Editor's Corner

In the interest of starting the new year with a clean slate, over the next few weeks, I’m going to be tackling some difficult reader questions that I’ve been putting off answering.

This first question comes from Brandon, who wrote, “I always thought [in process and
in progress] meant the same thing. Then, the more I thought about it, I figured in process may be used to describe something not yet started, or in the beginning stages and thought. Whereas in progress denotes something underway or progressing and in action.”

My initial thought was that in progress is the correct term and that people who say in process are confusing it with the similar phrase in the process of.

The following sentences are both correct. The main difference is that the first emphasizes the action (renovation) and the second emphasizes the person doing the action (my brother).

• The renovation is in progress.
• My brother is in the process of renovating.

But what about the sentence, “The renovation is in process”? It sounds strange to me, and a quick Google search confirms that the phrase in progress is about seven times as common as in process.

However, according to Merriam-Webster, this use of in process is correct. (They give the example, “the job is not yet finished but is still in process.”) And if it’s good enough for Merriam-Webster, it’s good enough for me.

As for the question of whether in process and in progress mean the same thing, my answer is basically yes. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary says they’re synonyms, and the Unabridged Dictionary gives definitions that are strikingly similar:

• process: a progressive forward movement from one point to another on the way to completion
• progress: an advance or movement to an objective or toward a goal

I did find several sources online that do differentiate between in progress and in process. For example, Investopedia says, “Some people differentiate between work in progress and work in process based on the duration of the production cycle.”

However, as with all jargon, if you’re writing for a general audience, be aware that the reader might interpret the terms differently or might not observe a distinction at all.

Avoid possible confusion by writing sentences that aren’t open to interpretation. Instead of writing, “We have two projects in process and one project in progress,” write something like, “We have two projects with a target completion date of January 5, 2019, and one project with a target completion date of late 2021.”

Thanks for the great question, Brandon, and happy new year to all of our readers.

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 Editor | Symitar®
8985 Balboa Avenue | San Diego, CA 92123
619-682-3391 | or ext. 763391 | www.Symitar.com

Symitar Documentation Services

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Hello and a Happy New Year’s Eve Day to you!

Looking for a fabulous way to start off 2019? Daily Writing Tips has provided us with a list of 41 synonyms for good that are certain to make things interesting. Click here to see the full list of words. I have a few of my favorite here for you to start with.

I hope 2019 is your most exquisite, dazzling, five-star year ever!

1. breathtaking – amazing, surprising, astonishing, enough to make you gasp with pleasure, and almost enough to make you forget to breathe.
2. dazzling – amazing, splendid, brilliant, shining so bright that it’s hard to see it.
3. delightful – causing joy, delight, or pleasure, producing positive emotion, with the same Latin root as “delectable.”
4. deluxe – high quality, related to luxury, from the Latin for “excess.”
5. exceptional – uncommon, rare, and better for being so.
6. exquisite – exceptionally fine or rare, with the sense of extreme
7. favorable – helpful, encouraging, positive, convenient, such as getting hoped-for results.
8. first-rate – exceptionally good, in the highest class. Describing a British naval vessel with more than 100 guns.
9. formidable – causing awe, respect, wonder, or even fear, perhaps because it’s so large or strong.
10. gilt-edged – high quality, from the practice of putting a thin layer of gold on the edges of a book.
11. gratifying – pleasing, satisfying, making someone content.
12. incredible – amazing, beyond belief, almost too good to be true.
13. magnificent – splendid, elegant, noble. From the Latin word for “great deeds.”
14. prime – first, as in first quality.
15. satisfying – sufficient, pleasing, more than adequate.
16. shipshape – well-organized, fully prepared, meticulous, tidy. Before you embark on an ocean voyage, you want your ship to be in shape.
17. sterling – of high, verifiable value, as in sterling silver, which is 92.5% pure silver. Originally referring to British coins, which had a star or a starling on them in the Middle Ages.
18. striking – impressive, memorable, calling to mind the striking of a coin.
19. top-notch – belonging to the highest level, possibly from some 19th century game that used notches to keep score.
20. welcome – anticipated, a pleasure to see, received with gladness, as in “welcome news.” From the Old English for “a wished-for guest.”

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

I wrote recently about the comma rule for conjunctions. No one sent me hate mail. In fact, a few of you thanked me for the refresher. So, I’m taking that as permission to share another comma rule with you today: commas with introductory (also called transitional) words and phrases. It’s your own fault!

