Dash It All!

Dashes are one of the most useful and often misused bits of punctuation. Traditionally they just set off a parenthetical statement—just like parenthesis or commas—but they’re also used to create a pause in conversational pose or to show as shift in stream of consciousness. I see a lot of dashes used too casually or incorrectly, so I’m going to talk about the right way to use them.

First of all, a dash is not a hyphen. Hyphens are only used for forming some kinds of compounds, generally used as adjectives or nouns. Examples include tight-lipped, half-hour and city-state. Hyphens are also placed by typesetters where part of a long word must be continued on the next line.

There are two kinds of dashes. The en dash, so called because it is the width of a letter N, connects numbers or places; generally, it means the same as the word to or though. 25–30, or Paris–London are examples.

The em dash, the longest and most versatile dash, joins and separates parts of sentences. They can be used where other punctuation won’t do, indicating a sudden break, introducing an aside or separating a subject and its pronoun in the same sentence. The em dash—flexible as it is—is useful, but has potential for misuse. Insert em dashes sparingly—no more than twice in a single sentence—to avoid confusion. Don’t use them where another punctuation mark makes more sense; in this sentence, many writers would use a dash, but a semicolon is more appropriate.

Microsoft Word can automatically insert a dash where a writer puts a hyphen to indicate that one is necessary. However, it doesn’t always detect one properly, or the feature may be disabled. This accounts for a lot of the misused hyphens I come across. If Word isn’t automatically inserting your dashes, you can do it manually. In the menu bar, click Insert > Symbol… to bring up a character palette. You can select and insert an en or em dash here, in addition to a number of other special characters.

If you have trouble remembering which is which, go by the length: a short hyphen combines words, but a longer dash combines groups of words. This simple rule will help you keep your writing both easy to understand and formally correct.

Link: Three Grammar Rules You Can Break at Copyblogger

Copyblogger posted a nice, short article today about three rules of grammar that are meant to be broken. Check it out here.

Beware of Grammar Snobs

We're all familiar with the maxim "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." This applies just as much in editing as anywhere else. When you over-edit, you risk introducing new mistakes, stripping the piece of its author's voice, and giving yourself a headache.

A lot of people out there think the rules of usage they remember from the 9th grade are the definitive way to write in English. Thus they might make unnecessary changes that actually hurt the document. I recently posted an ad for my services on Craigslist, and some kind soul had the courtesy to e-mail me and suggest that I meant to use "don't" where I said "won't." This change actually would've caused the sentence in question to contain a disagreement of tense between two clauses, thus introducing an error that wouldn't have existed before. I gave this person my courteous thanks and left the ad as it was.

There's a certain breed of people out there who, perhaps under the influence of books like Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, see themselves as defenders of correct English, and take delight in finding violations of whatever arbitrary "rules" they've absorbed most recently. Beware of these people! The aim of editing is internal consistency; as long as an author follows their own precedents, there's no need for nit-picking.

I won't deny that there's a certain standard of English usage that we should stick to - you can't get away with spelling errors or disagreements in tense just because you do things that way consistently - but people need to loosen up a little bit. Just because a writer doesn't do things the way you would, doesn't mean they're wrong, it just means we need to be respectful of their style and extra careful about making changes.

Two approaches to writing a clear introduction

No matter what kind of piece you're writing, it can benefit from having a clear, precise introduction. A good introduction tells the reader what to expect and hooks them in, so they'll keep reading.

A lot of writers use their introduction to get warmed up or figure out what they're going to write about, end up putting the most important part at the end of it, and then fail to edit this introduction later. This is the worst way to write an introduction! I'm going to talk about two ways of writing an introduction that result in a great start to any document.

The Planned Approach

If you're the kind of writer that plans carefully before typing a single word and does minimal editing once you're finished, this is the approach for you. Once your ideas are clearly formed in your head, or even better, in your outline, you will know exactly what you're going to say. Start your introduction by stating your intention or main point. Then, write sentences describing what each paragraph or section will be about. They should have some sort of logical order.

Now, use each of those subsequent sentences as the topic sentence for each actual paragraph. Focus on each, and use only details that support that statement in its paragraph. Your writing will follow the plan you had for it, and will all add up at the end. With enough discipline, you won't even have to edit your introduction.

