Editrix

(C)han(n)uk(k)a(h)

According to joemaller.com, the most popular way to spell Hanukkah is, well, Hanukkah. Chanukah is next, followed by Hannukah, Hanukah, Hanuka, and Chanukkah (though the list doesn't end there).

How do you spell it?

Note (12/24/08): goofy left a comment that included the Hebrew spelling of Hanukkah, but I accidentally deleted it because the combination of annual site reports and mandated holiday cheer has turned my brain to mush. Anyway, the Hebrew spelling that goofy provided is, I think, this: חנוכה. (Thanks, goofy.)

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The Career of "Career" is Over

Pretend, for a moment, that you’re back in English class, only this time around, you don’t reek of Clearasil, you don’t have to ask your mom for the car keys, and you don’t spend most of homeroom doodling on your Chuck Taylors.

Now, choose which sentence is correct:

A)      The car careered off a cliff.

B)      The car careened off a cliff.

If you’re a conservative grammarian—and I don’t mean that in the Republican sense—you’re likely to choose A. If you’re a liberal grammarian, you’re likely to choose B. However, even I, with all of my prescriptivist tendencies, would choose B. Because, damn it, career sounds like a made-up verb, like something my Human Resources department would come up with: “Once you have properly careered your résumé and ensured that it is free of errors, send it to the address below.”

But career is an actual, by-gum verb. It means “to move or run at full speed.” Careen has traditionally meant something different: “to lean to one side, as a ship sailing in the wind.” That’s why conservative grammarians get testy if you say a car careened off a cliff. Oh, really? Did the car lean so far over that it toppled off a cliff? No? You mean someone just drove it off a cliff. Then I guess it didn’t careen, did it? It careered.

Garner’s may appreciate why careen has elbowed out career (“It’s understandable why most people aren’t comfortable with this verbal usage of career . . . [T]oday, people think of it only as a noun: the path of a life’s work” [pp. 130–131]), but it doesn’t let up on the traditional distinction between the words:

Since the early 20th century, AmE [American English] has tried to make careen do the job of career, as by saying that a car careened down the street . . . Despite the increasingly currency of careen in this sense, however, careful writers* reserve career for [its traditional usage] (p. 130).

I recently learned that Bill Bryson, too, is anti-careen. “Careen should convey the idea of swaying or tilting dangerously,” he writes in his Dictionary of Troublesome Words. “If all you mean is uncontrolled movement, use career” (p. 35).

Lucky for me, everyone else I’ve consulted is pro-careen.

Believe it or not, Fowler’s—Fowler’s!— plays good cop opposite the prescriptivist bad cops. After confining the careen/career kerfuffle to America, Fowler’s implies that careen is either acceptable or not troublesome enough to discuss in depth:

In a separate modern development in AmE, since the 1920s, careen has rapidly become standard in the sense ‘to rush headlong’ . . . This modern sense hardly occurs in BrE [British English]” (p. 130, emphasis mine).

Several examples of careen, used broadly, are then presented without comment.

The American Heritage Dictionary, whose definitions I quoted above, is blunter. Its usage note for careen says that there is:

no reason to conclude that [the broad sense of careen] is the result of a confusion of careen with career, “to rush.” Whatever the origin of this use, however, it is by now so well established that it would be pedantic to object to it.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage also looks favorably on careen. It even cops an attitude: “So if you simply cannot accept the fact that the broadened uses of careen are here to stay, you might have to pack your bags and head for the more congenial clime of British English.” In the words of Jon Stewart: oh, snap!

Chicago too accepts careen, albeit reluctantly: “[C]areer’s career as a verb meaning ‘to go full speed’ may be about over . . . Its duties have been assumed by careen.” I say “reluctantly” because Chicago ends its careen/career usage note by saying, “Still, careful writers recognize the distinction.” I’m familiar with this reluctant tone because I use it when I talk about Natural Lite, empty cans of which always litter our street after our neighbors have thrown a party (i.e., every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning). Natural Lite is here to stay, but the careful drinker selects a microbrew.

I typically side with Garner’s when it comes to disputes like this, but this time I’m going with Fowler’s et al., on the grounds that if I said my car careered into a guardrail, I’d spend the next fifteen seconds blushing and worrying that the person I was talking to was going to cock an eyebrow and say, “Huh?”

* Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage has this to say about the “careful writer”: “The careful writer is a fiction often invoked by usage commentators. Conveniently, the careful writer follows whatever precept the commentator is laying down at the moment . . . When you meet the careful writer in usage books, you should be careful to distinguish him from the good writer” (p. 225).