These commas signal where the introductory element ends and the main part of the sentence (the independent clause) begins.

Following are some examples of sentences that being with an introductory word or phrase:

• In fact, a few of you thanked me for the refresher.
• Meanwhile, the children were running, jumping, and doing cartwheels in the school cafeteria.
• Therefore, your hands are tied, and you’ll need to speak with your attorney.
• On the other hand, her quiet nature might make her an ideal roommate.
• To put it another way, half-eaten pizzas are nonrefundable.
• Without a doubt, you are the happiest undertaker I’ve ever met.
• When the long meeting ended, the staff exited the room like bats out of hell.
• While packing for her trip, Judy realized she forgot to book a flight for her husband.

Notice that in all the examples, the clause that comes after the introduction and the comma is an independent clause, meaning it is a complete sentence that can stand on its own. The introductory phrase, on the other hand, does not make sense alone; it only introduces the independent clause or serves as a transition between sentences.

To put it another way, if you begin your sentence with a dependent clause followed by an independent clause, you need a comma between the two. Easy, right? You’ve got this!

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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It’s that time of the year when most dictionaries publish the most “looked up” word or words of the year. As you will see from this look at Merriam-Webster’s list, people are curious about day-to-day events in our country and words they read or hear in the news. This is just a partial list, but the full list is here, from Daily Writing Tips.

Happy holidays! I hope you enjoy your day off tomorrow!

The Word of the Year, justice, was newsworthy in several contexts. The primary sense is that of administration or maintenance of fairness and lawfulness, and increasing concern about social justice has brought the concept, and the term that represents it, to the forefront in our society. But justice is a job title as well as a concept, referring to a judge on a national or state supreme court or similar body, and the controversy over confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court also led people to check the definition. (The senior member of a supreme court is often titled “chief justice,” while the others are designated “associate justices.”)

Lodestar, originally denoting Polaris, the North Pole Star, which for millennia has served as a navigational aid, now refers more broadly to a guide, inspiration, or model. (Lode is a Middle English word meaning “course” or “way”; it’s seen also in the context of mining: A lode is a deposit of ore.) The term had a vogue this year after it was used in an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times purportedly written by a senior Trump administration official. Because Vice President Mike Pence is known to use the fairly obscure term, some people suspected him of being the author.

Laurel, the word for a tree whose foliage was used to crown victors in athletic events in ancient Greece, became a hot search term when a debate erupted online about which of two words was being enunciated in an online dictionary’s pronunciation sound file. By extension of its original definition, the term came to apply to the celebratory object itself and to figurative honors; one idiom based on the term is “rest on (one’s) laurels,” which alludes to someone who, upon achieving an honor, refrains from attempting feats that bring further recognition. (Usage generally pertains to one who does not rest on one’s laurels, meaning that person does seek other honors.)

The death this year of Aretha Franklin, best known for her rousing rendition of the song “Respect,” prompted look-ups of that word, which literally means “look back.” (The second syllable of that word, meaning “look,” is also the root of spectacle, spectator, inspect, suspect, and so on.)

The death of Marvel Comics mogul Stan Lee this year resulted in references to excelsior, the word with which Lee typically signed off in the columns he wrote for his company’s comic books. Though the primary meaning of the word is mundane—it was a trademark for a brand of wood shavings used as protective packing material and later a generic term—its origin is the Latin word meaning “higher”; excel, excellent, and so on are related.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

Two commonly confused words are grisly and grizzly. Here are the definitions from Merriam-Webster:

• grisly: inspiring horror or intense fear; inspiring disgust or distaste
• grizzly: sprinkled or streaked with gray

Grizzly can also be short for grizzly bear, which was probably named for its gray fur.

• grizzly bear: a very large brown bear (Ursus arctos) of northwestern North America

Some people think that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark meant to describe the North American brown bear as scary, not gray. (They’re often both!) In 1814 (less than a decade after the Lewis and Clark Expedition), Henry Marie Brackenridge described grizzly bears as “the enemy of man” and wrote that they “literally thirst for human blood.”

The most common mistake writers make is misusing the word grizzly to mean horrible or disgusting. A Google search yields thousands of results for the phrase “grizzly details” (sic), though some of them are punning references to bears.

A less common mistake is misusing the word gristly:

• gristly: consisting of or containing gristle (tough cartilaginous, tendinous, or fibrous matter especially in table meats)

I like to use mnemonics to remember confusing word pairs. I couldn’t find any good ones online, so bear with me as I share two that I came up with.

