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I originally intended this blog to be about what I'm reading at the moment, but it's turned into a much broader discussion of my work at Publishers Weekly and all things related to books and publishing. I generally write at least one post every day that I'm in the office, though I usually do the actual writing at home in the evenings and save drafts to post during the following day. I'm certainly not using paid time for blogging, just like you're not reading this from work. Right?
This is very much not an official PW blog. (I hope to start officially blogging for PW sometime soon, but I'll probably have to tone myself down a lot.) I'm extremely opinionated--not surprising, given the work I do--and I post about anything that catches my eye, including politics, the serial comma, and other sensitive topics on which I may personally disagree with the official stance of PW. Please do keep this in mind while you're reading, and remember that I am not by any means an official spokesperson.
I should also note that I reviewed over 100 books for PW from 2002 to 2007, but now that I edit PW reviews, I no longer write them (though I still review for Strange Horizons, Lambda Book Report, and other publications). PW reviewers are anonymous, and we take that anonymity really seriously. I often write about my personal opinions of books here, and I want to make it absolutely clear that I did not review those books for PW.
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Showing posts with label punctuation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label punctuation. Show all posts
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Thursday, September 13, 2007
An abundance of commas
Today's words that are not the same:
depends
deepens
Today's punctuation marks that are not the same:
,
.
Today's words that are not words:
magicans
muscial
Spellcheck is not by any means a replacement for editing (as the first entry in this post makes clear), but there's a lot to be said for using it to at least give things a once-over and draw your eye to typos. And seriously, what is it with the commas? There are many punctuation marks that can be used to conclude sentences, but commas are not on the list.
depends
deepens
Today's punctuation marks that are not the same:
,
.
Today's words that are not words:
magicans
muscial
Spellcheck is not by any means a replacement for editing (as the first entry in this post makes clear), but there's a lot to be said for using it to at least give things a once-over and draw your eye to typos. And seriously, what is it with the commas? There are many punctuation marks that can be used to conclude sentences, but commas are not on the list.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Very good, class.
Today's lesson is on the en-dash. The en-dash is the same length as a lowercase 'n', longer than a hyphen and shorter than an em-dash. It is used to hyphenate multi-word phrases.
"non-meringue fetishists" (hyphen) refers to fetishists whose fetish is not meringues.
"non–meringue fetishists" (en-dash) refers to people who are not meringue fetishists.
This is, sadly, a real-world example (not a real–world example), albeit with the fetishized noun changed to protect the writer. I will be editing it out altogether, as I feel one should do with most en-dash phrases, but figured I'd make an object lesson of it first.
The en-dash is also, more commonly and less egregiously, used inclusively between numbers, time periods, monetary amounts, etc. "The gallery is open Mon–Fri, 2–7 p.m., March–October. Admission is $15-20 sliding scale. For more information, see catalog pages 17–22."
These are the only uses that CMS14 allows, but other authorities use it to replace the word "to" in sports scores ("The Yankees beat the Red Sox 78–2"*) and other relationships ("Paris–London trip", "mother–daughter talk") as well as to connect any pair of proper nouns where both modify a following noun but do not modify each other ("McCain–Feingold bill"). I find all of that far too complicated, so I stick with the Chicago rules.
* I acknowledge that this example may be slightly gratuitous, but I couldn't resist.
"non-meringue fetishists" (hyphen) refers to fetishists whose fetish is not meringues.
"non–meringue fetishists" (en-dash) refers to people who are not meringue fetishists.
This is, sadly, a real-world example (not a real–world example), albeit with the fetishized noun changed to protect the writer. I will be editing it out altogether, as I feel one should do with most en-dash phrases, but figured I'd make an object lesson of it first.
The en-dash is also, more commonly and less egregiously, used inclusively between numbers, time periods, monetary amounts, etc. "The gallery is open Mon–Fri, 2–7 p.m., March–October. Admission is $15-20 sliding scale. For more information, see catalog pages 17–22."
These are the only uses that CMS14 allows, but other authorities use it to replace the word "to" in sports scores ("The Yankees beat the Red Sox 78–2"*) and other relationships ("Paris–London trip", "mother–daughter talk") as well as to connect any pair of proper nouns where both modify a following noun but do not modify each other ("McCain–Feingold bill"). I find all of that far too complicated, so I stick with the Chicago rules.
* I acknowledge that this example may be slightly gratuitous, but I couldn't resist.
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