Five Things I Learned from Bill Bryson

I just started reading Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words, by Bill Bryson, and I’ve already learned five things:

1. The British don’t put periods after Mr, Dr, and St because those abbreviations begin with the first letter of the full word and end with the last. (Mr. Bryson calls this kind of abbreviation a contraction.) However, the British still put periods after abbreviations that stop in the midst of a word (e.g., Prof.).
2. Admit to is almost always wrong (e.g., “She admitted to having an affair with the milkman”). To should be deleted. “You admit a misdeed,” says Mr. Bryson, “you do not admit to it.” I admit to knowing nothing of this distinction until now.
3. An altercation is not a fistfight, knife fight, gunfight, or food fight. It is a “heated exchange of words.”
4. Another should be used “to equate two things of equal size and type.” So, saying “I drank three cups of tea at work and another two cups at home” is incorrect. However, changing it to “another three cups at home” would make it OK (though six cups of tea in a day might give me the shakes; I use a jumbo mug). Also correct: “I drank three cups of tea at work and two more cups at home.”
5. It’s OK to say either appendices or appendixes when referring to a book’s back matter. I had learned (where? when? from whom?) that appendixes refers to back matter and that appendices refers to vestigial organs.

And that’s just the a’s. God knows how humbled I’ll be by the time I get to the z’s.

I Am Neither Sure nor Adamant about My Opinion

During a lull at work the other day, I was thumbing through Carolyn D. Rude’s Technical Editing, and I came across a use of nor that gave me pause. I wish I’d dog-eared the page, because now I can’t find it. At any rate, it was structured like this: “Editors should not be hasty, rude, nor flippant.”

 

I thought (hastily) that the sentence was wrong. Nor should be or because not comes before it. Similarly, we don’t say, “I’m an editor who doesn’t have no patience.” However, Mr. K— thought it sounded right to him.

 

Turns out, Garner’s is on my side, and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage is on his.

 

Garner’s says this (you can skip to the bullet point if you’re in a pinch):

 

When the negative of a clause or phrase has appeared at the outset of an enumeration, and a disjunctive conjunction is needed, or is generally better than nor. The initial negative carries through to all the enumerated elements—e.g.:

 

·         “There have been no bombings nor [read or] armed attacks by one side against the other.” William D. Montalbano, “Links to IRA Seen in Rash of Violence in Northern Ireland,” L.A. Times, 12 Jan. 1996, at 1.

 

Meanwhile, the Dictionary of English Usage says this:

 

Nor frequently replaces or in negative statements . . . It is clearly felt to be more emphatically negative than or in some instances:

 

·         . . . I recommend that you have nothing further to do with this person nor with these arms transfers —Robert C. McFarlane, quoted in The Tower Commission Report, 1987

 

Thoughts?

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Was November 4 an Historic Day?

Yesterday I got an interesting e-mail from a reader, Katie. She wanted to know if you’re supposed to say a historic or an historic. She thinks a historic is correct, but her girlfriend, Dylan, is a firm believer in an historic. As Katie wrote:

The lady friend and I were disagreeing over this little indefinite article the other night; despite valiant attempts, we could not come to an agreement that I am correct . . . Had just about anyone else disagreed with me, I would have brushed them off, but Dylan has rarely been wrong and her contention has made me curious.

Katie, when I first read your letter, I was with you all the way. “A historic,” I thought. “Definitely. Not an.” But I decided to check my sources before I got cocky, and since then, things have gotten more complicated, as is their wont.

First I asked my S.O., Mr. K—, what he thought. For one thing, this question seemed to be right up his alley. For another thing, he was in the middle of washing dishes at the time, making him a captive audience. Our conversation went something like this:

Him: An historic sounds like an affectation.

Me: Yeah, I think so, too. It sounds so mannered. People should say a historic. [Pause] You don’t think it’s a British thing, do you?

Him: No.

Me [feeling paranoid, because British English always trips me up and leaves me feeling like some stupid, ignoramus Yank]: But what if Katie’s “lady friend” is British. I mean, she didn’t say she wasn’t British. Maybe they’re both British.

Him: It doesn’t matter if you’re British. It should be a. [Pause] But I do use an sometimes.

Me: What?!

Him: Never in writing! Just when I’m speaking. Like, if I’m giving a conference paper, I might say an historic. It sounds more formal.

Anyone with a functioning nervous system could tell that Mr. K— was wrong, wrong, wrong. “It sounds more formal.” Please. Clearly, Mr. K— had made the same mistake that Katie’s lady friend had: he wouldn’t agree that I was correct. So, I hit the books. Surely they would back me up, right?

Right?

