Editor's Corner

I’m sure some of you wonder why I send you emails every day, especially if your manager signed you up under duress. Today, I want to take a minute to remind you of why grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and writing well is important.

Even if you are not a writer, chances are that you are required to write for your job. Whether you write emails to clients, business designs, product descriptions, programming notes, user documentation, articles, warnings, marketing campaigns, or something else, what you say and how you say it is important. When you communicate clearly, you are generally viewed as being more credible and more capable of doing your job. This is particularly important when writing to clients.

You may think that reviewing or relearning the rules of writing well are a waste of your time. I would argue that no matter what your position is here, spending 5–10 minutes a day to improve your communication is worth it.

Choosing your words carefully, proofreading your writing, and using proper grammar and punctuation will only help you communicate better, stronger, and faster at work. Try to make a little time each day to improve and polish what you write.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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Dear Editrix,

I’m wondering about the two words further and farther. Do they mean the same thing? Is further farther away? I’m confused.

Further Father

Dear Father,

Generally, we use this rule:

· Farther is for physical distance, such as “John’s house is farther from school than it is from the public pool.” (Just think about “far” measuring distance.)

· Further is used more for figurative distance, such as, “If you take this argument any further, I will not make dinner.” (Just think about “fur” having nothing to do with distance or anything else in this conversation, unless you are talking about figurative or metaphorical puppies.)

Sometimes, it could be both, so your choice is okay either way. For example:

· I am further along in the assignment than I thought I would be.

· I am farther along in this assignment than you are—I’m on page 10 and you’re only on page 3.

For difficult moments where you aren’t sure if it is physical or figurative distance, it is safer to use further, since farther is restricted to distance only.

Sincerely,

Editrix

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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We’ve talked about ending a sentence with a preposition, but this topic still comes up several times a year. Some grammarians claim it is never allowed, while we, and many others, disagree. Our general attitude here is that if ending a sentence with a preposition is clearer and less stilted, you should go with it.

For example:

· Who are you giving that pocket knife to? (Nice and easy.)

· To whom are you giving that pocket knife? (What are you, a butler on Downton Abbey?)

(For more information on the topic, including Winston Churchill’s famous quote, see Your Dictionary.)

Today, however, I’d like to bring up a specific example that has made a few of us peevish, and that is this question: Where are you at? In this case, it is completely unnecessary to add the word at to the end of the sentence. “Where are you?” is clear by itself and is the correct way to ask someone where they are.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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Good morning and happy Friday to you all!

While I waited for my doggies to visit the vet, I read through more of Grammar Girl’s book, The Grammar Devotional. I found several more topics that come up a lot here and others that are just interesting grammatical tidbits. Today I think I’ll share a little quiz with you. (Answers and explanations are at the bottom of this email.)

Quiz: You’re Welcome (p.5)

Which of the following is incorrect?

1. Squiggly received a warm welcome.

2. Please welcome Squiggly.

3. Squiggly’s arrival was a welcome distraction.

4. You’re welcomed.

5. They welcomed Squiggly to the family.

6. Welcome!

The answer is (4). Welcome can be many things: a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an interjection. But welcomed is the past tense form of the verb to welcome, not an adjective.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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Sometimes I feel like I am a stodgy, old-fashioned grammarian who should be sitting in an overstuffed chair and wearing a smoking jacket, while I read Roget’s Thesaurus. Then there are times like today when I think that we should all lighten up and let English expand and grow as it always has. The bit of reading that got me thinking about this is from Grammar Girl’s book, The Grammar Devotional (p. 105). I have to say, I’m on the side of the firefighters who decided that “flammable” (meaning “burns easily”) is easier to understand than “inflammable.”

Come On, Baby, Light My Fire: Flammable Versus Inflammable

Flammable and inflammable both mean “easy to burn.” Inflammable is the original word, but in the 1920s, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, the National Fire Protection Association started encouraging people to use flammable instead because they worried people could mistakenly think “inflammable” meant “not flammable.” Academics were inflamed (get it?) because they didn’t appreciate the NFPA promoting “corrupt” words, and linguists have groused about flammable ever since.

If safety is important, it is best to use flammable or some other phrase like burns easily. In other cases, you can use whichever word you like.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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Today’s article is from Daily Writing Tips. I cut a bit out to save time and because I started getting bored reading about fishwives, but the full article is available by clicking here.

Wer and Wyf, Man and Woman

In Old English, the word man had the meaning of “human being” or “person,” male or female.

Note: Old English is the earliest form of English, brought to Great Britain in the fifth century by Germanic settlers. The first literary works in Old English date from the seventh century.

In OE, the word man occurs in proverbs in the sense of “one,” “a person,” or “people”:

Nē sceal man tō ǣr forht nē tō ǣr fægen.
A person shouldn’t be too soon fearful nor too soon glad. [KC – I’d be more likely to translate this Old English as “Don’t steal a person’s Fahrvergnügen.”]

The usual OE word for “an adult male person” was wer. Man didn’t start being used in that sense until late in the OE period (c. 1000). Wer continued into Middle English, but by the late thirteenth century had been replaced by man.

Wer survives into modern English as the combining form seen in the first syllable of werewolf: “a person who, according to medieval superstition, is transformed or is capable of transforming himself at times into a wolf.”

The general meaning of man to mean human person of either gender survives in modern English in such words as manslaughter and mankind. The latter is being superseded by the word humankind in the belief that the man- of mankind excludes women. Its fixed legal use will probably prevent manslaughter from being replaced by humanslaughter.

