Editor's Corner

Synonyms are words that have the same meaning as other words. As an organization, we should be consistent in our word use, so you should always consider standard word usage when picking a better word or picking a word to add variety to your writing. Find a synonym for words that are unclear, unprofessional, or that stimulate violent imagery.

For example, we advise against using the word execute to describe performing, implementing, or completing something. We also shy away from using the word impact instead of the word affect or the word hung instead of the word frozen. Execute, impact, and hung generate negative imagery we would rather not think about.

Jackie Solano | Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.542.6711 | Extension: 766711

It’s my favorite time of the week—Mondegreen Friday! We have over 200 new subscribers to the Editor’s Corner this week. For you new folks, mondegreens are misheard song lyrics. For further explanation, you can see these two articles on the Editor’s Corner website:

· https://episystechpubs.com/2014/09/19/editors-corner-marvelous-mondegreens/

· https://episystechpubs.com/2014/11/07/editors-corner-lady-marmalade-and-lady-mondegreen/

Today’s selection of mondegreens is brought to you by Hit Me with Your Pet Shark: Misheard Lyrics of the 1980s, by Charles Grosvenor Jr.

And here’s one I remember from another book, but I’m not sure which one:

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

(Originally posted September 26, 2014)

Happy Friday!

Yes, 99 percent of you have heard my spiel on mondegreens, but for those of you who have joined recently, here is a little more information on the history of the word, from Wikipedia:

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning.

Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to clearly hear a lyric, substitutes words that sound similar, and make some kind of sense. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper’s Magazine in November 1954.

In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray." She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy’s Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". Wright explained the need for a new term:

"The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original."

Now for this Friday’s sampling from Hit Me with Your Pet Shark: Misheard Lyrics of the 1980s, by Charles Grosvenor Jr.

Here are your lyrics for today. I have to say, some of the actual lyrics are odder than the misheard ones!

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. The message,
together with any attachment, may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
Any unauthorized review, use, printing, saving, copying, disclosure or distribution
is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
immediately advise the sender by reply email and delete all copies.

The other day, someone asked me whether it is acceptable to start a sentence with and, but, yet, or other coordinating conjunctions. The answer is: it depends.

Many teachers will tell you that it is not at all acceptable; our authority, the Chicago Manual of Style says that the belief that you can’t start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction “has no historical or grammatical foundation.” Additionally, CMOS says “a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice” (CMOS 5.206).

As far as being a technical editor who deals mostly with technical writing, I would recommend that you stay away from this construction. The “first-rate writing” that CMOS mentions is from renowned writers such as Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, and George Orwell. I don’t think anyone will ever accuse us of penning a masterpiece on lending software.

So, you can use a coordinating conjunction to start a sentence without the grammar police arresting you, but just like anybody can legally wear a bikini—sometimes it is better not to if you can’t do it well.

Need a reminder about how to use conjunctions? Take a trip back to the ‘70s with Schoolhouse Rock.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. The message,
together with any attachment, may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
Any unauthorized review, use, printing, saving, copying, disclosure or distribution
is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
immediately advise the sender by reply email and delete all copies.

Welcome new subscribers! Today I am going to talk about paragraphs. A paragraph represents a topic. Each paragraph must have a topic sentence that describes the main point of the paragraph. The rest of the sentences in the paragraph support the main point.

When you are writing paragraphs, watch out for sneaky sentences that don’t support your topic. If you are introducing a new topic, create another paragraph with its own topic sentence.

To make sure information flows from paragraph to paragraph, include transitions to tie your information together. Transitions include single words, phrases, or full sentences. Transitions help readers understand how the information works together.

Documentation that contains multiple topics in the same paragraph, or lacks transitions is difficult to understand. If you don’t organize the information in your documentation, it won’t be useful to readers and you won’t accomplish your writing goals.

Jackie Solano | Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.542.6711 | Extension: 766711

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. The message,
together with any attachment, may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
Any unauthorized review, use, printing, saving, copying, disclosure or distribution
is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
immediately advise the sender by reply email and delete all copies.

Good morning, everyone! The newest set of questions and answers from the Chicago Manual of Style was just released for November. Having never heard of a business referred to as “she” (except maybe in dog breeding), I thought this was amusing.

Q. I have seen some texts using the pronoun her to refer to a business: “Apple’s profit was high due to her impressive product designs.” I would like to learn when I should use the feminine pronoun and when I should avoid it.

A. Use the feminine pronoun when referring to a female person or animal. Avoid using it to refer to a business, a ship, or any nonliving entity—especially in the presence of a female person.