Well, Katie, you will be happy to hear that both Chicago and AP use a before historic and historical in their respective discussions of how the words differ. Garner’s, too, will not disappoint. It discusses the a-versus-an dilemma at length:

Most authorities have supported a over an. The traditional rule is that if the h- is sounded, then a is the proper form. So people who aspirate their h’s and follow that rule would say a historian and a historic . . . This is not a new “rule.” Even the venerated language authority H.W. Fowler, in the England of 1926, advocated a before historic(al) and humble.

However, the current edition of Fowler’s (i.e., not the one written in 1926) says flat-out that historic should take an. I don’t know what’s up with that, but it might make Dylan happy to hear it.

Dylan might also like to hear that the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage blesses an: “A number of commentators prescribe a [before historic], but you should feel free to use an if it sounds more natural to you. We find that more writers use a than an but that both are common.”

I guess it all comes down to, as Garner’s put it, whether you aspirate the h-. If you do (hiss-toric), then say a. If you don’t (iss-toric), then say an, but keep in mind that some people might do as linguist Dwight Bolinger has done and charge you with “Cockneyed, cockeyed, and half-cocked ignorance and self-importance” (Garner’s, 1).

Personally, I think of an historic as a tuxedo: there’s nothing wrong with wearing one, but if you don’t confine it to very specific events, you run the risk of looking like a tool. Unless, of course, you’re British, in which case, I don’t know what to tell you.

Update (12:30 p.m.): Grammar Girl gives a historic the nod. I learned through Mighty Red Pen that The Columbia Guide to Standard American English favors a historic. Barbara Wallraff, the editing guru who sparked my interest in grammar during my undergrad days, says that a historic is correct if you pronounce the h and that an historic is correct if you don’t—but hurry up and use an historic now because it’s going out of style. And, most outrageously, according to Language Log, the title of the Oxford English Dictionary was affected by the a-versus-an conundrum (I am not making this up).

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Do You Concur?

I was flipping through a technical-editing textbook (Technical Editing by Carolyn D. Rude), brushing up on some style elements, when I came across this example sentence:

Staff members in other divisions concurred with the manager’s budget assessment. (p. 258)

It caught my attention because out of every ten documents that come across my desk, six will say concur, and of those six, five will make the same mistake that Technical Editing has: saying concur with when they should say concur in. You can concur with a person, but you have to concur in an assessment (or a report, or a statement, or any other kind of document). In my line of work, government regulators, elected officials, and other bigwigs are always agreeing on some kind of document or another—that is, they’re concurring in documents, not concurring with documents. It’s a pretty clear-cut distinction.

Isn’t it?

Webster’s says that concur in means to approve (its example: “concur in a statement”). However, it says that concur with means to express agreement (its example: “concur with an opinion”). So, this seems to suggest that if you concur with your manager’s budget assessment, you’re agreeing with it (“Yup, those cost variances look accurate to me, by gum”), but if you concur in your manager’s budget assessment, you’re approving it ([Beep] “Joey, bring that budget assessment into my office so I can sign off on it. Oh, and bring me a cup of coffee while you’re at it—and for fuck’s sake, don’t forget the creamer this time”). Now that I’m mulling over this subtle difference, I’m beginning to fear that it could launch me into author-query hell (e.g., “Did the DOJ merely agree with the report, or did the DOJ actually approve the report? If the former the first option is true, then stet leave this sentence as it is. If the second option is true, change ‘concurred with’ to ‘concurred in’ for the millionth time, you overpaid bovine please”).

But that hell is merely hypothetical. The hell I’m in right now is competing-sources hell, because American Heritage seems to disagree with Webster’s when it comes to concur. Instead of concur in, American Heritage prefers concur on (its example: “concurred on the issue of preventing crime”).

And then there’s Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, which takes what I lovingly call the kumbaya approach and embraces every preposition, regardless of shades of meaning:

Concur may be used with various prepositions, chief among them being with, in, and to:

. . . I asked him whether he concurs with the opinion of most psychiatrists that the creative impulse is a kind of neurosis —Jim Gaines, Saturday Rev., 29 Apr. 1972

This recommendation occurred in by all members of the Department —AAUP Bulletin, September 1971

Physical and moral causes had concurred to prevent civilization from spreading to that region —T. B. Macaulay, The History of England, vol. I, 1849

Less frequently concur may be found with on:

We all concurred on the argument that when you have news, you have to print it —Katharine Graham, quoted in McCall’s, September 1971

Hell. Now I don’t know what to think. Maybe Technical Editing has it right after all. What do you think?

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Gauging Your Reaction to "Gage."

