Editor's Corner

Today, I have a vocabulary quiz from Daily Writing Tips for you. Like previous vocabulary quizzes that I’ve shared, this one is made up of five commonly confused word pairs. All you have to do is guess the right word to complete each sentence. You have a 50/50 chance. As always, you don’t win anything if you get them all right, but it’ll put a positive spin on the rest of your day. You can’t put a price on that.

And if you don’t get them all right, there’s still a silver lining because we all learn from our mistakes, right? So, you’ll probably remember these word pairs and never make the same mistake again. You can’t put a price on that either.

The quiz questions are directly below. You have to scroll down a bit for the answers and the very helpful explanations. On your mark, get set, go!

In each sentence, choose the correct word from the pair of similar terms. (If both words possibly can be correct, choose the more plausible one.)

1. Mozart was a musical ______ who gave his first concert at the age of four.

a) prodigy
b) prodigal

2. None of the freshmen wanted to room with Felix because of his _____ manners; he piled wet towels on the floor, used anyone’s toothbrush, and left food scraps to moulder in the wastepaper basket.

a) barbaric
b) barbarous

3. Your design would probably work, but building it is not ______ because of the expense and rarity of the materials.

a) practical
b) practicable

4. His friends’ plan to vandalize the school went against the boy’s ______ , so he refused to take part.

a) conscience
b) conscious

5. Some have called this ______ life “a vale of tears.”

a) earthy
b) earthly

Answers and Explanations

1. Mozart was a musical prodigy who gave his first concert at the age of four.
a) prodigy

A prodigy is something out of the ordinary. It’s often used to refer to a child with gifts beyond his age. A prodigal is a wastrel, a person who spends his wealth foolishly, with no thought for the future.

2. None of the freshmen wanted to room with Felix because of his barbarous manners; he piled wet towels on the floor, used anyone’s toothbrush, and left food scraps to moulder in the wastepaper basket.
b) barbarous

Barbarous and barbaric are similar in meaning; many speakers use them interchangeably to mean “uncivilized.” Barbaric always refers to extreme, gruesome cruelty; barbarous can refer to behavior that is merely coarse.

3. Your design would probably work, but building it is not practicable because of the expense and rarity of the materials.
b) practicable

A practical idea is sensible and reasonable. A practicable idea, on the other hand, is one that can be done or put into practice.

4. His friends’ plan to vandalize the school went against the boy’s conscience, so he refused to take part.
a) conscience

Conscience is a noun. It is a person’s moral guide. Conscious is an adjective meaning “alert, aware.”

5. Some have called this earthly life “a vale of tears.”
b) earthly

Earthly is an adjective referring to things on or of the earth. Earthy is also an adjective. Earthy is a pleasant word for vulgar. “An earthy remark,” for example, is one that would not be spoken in polite company.

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | Symitar®

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

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Today I received a newsletter about a word I hadn’t heard before: retronym. I was thinking it must mean something about old clothing styles or movies or technology that came back into fashion—but I was wrong.

According to Wikipedia: “A retronym is a term used to describe an older object or idea to contrast it with something similar but newer.” Here is an example from The Grammarist, which might give you a better idea of what they are and how they are formed:

Evolving technology does not always create new words, sometimes it takes words that have been in use for a period of time in the English language and gives them new meanings. For example, the word phone has been in use for a long time to mean an instrument that one uses to call another person to speak with him. For decades, all phones worked by virtue of a rotary dial. Today, when one says the word phone, it conjures the image of a hand-held wireless device. To talk about the original model of the phone, it is now necessary to refer to the retronym rotary phone.