As a female person, I second that motion and wonder why the original writer didn’t just use the pronoun “its” when referring to Apple’s designs. Perhaps the writer wasn’t sure of the difference between “its” and “it’s”? If you are among those who get confused, have a gander at this video (below). Many of you have already seen it, but if you haven’t, you’ll get a taste of the kind of lessons Editor’s Corner has to offer, and a comedic look at frequent grammar mistakes.

The video is called Word Crimes (a parody of Blurred Lines) and you can view it here: http://www.weirdal.com/

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. The message,
together with any attachment, may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
Any unauthorized review, use, printing, saving, copying, disclosure or distribution
is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
immediately advise the sender by reply email and delete all copies.

Good afternoon! We have a lot of new subscribers today—a hearty welcome to you!

While I am busily adding you to the distribution list, I have some information for from the Daily Writing Tips newsletter. Today’s topic is misspelled idioms.

Note to newbies: I generally write in blue text to differentiate my comments and lessons from information I borrow.

Five Misspelled Idioms

1. waiting with bated breath
The word bated in this expression is often misspelled “baited.” For example, “We’re waiting with baited breath to hear if Rosie O’Donnell is officially coming back to daytime screens.”

The word bated is from a shortening of the verb abate. “To bate” means “to reduce, to lessen in intensity.” The expression “bated breath” is the only survival of the word in modern English.

2. lo and behold
People use this to mean something like “and then see what happened.” The idiom is frequently misspelled as “low and behold.” Lo is an old form of “look.”

3. pore over
Not to be confused with the noun pore (an opening in the skin), the verb pore means, “to study or examine carefully.” In expressions like “pore over a book” and “pore over my taxes,” the word is often misspelled as pour (to transfer liquid).

4. toe the line
This expression derives from the practice of lining up with one’s toe touching a line that has been drawn on the ground. Competitors line up to begin a race or some other competition. When everyone “toes the line” in this way, conformity has been achieved. In modern use, the expression occurs almost always in a political context with the meaning of “to conform to a political party’s platform.” It is often miswritten as “tow the line.” [KC – I always imagined it was people all doing the same thing but towing (pulling) a rope! I pictured a bunch of people in a tug-of-war, all pulling the rope in the same
direction. Go figure!]

5. pique one’s interest/curiosity
The French borrowing pique means “to stimulate.” The word is sometimes misspelled as peek and peak. [KC – Peeking at someone else’s curiosity is generally considered bad manners.
J]

For more information on each of these, there are links on the Daily Writing Tips website.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Good morning!

For giggles, I subscribe to the Dictionary.com Word of the Day. But I also have a fun desk calendar that gives me the Urban Dictionary word of the day, and these are usually words that are not recognized by any professional dictionary. They are often slang terms (and they are typically off-color; so if you look them up, consider yourself forewarned). Occasionally, these words or phrases catch on in our everyday speech, but usually they just make me laugh.

For example, a while back Urban Dictionary introduced the following word and definition:

voluntold: The exact opposite of volunteering. Always used in reference to an unpleasant task to which you have been assigned by your boss.

Example:
Co-worker 1: I hear you got a transfer.
Co-worker 2: Yeah. I didn’t want to, but I was voluntold.

And then sometimes, the Urban Dictionary word of the day ridicules our misuse or overuse of a word. That’s what happened last Thursday when the following word and definition came up and made me high-five my imaginary cubicle-mate.

leverage: After much misuse, the word leverage no longer describes anything or has any meaning to anyone who has ever worked in an office. In business circles this word is most commonly used in place of the word use or get.

Example:
Can we take this offline? I’m starving and need to leverage a sandwich.

The word leverage is seriously overused in our communication and documentation. We are using this longer, less precise word when a shorter, clearer word does the trick. You really don’t need to say that a product “leverages a fully-automated scheduling system.” You can just say that the product uses one. If you want to be understood, it’s best to keep your writing simple and jargon-free.

Donna Bradley Burcher | Technical Editor, Adv. | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.278.0432 | Ext: 765432

Happy Halloween!

Today’s selection of mondegreens is brought to you by Hit Me with Your Pet Shark: Misheard Lyrics of the 1980s, by Charles Grosvenor Jr.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
exclusively for the individual or entity to which it is addressed. The message,
together with any attachment, may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
Any unauthorized review, use, printing, saving, copying, disclosure or distribution
is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
immediately advise the sender by reply email and delete all copies.

The other day my friend asked me a grammar question because she saw a grammatically incorrect post on Facebook. This conversation made me think about the shorthand that is typically used when communicating through social media. On several occasions, I have seen this shorthand used in documentation at work. Shorthand shouldn’t be used in any documentation for JHA.

Using shorthand or poor grammar when communicating through social media is your call, just remember that people notice bad grammar, bad punctuation, and bad spelling in any medium.

Jackie Solano | Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.542.6711 | Extension: 766711