Editor's Corner

Dear Editrix,

Here’s a question that always has me wondering. Hopefully the answer is not too complicated or I won’t remember it.

Is there a rule about when you use a semicolon before the word however vs. just ending the sentence and starting a new sentence with However, and any other proper way of using however? Enquiring minds want to know.

Sincerely,

Enquiring Minds

Dear Enquiring Mind,

There’s never a simple or easy answer with English. 🙂

Here’s the “why” and the “when” of the semicolon used with however, borrowed in part from the Purdue OWL (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/598/01/):

However is an independent marker word. An independent marker word is used at the beginning of an independent clause.

These words can always begin a sentence that can stand alone. When the second independent clause in a sentence has an independent marker word, a semicolon is needed before the independent marker word.

Jim studied in the Sweet Shop for his chemistry quiz; however, it was hard to concentrate because of the noise.

Some common independent markers are: also, consequently, furthermore, however, moreover, nevertheless, and therefore.

The “where” to place however in a sentence is less formulaic. Placement depends on the sentence flow and where you want the emphasis to be. Some say that putting however at the end of a sentence is inelegant; putting it at the beginning is considered informal.

As an editor, my issue with it is that many people use it too often. It is sometimes used as a buckle to combine two independent clauses, which is not a problem in itself. The problem is that these clauses are often gigantic and unclear, and adding a fancy word in between only makes them longer, not better.

I’ve included some sentences to give you an idea of the flow and flavor as they’re changed by the placement of the word. (The middle sentence does not require a semicolon because it is not two independent clauses):

• However, the runt of the litter became an alpha male.
• The runt of the litter, however, became an alpha male.
• The runt of the litter became an alpha male, however.

So, that’s the short answer! For (a lot) more on however see the article below.

· http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/starting-a-sentence-with-however.aspx

Warm regards,

Editrix

Yesterday, I received a pleading e-mail to go over the difference between the words passed and past—a pet peeve of one of our managers, so take note! Here is a brief explanation and a few examples to get you past the grammarlicious terms. For more information on these frequently confused words, there is a more lengthy post on the topic at DailyWritingTips.com (http://www.dailywritingtips.com/passed-vs-past/).

Passed

Passed is the past participle of the verb “to pass.”

· Pass (transitive verb)
I passed the hospital on my way to the rally.

· Pass (intransitive verb)
She passed through life without a worry.

· Pass (intransitive verb, sometime used as euphemism for “die”)

He passed last night at bedtime, after we sang his favorite hymn.

Past

Past can be used as several different parts of speech:

· adjective
Don’t be angry at your sister for past offenses.

· adverb
I thought the dog would stop, but he just ran past.

· preposition
Dorothy has a horrible fake ID—she can never get past the bouncer!

So much to do, so little time! Here is another excerpt from Grammar Girl’s newest book: Grammar Girl’s 101 Troublesome Words You’ll Master in No Time.

Making Abbreviations Plural: RBIs

Acronyms are abbreviations that are pronounced as words (NASA), and initialisms are abbreviations for which you say each letter (FBI).

Even though it doesn’t make perfect sense, you make initialisms and acronyms plural by adding an s to the end no matter what part would be plural if you wrote out the whole thing. Therefore, even though you would write runs batted in, the plural is RBIs.

In the past, some publications used apostrophes to make acronyms and initialisms plural, so until a few years ago, it was common to see something like RBI’s or CD’s in The New York Times. But these days, the major style guides recommend omitting the apostrophe.

[KC – We do the same here in our documentation at Symitar—at least the items that come through our editing queue. You may notice that PCs, VPNs, IDs, and other
acronyms do not contain apostrophes after we’ve had our way with them. Occasionally, we may make an exception if the apostrophe adds clarity.]

A few weeks ago when I wrote about the different spellings of blond (blond♂and blonde ♀), someone asked about the word grey—or is it gray?

This is another one of those words where the primary difference in the spelling is where you live. The preferred American spelling is gray with an “a.” The rest of the English-speaking world tends to use grey with an “e.” In our Symitar documentation, we go with the rest of America and use gray, unless of course we’re writing about greyhounds (and you know that happens all the time in technical writing).

Here’s a little bit of history from Wikipedia and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

The first recorded use of grey as a color name in the English language was in AD 700. Grey is the British, Canadian, Australian, Irish, New Zealand and South African spelling, although gray remained in common usage in the UK until the second half of the 20th century. Gray is the preferred American spelling, although grey is an accepted variant. Gray became the preferred spelling in American English around 1825.