Make sense? Here are a few more retronyms for you, from Wikipedia:

• Manual transmissions in vehicles were just called "transmissions" until the invention of automatic transmissions.
• Plain M&M’s: Plain M&M’s candies (now Milk Chocolate) would not have been called that until 1954, when Peanut M&M’s were introduced.
• Regular coffee: The development of decaffeinated coffee led to this coinage.
• Acoustic guitar: Before the invention of the solid-body electric guitar, all guitars amplified the sound of a plucked string with a resonating hollow body. Similarly: acoustic piano.
• Bar soap: The common cake of soap used in the tub or shower was familiarly called "soap" or "bath soap"; the term "bar soap" arose with the advent of soaps in liquid and gel form.
• Corn on the cob: Before canned corn was widely available, "corn on the cob" was simply "corn".
• Paper copy, hard copy: With the proliferation of exchange of documents in the form of electronic files, physical copies of documents acquired this retronym. Occasionally extended to the copying devices; i.e. paper copiers..
• Silent film: In the earliest days of the film industry, all films were without recorded sound. Once "talkies" became the norm, it became necessary to specify that a particular film was "silent".
• Sit-down restaurant: With the rise of fast-food and take-out restaurants, the "standard" restaurant received a new name in the United States.
• Whole milk: Milk was formerly available in just one version, with the cream included, and benefited eventually by pasteurization and homogenization. But it was still called simply milk. This variety of milk is now referred to in the U.S. as whole milk (3.25% milkfat) to distinguish it from 2% (reduced fat) milk, 1% (low fat) milk, and skim milk (nearly no fat).

She’s so retro, the first woman’s hair doesn’t fit into the picture! And you

must love the gloves!

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

“If nothing else” is a remarkably difficult phrase to define, which might be why Merriam-Webster gives this uncharacteristically muddled definition:

• if nothing else: used to say that something is probably the only thing that is true, acceptable, desirable, or certain because there are no better/worse possibilities

Some dictionaries adopt a narrower definition, such as the following (from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English):

• if nothing else: used to emphasize one good quality or feature that someone or something has, while suggesting that it might be the only good one

Examples:

• “Andrea’s work has always been very neat, if nothing else.” (Macmillan Dictionary)
• “The food is cheap, if nothing else.” (Merriam-Webster)

For these sentences to make sense, the reader needs to recognize that “neat” and “cheap” are positive characteristics.

“If nothing else” can also mean the opposite (emphasizing the only bad quality that something has). For example, you could say, “I’m not buying that new sportscar. It’s too expensive, if nothing else.”

There are many other meanings the phrase can take, such as the following:

• if you do nothing else (“If nothing else, you should send him a card.”)
• if there’s no alternative (“If nothing else, there’s the party to go to this evening.”)
• if they have nothing else in common (“Everybody knew each other, and had grown up in proximity, if nothing else.”)

If you’re not careful, you can make too big of a logical leap and end up confusing your reader.

Examples:

• “The sun is hot, if nothing else.”
• “The Statue of Liberty is green, if nothing else.”
• “That tree is leafy, if nothing else.”

When you’re writing a business email or a technical document, you don’t want to leave anything open to interpretation. Use more precise language.

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Ben Ritter | Technical Writing Supervisor | Symitar®
8985 Balboa Avenue | San Diego, CA 92123
619-682-3391 | or ext. 763391 | www.Symitar.com

Symitar Documentation Services

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Recently, several people have brought up emojis as an Editor’s Corner topic. In the past, I’ve avoided them because they are pictures rather than words. Additionally, since this is a business, we try to project a certain amount of seriousness when communicating with the world outside. But we also like to have a little fun, and when you spend your day in email and instant messages and on the phone, sometimes it’s nice to see a smile while you’re reading. Emojis can add a little extra “oomph” to your conversation.

And here’s the other reason I’m talking about emoji’s today: the almost sacred Chicago Manual of Style discussed them in their monthly Q&A! That’s like getting permission from your parents to watch an R-rated movie when you aren’t 17 yet! Yes, excitement abounds!

According to Merriam-Webster, an emoji is “any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in text messages, e-mail, and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey information succinctly, communicate a message playfully without using words, etc.”

The word is from the Japanese words for picture (e) + character (moji).

Now, before you start getting emoji crazy, here are some rules and good advice from Entrepreneur magazine’s website. These are the bare bones, but you can read the full article here.

