Perdue, in planning for a budget that will take effect July 1, has made the decision to eliminate across the board percentage cuts and is instead asking school boards to eliminate spending outside of the core educational mission.

“There are going to be some times over the next seven or eight months that you hate me,” Perdue said. “Do you want to bleed away the system as we’ve done the past two years, where everybody takes an across-the-board 10 or 15 percent cut, and you do a fairly good amount of damage to every single piece of public services, or do you try to find the stuff that’s not essential?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9_kahA_wQo

I have broken the apostrophe laws on the word its so many times, so I’m hoping this will help me remember. I refreshed myself on the adjectives too. Demonstrative adjectives use words like this, that, these and those. Here’s an example: Wow John, this is an awesome blog post.  Attributive adjectives are part of the noun phrase headed by the noun they modify; for example, happy is an attributive adjective in “happy people”.

The infamous elipsis. I came very close to using one of these on my last blog but I stopped myself. Our ellipsis slide from class makes these basic points:

• Shows omission from directly quoted text
• Three periods, each preceded and followed by a space
• Unnecessary if the omission is at the beginning or end of the quote
• If the omission is at the end of a sentence, or if the omission is of a complete sentence or more, use four periods (….)
• To show the omission of a line of poetry, use a complete line of ellipsis points

Typos — no big deal? Think again.

A reflection on the importance of typos.

With the English language evolving there is nothing that detracts from your image more than communications that contain spelling mistakes or obvious grammatical errors.  Your credibility is very important to have in this field of work and having good grammar is an important part of creating easy to read, informative corporate publications and press releases.

Even though I have not completely decided, many PR people become journalists.  This may be something that I would want to do and in journalism have good grammar is important too.  Grammar gives you the ability to communicate clearly with all different types of people and this is both important in PR and journalism.  For public relations if you can not communicate clearly then you cannot connect with the public and get your clients message out to them.  In journalism if you can not communicate clearly then your story will not connect with the readers and they will not understand what you are trying to say.

• I write like I think. I write like I talk.
• I write anywhere, anytime.
• When I get the idea, I stretch it.
• I write from my own experience.
• When I write a column or a chapter, I stick to one subject, thought, or theme.
• I don’t care about grammar.
• I do care about structure. I do care about flow.

(Gitomer)

I also write in my own voice, and I wouldn’t say that I don’t care for grammar but there are a lot of rules I like to break.  I learned in this class that am not nearly experienced enough to choose to ignore grammar like I do, which was discouraging at first. Fortunately, I am very relieved to have learned this in class than from an angry editor.  Another element of style that is crucial in journalism is conciseness. This is closely related to writing in active voice rather than passive voice, another weakness of mine.

In another article, I found some interesting insight on active versus passive voice. The active voice and passive voice are matters of structure. Active voice: subject/verb/object. Passive voice: object/verb/subject, or merely object/verb:

Active: The pitcher threw the ball.

Passive: The bail was thrown by the pitcher.

Passive: The ball was thrown.

The passive voice uses an auxiliary verb plus a past participle of another verb, and that the auxiliary is usually a form of the verb “to be.” The woman who wrote this article worked for an editor that was trying to ban all “to be” verbs. She concludes that the editor banned something without knowing what that something was. She knows that he’s the first to misunderstand the passive voice, nor is he the first to suggest there’s something inherently wrong with “be” verbs. Apparently, some people think that any sentence containing an auxiliary or “be” verb is in the passive voice. (Larocque)

I think the point of this lesson goes along with one of the most interesting things I learned in our grammar class, which is that there are exceptions to every rule. I’ve been hounded on my passive voice in journalism classes since I was in tenth grade, and although it is usually better to use active voice there are always sentences that change meaning depending on which voice is used. There are also many different sets of grammar rules for different styles of writing. I learned AP style first and I thought it was basically law until I got to college. There are some differences between AP and English Simplified, for example. My biggest issue in this class was over the serial comma, which is always omitted in AP style. I found it hard at first, but once I got used to it I saw it as the only way. Then I got to this class and saw it used and it was weird all over again. Also, zero through nine are the only numbers that are spelled out in AP, as opposed to ES which spells out any number under three syllables.

