Editrix

5 Questions with Kate Harding

Kate Harding writes for the Salon column “Broadsheet” and for the blog Shapely Prose. Her new book is Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere.

 

Q: What is your preferred environment for writing?

 

A: Today is the first day in 2009 it’s been warm enough for me to write in my preferred environment: on my back porch. I really need a more comfortable chair out here, if not a proper desk, but I love sitting outside with my laptop. During the winter (which in Chicago, of course, is roughly October–May), I usually sit on the living room couch. I have a home office with a door and a desk and everything, but that’s become a repository for crap I can’t find space for anywhere else in the apartment, so it’s not the most welcoming environment. In the living room, I can sit in front of the fireplace and be slightly less miserable about being stuck inside, at least—even though I’m probably doing terrible things to my body by writing on the couch. 

 

Q: What punctuation mark are you fondest of?

 

A: Oh, lordy, the em-dash. I am a crazy em-dash enthusiast—or abuser, depending on how you look at it. (See what I did there?) When I started using WordPress as my blogging platform, I was bereft because the only way to type an em-dash in its WYSIWYG editor is to put two hyphens together, and the only way to do that is to leave spaces around them. (Otherwise, they’re automatically turned into a single hyphen.) The spaces drove me nuts at first, but now I’m used to them. I still want any purists reading to know I don’t actually believe they belong there, though. 

 

I will occasionally make use of a semicolon or parentheses instead, and I often find it’s good to remove a few gratuitous em-dashes before publishing, in the manner of removing a piece of jewelry before one leaves the house. But as someone who writes in a very conversational style and is prone to interrupting myself, I make em-dashes do a whole lot of work.

 

Q: What punctuation, spelling, grammar, style, or usage error annoys you the most?

 

A: You know, I do have an answer to this (or a few), but in recent years, I’ve been actively trying to be less of a jerk about other people’s writing issues. It finally dawned on me that all of it—grammar, spelling, punctuation—came so naturally to me, I can’t even take credit for whatever skills I may have. (And I should note that I just deleted a comment on my author blog that said something to the effect of, “For someone who talks so much about writing, your punctuation is terrible!” I have indeed gone a bit soft since I stopped copy editing for a living, but also, eff you, Jack. Knowing all the rules means you get to break ’em.) Also, we all make mistakes. I’m still mortified by the memory of getting back a paper (about 14 years ago, mind you) with a snotty comment from the prof, exhorting me to “look up the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect.’” BUT I DID KNOW THE DIFFERENCE! IT WAS A TYPO! YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME! WAAAAAH!

 

So, between my own fallibility as a grammarian and my recognition that I completely suck at basic skills other people take for granted—notably arithmetic—I finally decided to quit judging other people’s writing mistakes. Sure, seeing “definately” still elicits an involuntary cringe, but I am trying to be a bit more zen about it these days. (“FINITE!” Think “FINITE!”) 

 

Q: If you weren’t in your current line of work, what would you be doing instead?

 

A: Probably editing. I have never been good at a damned thing that didn’t involve words, and I’ve been quite lousy at a few things that did (e.g., public relations). I loved substantive editing, but I gave it up because it taxed the same parts of my brain I needed for my own writing, and I wasn’t yet ready to abandon the dream of being an author. Now that I am one, it remains to be seen whether I can continue to be one, let alone make a living at it. There might yet be more editing in my future—but as long as I can still sit on my porch wearing yoga pants and play with words all day, that would be just fine. (Please note that I do recognize how ludicrous it would be to cast editing as a stable and adequately remunerative alternative to pretty much any other profession. It’s all relative.) 

 

Q: Why do you write?

A: Because I don’t know how to stop. 

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Do You Ever Come Down with Editorial Ennui?

I do.

I have it right now.

My editing has been sloppier than usual, all I want to do is go on a Sopranos binge, and I haven't bothered to properly remove the nail polish I wore to my wedding, which is now flaking off in a truly sad, red-light-district way.

How many times can I change “on an annual basis” to “annually” and “has the potential to affect” to “could affect” before I experience a psychotic break, I ask you, dear reader? HOW MANY TIMES?

Luckily, sometimes you come across a book whose slipshod editing makes you remember that the work you do isn’t as pointless as it sometimes seems.