1. Keep the situation in mind. Before flooding your message with emojis, carefully consider the situation, the person who will receive it, and the tone of your business communications.
2. Practice discretion. Regardless of the situation, emojis should never be used to totally replace actual words; they are only meant to add a bit of emotion to your message.
3. Use only emojis you understand. When in doubt, leave them out.
4. Don’t use emojis with a potential client. It’s not wise to use emojis if you are trying to establish a new relationship with a client or colleague. Use actual words instead. Again, keep it professional.
5. Consider emojis like slang. Co-workers build a language of their own that includes industry jargon and casual slang, and using emojis is like using slang words. Emojis work best in casual conversations.

Okay, time for a look at the CMOS Q&A, which deals with using emojis and punctuation.

Q. Where does an emoji go in a sentence? Before or after the period? ✏️ Having a tough time deciding 🤔.

A. An emoji that applies to a sentence as a whole might logically follow the period or other terminal punctuation. Let’s coin a term and call this a sentence emoji. 😉 Then, by a similar logic, emoji applying to a word or a phrase could immediately follow that word or phrase, before any mark of punctuation 🔍, like that. Emoji standing in for words, like this picture of a 🐈—well, you get the idea. But if you’re texting? Most of this logic goes out the window (along with the punctuation). Love your emoji btw!

And here are two tips for those of you who may not be very familiar with emojis, like me:

• To find out what different emojis mean, check out Emojipedia.
• To see a list of emojis while you are in the text area of Microsoft® Outlook® or Word, click the Windows® key and the period. A menu appears with various emojis.

Have a great day! 🌞

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

I recently read a book that is full of extraordinary metaphors, and it made me want to share some information about these useful figures of speech.

A metaphor is a word or phrase that is used to compare two unlike objects, ideas, thoughts, or feelings to provide a mental image and a clear description. For example, when I say that my father is a rock, the comparison lets you know how solid and dependable he is. When I say that the DMV employee had a wooden face, you understand that the agent showed no emotion (surprise!). If I say that my heart swelled watching the children play, you know that I was feeling very happy emotions.

Metaphors make language come to life. We may not use them much in technical writing, but we use them in speech, in our emails, and in other correspondence. Here are some common examples:

• Time is money.
• You are my sunshine.
• He has a heart of stone.
• I was jumping for joy.
• She’s the apple of his eye.
• It’s raining cats and dogs.
• I’m dead tired.
• He’s as strong as an ox.

You can create your own metaphors to express your thoughts and feelings. Here are some less common examples:

• These shoes are prisons for my feet.
• Chocolate is my drug.
• He’s my Adam; I’m his Eve.

What you don’t want to do is mix metaphors. Doing so creates competing imagery—but mixed metaphors are often funny. Here are some examples of humorous mixed metaphors with brief explanations:

• You better not burn your bridge when you get to it.
  (Mixes two common—even cliched—metaphors: “Don’t burn your bridges” and “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”)

• All at once, he was alone in the noisy hive with no place to roost.
  (Mixes a metaphor about a bee’s hive with a metaphor about the place where birds rest at night.)

• It’s our turn at bat, so let’s make this touchdown for the company.
  (Mixes two different sports metaphors.)

You get the point. Metaphors are fun to create, and when they’re original, they’re fun to hear and read. They can liven up our speech and writing (even so, you won’t catch us sprinkling them throughout Episys eDocs—I campaigned to introduce colorful metaphors into our documentation, but my boss didn’t go for it).

If you’d like to read a little bit more about mixed metaphors, click this link. And if you’d like to read some clever (slightly saucy) medical metaphors from the TV show House, click this link.

I hope that for the rest of the day, you’re as happy as a pig in a china shop!