Tip: If something is scary, it is grisly. Grisly contains the letter S for scary.

Tip: If meat is tough, it is gristly. Gristly contains the letter T for tough.

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 Editor | Symitar®
8985 Balboa Avenue | San Diego, CA 92123
619-682-3391 | or ext. 763391 | www.Symitar.com

Symitar Documentation Services

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‘Tis the season to be jolly! I have decorated my cubicle with a Festivus pole and covered a small tree at home with red balls and green ribbons. Usually at this time of year, I take you through the 12 Days of English and give you a gem of a countdown each day. This year, we are skipping that, and instead, I have a present for you.

Today I’m going to address a question I hear often:

What is the difference between onto and on to?

Here are a few simple rules, some examples, and a quiz—my gift to you! (The rules are from GrammarBook.com. The other things are from me. You’re welcome!)

Rule 1: In general, use onto as one word to mean “on top of,” “to a position on,” “upon.”

Examples:
Joe climbed onto the top of the dog house.
Before you come in, step onto the rug and wipe your feet.

Rule 2: Use onto when you mean “fully aware of,” “informed about.”

Examples:Don’t try to fool me; I’m onto your shenanigans.
When Steve realized Jana was onto his proposal plans, he canceled their date.

Rule 3: Use on to, two words, when on is part of the verb.

Examples:He couldn’t hang on to the rope any longer. (Hang on is a phrasal verb.)
Once you log on to the computer, you can do almost anything. (Log on is a phrasal verb.)

Quiz
1. Chad, I think climbing on to/onto that tree limb is a bad idea.
2. When I retire, I think I’ll go on to/onto take some art classes.
3. Adam stepped off the ladder on to/onto the flower bed.
4. Margaret realized her husband was on to/onto her plans to throw him a surprise party.

5. If you think it’s a good idea, we’ll move on to/onto the next step.

Quiz Answers
1. Chad, I think climbing onto that tree limb is a bad idea.
2. When I retire, I think I’ll go on to take some art classes.
3. Adam stepped off the ladder onto the flower bed.
4. Margaret realized her husband was ontoher plans to throw him a surprise party.
5. If you think it’s a good idea, we’ll move on to the next step.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

Many of you have confided that you are “not good with commas.” I’m not surprised. There are quite a few rules, and some of them are a little confusing.

Today, I’m going to explain just one comma rule: commas with coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet). According to this rule, you should use a comma before any coordinating conjunction that links two independent clauses.

I want to emphasize the phrase “that links two independent clauses” because that’s the part that people often get wrong. But before I go any further, let me clarify what an independent clause is.

An independent clause is a group of words that can stand on their own as a sentence. It has (at least) a subject and a verb. For example, both “I work for JHA” and “I have been here over eight years” are independent clauses.

When you have two independent clauses that are of equal importance, like the two I just mentioned, you can join them with a comma and a coordinating conjunction (like and): “I work for JHA, and I have been her over eight years.”

The mistake people often make is to use a comma when joining one independent clause with a dependent clause that starts with a conjunction. Confused? Here’s an example that shows a comma used incorrectly: “I work for JHA, and have been here for over eight years.”

Why is that comma used incorrectly? It’s because the phrase “and have been her for over eight years” is not an independent clause. It does not have a subject.

There are two ways you can revise the sentence to correct it.

• You can add a subject: “I work for JHA, and I have been here for eight years.”
• You can remove the comma: “I work for JHA and have been here for over eight years.”

Do you want to read a little more about this subject? Here’s a helpful link (see rule #1).

Enjoy your day!

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | Symitar®

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

Symitar Documentation Services

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
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On Sunday, my husband and I went over to our friends’ house, where we celebrated Hanukkah and ate latkes. (Latkes are made of a shredded potato mixture, fried into a little “pancake” of sorts, and served with sour cream and apple sauce. Delicious!) We aren’t Jewish, but we are always up for trying new things, especially celebratory things!

The house we were in belongs to a family who celebrates Christmas, and I noticed that they had “decked the halls” with boughs of some type of evergreen. And that brings me to the word of the day: deck. Usually, when I hear deck, I don’t think of it as a verb. I think of the noun version, like a deck of cards or a deck on a house. Here are some etymologies of both the noun and verb use. No matter what holidays you celebrate, now you will know what it means when you deck your halls with any kind of decoration! From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

deck (noun)

mid-15c., dekke, "covering extending from side to side over part of a ship," from a nautical use of Middle Dutch dec, decke "roof, covering," from Proto-Germanic *thakam (source also of thatch (n.)), from PIE root *(s)teg- "to cover."

