How to identify a dangling modifier: Held at the Dupont Circle town house of Peter Bergen, the CNN terrorism expert, the party’s heavily mediacentric guest list included Michael Isikoff of Newsweek; a former Clinton mouthpiece, Joe Lockhart; the political blogger…
Category: Usage
The punctuation enforcer
Reuters reports on a U.K. writer who is defending those apostrophes with her last breath.
Why I hate pressure groups
Because of their idiotic insistence on their preferred terminology. From Clay’s post on the proper terminology on the gay-people-getting-married dustup. “Gay marriage” is a stupid thing to call it. Gay people can get married now. Just not to other gay…
Bail, bond, etc.
See Nicole’s refresher.
OK, now I’ve officially had it …
… with “kinder, gentler.” Can we please toss this one out of the airlock, please? The vacuum of space would do it some good. The tipping-point passage: Toner notes that the candidates as a whole are appealing “to a far…
Like vs. such as
They’re wondering what to do about it in Philly.
Death to redundancy
Clay rails against “future plans,” which reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to do: compile an exhaustive list of redundancies. Here’s one that bugs me immensely: “Different.” As in “Fourteen different choices present themselves…” With all redundancies, the rule…
The last thing I will ever write about hyphenation
As Phillip Blanchard would say, this is simple: If adding a hyphen to a compound modifier makes something more clear or more accurate, then add it. If leaving the hyphen out makes it inaccurate, then for God’s sake put it…
Nominations for Banned Words of 2004
The Testy Copy Editors are taking them. And sharing timeless laments. Why can’t we persuade the reporters that the best word for “said” is “said.”
Anti-anti
Nicole Stockdale points out changes to the curent AP Stylebook.