Have a super weekend!

Kara

Greyhound puppies from CutePuppyWorld.com

Here are the selections from earlier and the number of people who selected each answer. The total number follows, along with the original questions and a photo for your amusement.

1) EBE – 0

2) CBB – 38

3) EAD – 1

4) CBA – 14

5) CAB – 18

Total number of responses: 71

Questions:

1. In the sentence "The pig ate her corndog," the underlined pronoun has which of the following combinations of person, number, and case:

C. third person, singular, possessive

2. In the sentence "Each of the elephants have a pedigree," the verb agreement is which of the following:

B. Incorrect

3. What punctuation does the following example require? "He has carefully fixed all of the dents moreover, he has replaced and polished all of the chrome."

B. A semicolon after "dents"

From www.englishfailblog.com, a major failure from the bakery:

It’s quiz day! If you’re getting this via Outlook, use the voting buttons above to select the correct answer. If you’re reading this on the website, you’ll just have to write down your answer and check in later. I will send the correct answers this afternoon around 1:00 p.m. Have fun!

1.  In the sentence “The pig ate her corndog,” the underlined pronoun has which of the following combinations of person, number, and case:

• A. third person, plural, possessive
• B. third person, plural, accusative
• C. third person, singular, possessive
• D. third person, plural, subjective
• E. none of the above

2. In the sentence “Each of the elephants have a pedigree,” the verb agreement is which of the following:

• A. Correct
• B. Incorrect

3. What punctuation does the following example require? “He has carefully fixed all of the dents moreover, he has replaced and polished all of the chrome.”

• A. A comma after “dents”
• B. A semicolon after “dents”
• C. A period after “dents”
• D. A colon after “dents”
• E. None

This made me laugh, and it’s short but sweet. Today’s item is from the new book Grammar Girl’s 101 Troublesome Words You’ll Master in No Time.

No Such Thing as a Kudo

What’s the Trouble? Some people mistakenly believe that kudos is plural.

Kudos means “praise” or “glory” and is often used where congratulations would fit. It comes directly from Greek and is singular, just as praise and glory are singular. However, because kudos ends in s and congratulations is plural, some people mistakenly believe that kudos is plural and use kudo as a singular form. Such use is incorrect.

What Should You Do? Use kudos, and remember that it’s singular.

By request, today’s tidbit is about backward/backwards and toward/towards. The explanation is from www.quickanddirtytips.com, courtesy of Grammar Girl:

Most references say that, like “towards,” “backwards” is standard in Britain and “backward” is standard in America. The exception is that when you are using “backward” as an adjective, as in “her grandmother’s backward ways” or “the program has backward compatibility,” then you never use the “s.” It is always “backward” as an adjective.

If you are in the U.S., you have it easier because you can just remember that it’s always “backward” without the “s.” We like shortcuts here, such as eating dinner in our cars, so you can remember that we’ve lopped off the “s.” But if you are using British English, you have to remember that it’s “backwards” as an adverb and “backward” as an adjective.

For information on further and farther, see previous postings of Editor’s Corner: https://episystechpubs.wordpress.com/. For forward/forwards/foreword, see the “F” section in Common Errors in English Usage at: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html.

Today I give you the last five symbols from the article “12 Signs and Symbols You Should Know” (on DailyWritingTipscom). I hope you enjoyed your weekend!

# (Number or Pound Sign, or Hash)

This symbol evolved from the abbreviation for pound, lb. (a literal abbreviation for the Roman word libra, meaning “balance”), in which horizontal lines were superimposed on the vertical lines of the letters, producing something like the tic-tac-toe pattern used today. One of many other names for the sign, octotherp (also spelled octothorp or otherwise), was a jocular coinage by telecommunications engineers in the mid-twentieth century. The symbol is seldom used outside informal or highly technical or otherwise specialized contexts. [KC – Okay, folks. This is the most wishy-washy, flip-floppy definition I’ve seen in a long time! “It’s spelled like
this—except when it isn’t spelled that way.” Yikes!]

% (Percent)

The sign for indicating percentage developed in the Middle Ages over the course of hundreds of years, beginning as an abbreviation of percent (from the Latin phrase per centum, meaning “out of a hundred”). Its use is recommended only in technical contexts or in tabular material, where space is at a premium. (Some standards authorities call for a space between a number and this symbol, but most publications and publishers omit the space.)

