Observations from a nit-picking former editor

Forty-five years of editing copy, which ended in October 2012, made me hypersensitive to common boo-boos in writing, in punctuation, grammar, syntax, capitalization, etc.

Spelling was a slightly different subject; there are a few words that are usually misspelled by many writers, although there’s always something new to learn there, too.

It was only a couple years ago, for instance, that I discovered that “canceled” has only one “l.” For decades I had been spelling it “cancelled.”

But things like punctuation are in a different category; for example, I ended the previous sentence in this column by placing the period inside the end quotation marks (“cancelled.”).

In school as a kid I learned that the period goes outside the quotation marks unless it is part of an actual quotation. But recent usage gives a writer leeway to place the period inside in other instances now, as I understand the situation.

Other rules that used to be inviolate have relaxed as well.

It’s OK to split an infinitive nowadays: “to always run fast” is accepted today, instead of “always to run fast.”

It’s apparently OK in today’s English to end a sentence with a preposition: “Let’s give them something to talk about,” instead of “Let’s give them something about which to talk.”

It’s optional whether to use a comma before the last item in a list (“Tom, Dick, and Harry” or “Tom, Dick and Harry”).

And it’s less awkward to say “It should have been me” instead of the technically correct “It should have been I.” (In grammatical terms, “should have been” is a state of being verb, so “I” as the nominative case first person singular is the technically correct word instead of the objective case “me”.)

Changes like these are just fine.

They maintain the vigor of the language as a living entity, much the same as Supreme Court decisions over time have maintained the vigor of the Constitution. Times change, and so do speech patterns.

But sometimes a usage is just plain wrong.

Mistakes in grammar or punctuation are not fatal, and they usually don’t confuse the meaning of what’s being written. But it seems to me that some of them are growing more common these days, and that’s a little depressing.

I don’t know if it means that English rules are not emphasized in education as much as they were 50 years ago, or if writing itself is going out of style as electronic communication replaces much of what used to be the written variety.

Twitter requires that a message be compressed into 140 characters; such abbreviation encourages shortcuts of all kinds, probably degrading accurate use of the language.

Maybe more people nowadays don’t know what’s correct, or maybe they just don’t care.

Either way it’s a cause for concern, and food for thought.

Among the errors that seem to be spreading:

• Confusing “comprise” with “compose.”

“Comprise” indicates that something includes, surrounds or contains several items: “The United States comprises 50 states.” Conversely, “compose” indicates that several items make up the whole: “Fifty states compose the United States.” Many writers today, probably trying to appear educated, use “comprise” when “compose” is actually the correct word. “Fifty states comprise the United States” is not right.

• Using an apostrophe where there is no possession.

More and more signs on residences or out front on the signpost are written, for instance, The Johnson’s instead of The Johnsons.

If the sign is supposed to indicate that something at that residence, such as the house, actually belongs to the family, then it should read The Johnsons’, with the apostrophe at the end of the name, outside the “s.”

• Changing to “their” when referring to a singular subject: “Every student should learn their grammar rules.”

Either “all students should learn their grammar rules” or “every student should learn his or her grammar rules” would be correct, but not switching to the plural “their” from the singular “every student”. This is one of the most common mistakes in usage today, and I’m guessing that an increasing number of writers and speakers don’t know it’s incorrect.

I think the frequency of this error started with the attempt at political correctness of dropping the use of the masculine form as the neutral form and substituting both the masculine and feminine form instead. Until about 50 years ago the use of the masculine pronoun for the neutral form was not considered demeaning to women.

But the rise of feminism focused attention on the language’s use of pronouns, giving rise to the awkward phrase “his or her,” or the even more awkward “his/her” as the written form.

It became easier simply to substitute “their” instead, even if the subject (“every student”) remained. For me, the easy “fix” is simply to make the subject plural, as in “all students should learn their grammar rules.”

• Using the preposition “like” in a clause instead of the adverbial phrase “as if.”

This usage has become probably the more common alternative today: “He ran like his life depended on it” instead of the correct “He ran as if his life depended on it.”

In the terms of Kathleen Fields’ seventh grade English class, “like” is a preposition used with an object in a phrase (“He ran like a scared rabbit”), while “as if” is an adverbial combination used to introduce a clause, which has a verb in it (“He ran as if his life depended on it”).

Sports broadcasters have developed several special usages over the years that have worked their way into common parlance: for instance, “The Wombats have closed to within four points,” a questionable use of the word “within”.

Another is “Joe Bonomo runs slow” instead of “Joe Bonomo runs slowly.” Maybe using an adverb with the suffix “ly” is somehow considered wimpy, whereas the short terse word “slow” is tougher, more masculine.

And technically, “linebacker Broadaxe only had three stops” should be “linebacker Broadaxe had only three stops,” but that’s a pretty minor point.

Some are more egregious; occasionally a color announcer, who’s often a well-known retired coach or former All-American, will say something like “he’s only ran for 55 yards in this game.”

If you’ve stayed with this tut-tutting to this point, you probably need to get a life.

But I’ll throw in one more: I’d rather see “noon” and “midnight” used instead of “12 a.m.” or “12 p.m.”

I don’t know whether “12 p.m.” means noon or midnight — do you?

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