Just put them before or after the 3-dot ellipsis, depending on where the gap is. Exactly as described above for periods. You don’t have to include commas or semicolons—judgment call—but sometimes they make your sentence more readable.

Original: “And in a way, I had a similar feeling. ‘What do I do here in Antarctica?’ And I said to myself, ‘I’ll do the same thing as Virgil would have done: describe the magnificence, one after another.’ ”

Elided: “I had a similar feeling,” said Herzog. “ ‘What do I do here in Antarctica?’ . . . ‘I’ll do the same thing as Virgil would have done.’ ”

Elided: “I had a similar feeling,” said Herzog. “ ‘What do I do here . . . ?’ And I said to myself, ‘I’ll do the same thing as Virgil.’ ”

Original: “He just names it, name after name, without explanation.”

Elided: “He just names it, . . . without explanation.”

Elided: “He just names it . . . without explanation.”

In the next example, “which I hated” is a parenthetical phrase in the original, so it’s best to keep the comma before as well as the one after.

Original: “I was forced to learn Latin and Greek when I was in high school, which I hated, but nowadays I like it.”

Elided: “I was forced to learn Latin and Greek . . . , which I hated, but nowadays I like it.”

These example should cover most situations. For even more detail on using ellipses, I recommend Edward D. Johnson’s Handbook of Good English. The more I read this guide, the more I appreciate it.

Next time, we’ll look at ellipses’ other uses: to indicate pauses and trailing speech. Especially good to nail down if you write fiction.

P.S. Check out another Herzog film that uses mesmerizing footage from Antarctica, The Wild Blue Yonder.

April 2010
When Punctuation Meets Quotation Marks

Confused about whether to put punctuation inside or outside quotation marks?

Which of these sentences, for example, is correct:

Sold “as is”, it was cheap. or Sold “as is,” it was cheap.

The second is correct in American English. Such situations trip up writers time and again. Indeed, confusion seems more widespread than ever. I indulge in speculation about that below. First, though, the rules—which are actually pretty easy—followed by plenty of illustrative examples.

The basic rules

For both double and single quotation marks:

• Commas and periods go inside closing quotation marks, even if they’re not part of the quoted material.


• Colons and semicolons go outside closing quotation marks.


• Question marks and exclamation points go outside closing quotation marks unless they are part of the quoted material. In the latter case, when that quoted material coincides with the end of a larger sentence that embraces it, the question mark or exclamation point ends both sentences—you don’t need a period too. And don’t use a period or a comma alongside a question mark or an exclamation point; the stronger mark wins.

Commas and periods are so quiet and generic, you needn’t worry that putting them inside a quotation will somehow compromise the quote (unless you are doing very precise scholarly work). Putting them inside may not always seem logical, but it is neater and in some ways simpler. Colons and semicolons, on the other hand, strongly define sentence structure. And question marks and exclamation points have specific meanings that may or may not be part of the quote.

Examples for every occasion

All of the following sentences are punctuated correctly.

The brochure described the architecture as “Las Vegas meets yurt,” which piqued her interest.

He described the architecture as “Las Vegas meets yurt.”

The architecture was “Las Vegas meets yurt”; the decor defied description.

She has memorized what she calls “the seven ’stans”: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.

“Fire!” he yelled.
The quoted word is loud or emphatic.

He yelled, “Fire!”
The quoted word is emphatic; the exclamation point also serves to end the sentence.

Do not yell “fire”!
The whole sentence is emphatic. Don’t use the exclamation point inside the quotes; the needs of the overall sentence take precedence.

When you yell “fire,” there better be one!

Who said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”?
The quoted material is not a question; rather, the whole sentence is the question. (Answer here and here.)

He asked, “Who said, ‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire’?”
The quote inside the single quotes is not a question; the quote inside the double quotes is. The question mark also serves to end the larger sentence.

Juliet said, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”
The question mark is part of the quote and also serves to end the sentence.

“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?” Juliet said.
The question mark is part of the quote. Note too that the question mark replaces the usual comma before an attribution, as in, “My favorite Juliet was Olivia Hussey,” the critic said.

In what act of Shakespeare’s play does Juliet say, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”
The question mark is part of the quote and also serves to end the entire sentence, which happens to be a question as well.

Juliet says, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?” in what act of Shakespeare’s play?
The question mark is part of the quote; the sentence as a whole is also a question.

Juliet says, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?” in the second act.
The question mark is part of the quote, which is within a statement that ends with a period.

“Don’t you just love Oklahoma!?” he asked.
A rare case in which doubling up is okay. The exclamation point is part of the musical’s title, so it stays despite the question mark. The standard styling of the title (italicized in roman text; roman in italicized text) tells us the exclamation point is part of the title, not sentence punctuation.

Why all the confusion?