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | Symitar®

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

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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My husband walked in to the kitchen the other day and asked, “Since your relatives are Greek, what phrase do they use if they don’t understand something? They wouldn’t say ‘It’s all Greek to me,’ would they?” “Good question,” I responded. Before I could do any research, a link appeared in my email like magic! Here, from Wikipedia, is a selection of phrases people use to indicate that they don’t understand something. If you want to see the full list, click here.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

The Academy Awards® are coming up in 10 days, and there’s one question on every movie-lover’s mind: According to The Chicago Manual of Style, the title of an individual film should be italicized (for example, Jaws 3-D). But what about the name of a film series (for example, “the Jaws tetralogy”)?

I found an answer on the Modern Language Association (MLA) website: How do I style the title of a trilogy or informally titled series? Although we do not use the MLA Handbook, I think their advice makes sense. Basically, the decision to italicize depends on whether the series is named after a film in the series (which is italicized) as opposed to, say, a character’s name (which is not italicized).

MLA says, “Star Wars is the name of the first movie released in the series. Since the title is foundational, italicize the series name: Star Wars movies. If you are writing about the Nancy Drew books, style the series name roman, since ‘Nancy Drew’ does not appear in the titles of the individual books. If you are discussing the Harry Potter books, you could style the series name either way—Harry Potter books or Harry Potter books—since the series is associated with the first title in the series (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) and also with the character’s name.”

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

Did someone forward this email to you? Click here to subscribe.

Don’t want to get Editor’s Corner anymore? Click here to unsubscribe.

Do you have a question or an idea for Editor’s Corner? Send your suggestions or feedback to Kara, <a href="mailto:DBurcher, Jackie, or <a href="mailto:BRitter.

Ben Ritter | Technical Writing Supervisor | Symitar®
8985 Balboa Avenue | San Diego, CA 92123
619-682-3391 | or ext. 763391 | www.Symitar.com

Symitar Documentation Services

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I was just looking at these seven steps for proofreading, and though I think I’ve shared them with you before, I decided that there’s no time like the present to review them. The original article is from Daily Writing Tips, but I’ve almost completely obliterated it to make it more personal. (As usual, black text is from the original article, blue text is mine.)

Use a checklist. Create a list of important things to check for. This list should be very personal (well, no love notes). If you often forget periods at the ends of your sentences, put it on your list. If you have problems with subject/verb agreement, add that. If you add two spaces after a period, put it on your list and remind yourself not to do it.

Fact-check. Double-check facts and proper names. If you are writing to clients, it’s important to get their names and their financial institutions’ names right. Some people take great offense when you don’t get this right. Other facts and figures should also be checked, such as product names. If something seems to be missing, highlight it and fill it in before sending out your communication.

Spell-check. ¡Ay caramba! There is built-in help in Word, Outlook®, and other programs to help with spelling and grammar. Of course, I could say, “Thanks for providing us with job security by turning this off!” But really, don’t embarrass yourself. Use what’s out there. We have instructions for two of your options in the Symitar Knowledge Base:

• Outlook
• Word

Read aloud. Nope, I’m not talking about digging out Goodnight Moon or The Runaway Bunny. Read the text of your email out loud (quietly). It can help tremendously when something doesn’t look quite right, but you can’t figure out what. For example, repeated words are more obvious when reading aloud, as are extra words (such as “the the”) that were missed while rewriting.

Focus on one line at a time. When proofing print documents, use another piece of paper or a ruler to cover the text following the line you are proofreading, shifting the paper down as you go along. This technique helps you keep your place and discourages you from reading too quickly and missing subtle errors. Okay, not many of us proofread print documents these days, but just in case you do, this works pretty well.

Attend to format. Proofreading isn’t just about reviewing the text. Make sure that the document design adheres to established specifications. Even better, send your client-facing documents to an editor! It is our job to read your material, apply the correct formatting, use the correct template, and comb through what you’ve written to make sure it applies to the company’s standards.

Proof again. Once revisions have been made, proofread the document again.

That’s it! Yes, the amount of time you spend on your 200-page master work will differ from the time you spend on an email, but these steps will help you present your best written “self,” with just a little bit of extra time each day.

Whew! Time for some puppies!

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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Happy Thursday!