I give you Introduction to Language Development by Scott McLaughlin. (The edition I have is an old one, from 1998, and if I had money to blow right now, I’d buy the most recent edition and see if it has been improved. But I just spent $600 on new tires, and I have to spring for a dentist appointment later this week, so what are you gonna do?) The thing is, Introduction to Language Development pushes so many of my editorial buttons that I can’t concentrate on the content. First, there’s the problem with comprise. To paraphrase Stunk Strunk and White,* animals do not comprise a zoo; they constitute a zoo. So why does Introduction to Language Development keep insisting, over and over again, that parts comprise the whole? And why does it not recognize that utilize and use are not the same thing? And why are its sentence structures as lulling and monotonous as a Greyhound ride across rural Louisiana? 

The concept is central to any modern linguistic theory of language behavior. A generative grammar is one that is comprised of [!] a limited number of rules capable of generating an unlimited number of acceptable sentences in a language. It is analogous to a collection of algebraic equations that have the potential to produce an infinite variety of answers as different values are plugged in for each variable.

 And why—God, why?—does it say things like this: 

Dr. and Mrs. Watson were thrilled! [Women don’t become doctors. They go to college to get their M.R.S. degree, not their M.D.] The excitement of this first addition to their family [The newborn baby was excited? Really? I thought newborns spent most of their time lying around and shitting themselves, but hey, what do I know?] was beyond their wildest anticipation. [Just say “wildest dreams.” You know that’s what you want to say, so just say it. Changing “dreams” to “anticipation” does not eliminate the stench of cliché. It just tries to mask it with a spritz of White Diamonds.] Dr. Watson drove carefully as Mrs. Watson nestled herself close to this new little package of joy. [“Here. These have always brought me luck.”]

 And this: 

[I]n maternity wards where six mothers and their babies shared the same space, after just the third night, mothers were awakened only by the cry of their own baby . . . (Some would suggest this is an ability that few fathers develop with just one baby in the house for a year!) [Poor, poor, stupid men!]

 And this, which really appropriates the cake: 

Infants who breast-feed have been found to discriminate between their mother and other women strictly on the basis of their odor. (The ladies who participated would all probably prefer the term “fragrance.”) [!!!]

Look, I know the book’s over a decade old, but in the year it was published, I was taking freshman comp, and I distinctly remember Dr. Marcello telling us to say “his or her” instead of “his” in our essays. Didn’t—wait, let me double-check the book’s publisher—Singular Publishing Group Inc. employ any women in editorial positions, who (one hopes) would have bristled at “ladies” and put the kabosh kibosh on it, at the very least? Or was the publishing world of 1998 more like the one of 1906 than I’d like to admit?

*I'm sorry to say that this typo was not a joke. See what editorial ennui can do to you?

Slut: Part 2

I e-mailed Leora Tanenbaum, author of the very readable and very memorable Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation, to ask her why she thinks there’s no male counterpart to the word slut. This was her response:

The reason there's no term that is a male counterpart to “slut” is that we have a sexual double standard—one standard of sexuality for girls and women and another one for boys and men. A male who's sexually experienced is a stud and a female who's sexually experienced is a slut. The lopsidedness in our language mirrors the sexism of our ideas. If we had one sexual standard for everyone, the language would be forced to become uniform.

Of course, I would like to see the day when the term “slut” is not used at all, since there's no reason for anyone to be called to task for their sexual behavior, real or presumed, as long as it's consensual and no one is being hurt or lied to. So I don't advocate for creating a term that would be equivalent to “male slut.” Having said that, I have heard the term “himbo” used a number of times. I didn't coin it so I don't know who would get the credit or blame.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to eating my cereal bowl of Tylenol capsules and pinching the flap of skin between my eyes (as if that ever did anyone any good).

P.S.: Thanks to all of you who have sent me get-wells.

Fox News Covers Karl Rove's Ass Rove's Assessment of Obama

The link circled above, from Fox and Friends, reads, "Karl Rove on Obama's Ho on Obama's Honey."

Stay classy, Fox.

Hat tip: News Hounds

Nobody Likes a Slut

So, the other day, I was reading Feministing, where one of the blog’s authors has posted a retro-creepy video called Are You Popular?, from 1947 (see below). Although I find the video’s fucked-up-ness endlessly fascinating (“Jenny thinks that she has the key to popularity: parking in cars with boys at night . . . No, girls who park in cars are not popular. Not even with the boys they park with”), I’m even more fascinated by the comment thread the video has spawned. It discusses, among other things, what the male equivalent of slut is:

ucsbclassics53 said:

Is there a counterpart to the term slut for guys? I mean I've heard man-slut, but I don't think that's very well used...and I don't think it has the extremely negative connotations that slut has...

nome replied to ucsbclassics53 :

Nope. Men get to fuck however much they like however they like. There's no word for them.