I posit two explanations (beyond the general decline in standards of literacy, blah, blah, blah):

Online anarchy strikes again. I love the Internet, but as I whine about constantly, its otherwise charming anarchy isn’t doing much for the finer points of language. Traditional editorial processes, including copyediting, that help shape and preserve a shared understanding of the written word are often nonexistent. (For that matter, such processes are increasingly neglected in the printed world.) Thus readers experience, absorb, and replicate chaos, not order.

More exposure to British English. The other simultaneously wonderful and problematic thing about the Internet is that it’s international. American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) have different conventions for punctuation and spelling. In BrE, all punctuation that is not part of the quote goes outside the quote marks. A number of English-speaking countries use BrE or a mix of AmE and BrE, among them Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. I figure the more reading people do on the Internet, the more likely they are to encounter the Brit way. Readers may see different rules applied to the same situations on an almost daily basis. The result: “Huh?”

Punctuate locally

Unless most of your readers go to the “loo” after having too much tea with their “biscuits,” punctuate your quotes the American way. The American convention is virtually universal in U.S. publishing and printing. There’s an undeniable logic and consistency to the British convention, yet it also demands an extreme precision with quoted material that most writers are going to find burdensome. It also works better typographically with the British convention of using single quotes first, doubles for quotations within quotations (the reverse of the American convention).

I hope this has been helpful! Index

February 2010
Comma Tip: Don’t Cut Off a Verb From Its Subject

When a subject is followed by two verbs, don’t unnecessarily separate the subject from the second verb by inserting a comma before a joining word like and, but, or or. The shorter, more technical way to say that: Don’t split a compound predicate.

Wrong: He broke her heart, and fractured his nose.

Right: He broke her heart and fractured his nose.

The subject, he, did two things: 1) broke her heart and 2) fractured his nose. The two create a compound predicate. Whether the two actions relate to each other is unclear ... but structurally they share the subject, so they need equal access: no comma.

Confusing two rules

This mistake may stem from mismanaging another comma rule: Place a comma before a conjunction that joins two independent clauses (see the December 2009 post). I suspect that some people have a vague notion of this rule, and they automatically insert a comma before any and, but, or or that shows up in the middle of a sentence (but particularly before and). The key phrase, however, is “two independent clauses, ” each with its own subject. For example:

Wrong: He broke her heart and she fractured his nose.

Right: He broke her heart, and she fractured his nose.

Wrong: Valentine’s Day has devolved into a Hallmark holiday and she refuses to observe it.

Right: Valentine’s Day has devolved into a Hallmark holiday, and she refuses to observe it.

Back to the tip at hand. Here’s a sentence similar in meaning to that above, but written with a compound predicate:

Wrong: She says Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday, and refuses to observe it.

Right: She says Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday and refuses to observe it.

In this case, the subject of the first part of the sentence, she, is also the subject of the second part. She 1) says and 2) refuses. Again, you have a compound predicate. “Refuses to observe it” is no longer an independent clause. No comma.

Long sentences tempt bad punctuation

The farther away the second verb is from its subject, the more tempted you may become to stick in a comma. Think twice before you give in.

Wrong: Buying discounted roses after Valentine’s Day saves money, and does not count as observing the Hallmark holiday.

Right: Buying discounted roses after Valentine’s Day saves money and does not count as observing the Hallmark holiday.

The phrase “buying discounted roses after Valentine’s Day” is the subject of both parts of the predicate. Buying discounted roses 1) saves money and 2) does not count.

Two sentences may be in order

Sometimes the second part of the predicate gets so far away from the subject that, even if you know better, you’re dying to put a comma in there just to give your reader a break. The sympathetic impulse is a step in the right direction. But consider channelling it toward rewriting your sentence. If the sentence is that long, perhaps it should be two.

Wrong: She fractured his nose after he broke up with her quite unexpectedly just a week after the unobserved Hallmark holiday, but soon learned he’d done it preemptively after accidentally crushing her cat with his Smart car.

Right, but even more exhausting: She fractured his nose after he broke up with her quite unexpectedly just a week after the unobserved Hallmark holiday but soon learned he had done it preemptively after accidentally crushing her cat with his Smart car.

Better: She fractured his nose after he unexpectedly broke up with her just a week after the unobserved Hallmark holiday. However, she soon learned he had done it preemptively after accidentally crushing her cat with his Smart car.

Don’t let an intervening phrase that requires commas confuse you. Below, the subject it can 1) crush and 2) break.

Wrong: A Smart car is small, but it can still crush a cat, and by extension, break a heart and a nose.

Right: A Smart car is small, but it can still crush a cat and, by extension, break a heart and a nose.

That extra comma may look harmless ...

Many times, the misplaced comma is merely superfluous and does no harm beyond cluttering up your sentence. But it’s a false signal and could cause confusion.

This sentence is simple enough to be clear despite the misplaced comma:

He taped his nose, and called the doctor.

If things get more complicated, you might have a problem:

She told them that he had taped his nose, and called the doctor.

As we reviewed earlier, a comma before a conjunction can signal that an independent clause is next. So here, it suggests that she, rather than he, is the subject of called. So the reader may well think she told them about the nose and called the doctor herself.