Overall, I really learned to appreciate how grammar affects the meaning, sound and effectiveness of writing.  The second essay we did showed me that professionals can say a lot in as few words as possible. This is the main thing that I am taking away from this class and plan to practice in my future as a writer.

Just a pinch of commas, please.

I’m pretty much in love with what I do. Maybe, a lot of the time we only end up doing what we love because it’s just about the only thing we’re good at.  I feel like that most times.  For me, being a writer, practicing the craft and art of good creative writing, has less to do with creativity and soul, and more to do with that feeling you get when you’re cooking something, maybe lasagna.  You sort of know all the motions you have to go through, do them well, but you love it. You get a kick out of structure and purpose. That’s why I write.  Okay, fine. Throw some soul in there too.  It probably wouldn’t hurt.

I’m feeling a little raw about this blog post. Another creative writing major (cough Matt Baker cough) stole both of my sources, and posted before I had the chance to. I’d talk about how furious I am, but I think it rather speaks to the authority of the sources, sort of indicates how damn important grammar is to folks like us, folks whose whole business is wrapped up in crafting comprehensible, artful sentences.  Grammar and punctuation lets us do just that. I turned to Noah Lukeman too. The suggested reading for our course A Dash of Style: the Art and Mastery of Punctuation is really insightful, exactly what I needed to flesh out some of my lingering stylistic concerns.  These are a few of my favorite sentences:

“As you’ll see, these marks sometimes divide, other times connect, yet always they wield power over structure. The period would be impossibly far away if it weren’t for the comma and the semicolon, which allow a much-needed pause. The comma would be stuck in endless pauses if it weren’t for the period to teach it how to stop; and the gracious semicolon wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the failure of both the comma and period to fulfill its task.”

I absolutely adore that.  And Lukeman is right.  In a lot of ways, use of punctuation in creative work is about regulating how much comes flooding out of a sentence. Think about this, then:

“Why did Hemingway lean heavily on the period? Why did Faulkner eschew it? Why did Poe and Melville rely on the semicolon? Why did Dickinson embrace the dash, Stein avoid the comma? How could the punctuation differ so radically between these great authors? What did punctuation add that language itself could not?”

I dig that too.  Here’s Lukeman’s answer: “There is an underlying rhythm to all text.”  That’s nice.  There is a sound to all of it.  There is intonation and expression in every chosen word, every application of punctuation marks.  That’s a power over language writers in a lot of other fields don’t have room to wield.  Creative writers, therefore, have a lot of responsibility.

Grammar: it's my bones

The thing about creative writing, I think, is that a lot of folks think we break the rules for style, because it sounds nicer, or we just like the way it looks on the page.  Professor of creative writing here at Elon, Tita Ramirez, says, “We’re actually breaking the rules much less often then people think we are.” In fact, writers who string along gigantic sentences (I’m looking at you, Faulkner) actually rely on grammar, need it, desperately, for their writing to make any sense at all.

“You need to understand periods, commas, semicolons, colons,  and dashes.  Otherwise people get lost and you lose your credibility. You need your rep in tip top shape. No one takes you seriously if you can’t use a comma…. That’s a really dumb reason for someone not to publish or read your work.  Know your stuff.”

Sounds about right to me.  For what I want to be doing, I have to rely on grammar.  It’s like my skeleton really.  I need my bones. I love my bones.

SmartCEO's May issue, Baltimore edition

SmartCEO, the regional business magazine for which I’ll be working, has an audience of C-level executives who likely cannot tell AP style from technical writing, but most are intelligent, particular people with well-trained staffs of public relations professionals who will cry out in outrage over a misplaced modifier in a company description. The magazine has a relatively small reader base and depends heavily on community-building efforts for financial support, so upsetting a big spender with a lazy editorial mistake is simply not an option. Magazine proofs are circulated to production staff twice and “OKed” by the editor before they are sent to the printer, meaning that all errors should have been eradicated well before the magazine is published. The American Society of Magazine Editors emphasizes the importance of this process in its list of guidelines:

“In order for a publications chief editor to be able to monitor compliance with these guidelines, every effort must be made to show all advertising pages, sections and their placement to the editor far enough in advance to allow for necessary changes.”

