How we speak reveals much about our backgrounds. It influences how others relate to us. Our style of writing reflects our thinking.Linguistic anthropology fascinates me.I cringe as I watch educational philosophy regarding how to teach reading skills go through one fad after another. The simple and obvious approach would be to base teaching methods on scientific research. Changes in curricula should be based on research findings, not upon the whims of bureaucrats.Being able to communicate via written and spoken language is a valuable skill that can be improved with study and practice.Style can be manipulated creatively. For example, the phrase Oh. My. Goodness. indicates emphasis on each word. You have to understand the rules before you effectively break them.At any time, there may be multiple projects in front of me: writing this column, a novel, a play or a magazine article; and editing other writers novels, non-fiction books, newspaper articles, lawyers briefs and medical/scientific journals. Each has its own style.I have several reference texts nearby. The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook, The Canadian Press Stylebook and other texts sit within reach. To anyone who wants to write well, there are three essential books. I recommend The Elements of Style by Strunk and White as well as Lynne Truss Eats, Shoots Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Theres a newly published book to add to that list: June Casagrandes The Best Punctuation Book, Period.Casagrande explains clearly and concisely that there isnt one correct way to write, but there are many wrong ways.Casagrande looks at the major forms of punctuation in the English language. She describes rules of each style: book editing style for authors of fiction, non-fiction and popular magazines; news media and business writing, which is based on The Associated Press Stylebook (in Canada, The Canadian Press Stylebook) and Websters New World College Dictionary; science style, based on The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Ive always found it humorous that a soft science organization gets to control hard science publishing standards. How did that happen?) and Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary; and academic style, which is based on The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.For each guideline, Casagrande places a B(book), N(newspaper), S(science) and/or A (academia) to indicate which style applies. For example, how do you punctuate the possessive of James? Newspaper and media style would punctuate this as James, but (most) book, scientific and academic styles use Jamess. However, many book editors are moving toward (towards, in the UK) the news style.Space ExplorationDo you always put two spaces after a period? You probably attended a one room school house shortly after Confederation (Im exaggerating) and before the advent of the computer. Two spaces following a period have not been used in a long time. They drive editors and graphic design pros nuts. It may just be an extra space to remove, but if, like me, you sometimes spend 12 hours in a day as an editor of someone elses work, f-bombs will be flying sometime after the third or fourth hour of removing spaces.For centuries, placing two spaces after a period was common practice. Around 1940 (1950 in the UK), this started to change. Following the advent of computers and proportional fonts, the double space disappeared altogether.Today, almost all style manuals use the single space rule. There are exceptions: some professional and academic organizations allow two spaces in draft manuscripts and articles. Even those organizations usually switch to the single space rule upon public dissemination of the material. Whether one likes it or not, the double space after a period is a thing of the past. If you use it, editors, agents and other scary (scarey is also correct) people will make changes in your work.The double space after a period will soon be considered as quaint and archaic as the words thy and thou.The Mythical Split Infinitive RuleSomewhere in the collective unconscious of our culture there is a view that you must not split infinitives. Even many English teachers buy into this and tell students that they must write to go boldly not to boldly go.However, that is not a style rule, its erroneously morphing Latin onto English.There are no infinitives in Latin, so you cant split them. But English has different rules than Latin, Irish, Mandarin and other languages. This thou shalt not split infinitives view had a lot of steam in the Victorian Era and some grammarians from about 1850 to 1925 frowned on it. It never really applied to the English language, and it certainly doesnt apply today. Go ahead in your voyage to valiantly split infinitives.Serial KillersIn general, there is standard agreement on uses of the comma. But for serious disagreement, drag up the Oxford (serial) comma. What do you do in a series like red, white and blue?To many writers (and all news media), placing and and , together forms a redundancy. But to old school writers, leaving out that last (Oxford) comma is lazy and improper. Writers in the book world, science and academia still use it. This is evolving quickly. Many writers and editors of books and magazines are leaving out that last comma. I try to tell writers to consider it an ampersand rule. You wouldnt write red, white, blue; youd write red, white & blue. Do the same when you spell it out.ModifiersHeres a rule for improving your writing: omit adverbs and adjectives. Use stronger nouns and verbs. Do a word search for very in everything you write. Eliminate the word. Its meaningless. The same goes for other adjectives and adverbs. Expand your vocabulary. Ill include the exclamation point (!) in this discussion of modifiers. I recently edited an article that contained 36 of these little buggers. Trust me; you lose the effectiveness of your writing if every sentence ends with !. Ill think youre screaming, youre on medication or you forgot your medication. Heres a good rule: if there is more than one exclamation point in a chapter, there are too many.ClichésAvoid the use of cliché phrases. For example, when someone tells me theyre thinking outside the box, theyre showing that theyre not, because that cliché is so deeply inside the box.IdiosyncrasiesThere are regional dialects and style idiosyncrasies.I grew up and learned to spell in New York State, so I can jokingly say that my natural tendency in writing is more ecologicallyconscious than that in Canada, my country of birth. I spell words like honor and color without the u and, therefore, I use less ink and less paper, thereby killing fewer trees.Stylistically, Canada is stuck somewhere between continents. Our spelling of things like honour and colour reflects an adherence to British style, yet our punctuation is distinctly American. Dr. Jones, not Dr Jones, prescribes medication.A few years back I was doing some work in Kentucky. Id had dinner with an interesting fellow, and later we went to a camera shop to buy some supplies.This eloquent and refined gentleman asked the clerk: How much is yalls film? The South has its own beautiful charm.The Mysteries of Prepositions and ConjunctionsMany have a rigid personal belief about not ending sentences with prepositions (With whom are you going?). Sentences have been ended effectively with prepositions for centuries. Its really a caste/class distinction and not a style rule. The Chicago Manual of Style goes so far as to say, The rule prohibiting terminal prepositions was an ill-founded superstition.The same is true for starting a sentence with a conjunction. It can be effective to begin with and or but. Theres a great discussion of this in the movie Finding Forrester.Then there are brilliant writers who have thrown all punctuation to the wind. James Joyces Finnegans Wake is a classic example.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 03:55:24 +0000
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