The inevitable exceptions

This rule (or any other) should be suspended when clarity demands. Sometimes a comma does serve a function in a compound predicate. As always, be alert for potential misreads.

Not so good: He grabbed his nose as it swelled and fell to the ground.

Better: He grabbed his nose as it swelled, and fell to the ground.

Alternatively: He grabbed his nose as it swelled, and he fell to the ground.

Presumably, his nose didn’t fall to the ground. He did. In the second sentence, the comma separates fell from “it swelled” and helps to signal that fell relates to he, not to nose. Still worried about clarity? Another option is to dispense with the compound predicate and create two independent clauses, as the third sentence illustrates.

No comma with compound conjunctions, either

This is a good time to make note of another kind of compound and its comma requirements: the compound conjunction. Examples are such as and such that. Again, don’t let a comma come between the two parts, no matter how far away from each other they get. Sometimes it’s best to keep the parts of the compound conjunction together.

Wrong: Such was the angle of the sun, that she did not see the tiny car when she pulled into the driveway with her Suburban.

Right: Such was the angle of the sun that she did not see the tiny car when she pulled into the driveway with her Suburban.

Alternatively: The angle of the sun was such that she did not see the tiny car when she pulled into the driveway with her Suburban.

Wrong: Such was his delight in the conciliatory gesture of a Suburban full of discount roses, that he forgot about the nose, and hardly mourned the crushed Smart car.

Right: Such was his delight in the conciliatory gesture of a Suburban full of discount roses that he forgot about the nose and hardly mourned the crushed Smart car.

Alternatively: His delight in the conciliatory gesture of a Suburban full of discount roses was such that he forgot about the nose and hardly mourned the crushed Smart car.

The end. Index

December 2009
Comma Before a Conjunction: Don’t Get Distracted

Here’s a quick comma tip that addresses a mistake I see all the time, one that is easily corrected. It is perhaps a subtle mistake, but still. In addition, there will be a brief, seasonally mandated digression concerning the Grinch. Yes, that “bad banana with a greasy black peel,” that “three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce,” et cetera.

The basic rule

It’s a basic rule of punctuation: Place a comma before a conjunction that joins two independent clauses—even in the presence of an intervening phrase. Most writers easily observe the first part of the rule; the problem lies with the second part about the intervening phrase.

Just to be clear, when I say “conjunctions,” we’re talking about “coordinating” conjunctions, which join clauses of equal rank/importance. (Reminder: the coordinating conjunctions are and, but, and or, and a clause, unlike a phrase, has a subject and a verb—it could stand alone.)

First, let me illustrate the basic rule:

The Grinch hurtled down Mount Crumpit, and he robbed every last Who in Whoville.

“The Grinch hurtled down Mount Crumpit” and “he robbed every last Who in Whoville” are the two independent clauses; and is the conjunction.

Grinch trivia

Time for the aforementioned digression:

Dr. Seuss, aka Theodor Seuss Geisel, grew up in Springfield, MA. Apparently, he looked just a few miles north for inspiration while writing How the Grinch Stole Christmas, basing Mount Crumpit on Mount Tom, and Whoville on the town at its foot, Easthampton (see Wikipedia). I’ve hiked Tom countless times with my partner, Mark. It’s part of the Holyoke Range, which, now that the leaves are down, I can see through the window of my downtown Northampton apartment as I write.

But back to punctuation.

The reason for the rule

This comma rule prevents ambiguity. Here’s just one example of what can happen if you omit the comma before a conjunction:

I’m having a dinner in honor of the Grinch and Cindy Lou and I will be cooking all day.

Am I cooking for the Grinch and Cindy Lou? Or is Cindy Lou helping me in the kitchen, maybe cutting green beans with safety scissors?

Don’t let a phrase confuse you

It’s common for writers to misplace this comma when their sentence has a phrase in the middle of it. I’ve observed that the longer the phrase, the more likely the writer will be distracted by it and lose sight of the sentence structure.

Wrong: The Grinch’s heart was the size of a golfball and twice as hard but, when he heard the joyful Who voices drifting up from the valley below, it assumed the proportions and cush of a Super Nerf Ball.

Right: The Grinch’s heart was the size of a golfball and twice as hard, but when he heard the joyful Who voices drifting up from the valley below, it assumed the proportions and cush of a Super Nerf Ball.

The comma still comes before the conjunction. When you pull out the phrase, the sentence structure becomes clear:

The Grinch’s heart was the size of a golfball and twice as hard, but it assumed the proportions and cush of a Super Nerf Ball.

No need to set off the phrase

Note that most of the time you don’t need another comma to set off the beginning of the intervening phrase. The following sentence isn’t wrong, per se, but we can probably agree that the additional comma isn’t doing it a service:

The Grinch’s heart was the size of a golfball and twice as hard, but, when he heard the joyful Who voices drifting up from the valley below, it assumed the proportions and cush of a Super Nerf Ball.