Sense extended early in English from "covering" to "platform of a ship."

Meaning "pack of cards necessary to play a game" is from 1590s, perhaps because they were stacked like decks of a ship.

Tape-deck (1949) is in reference to the flat surface of old reel-to-reel tape recorders.

Deck-chair (1844) so called because they were used on ocean liners. On deck (by 1740) was in nautical use especially "ready for action or duty;" extended sense in baseball, of a batter waiting a turn at the plate, is by 1867. To clear the deck (1852) is to prepare a ship for action; it is perhaps a translation of French débarasser le pont.

deck (verb 1)

"adorn, array or clothe with something ornamental" (as in deck the halls), early 15c., from Middle Dutch decken "to cover, put under roof."

deck (verb 2)

"to knock down," by 1955, probably from deck (n.) on the notion of laying someone out on a ship’s deck. Compare floor (v.) "to knock down." Related: Decked; decking.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

When I was in elementary school, I was taught to underline book titles regardless of whether I was typing or writing by hand. Now, I use the Chicago Manual of Style, which says to italicize book titles.

I was curious whether the Chicago Manual of Style ever calls for underlining text, so I did a search. The closest it comes is, “Occasionally, boldface or underscore (also called underlining) is used for emphasis. In formal prose, especially in print, italics are usually more appropriate.”

In another section, it says, “Underlined words in a quoted manuscript may be printed as italics, unless the underlining itself is considered integral to the source or otherwise worthy of reproducing” (for example, when transcribing handwritten letters).

Underlining hasn’t gone the way of cursive writing just yet, however. In the digital world, underlining is the de facto standard for indicating that a word or phrase is a hyperlink. Using italics for emphasis instead of underlining avoids confusing sentences such as, “I insist that you visit the Editor’s Corner blog.”

Additionally, as anyone who’s submitted a document to Symitar® Editing can attest, when you use tracked changes in Microsoft® Word, underlining indicates an insertion (like this).

The bottom line is, there are still various uses for underlining, but they do not include adding emphasis to a word or phrase or citing books or periodicals. In those cases, use italics instead.

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.

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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 Editor | Symitar®
8985 Balboa Avenue | San Diego, CA 92123
619-682-3391 | or ext. 763391 | www.Symitar.com

Symitar Documentation Services

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,
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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.

Dear Editrix,

In the midst of exerting restraint from drinking at work while anxiously awaiting the election results, I wondered why we say, “wreaking havoc.” I don’t recall wreaking anything else (although my seat mate on the bus is frequently reeking of garlic) and we don’t seem to wreak anything happy like “wreaking joy.”

Perhaps you could explore “wreaking havoc”?

Fondly,

Your devoted reader

Dear devoted reader,

I would love to explore wreaking havoc! I have several ideas about how to do just that at my next holiday party!

No, I would never do something like that. J I did, however, investigate this term, because like you mention, we don’t ever hear about people wreaking positive things such as love, joy, and happiness. Here is some interesting information I found in an article about people misusing the phrase, saying “wreck havoc” rather than “wreak havoc.” From the Oxford Dictionaries blog:

The word wreak means “to cause or inflict” and is usually paired with nouns meaning either “a large amount of damage or harm” (as in wreak havoc or wreak devastation) or “vengeance” (as in wreak revenge). Although it would sound somewhat archaic today, the word wreak can also be used alone, without an object, to mean “avenge.”

On the other hand, the verb form of the word wreck, means to “destroy or severely damage (a structure or vehicle)” or “spoil completely.” Because wreck does not have the sense of “cause” or “inflict” like wreak does, the phrase “wrecking havoc” is illogical.

Using that definition of wreak, you can see that it would be tough to “wreak joy,” since that would mean “to cause, inflict, or avenge joy.” Inflict is another word that isn’t associated with pleasant things. In fact, let’s have a quick look at that word, too. From Etymology Online:

inflict (v.)

1560s, "assail, trouble;" 1590s, "lay or impose as something that must be suffered," from Latin inflictus, past participle of infligere "to strike or dash against; inflict," from in– "in" (from PIE root *en "in") + fligere (past participle flictus) "to dash, strike" (see afflict). You inflict trouble on someone; you afflict someone with trouble. Shame on you.

On that note, I’d like to say, “Have a lovely day!”

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services