The Organic Approach

This approach is for writers who like to start by writing, then whittle their work down to its essentials. It might take a little longer than the planned approach, or it might not, because you write faster and spend time editing, rather than planning each statement.

Go ahead and just start writing, using all the time to lead in or give background information you need. Let your arguments develop as they come to you, and conclude when you think you've said everything you need to.

Now, set the work aside. Read it the next day, or have another writer you trust read it. You'll probably find that the beginning has little to do with your actual point, or that the initial statements can be better placed further on to support other arguments. Look for the single sentence that suddenly clarifies everything that came before it, that says, "This is what I'm talking about." This is your topic sentence. Put it at the very top of your first page.

Next, read each paragraph or section in the same way. Locate the strongest statements, that tell us what each part is about, then copy them into your introduction, after that first sentence. If necessary, reword or rephrase them to make sense together. When you've gone all the way through your text this way, you will have a clear introduction that grew naturally from the logical process of your thoughts. Go ahead and recycle or throw out all that unnecessary lead-in that you originally started with.

Any essay, article, or other text makes more sense and has a greater impact with a clear introduction. If you're going to take the time to write something, you'd better take the time to write an introduction that's going to get someone to read it. Follow one of these approaches, and you won't have a problem at all.

Link: What do Editors Do?

I was planning on writing a post about how editors work, but this one over at About Freelance Writing is probably better than anything I could've come up with.

An editor is an advocate for the reader and for the writer. Her job is to make sure they understand each other.

That means that we have to ask dumb questions sometimes, which doesn’t
mean we’re making fun of writers’ works. Or, we can try to fix things
we don’t understand, and if we mess up, that’s a good message that the
reader wouldn’t “get it” either.

Go read it.

Might makes Right

Ever wonder why tons of words have silent letters or letters that don't make their usual sound?

This article at Grammarphobia gives a two sentence explanation of every spelling irregularity I can think of, and a few that don't come to mind right away, and unlike a lot of grammar blog articles, is a damned interesting read.

The Five Editors You'll Meet in Publishing

Since a lot of people out there have never even heard of copy editing, today I'm going to discuss the different types of editors and their responsibilities.

When people think of an editor, there are two types that traditionally come to mind. One is the editor-in-chief at a metropolitan daily newspaper. This is the cigar-chomping, suspender-snapping, grumpy guy in the big office responsible for agenda setting, giving assignments, and harassing the help. You might also think of the star editors of the early 20th century, turning literary riffraff into authors of classic novels used to torture tenth-graders forevermore.

As far as real editors go, the highest ranked is a managing editor. In addition to supervising the editorial staff, managing editors do most of the things mentioned above. They might find suitable writers for an idea they had for a piece, or set the overall tone of their publications. They might also get their hands dirty with substantive editing.

Substantive editors do the work we're most familiar with. They examine a work as a whole, and may remove or rearrange large sections to better express an author's point or theme. They might also ask the author to rewrite or write additional portions. A developmental editor does the same kind of work, but helps the author along while the manuscript is being written. In this sense, developmental editors are collaborators, and are often ghostwriters as well.

Copy editors work more closely with the language of a text. They examine and correct spelling, grammar, syntax, word usage, and address style. Style doesn't necessarily mean linguistic style, but a consistent way of using certain features of the language, formatting the text, and presenting the whole work. They are aided in this by style manuals, long books of guidelines for writers and editors. The style manual used depends on the publication. For example, newspapers use the Associated Press Stylebook, which is geared toward news writing.

Line editors, I believe, used to be the same thing as copy editors, except they existed in the era of Teletype machines, a sort of primitive electronic typewriter that only allowed their users to work with one line of text at a time. Line editors apparently still exist at some software companies, where they edit code, line by line.

Proofreaders have similar responsibilities to copy editors, but are the last people to work with a piece of text before it is ready to be published. Therefore, most of the errors have already been caught, and it falls to the proofreader to catch any outstanding errors in facticity, grammar or spelling.

That should explain the major distinctions between the types of editors. Of course, the responsibilities of an editor will vary depending on the type and size of the organization the editor works for - at small publications, one staff editor might have to do everything - but these are general categories, pretty distinct from one another. There are also a lot of other specialty groups, like acquisitions editors, technical editors, etc., but most of these have names that explain the essence of what they do.

And if I've raised any questions, feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment, and I will do my best to write a stimulating, enlightening answer, right here.

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