So there you have it. As I said, subtle. But the point is that good punctuation reinforces sentence structure and thereby helps keep your reader on track; poor punctuation opens the way for miscommunication.

’Tis the season to Nerf up

Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. And if you don’t celebrate anything (which can be a wonderful way to preclude the holiday blues), may your heart nevertheless feel big and glad. Maybe I’ll see you on Mount Crumpit, where, looking out over the valley on a clear day in the company of my beloved, my own heart has been known to release its cares and expand almost as much as the Grinch’s. Index

October 2009
Use the Serial Comma (If You Ask Me)

Herewith, another directive and its overlong justifications . . . as well as some loosely related rambling about architecture, big bad Victorian furniture, and Vampire Weekend.

What is the serial comma?

The serial comma, for anyone not familiar with the term, is the one you’ll often find before the last item in a series of three or more. By “item” I mean not only a thing but also a phrase or clause. I’ve just learned that in academic circles, the serial comma has also been called the Oxford comma (apparently, it’s been standard in the Oxford University Press style guide since 1905) or the Harvard comma.

The flag is red, white, and blue. There it is, after white.

She didn’t know whether to marry Jane, Alice, or Bob. And after or.

He is tall and lean, uniquely handsome, and big of nose.

Joan slipped on some previously undetected cat vomit, Cassie fell through the cane seat of the old chair Joan had been meaning to fix, and their brother laughed inappropriately.

Let’s briefly look at the history of this comma, explore the debate around it, and outline why you should resolve to join those of us who use it religiously (if you don’t already). Whatever you do, be consistent and always be on the lookout for ambiguity.

Two camps, plus an unaffiliated group of confused writers

Whatever you call it, people have long been divided over whether to use this comma all the time. Many feel rather strongly about it, if only because they learned one way or the other and don’t care to change, while others are inconsistent (whether worriedly or blithely) in their use of it.

The latter category is no doubt large. The problem is, you see sentences punctuated both ways, the comma seemingly appearing at random—virtually all newspapers and some magazines do not use it, presumably to save precious space in their narrow columns, while most book publishers do. The natural result is either confusion or the assumption that you are free to do whatever strikes your fancy in the moment.

A little history

Some consider the serial comma old-fashioned. If you look at, say, a 19th-century text, you’ll probably find it teeming with commas. The 20th century brought a movement toward what’s termed “open” rather than “close” punctuation. That is, less rather than more. I’ll speculate that this was part and parcel of the larger modernist movement that brought us International Style skyscrapers stripped of ornament, and furniture that was sleeker, lighter. (Remember architect Mies van der Rohe’s dictum from that era: “Less is more.”) To the modern reader, those old writings seem halting, all that punctuation cumbersome, just as Victorian furniture seems to many of us dark and heavy and overdone. In some quarters, the serial comma went out with all the others.

Err on the side of clarity

Opponents of the serial comma argue that you simply don’t need it for clarity. Sometimes that’s true. The problem is, too often the serial comma absolutely is necessary for clarity. If your practice is to use it, you will rarely court ambiguity. If it is not, you need to be alert for the many exceptions that demand it. And don’t you have enough other stuff to keep track of when you undertake the complex task of writing?

That’s not only my conclusion but also that of many esteemed authorities and standard style guides old and new: Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, The Chicago Manual of Style (the book industry standard), Words Into Type, Edward D. Johnson’s Handbook of Good English, and Fowler’s, to name several.

Opponents may argue, too, that because one of the many functions of the comma is to stand in for and, it’s redundant to use one before and in a list. However, another of its functions is to indicate a natural pause in speech. And as Johnson points out, you can actually hear the serial comma when a series is spoken aloud.

For example

Here are a few sentences that illustrate the enduring benefits of the serial comma.

Mark, Hanno and Cindy are here.

With the serial comma missing, “Mark” can be read as a noun in direct address. That is, the reader has every reason to think that a speaker is telling Mark that Cindy and Hanno have arrived, when what’s meant is that all three people have arrived.

Advocates of the serial comma include me and pretty much every other copy editor I know, Fowler and Strunk and White.

The boots came in black, brown, black and gray, tan and brown and wine.

When any of the items in the series contains a conjunction, the absence of the serial comma can mean trouble. In the first of the two sentences above, how is the average reader to know that Fowler is one item, and Strunk and White (as coauthors) the last? In the second, do the boots come in solid tan, or in tan and brown? In solid wine, or brown and wine? There’s no way to tell.

The fresh air, the taste of the wine and the dog made her forget the trouble she was in.

Without the serial comma, the reader may well take “the taste” as applying to the wine and the dog, if only for a shocked moment. I adore dogs and think they smell good (well . . . usually), but even I don’t go around tasting them except by accident.

I remember the gleam of the rain-washed pavement, the distant clatter of streetcars, the garlicky aroma wafting from the restaurant downstairs and the simple dress she wore.

That’s one of Johnson’s examples; I’m not feeling clever enough today to make up another. You see the problem: a garlic-scented dress would be memorable indeed.

