Are you sick of sounding silly when trying to use “whom” correctly? Of course you are. Here is how you figure out when to use “who” or “whom.”
Whom replaces a subject where the answer to the question could be either “him” or “her” or “them.” I remember it like this: whom ends in an M, just like him. Continue reading
To the chief bottle washer, Cog:
Today, we’re staging a little intervention. Cog, we’re not doing this to punish you; we’re doing this because you’re our friend and we want what’s best for you. It’s getting to the point where you can’t handle it anymore. You’ll destroy yourself if you keep using at this rate!
I speak, of course, of your rampant abuse of ellipses.
I am completely biased, but I think they’re the most wimpy punctuation mark available. Lots of people use them (or, in my view, overuse them) because they lend a sort of pause in a sentence, and we naturally pause when speaking to breathe or think. Except I believe that our writing should be better and more compelling than our speech. We have the time to set it in stone (or word processor, as the case may be); we should strive for perfection.
So let’s talk about dot. Dot. Dot.
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Normally, any attempt to stifle what little creativity we have in this business makes my skin crawl. Really takes the cake. Gives me the pip. But in this instance, I have to put my foot down.
Guys. Stop using figures of speech in your business writing. If I had a nickel for every time someone mucked up some folksy sayings, well, I’d have a bird in hand, which I’m told is worth two in the flora.
Okay, I’ll put the stupid jokes on the back burner now. My point is, writing pitches and press releases is hard enough without figures of speech ruining everything. Two reasons: colloquialisms are easily misused, and easily misunderstood. Continue reading
Dear Oprah:
I never thought you’d have a very large impact on my life. Then I got into the book business.
Oprah, my relationship with you has been very like my relationship with God. At times I felt like I depended on you, that you controlled my life. And then there were times I thought you’d abandoned me altogether.
I will miss you the same way I miss having God in my life. So, take that any way you’d like.
Instead of my usual harsh judgment (my hammer of knowledge, if you will), this week I bring you a question. It’s an issue on which I’ve been waffling for some time.
Backstory: Remember a few weeks ago, when Starbucks released their new instant coffee? Well, now Nestle’s Taster’s Choice would like to remind you that they’ve been making instant coffee way before that young Turk ever came into the java-slinging world. Here in New York, and in several other cities, Nestle street teams have been handing out little envelopes filled with all sorts of Taster’s Choice instant coffee packets. Copy on these envelopes calls out the Starbucks instant brand as a lot of needless hype.
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One of our own, CTMichaels, is in the market for a new place. Like a lot of people, he’s going to be looking on Craigslist (CL) for the apartment and/or roommate of his dreams. Because Craigslist is the place where copy goes to die, I pleaded (nay, begged) CT to let me have a crack at his advertisement. Below is what he had in mind. Continue reading
It’s November, which means NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).
NaNoWriMo can also be called “the month where all your wordy friends disappear from the planet.”
If you’ve never heard of it, here’s the scoop: for the month of November, participants sign up for the NaNo challenge. Their goal is to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month. Some quick math reveals that this means writing a little under 2,000 words a day on average, and that doesn’t sound very difficult. Continue reading
Wow. Guys. Did we really need to sit down and talk about how you probably shouldn’t steal? Man, I guess we do.
So here it goes: when you steal words, pictures, or ideas from other people, especially people who live in the constantly well-documented world of the blogosphere, you’re not being cool. Continue reading
Please consider this a gentle nudge in the direction of proper usage. I am not angry with you, dear thing. Almost everyone makes the same mistake time and time again. But for your elucidation:
Editing is not the same thing as copyediting.
When you talk about making sure all the commas are in the right place? That’s copyediting. When you think about taking a red pen to a piece of writing? You’re probably thinking of copyediting. It’s something wholly different than editing-editing, and you should probably know the difference.
I love English, but I’ll be the first one to say it is cruel, unwieldy, illogical, and frustrating. We have words that sound alike but are spelled differently, words that have two meanings, words that are spelled the same but sound different, words that have three meanings, words that mean one thing as a verb but the opposite thing as a noun, and words that have seventeen meanings.
And there are some words and phrases you should just avoid because you are doing it wrong. Sorry, but you are. Here’s a quick rundown: Continue reading