I was thinking about discussing a few idiomatic phrases today, and then my favorite newspaper clipper (Thanks, Ron!) left an article right here on my doorstep, so I decided to share these phrasal origins with you instead. These are from one of Richard Lederer’s articles here.

DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: I often hear people saying “Let’s just cut to the chase.” What in the world is that? I thought that expression was originally “cut through the chaff” (chaff referring to the residue left from threshing of wheat). Did cut to the chase evolve in reference to some chase scene from a movie and is in fact asking the person to cut the details of the plot and get to the action? –Mary Rose

Your movie theory is the right one. Cut to the chase is unquestionably a reference to chase scenes in action movies. The literal use — as a director’s instruction to go to a chase scene — is almost a century old. A 1929 screenplay, for example, includes “Jannings escapes. Cut to chase.” It’s but a short leap from “enough of the kissy-kissy scene already; let’s get to the car chase” to a more figurative use: “Get with it. Get to the point.” That extended meaning is fairly recent, dating from only the early 1980s.

*****

DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: What is the background of pan out as in “my good ideas didn’t pan out”? –John Olivier

The expression, which means “to turn out well,” derives from the act of extracting gold out of gravel in a pan.

On the other hand, the cliché a flash in the pan has nothing to do with the way prospectors pan rivers for gold. In truth, a flash in the pan refers to the occasional misfiring of the old flintlock muskets when the flash of the primer in the pan of the rifle failed to ignite the explosion of the charge. It is estimated that such misfirings ran as high as 15 percent, leading a flash in the pan to mean “an intense but short-lived success or a person who fails to live up to his or her early promise.”

*****

DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: Since this is a Navy town, we should all know that “three sheets to the wind” means “very drunk.” But why? –Gloria Reams

For sailors, sheets refer to the lines attached to the lower corner of a sail. When all three sheets of an old sailing vessel were allowed to run free, they were said to be “in the wind,” and the ship would lurch and stagger like a person inebriated. That’s why we call an unsteady state of drunkenness three sheets to the wind.

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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Dear Editrix,

At the end of a thought, after an implied comma or period, sometimes the word “so” pops up with only a pause following.

In some cases, it’s clear that the listener should complete the thought mentally. In others it seems to be just a way to “pass the baton” of conversation.

Does that have a name and definition?

Interested in Allen

Dear Interested,

My first thought about this was that you must be eavesdropping on our Toastmaster meetings, where “so” used in this way is a clickable offense. I know I am guilty of filling sentence transitions with it, and that it is actually a conjunction. Other than that, I didn’t have much to offer. Then, you supplied me with a very interesting link on this topic. (For those of you who want the full discussion, see The Atlantic article here.)

I found this excerpt interesting:

I’ve heard this end-of-sentence “so” called a “dangling so” and a “trailing so,” but Geoffrey Raymond, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies conversation, calls it a “turn-final so.” In conversation, we take turns speaking. A turn can be as short as one word—“Okay”—or many sentences long. And while the word “so” would usually indicate some more words to follow, a turn-final so comes at the end of a turn, when someone’s done talking.

The way “so” is being used in these instances is as a discourse marker—a word that doesn’t add explicit meaning to what you’re saying, but can mark your place in a sentence. “Well” and “oh” are other examples of discourse markers. A “so” at the beginning of a sentence is a discourse marker too—à la “So, I said to him …”

Because the word’s traditional function is to connect two clauses or ideas, when you hear a “so,” you expect something to follow—an upshot or a conclusion of some kind. Thus a “so” followed by a period, or an ellipses as the case may be, indicates that there is an upshot being implied there. It’s just not being spoken aloud. This is a conspiratorial thing to do—indicating to the people you’re talking to that they know what you mean.

I think that explains what you are talking about (though I prefer “dangling so” to “turn-final”). Many of us have heard “so” thrown out at the end of sentence where we are supposed to fill in the blank. But just because people use it this way, does not mean it’s proper. It’s a conjunction (like and, or, nor, and yet) and should be used as such. As Jean-Luc Picard says, “Make it so.”

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services