Note that automatically inserting a comma before and or or can create problems too.

I framed pictures of my cats, Leonard, and Elaine.

If I framed pictures of 1) my cats, 2) someone named Leonard, and 3) someone named Elaine, this is right. But if my cats are named Leonard and Elaine—that is, what follows the comma is not a second and third item but an appositive—it’s wrong.

What does Vampire Weekend have to do with it?

A band called Vampire Weekend charted in the UK with a song titled “Oxford Comma,” although it’s not really about punctuation. I’ve never heard it, but others have called it “damn catchy” and “an extremely enjoyable ditty.” Click here to get an “Oxford Comma” ringtone for your cell. Index

Addendum: I recently ran across a hilarious illustration of the benefits of the serial comma.
Note: It’s PG-13!

July 2009
Keeping Up With Compound Words

These ungovernable liaisons challenge regular humans and copy editors alike. Or do I mean copyeditors? Hmm. As you will see, compounds are slippery, changeable things. A thank-you to poet Ruth H. for her inquiry.

First, what is a compound word? There are two kinds: permanent—the main focus of this discussion—and temporary.

Permanent vs. temporary compounds

A permanent compound may be a single word made up of two words, two words connected by a hyphen, or two words written separately, but in any case it expresses a single idea. Outhouse, stepping-stone, and credit card are all permanent compounds. Now and then you’ll encounter a three-word compound, such as commander in chief.

Temporary compounds normally express two separate ideas and join forces, via hyphen, only when modifying something. The hyphen prevents ambiguity. Take old-book collector. Without the hyphen, the phrase would be readily interpreted to mean an aged collector of books, rather than a collector of old books.

Words created by the addition of a prefix or suffix are also considered compounds.

No broad rule

No one should feel bad about being confused by compounds, permanent compounds in particular. The problem is, there is no broad rule for when they should be expressed as one word (aka closed or solid), hyphenated, or written separately. So inconsistencies abound—it’s not your imagination. Even dictionaries differ.

You see, it’s the tendency in the English language for frequently used sets of words that express a single idea to become more and more readily understood as a unit and to eventually fuse. So a noun modified by an adjective or another noun evolves into a single noun. Data base rapidly became database, for example. Sometimes there is an intermediate step, the hyphenated compound. Dictionaries get updated only so often and may fall behind the curve.

Not everyone realizes this, but dictionaries are not prescriptive. That is, they don’t aim to dictate how words should be used. Rather, they are carefully researched to reflect how words are in fact being used. So a dictionary revised in 1990 reflects usage in 1990, and a handful of words may have evolved since then. Words continuously spring forth, change, die ... whether it makes sense or not.

Take homeowner. You won’t find it in Webster’s, or probably most dictionaries, yet it is everywhere. This is a casual observation, but it seems have arisen during the housing boom, when home and own cozied up to each other with perhaps unprecedented frequency. These two words were seen together so often that their marriage was assumed. Or arranged—no doubt by bankers and real estate brokers who don’t think a lot about language but wanted, if subconsciously, to plant home ownership in our minds as a very special kind of ownership, beyond all others. There’s no sense to it. The phrase is perfectly understandable as two separate words. Do we write dogowner? carowner? Of course not. Another problem with it is that the beginning of the so-called word can be read as the prefix homeo, “same,” as in homeostasis.

This is a pet peeve of mine, obviously enough.

But, a broad guideline

By now, you can see why there’s no broad rule for handling compounds. All you get is a broad guideline: Hew to current usage so as not to give your reader pause, and be consistent in your own writing.

Despite what I said earlier about the limitations of dictionaries, in most cases they (and not a spell-checking program!) are still the best way to determine current usage. If you’re not sure whether a compound should be one word, two separate words, or hyphenated, look it up. Webster’s 11th Collegiate is the publishing industry standard and the one I use, but use what you’ve got. If it’s in your dictionary as one word and you use it that way, you’ll be in good company. If it’s not in the dictionary at all, it’s not widely accepted to be a single word and is better left open.

You’ll find hatbox, rowboat, housedress, taxpayer, lightbulb, litterbug, spiderweb, flatcar, newspaper, but litter box, light box, tree house, tax base.

Plenty of permanent compounds are evolving into one-word nouns as I write, many of them more sensibly than homeowner. You see treehouse a lot, for example, but that has precedents in such words as doghouse and whorehouse. There are probably dictionaries that do list it as a single word. I’ll bet lightbox is common—it makes sense to close it up given the potential to misread the open form as “a box that is not heavy.” Although Webster’s lists Web site (the shorthand is usually “the Web,” after all), website is very common. You see both copy editor and copyeditor.

There are exceptions, of course!

If your reading tells you that your dictionary is out of date on a particular compound (and the new word isn’t stupid, like homeowner!), go with your experience. Again, just be consistent. Likewise if your industry overwhelmingly favors a certain form and any other would make you look like a dope.