Along with simply identifying and fixing mistakes in grammar, part of my job will be interpretive. As Mary Norris, a veteran copy editor at The New Yorker, said, editors have to strike a balance between respect for a writer’s creativity and the standards to which the publication holds them:

“Sometimes you notice that your suggestions have not been taken, so if something bothers you, you try again. Sometimes you wear them down, sometimes you cave. I have been on both sides of the process, as a writer and as a query proofreader. Being edited sometimes felt like having my bones reset on a torture rack. I don’t ever want to do that to a writer, but I probably have from time to time. ‘What is this, the adverb police?’ a writer who shall remain nameless once said in my earshot. ‘You betcha,’ I wanted to say. I don’t remove every word ending in ‘ly,’ but I like economy and concision.”

Mary Norris, a copy editor for The New Yorker (Photo courtesy of Red Room)

I personally agree with Norris that “being edited” is a painful but necessary experience. I strive to keep my own writing stylistically free of error by editing as I write, but I can always make improvements in the quality of content and its format. This year, I’ve been fortunate enough to sit on both sides of the editing fence. I was the features editor at The Pendulum, and I was a contributing writer for Her Campus Magazine. At The Pendulum, I became accustomed to editing my own work and having the other staff members trust my decisions, but when I started writing for Her Campus, a remote position, the editors exacted cruel and unusual criticism to my work. In my position at SmartCEO, I’ll keep this experience in mind and bridge the gap between the writers (who are mostly freelancers) and editors.

While correcting grammatical errors in copy is certainly not the only responsibility of copy editors (other things need correcting, too), it’s one of their major concerns. Jeff Baron, a copy editor for the Washington Post, wrote a defense of copy editing that was published on the newspaper’s website. In it, he described the duties of those in his position:

“We are the defenders of proper grammar, usage, spelling and what publications call style: when to capitalize, when to use numerals or spell out the numbers, etc. Copy editors might be the only people who can discuss, cheerfully and seriously and on their own time, when to hyphenate a compound adjective. Normal people, I have found, deeply do not care.”

Grammar comes first on Baron’s list of duties, and while the list may not have been intended to be in order of importance, I still think it says something that Baron would think of grammar first when describing what copy editors do. This may sound obvious, but copy editors have to be able to identify grammatical errors before they can correct them; therefore, they have to clearly understand the parts and rules of grammar. They have to know the difference between an independent and a dependent clause so they can tell when to put a comma before a coordinating conjunction; they have to know that punctuation always goes inside quotation marks, except when it doesn’t, and then they have to know the exceptions; they have to be able to recognize appositives and know they should always be set off by commas. Someone who wants to be a copy editor isn’t going to make it very far if he or she doesn’t understand the rules of English grammar.

(As a side note, I have to plead guilty to discussing the proper use of hyphens on my own time. Perhaps this is a sign.)

I read a journal article called “Stories of Three Editors” by Isabelle Thompson and Joyce Rothschild* that, although it wasn’t about copy editors specifically, was an interesting study on how “editor” can mean many different things depending on the person and the organization. What remains consistent across editing jobs, though, is the attention to grammar:

“Rule-based changes are consistent, the changes Dorothy always makes regardless of the document. For example, she consistently changes ‘since’ to ‘because’ when the clause gives a reason, ‘which’ to ‘that’ when the clause is nonrestrictive, and ‘due to’ to ‘because of’ in all situations.” 147

What I find most interesting in that excerpt is the distinction that grammatical changes are “always [made] regardless of the document.” Completely restructuring a paragraph, for instance, is not appropriate in every situation, but grammar errors should always be corrected.

So, yes, grammar is a very important part of copy editing. It’s one of the basic concerns of someone with the job, no matter what kind of publication he or she is editing for, and I look forward to experiencing the satisfaction of destroying correcting errors for a living.

* Isabelle K. Thompson and Joyce M. Rothschild, “Stories of Three Editors: A Qualitative Study of Editing in the Workplace,” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 9.2 (1995): 139-167.