In a conference paper I edited last week, I kept coming across the word gage—not gauge—in reference to the piece of equipment that measures things for you. My first instinct was to add a u, but the more I stared at the word, the more I doubted myself. Pretty soon, it stopped looking like a word at all—the way you can stare in the mirror for so long that your face doesn’t look like your face anymore, but some creepy, Picasso-esque doppelganger’s face, and you just know that if you pressed your hands against the glass, she’d sneer at you, entwine her fingers with yours, and yank you all over the place. Or maybe that’s just me. (The Poltergeist movies scarred me at a young age.)

Anyway, I decided to hit the books.

According to American Heritage, gage is a variant of gauge (the primary spelling). The first definition of gage is “(1) Something, such as a glove, deposited or given as security against an obligation; a pledge. (2) Something, such as a glove, that is offered or thrown down as a pledge or challenge to a fight. (3) A challenge.” It’s also a type of plum. Gauge, however, carries no connotation of fruit or fisticuffs. In addition, American Heritage includes definitions for pressure gauge, water gauge, and vacuum gauge, not pressure gage, water gage, and vacuum gage.

Webster’s rules similarly.

Fowler’s says gage “is a spelling of the word meaning ‘a pledge, a challenge, etc.’ and of the abbreviated form of the ‘greengage plum.’ ‘In AmE [American English] it is also a variant of ‘gauge’ . . . , the ‘measure’ word, but ‘gauge’ must be so spelt in BrE [British English].”

I say we should all make like the Brits and embrace gauge rather than throwing down gages and declaring war with each other.

However, it’s worth noting that Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage embraces gage:

Note well the spelling of ‘gauge.’ A common error puts the ‘u’ before the ‘a’. . . The old and respectable variant spelling ‘gage’ avoids the problem altogether, but it is now rarely used for the verb. Its most common use is in reference to scientific instruments used to make measurements.

So, if someone were really attached to gage, he or she could make a case for using it, especially since no one but horticulturists or Renaissance-fair fanatics would think “plum” or “challenge,” respectively, when they came across gage in print. But—being biased—I still see the score as gauge: 3, gage: 1.

What do you think?

P.S.: As far as the conference paper is concerned, I ended up chickening out and querying the author (“Should this be gauge, per American Heritage?”) and letting him decide. I’m happy to say that he inserted the u.

 

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It's a Miracle

Someone in my company has used comprise correctly:

The implementation team comprising both managers and subject matter experts developed an implementation procedure. 

For once, the team wasn’t “comprised of both managers and subject matter experts.” I think I might spring for a bottle of champagne. Seriously, this is an event—a good-usage event.

I'd Like to Establish Something

OK, so this is really nitpicky of me, but hey, if you can’t get away with nitpicking when you’re an editor, when can you?

Anyway, in my line of work, I see sentences like this one (taken from a report I’m editing right now) all the time:

The area was reseeded with native species and will be monitored for the next few years as the vegetation establishes.

In contexts like this, I always, always, always want to change “establish” to “be established” or “become established.” To wit:

The area was reseeded with native species and will be monitored for the next few years as the vegetation establishes becomes established.

Establish is a transitive verb. Webster’s doesn’t even bend a little bit by saying that it can have an “intransitive sense” or anything like that. In fact, the example it gives for one of establish’s definitions is “establish grass on pasturelands.” “Grass” is the direct object of “establish”; it’s not the subject of the sentence. It’s not establishing itself. Gardeners (or farmers or horticulturalists or whoever) are establishing it.

But in the reports that come across my desk, I read so commonly of vegetation establishing that I’m willing to admit I might be wrong about this. (Fifty thousand Elvis fans can't be wrong, and all that.)

Thoughts?

P.S.: The other day, when I configured my Amazon Prime membership for automatic renewal, this thing popped up (see below; click to expand). Again, in my opinion, the membership isn’t renewing itself. The Amazonians are doing it. Jesus, am I nuts for letting this get to me?

 

I Don't Know About You, But I've Got Tons of Stuff Saved on MY Computer

Yesterday morning, I was looking at Chicago’s questions and answers for this month, and I came across this:

Q. My colleagues are divided in their opinions about “storing data in a computer” versus “storing data on a computer.” Which is correct? Thanks.

A. You can do either, but I would store the data in the computer. It used to be easy to store stuff on a computer, but now with flat screens and laptops it tends to slide off.

I disagree. I’ve got a novel, eight stories, two spreadsheets, an electric toothbrush, a Fiesta Ware serving tray, and my entire summer wardrobe stored on my flat screen at home. In your face, Chicago.

No, seriously. I really disagree. If a colleague asks me where I saved a document, I might answer, “I saved it on the network. You can access it.” I save story drafts on my laptop, but my backups are on my flash drive. In the network, in my laptop, and in my flash drive sound strange to me, as does in a computer.

Thoughts?

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