Also worth noting: An open compound doesn’t necessarily have to be hyphenated when used as a modifier. Consider credit card. I’d argue that this permanent compound is so readily understood as a unit that there’s no chance of misunderstanding a phrase like credit card debt the way you might misunderstand old book collector. And too many hyphens can be distracting.

Lastly, as with rules—this is for you, poets—guidelines too are meant to be (skillfully) broken. In creative writing, one can potentially fuse open compounds in defiance of current usage to good effect.

Excellent case in point: Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic The Road (the movie is out in the fall of 2009). McCarthy fuses quite a few words to create compounds that feel unfamiliar, slightly off. The device is subtle but effective. McCarthy’s setting is some unspecified yet not-too-distant future, and for this reader, the new words imply the passage of time. But they also give an impression of breakdown, of the language fraying in the face of unimaginable (well, not to McCarthy) devastation and dislocation.

Whatever the case, we can be certain with a writer as gifted as McCarthy that these mergings are not accidents. And now, I hope, you understand compounds well enough to fully appreciate the effect!

I can’t recommend the book more highly, by the way. I was beside myself with admiration as I read.  Index

February 2009
Semicolons 101

I’ve had a request for a class on semicolons. (Thank you, Anne M.)

If we could query the late Kurt Vonnegut, he would likely advise us to avoid semicolons entirely, having said of them, “They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing.” (I suggest you save wrapping your head around that for later.) I checked up on Mr. Vonnegut and found numerous semicolons in 1963’s Cat’s Crade, but not a one in 1969’s Slaughterhouse Five. What happened in the interim? Did semicolons fail a personal acid test of some kind? Whatever the heck Vonnegut was talking about and why, he did walk his talk.

If transvestite hermaphrodites and semicolons have anything in common, I suspect it’s that both are widely misunderstood. I can imagine that the former stand for something (that’s for them to say), and I am certain that the latter are in fact quite useful, if often abused. So do employ semicolons in your writing, but do it correctly—and sparingly. Here are the basics on this mark of punctuation, plus a few of its many subtleties.

The semicolon has two principal uses:

1. It joins, as a single sentence, two independent clauses that are closely connected in thought but not linked by a conjunction (such as and or but). A clause is a group of words that contains both a subject and a predicate; it’s independent if it can stand alone as a sentence.

2. It separates items in a series when some of the items already have commas, which can make the list easier to comprehend.

Joining

Let’s look at the first use. The definition from above is as good an illustration as any.

Right (and best in this instance): A clause is a group of words that contains both a subject and a predicate; it’s independent if it can stand alone as a sentence.

Wrong: A clause is a group of words that contains both a subject and a predicate; and it’s independent if it can stand alone as a sentence.

Wrong: A clause is a group of words that contains both a subject and a predicate, it’s independent if it can stand alone as a sentence.

Also right: A clause is a group of words that contains both a subject and a predicate. It’s independent if it can stand alone as a sentence.

Also right: A clause is a group of words that contains both a subject and a predicate, and it’s independent if it can stand alone as a sentence.

The third criterion is always the sticky one. Are the two thoughts really connected? Is a semicolon truly the best option, or would two sentences, or a comma and a conjunction, do just as well? Misused semicolons make your writing confusing, and too many make it choppy, so think carefully.

Here, the semicolon is a great choice because the sentence presents a single definition that has two components. It helps the reader by signaling that these two thoughts go together, that they are more closely associated with each other than the first is with the sentence before or the second is with any sentence that might come after.

There are, of course, exceptions. If the clauses are quite short and balanced in structure, or if the tone is very conversational, ditching the first two criteria can be not only correct but also preferable.

Right but stilted: The problem was simple; the solution was simple.

Better: The problem was simple, and the solution was simple.

Best: The problem was simple, the solution was simple.

Right but stilted: He was smart; he was handsome; he was funny. What more could a girl want?

Better: He was smart, he was handsome, he was funny. What more could a girl want?

By the way, you could write that last example as a list:

Also right: He was smart, handsome, and funny. What more could a girl want?

See the January 2009 class for another example of semicolon decision making.

Separating

Now let’s look at the second use, separating items in a series when some of the items already have commas. Without semicolons, the following sentence might be hard to grasp:

Right: The menu included porcini and truffle soup; chicken with a sauce of white wine, shallots, butter, and thyme; braised cannellini beans with marjoram; a spinach, walnut, and gorgonzola salad; and chocolate mousse cake.

Hard to read: The menu included porcini and truffle soup, chicken with a sauce of white wine, shallots, butter, and thyme, braised cannellini beans with marjoram, a spinach, walnut, and gorgonzola salad, and chocolate mousse cake.

Such lists don’t always need semicolons to be readable, especially if the extra commas appear only in the final item. The sentence below, a simplified version of the last example, works partly because it is indeed simpler. But it also works because there is only one and, whose appearance indicates that we have reached the last item of the list, and a singular article that further indicates one item.

