Good morning everyone and welcome to the new subscribers!

Let’s get right into today’s topic, the ellipsis (plural: ellipses). This piece of punctuation (…) is often misunderstood and misused. The primary purpose of the ellipsis is to indicate missing content. Occasionally it is also used to indicate a pause (though you might be better served with an em-dash). Since most of what we do is business writing, you should not see ellipses in our content. We don’t want to give the impression that material is missing or that we can’t complete a thought.

Here are a couple of examples of the appropriate use of ellipses from DailyWritingTips (and embellished a bit by me and Mrs. Wiggles).

1. To indicate a pause.

Example: And the Cutest Dog Award goes to . . . Mrs. Wiggles!

Note: A space precedes and follows the ellipsis.

2. To indicate an omitted sentence between two complete sentences.
Example: I have been there. . . .It’s not worth the price of admission.
Notes: The period immediately after “I have been there” indicates this is a complete sentence. The ellipsis before the second sentence “It’s not worth the price of admission” indicates a sentence has been omitted.

More on ellipses tomorrow!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

As promised, I have a few more tidbits on the possessive forms of words. Before I get to that, though, I want to answer a question that a good friend of the Editor’s Corner asked. We will call him “Mr. D” to protect his reputation and privacy. Mr. D wanted to know why the newspaper and other media don’t tend to refer to the Chargers’ wide receiver or the Chiefs’ scoreboard (using the apostrophe to indicate possession). My first thought was that maybe it’s a difference between the AP Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style. My second thought is that like “girls’ basketball” and “girls basketball,” the sports teams are being used attributively.

I looked through the AP Stylebook and I’m here to report that I couldn’t find any special rule about teams and apostrophes, so I think the team names are not intended to indicate ownership. (Can you ever really own a quarterback?) What the AP Stylebook does include, however, is:

· The correct way to report archery scores

· How to spell athlete’s foot

· Which team to report first in basketball scores (visiting team)

· That bobsledding is scored in minutes, seconds, and tenths of a second

· How boxing defines a kidney punch

· The differences between a colt, gelding, horse, and stallion

· Etc.

From the Chicago Manual of Style:

Possessive of most nouns

The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s. The possessive of plural nouns (except for a few irregular plurals, like children, that do not end in s) is formed by adding an apostrophe only.

the horse’s mouth

a bass’s stripes

puppies’ paws

children’s literature

a herd of sheep’s mysterious disappearance

Possessive of nouns plural in form, singular in meaning

When the singular form of a noun ending in s is the same as the plural (i.e., the plural is uninflected), the possessives of both are formed by the addition of an apostrophe only. If ambiguity threatens, use of to avoid the possessive.

politics’ true meaning

economics’ forerunners

this species’ first record (or, better, the first record of this species)

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

www.symitar.com

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Thanks to those of you who voted today! And the winner of the best tattoo is….

Okay. No tattoos. The answer I was looking for was ABB. This was a bit tricky, however, because it depends on whether you interpreted “girls” in the third set of sentences as a “team made up of girls” (attributive) or “girls” as in a “team for the girls” (possessive). Since the exercise was on possessives, ABB is the most correct, but ABA is correct in other circumstances. Here are the totals:

AAA (10)

ABA (39)

ABC (10)

ABB (22)

BBB (33)

BAA (10)

Congratulations to the 22 people who got everything right, despite the sneakiness of our language. And here are the answers from the writers of the quiz (from DailyWritingTips). Tomorrow I’ll send some additional information from the Chicago Manual of Style on forming possessive nouns; I know, you probably can’t wait!

1A: I helped paint the Smiths’ house.

1B: I helped paint the Smith’s house.

I helped paint the Smiths’ house.
The house is occupied by the Smiths, not the Smith, so the name must be treated as a plural possessive.

2A: My brother made a cake for our mom’s and dad’s anniversary celebration.

2B: My brother made a cake for our mom and dad’s anniversary celebration.

My brother made a cake for our mom and dad’s anniversary celebration.
When a pair of nouns is considered a single entity or group, only the second noun should be in the possessive form. (However, when two closely linked nouns are nevertheless clearly associated with distinct referents, both nouns should be in the possessive form, as in "I researched my aunt’s and uncle’s family backgrounds.")

3A: Darla made it onto the girls volleyball team.

3B: Darla made it onto the girls’ volleyball team.

3C: Darla made it onto the girl’s volleyball team.

Darla made it onto the girls’ volleyball team.
When a word can take either a possessive form (in this case, girls’, as in "for girls") or an attributive form (here, girls, as in "of girls"), the possessive form is usually more appropriate.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

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.
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is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
immediately advise the sender by reply email and delete all copies.