The Old English word for a female person, married or unmarried, was wyf.

The meaning “female spouse” developed within the OE period, but the general sense of woman, married or unmarried, continued. In the 18th century, one definition of wife was “a woman of humble rank or of low employment,” a sense that remains in the words fishwife and alewife. . . .

It’s interesting that today’s general word for “adult female person,” woman, originated when wyf (“female person”) was joined to man (“human being”) to produce the combination wyfman (“female human being”). The modern form woman developed from a plural of wyfman that did not include the /f/ sound or spelling: wimman.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
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I came across this article the other day about the Top Ten Confused Words fromDaily Writing Tips.Rather than give you all ten comparisons, I’m delivering just two sets. These pairs come up more often than you might expect when we are editing.

Enjoy your holiday weekend in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday (which was actually today, in 1929).

than/then
The word than is a conjunction used after a comparative adjective or adverb to introduce the second member of the comparison.
Ex. She thinks her border collie is smarter than my boxer.

The word then is an adverb that refers to a specified time, past or future, as opposed to the present.
Ex. We didn’t have enough money for luxuries like books then.

till/’til
Till has different functions, one of which is that of conjunction with the same meaning as until: ‘to the time that; up to the point when”: I will sit here till he agrees to speak to me.

The form ’til is an unnecessary shortening of until.

(KC – For more on this sometimes argued about topic, seeThe Grammarist.)

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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Luckily, it seems many of us enjoy hearing about where English words originated. Today’s word combination from Words of a Feather: A Humorous Puzzlement of Etymological Pairs, by Murray Suid is a super-whammy: it’s glamour and grammar!

Glamour and Grammar

Grammar—the study of how words work together to make sense—can be fascinating. But few people—including grammarians—would call grammar a glamorous activity. And yet, the two words are intimately connected in terms of etymology.

Grammar traces back to the ancient Greek gramma, “letter,” which relates to another Greek word graphein, “to draw or write.” The gramophone, an early sound recording and playback device, was a “writer of sound.”

But back to grammar: Over the centuries, the word took on the meaning of “learning,” especially sophisticated learning. Eventually, grammar included the mastery of magic and other amazing subjects. [KC – No wonder so many call us editors “witches.” Or is it something else?]

In the eighteenth century, as it came to denote the study of the occult, grammar spawned glamour. While grammar stayed behind as the term for more traditional studies, glamour continue its semantic evolution, eventually coming to mean things that were magical, mysterious, and, finally, in the nineteenth century, alluring.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
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Today’s grammar tidbit is from Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl). It’s from her book The Grammar Devotional, and I thought it seemed fitting for a January day.

Janus Words
Alert: Roman gods are fiddling with our language! Actually, they’re not, but a word that has two opposing meanings is called a Janus word, named after the two-face Roman god, Janus. For example, sanction is a Janus word because it can mean “to approve” or “to condemn,” “a reward” or “a punishment.”

The protest was actually a state-sanctioned event.

Imposing sanctions on countries has had mixed results.

Other Janus words include cleave (“to cling to” or “to separate”), screen (“to review, show” or “to display, hide, or shield from view”), and trim (“to remove things” or “to add things”).

For more on Janus and January, see this Dictionary.com blog: Janus.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
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Affect and effect are two words that many of us get mixed up. One of our credit union clients sent me a great photo the other day about these commonly mixed words, so I thought I’d include another article on the topic, this time from Your Dictionary.

Grammar Rules

Affect

1. Affect can be used as a verb. Use it when trying to describe influencing someone or something rather than causing it.

· Example: How does the crime rate affect hiring levels by local police forces?

· Example: The weather conditions will affect the number of people who come to the county fair this year.

2. Affect can also be used as a noun in one situation – to describe facial expression.

· Example: The young man with schizophrenia had a flat affect.

· Example: The woman took the news of her husband’s sudden death with little affect.

Effect

1. Effect can be used as a noun when you are talking about a result.

· Example: What effect did the loss have on the team?

2. Effect can be used if it follows one of these words: "into", "on", "take", "the", "any", "an" as well as "or."

· Example: The prescribed medication had an effect on the patient’s symptoms.

· Example: In analyzing a situation, it is important to take the concepts of cause and effect into consideration.

3. Effect can be used as a verb in one situation – if you want to describe something that was caused.

· Example: The new manager effected some positive changes in the office. (This means that the new manager caused some positive changes to take place in the office.)

Below are some more examples from the Your Dictionary site. Click the link to see even more!

Examples of Affect

· An early frost in Florida can affect the orange crop negatively.

· The boss’s negativity affected all the workers.

· The memoirs affected me so deeply I was brought to tears.

· Hugs can affect a person’s immune system in a positive way.

· Congress will pass a law that will greatly affect the economy.

Examples of Effect

· Transportation costs have a direct effect on the cost of retail goods.

· The effect of the medicine on her illness was surprisingly fast.

· The new law prohibiting texting while driving will go into effect tomorrow.

· In her will, she left all her personal effects to her daughter.

· The special effects in movies today are aided by computers.

Additional Information

Choosing between similar words can be challenging. When in doubt, be sure to consider whether the word you are looking for shows action (if so, you’ll probably need to use "affect") or if you are looking for an event (which would call for the word "effect.")

Photo by Tom Ha

Vice President of Information Technology

AmeriChoice Federal Credit Union

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services