Just fine: The menu included porcini-truffle soup, chicken with wine sauce, braised cannellini beans with marjoram, and a spinach, walnut, and gorgonzola salad.

Not wrong, but not particularly necessary: The menu included porcini-truffle soup; chicken with wine sauce; braised cannellini beans with marjoram; and a spinach, walnut, and gorgonzola salad.

Common Misuses

Here are the three most common semicolon mistakes I notice:

1. Writers use it with (before) a conjunction when, as discussed, it should be used instead of a comma and conjunction.

2. It’s used where a colon is what’s needed. The semicolon has not only a linking effect, but also a stopping effect. It’s akin to a very strong comma—or a weak period, if you like. A colon, on the other hand, introduces, launches the reader forward. (I think of the colon as the mouth of a megaphone: what comes after it is an “amplification”—as in expansion, explanation, or example—of what comes before it.)

3. And then there’s the semicolon as silver bullet. As Theodore M. Bernstein puts it in The Careful Writer, “What a semicolon is not used for is to cover up the faults in a sentence out of control.” So if you find yourself laboring over a long, unruly sentence that just won’t be tamed, and slipping in a semicolon suddenly seems like a neat idea ... do yourself and your readers a favor: rewrite the dang thing instead.  Index

January 2009
Comma Tip: Direct Address
Happy New Year, dear reader!

Use a comma to indicate direct address. What’s direct address? It’s simply the use of someone’s name, or a stand-in for a name, in speaking to him or her:

Happy anniversary, Mark!

Why, darling, you shouldn’t have.

Well, folks, we’d better get going.

In the sentence above, if you were to drop the comma, well might momentarily be read as an adjective, as in healthy, not sick, people.

Say, Joe, why did you do that?

Here, say might momentarily be read as a command to the reader (with a missing you understood as the subject) to speak the name.

The good sense of this rule becomes especially clear when you run across an amusing example of the perils of ignoring it. I saw this beauty on a hand-printed flyer:

Eat people, it is what gives us the energy to live.

Yikes! Soylent Green, anyone? You can see how dropping that comma before a term of direct address can lead to a serious misunderstanding! Most likely, the writer does not want us to eat people but is imploring us, the people, to eat:

Eat, people! It is what gives us the energy to live!

Notice also that I rewrote the sentence as two. Technically, the original sentence is a run-on. Specifically, it’s a comma splice: the improper joining of two independent clauses. Independent clauses should be joined with a semicolon, or with a comma and a conjunction. In this case, it would be a semicolon:

Eat, people; it is what gives us the energy to live!

However, I suspect you’ll agree that the semicolon feels cumbersome here. Sometimes you can get away with a splice (see Strunk and White), but in this case, why go there when using two sentences works so well? But I’m digressing into another lesson ... and I think this example sentence has had all the criticism it can take for today!  Index

December 2008
Comma Tip: Place-names
That’s Northampton, Massachusetts, everyone!

Here’s a rule I see broken all the time: Use commas to set off the individual elements in place-names. In other words, when you cite, say, a city and state, insert a comma before and after the state, as written in the headline above. Why is this rule overlooked so frequently?

I suspect it’s because we wouldn’t speak the names with pauses before and after the state, so there’s no natural cue for the commas. Also, much of the time the commas have no obvious clarifying role. For example, if I write that I live in “Northampton Massachusetts,” most Americans will know I mean a city or town called Northampton in the state of Massachusetts.

However, if we think it through, the need for both commas becomes clear. In the case of the first comma, what if my reader is from abroad and does not know the 50 states? “Northampton Massachusetts” could be a two-word city, for all he knows. Like Great Falls, in Montana. Imagine dropping the comma from New York, New York. The problem becomes clearer still if we put ourselves in the shoes of that reader and use utterly unfamiliar names, thus circumventing easy assumptions:

I was visiting from Merthyr Cynog Powys.

I was visiting from Merthyr, Cynog Powys.

I was visiting from Merthyr, Cynog, Powys.

I was visiting from Merthyr Cynog, Powys.

As for omitting the second comma—the more common error—the danger is that the first word of the name could be read as part of an introductory phrase, and the second word as part of the subsequent clause:

Once I got to Merthyr Cynog, Powys life seemed rosy again.

Telling me she was in Atlanta, Georgia didn’t help me any.

That’s a lot of explaining for two little commas, I admit. But of course rules are easier to remember when thoroughly understood. That’s the assumption behind this classroom, anyway.  Index

November 2008
An Everyday Error (You See It Every Day)

Many others have addressed this problem, but I feel obligated to do my part to combat it. It’s simple, really: The single word everyday is an adjective that, to quote Merriam-Webster online, means “encountered or used routinely or typically, ordinary.” It is totally different from the two-word adverbial phrase every day, which tells us when.

Just to reinforce the distinct meaning of everyday, let’s turn to Thesaurus.com for more synonyms: average, commonplace, conventional, customary, dull, familiar, lowly, mainstream, middle-of-the-road, mundane, normal, plain, prosaic, quotidian, routine, run-of-the-mill, unexceptional, unimaginative, unremarkable, usual.