~ (Tilde)

The tilde is used as a diacritical mark over various letters to indicate a variety of sounds in different languages, but it also appears midline, like a dash (and is sometimes called a swung dash), to denote “approximately” (“Last night’s attendance: ~100”). It has technical connotations as well and is even used as a notation for recording sequences of action in juggling. The name, borrowed into English through Portuguese and Spanish from Latin, means “title.”

/ (Slash, Solidus, Stroke, or Virgule)

During the Middle Ages, this sign of many names, including those listed above, served as a comma; a pair denoted a dash. The double slash was eventually tipped horizontally to become an equal sign and later a dash or hyphen. (The equal sign is still used as a proofreader’s mark to indicate insertion of a hyphen.) The slash — also called the forward slash to distinguish it from the backslash, which is used only in technical contexts — is an informal substitute for or. [KC – In poetry, when writing lines without formatting, a single slash indicates the end of a line; the double slash indicates the end of a stanza.]

_ (Underscore or Understrike)

This artifact from the era of the typewriter was used on such devices to underline words to indicate emphasis in lieu of italics. [KC – Emphasis mine. If you are using underlines for emphasis in this day and age, and you send me work to edit, I will remove them. This is a huge pet peeve of mine, since we do not want to look like a technology company that promotes the uses of typewriters or other “artifacts.” Off soapbox.] As a survival of that function, words are sometimes bracketed by a pair of single underscores in email and other computer contexts to mark a word for emphasis (“That band totally _rocked_ the place.”). Indeed, as I typed this post in Microsoft Word, the program automatically converted rocked to italics. The symbol also appears frequently in email and website addresses and other technical contexts.

Before we start with today’s symbols in writing, I’d like to impart some not-so-grammarly information. I had several people ask me how to make the “cent” symbol yesterday, and like magic, Javier Romero sent me the answer! He suggested I pass on the information, and I think that’s a brilliant idea. Really, all you have to do is search Google for “alt codes” and you get tons of information. To save you time, I’ve previewed some of the sites and selected these three for various reasons. I’m sure there are prettier ones out there, but time is of the essence.

· http://www.wikihow.com/Type-Symbols-Using-the-ALT-Key Provides instructions on how to create symbols using a desktop PC, laptop, or Mac; also provides a list of symbols and the associated alt code.

· http://www.altcodes.org/ Provides categorized lists of codes (e.g., alphabet, bullet, and trademark symbols), a “how to” section, and additional information on alt codes.

· http://usefulshortcuts.com/downloads/ALT-Codes Links to categorized lists and a quick-reference guide/list of codes.

Now for the next three symbols, from Daily Writing Tips (www.dailywritingtips.com):

5. ° (Degree Sign)

The sign for degrees of arc or degrees of temperature, which started out as a superscripted zero, was chosen for consistency with use of the minute (′) and second marks (″) employed in geometry and geography; those symbols originally stood for the Latin numerals I and II. The degree sign appears in technical contexts, but in general-interest publications, the word degree is generally used.

In references to temperature, the symbol (and the designation of the temperature scale) immediately follows the associated numerical figure (“45°C”). This style is true of many publishing companies, though the US Government and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures prescribe a space between the number and the symbol (“45 °C”), while other publications omit the first letter space but insert another between the symbol and the abbreviation (“45° C”).

” (Ditto Sign)

The ditto sign, first attested three thousand years ago, signals that text shown above is to be repeated, as in a list in which the same quantity of various materials is intended to be expressed:

Apples 24
bananas "
oranges "

The word ditto, meaning “said,” derives from the Tuscan language, the immediate ancestor of Italian, but was borrowed into English hundreds of years ago. The word, its abbreviation (do.), and the symbol are considered inappropriate for most writing, though the term has often been used in informal spoken and written language to mean “(the same as) what he/she said.” Although the symbol has a distinct character code for online writing, straight or curly close quotation marks are usually employed to produce it.

$ (Dollar Sign)

This symbol for the American dollar and many other currencies was first used to refer to the peso, which inspired the American currency system. Various origin stories for the symbol come in and out of fashion, but it’s most likely that it developed from an abbreviation of pesos in which the initial p preceded a superscript s; the tail of the initial was often superimposed on the s. A dollar sign with two vertical lines is a less common variant.

Most books and other formal publications tend to spell out dollars in association with a (spelled-out or numerical) figure, but periodicals usually use the symbol, as do specialized books about finance or business or others with frequent references to money. In international publications, when the symbol is used, for clarity, it is combined with the abbreviation US (“US$1.5 million” or “US $1.5 million”).

The dollar sign is also used as an abbreviated reference to various functions in computer programming and similar contexts.

Have a great weekend everyone!