why do i care because i would have gone down this rabbit hole if i had been the editor is pellar witch a known term or is it newly minted for this book would the author have said exorcist priest i doubt it now that i ve spent over an hour on this particular niggle i think it s time to let it go editors can do that it s legal i want to be a reader again by grammargeddonangel in editing grammar language style usage word choice writing april 30 2025 602 words 6 comments there s more than one way to write a passive sentence and that s one right up there so s the one preceding this not all passive sentences use passive voice however the common thread is reversal of the expected grammatical order placing the object of the verb as the subject of the sentence it s less visible and somewhat inside out with the expletive construction also called agentless construction but it s still there i ve written about the passive voice before as i have about expletives but it s time to revisit academic and technical writers are fond of the passive voice as in the experiment was performed in our lab over a period of six weeks not only is that in passive voice the grammatical subject is the object of the verb it s also agentless we aren t told who performed the experiment contrast that with the agentive construction i was struck on the head by a mallet we don t know who struck me but we know they used a mallet the mallet is the agent the thing that performs the action the wielder is presumably unimportant certainly unknown a clearer agentive construction is this one i was struck on the head by my assailant the weapon doesn t matter for whatever reason i could even say i was struck on the head with a mallet by my assailant that s a clunky way of saying my assailant struck my head with a mallet but that s not how we present information in say a victim statement to the police the active voice doesn t serve us well in that situation we put ourselves first usually it really is all about us expletive constructions use phrases like it is or there are to open the sentence adding nothing to the sense or meaning of the sentence all they do is delay the appearance of the subject while that can be effective in some cases it s usually best to recast the sentence be aware though that it is a red coat is not an expletive construction that s a subject and its complement it and coat or red coat it s common knowledge that he s a liar and a cheat though is an expletive construction it s doesn t add any meaning to the sentence without it we d say that he s a liar and a cheat is common knowledge or more likely everyone knows he s a liar and a cheat using the expletive it s feels more natural in there are four lights the word there adds nothing to the sense it s an expletive it doesn t tell us where the lights are it just takes up space in the sentence i m reminded now of that lovely quote from gertrude stein there s no there there i ll leave the pondering up to you by grammargeddonangel in grammar passive voice syntax usage april 9 2025 446 words leave a comment period words words period to use the language of text memes not me leaning toward the television pointing and shouting that hasn t even been said yet it certainly was me while watching an episode of mystery cadfael season 3 episode 3 if you care and hearing the following line you know what they say all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing trouble is cadfael is set in the late 12th century well before john stuart mill and edmund burke while the saying is commonly attributed to the latter the former wrote something nearly identical why latch on to burke and not mill i have no idea but that s what has happened anyway warning spoilers await you i don t have a copy of ellis peters s book the raven in the foregate peters is the pen name of mary edith pargeter by the by so i can t check the source material for the show however something te...
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