Here are some examples of correct and incorrect usage:

Wrong: Low prices everyday!
           (As written, this means, “Low prices ordinary!” Huh?)

Right: Low prices every day!
          (When are prices low? During each and every 24-hour period!)

Right: You’ll love our everyday low prices!
          (That is, our usual prices. Not special sale prices, just our normal ones.)

Wrong: He wore the same clothes everyday.
          (He wore the same clothes when? The answer is not, say, “dull,” although the
          predictable subject of the sentence may be.)

Right: He wore the same clothes every day.
          (When? One 24-hour period after another, again and again.)

Right: He knew his everyday clothes weren’t proper wedding attire.
          (The unexceptional clothes that he typically wears, e.g. jeans and T-shirts.)

Right: Everyday concerns recede when you’re falling in love.
          (The mundane stuff, the familiar, petty annoyances and worries ... all gone!)

Right: It’s not every day you see a nose of that size.
          (When do you see a nose like that? Not on a daily basis, that’s for sure.)

Right: His was not an everyday nose. No, it was a nose thrown onto his face by Rodin,
          full of character and expression, a form for its own sake.
          (Not everyday, but the opposite: remarkable, extraordinary, unique!)

Okay, I’m getting carried away. Or warmed up. In any case, by now you can see that the distinction between everyday and every day is a clear and useful one. You wouldn’t know it, though, from the rampant confusion of the two. As far as I know, everyday was in unmolested use as an adjective from around 1623 until relatively recently. What happened?

I suppose it’s a case of undereducation meets mass media. Start with someone who is in a position to expose a lot of people to an error—an ad agency executive, for example—and who is either semiliterate or attempting to be clever. Perhaps both. Release the error into the world, where it’s quickly and widely disseminated. The general public, itself on shaky ground grammatically, adopts it by osmosis. Pretty soon, thanks to sheer repetition, the mutation seems right and what’s correct seems wrong. It’s true that language evolves, but there’s no reason to rob ours of what everyday has to offer by forcing it to masquerade as every day.

Click here for a maddening series of e-mail exchanges between a former English teacher and an obtuse Coca-Cola Company flack regarding the company’s use of everyday in an advertising slogan. Titled “I’d Like to Teach the World to Spell,” the exchange appeared in the July 2003 issue of Harper’s Magazine, and I never forgot it!  Index

October 2008
Restrictive Appositives: A Bad Case of Comma Confusion

Are you mishandling restrictive appositives? (The plain language is coming; bear with me for a moment.) Don’t feel bad: this is one of those problems that has swept the country like a plague of locusts. The situation is so bad you can even hear restrictive appositives being abused, on National Public Radio for one (there’s a telltale pause that indicates a comma where there should be none).

Appositive is a fancy term for a word or phrase that pretty much restates the word or phrase that comes just before it. Here’s an example:

Her cat, Mumford, loves broccoli.

Oftentimes an appositive can be dropped without compromising your meaning. That makes the word or phrase parenthetical. That is, it could be put inside parentheses as an aside or even dropped entirely, as with the sentence above: Her cat loves broccoli is perfectly clear. To signal the parenthetical nature of the information, you set it off by placing a comma on either side. Think of the pair of commas as parentheses lite. Real parentheses are overkill in cases like this; they would interrupt the flow of your sentence.

Now, an appositive is sometimes “restrictive.” That is, it restricts the meaning of what comes before it by providing essential, defining information. The sentence just wouldn’t be the same without it. It’s not parenthetical, so it’s not bracketed by commas. With some context, the cat’s name in our example sentence might be restrictive:

Julia has ten cats. Yes, she’s well on her way to an unwelcome visit from the health department. Anyway, her cat Mumford loves broccoli.

Here, you’re talking about ten cats. If you were to write Her cat loves broccoli, the reader wouldn’t know which cat. Suddenly “Mumford” has become defining information: it’s a restrictive appositive and you need to drop those commas.

A few more examples:

Wrong: Author, Joe Smith, will read from his latest book tonight.
Right: Author Joe Smith will read from his latest book tonight.

In the absence of any other defining information for “author” in the second example, the name is a restrictive appositive. Take it away, as you can with a regular appositive, and you can see that: Author will read from his latest book tonight. That makes no sense, obviously.

Wrong: Aardvark expert, Jane Doe, is now available for speaking engagements.
Right: Aardvark expert Jane Doe is now available for speaking engagements.
Right: The world’s leading aardvark expert, Jane Doe, is now available for speaking
         engagements.

With “aardvark expert” defined by “the world’s leading,” you don’t need the name. This is easy to see if you drop it from the sentence: The world’s leading aardvark expert is now available for speaking engagements. That reads just fine.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful!  Index

> Contact me: laura@lauramackay.com or 413-585-9975

Home | Services | Portfolio | Workshops | Classroom | Profile | Contact | Links