You know what we haven’t done in a long time? A Thursday quiz!

For those of you who are new to the Editor’s Corner, here’s how it works:

1. I provide you with several sentences focused on a particular topic. Today’s topic is possessives.

2. You read through the sentences and pick the one that is correct.

3. Jot down your answers on a piece of paper.

4. Use the voting buttons at the top of this email (if you are using Outlook) to click the answer that matches yours.

5. I’ll send out the correct answers and explanations sometime after noon Pacific Time.

I don’t publish names and there aren’t any prizes—unless you count your growing knowledge as a prize. Isn’t that better than a cheap stuffed circus monkey anyway? Here are today’s sentences:

Set 1

A: I helped paint the Smiths’ house.

B: I helped paint the Smith’s house.

Set 2

A: My brother made a cake for our mom’s and dad’s anniversary celebration.

B: My brother made a cake for our mom and dad’s anniversary celebration.

Set 3

A: Darla made it onto the girls volleyball team.

B: Darla made it onto the girls’ volleyball team.

C: Darla made it onto the girl’s volleyball team.

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My apologies for the blatant error in yesterday’s opening sentence. I’m afraid my Wonder Woman exterior has been shattered to reveal I am a mere mortal. I know, it’s sad when the mystery fades.

Today, I have a few more tidbits from DailyWritingTips to keep your business email looking and sounding professional. As with yesterday’s tips, I’ve started with their information and made some revisions.

1. Conclude with a summary and, if you have any requests, a courteous and concise explanation of actions you would like the recipient to perform. If you are not requesting a response, simply inform or remind the recipient that your services are available, or mention something similar that is appropriate to the context.

2. Sign off with “Sincerely,” “Kind regards,” or the like. Include your name and use one of the approved JHA signature formats. For guidelines on company signatures standards, go to: jhaToday> Departments > Marketing > Marketing Library (in the left column)> JHA Corporate Collateral > Corporate Email Signature Standards.

3. Use your email program’s spell-checking tool! It doesn’t catch every error, but it will save you from some embarrassment.

4. Proofread your message and read it aloud in a separate pass. If you used any language that might not be perceived as professional, save the message without sending it and review it later, when you can be more objective about whether it is appropriate.

Hint: Anything that requires a grawlix (@#*&!) or a trip to the Urban Dictionary for a definition should probably be left out.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

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.

Over the last few years, I know we’ve going over email etiquette, email greetings, and other related topics. For the next couple of days I have another list of rules to live by when it comes to sending email. The original list is from my friends (okay, I don’t have a clue who any of these people are) at DailyWritingTips, but I have adapted it a little.

1. Send business email from a businesslike address. Not that any of you are on a job search, but if you are networking or inquiring on a new position somewhere, you might want to forego using your email address sassypants. Keep your return address clean and simple.

2. I believe this is already a rule as far as JHA email goes:
Avoid using animations, complicated fonts, and busy backgrounds in your messages.

3. Use the Subject line to state the purpose of the message distinctly and concisely.

4. Use a formal salutation unless you’re on a first-name basis with the recipient. For most of us here, we are addressing coworkers by first name (or pet name). Important: It is unwise to use “Love Monkey,” “Boo,” or “Sugar Blossom” when addressing upper management, no matter what their pet name is.

5. Use short paragraphs separated by line spaces to clearly and concisely communicate well-organized information. Don’t clutter your message with a lot of details or with digressions.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

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 morning! I was going to start this week with something easy—it’s Monday after all. But then I ran across this topic among my emails from you folks, and I decided just to dive in. Here are some helpful hints on when to use and when not to use hyphens, from The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation.

Hyphenating Between Words

Many of us get confused about when to hyphenate between words. For example, should you write nearly-extinct wolves or nearly extinct wolves?

Nearly answers how close to extinct wolves are/were. Adverbs answer the questions how, where, and when.

Adverbs do not get attached to adjectives with hyphens. Therefore, the adverb nearly, like most ly words, does not get hyphenated.

Only compound adjectives–adjectives that act as one idea with other adjectives–get hyphenated in front of nouns.

Example: The crowd threw out the barely edible cake.
The word barely is an adverb answering how edible the cake was.

Example: newly diagnosed disease
The word newly is an adverb answering when.

Example: We live in a two-story building.
The word two does not answer how, when, or where. It is acting as one idea with story to describe the noun building. Therefore, two-story is a compound adjective requiring a hyphen.

Example: The announcer offered a blow-by-blow description of the boxers’ punches.
Blow-by-blow is acting as one idea. Therefore, it is a compound adjective.