One commenter, Doug S., suggests player and womanizer, but as asseenontv points out, those terms “imply exploitation. And it is the exploitative behavior that is considered bad rather than being promiscuous itself.”

Another commenter, Destra, says that slut can be used to describe a man or a woman. At first, I liked that solution because it circumvents the double-standard problem entirely. Here a slut, there a slut, everywhere a slut-slut. (Similarly, I like it when partner is used to describe both heterosexuals and homosexuals. Which is not to equate partners—gay or straight—with sluts. OK, never mind. Moving on . . .) But when you look up slut in Webster’s, you find this:

1 chiefly British : a slovenly woman

2 a : a promiscuous woman, especially : prostitute b : a saucy girl : minx

For the record, American Heritage defines the term similarly.

So, a slut is, by definition, a woman? WTF is that? I don’t know why that surprises me. That is, I’m surprised that it surprises me. But . . . WTF!?

Please tell me there is a male equivalent to slut out there. Please. Somebody.

Gender, Booze, and Adjectives

I came across something interesting at Broadsheet yesterday.

It seems that men and women use different adjectives to describe drunkenness:

[T]he preliminary Web-based survey of people aged 17 to 24 did find interesting differences in the synonyms men and women use for intoxication. The study found that women tended toward words like "tipsy" and "loopy" to describe their own level of drunkenness, even when technically binge drinking . . . Men, however, were significantly more likely to use "heavy-intoxication" words, like "hammered," "wasted" and "ripped," to describe their own level of intoxication.

As for me, I'm a fan of plain ol' drunk.

To Sic or Not to Sic

In a recent comment, I noted that I’m of two minds when it comes to sic: “Whenever I get the chance to use it, I'm filled with glee, but I also feel as if I'm going to a dark, dark emotional place.” Which is why I’m not sure how I feel about the following two uses of sic, both of which I came across in books last weekend.

Here’s the first one (from ReVisions: Seeing Torah through a Feminist Lens by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein):

Herbert Chanan Brichto has observed,

Whenever man [sic] takes an animal life for his own table he must take that life on God’s table . . .

And here’s the second (from an epigraph in Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture by Daniel Boyarin):

Modern societies tend more and more to separate the body that reproduces . . . from the body that desires . . . Thus, man [sic] has two distinct bodies, using one or the other as he pleases.

I was surprised to have come across both occurrences in the same weekend. For one thing, it’s not often that one catches sight of a sic. (This must be what birdwatchers feel like when they spot a particularly rare breed.) For another thing, I’d always thought that sic was used to indicate a misspelling, misquote, or similar error in the source material. I didn’t think it could be used to pass judgment on the source material. In the two occurrences I cite above, the judgment seems to be, “The author of this source is using sexist language, which—I hasten to add—I do not endorse.”

So I turned to Chicago, and lo and behold, the use of sic is not confined to pointing out errors; it can also be a way to express your opinion. In fact, if you want to inject an editorial WTF—which Chicago defines more eloquently as “editorial protest or amusement”—Chicago says that sic is preferable to a bracketed exclamation point (§6.78).

But back to ReVisions and Carnal Israel. The feminist in me cheers those uses of sic. The people-pleaser in me thinks they’re overly aggressive (even in books about gender and Judaism). Meanwhile, the editor in me doesn’t know what to think.

What if you had been the editor of these two books? Would you have invoked sic?

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Feminist Shrikes on Parade Are Bad

Very, very bad. Just think of all the bird poo there'd be to clean up afterward.

Lipstick on a Pig? Pshaw!

Oh, mom. If men only knew (not counting drag queens and transgender men, of course, as they know how to look womanly better than most women do). As if femme-inclined women just roll out of bed, slap on some lipstick, and jaunt off to a political rally. If only it were that easy . . .

To read the rest of this "Sarah Palin Is My Mother" entry, click here. Language-related posts are forthcoming.

Is the Semicolon Girlie?

According to Sarah Hepola at Salon, a Boston Globe article suggests as much. An excerpt:

Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King, said [Ben] McIntyre [of the Times of London], "wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons."

Bonus: Ms. Hepola's article links to yours truly. Huzzah!