Example: Our building is two stories.
When the description follows the noun, do not hyphenate.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

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.
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is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
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One of our lucky coworkers recently returned from Australia and sent me a nice poem along the lines of the English Lesson I sent about a week ago. Again, not too sure of the author, but I liked this one, too. For those of you interested in more of these charming (and possibly confusing) poems, see The English Spelling Society (TESS) at: http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php.

I take it you already know

Of tough and bough and cough and dough.

Others may stumble but not you,

On hiccough, thorough, slough and through

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,

And dead–it’s said like bed, not bead.

For goodness’s sake, don’t call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat:

They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,

And here is not a match for there,

Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,

And then there’s dose and rose and lose–

Just look them up–and goose and choose,

And cork and work and card and ward,

And font and front and word and sword,

And do and go and thwart and cart.

Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,

I’d mastered it when I was five.

Happy Friday!

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

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.
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is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please
immediately advise the sender by reply email and delete all copies.

As I was enjoying my day off yesterday, I worked on knitting a small sweater for my friend’s dog and watched a lecture on European art. (Yes, we word nerds know how to party in our free time.) As I watched, I learned a few things that I thought I’d share with you about our language and some of the terms the professor discussed.

The first was the term hierarchical proportion. This is a technique used in art (in this case it was Italian sculpture and painting during the Gothic period) in which the artist uses unnatural proportions to represent the importance of the figures in the artwork. For example, in one sculpture of the nativity, Mary was considerably larger than the rest of the characters, the baby Jesus was as big as a grown man, and the wise men, visitors, and animals were all much smaller in comparison. (And as a side note, the professor mentioned that the people were generally more stylized, while the animals were shaped more realistically.) Here is a painting using hierarchical proportion, by an Italian painter, Duccio.

Apparently, Egyptians also used this technique often, which brings us to the professor’s first tangent and another vocabulary word: sarcophagus. In this case, most of us know what it is (a stone coffin), but what about the word sarcophagus? This is where it gets nasty! The Greeks named this thing a lithos sarkophagos (λίθος σαρκοφάγος), which translates as “flesh-eating stone.”

lithos (stone): The rumor is that they used a special kind of limestone which helped bodies decay faster.

sarco (flesh)

phagos (to eat): You know that Greek yogurt, FAGE (fage)? Yep, same root word, but no flesh involved.

The last term I want to cover today is flamboyant. This was originally a term to describe a specific feature in Gothic architecture. The term is from Old French (flambe—to flame). The architecture contains s-shaped details that look like waves of fire. (See the photo of the cathedral in Rouen for a great example of flamboyant architecture.)

The Rouen Cathedral (flying buttresses on either side, flamboyant decoration on windows and facade)

Here’s an interesting note: though we might associate Gothic with darkness today, features like the flamboyant windows and flying buttresses used in Gothic architecture were designed to provide more light in the churches and cathedrals. The fire-like design of the window tracings allowed for maximum amounts of light to enter the buildings; the flying buttresses supported walls from the outside so the buildings could be built higher and closer to the sky.

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

Today we’re taking a break from redundant phrases to have a look the oxymoron. No, I’m not talking about a stupid teenager with acne medicine on his face. An oxymoron (plural oxymora or oxymorons) according to our friends at Wikipedia is:

A figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. Oxymora appear in a variety of contexts, including inadvertent errors such as ground pilot and literary oxymorons crafted to reveal a paradox. The word oxymoron is from the Greek ὀξύμωρον, meaning "sharp dull."

I’ve included a few here for your viewing pleasure, along with some quotations and links to many more. Many of these manufactured oxymora are intended as funny commentary (such as “airplane food”) but I suppose it all depends on your perspective.

Have a great weekend!

· dark light

· living dead

· guest host (also: permanent guest host)

· mad wisdom

· mournful optimist

· violent relaxation

· baggy tights

· compassionate editor

· open secret

· act naturally

· found missing

· deafening silence

· clearly confused

·

· "I can resist anything, except temptation." – Oscar Wilde

· "Modern dancing is so old fashioned." – Samuel Goldwyn

· "A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business." – Henry Ford

· "No one goes to that restaurant anymore – It’s always too crowded." – Yogi Berra

· "Always be sincere, even though you do not necessarily mean it." – Irene Peter

More fun with oxymora here:

· http://www.fun-with-words.com/oxym_example.html

· http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/100-Awfully-Good-Examples-Of-Oxymorons.htm

· http://www.oxymorons.info/reference/oxymorons/oxymoron-quotes.asp

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor

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.