A Phenomena Phenomenon?

In the last week, I have heard two people who should know better misuse the word phenomena. I didn't think this was word that needed much explaining, but twice in a week? (At any rate, maybe these flubs will be the impetus that gets me blogging here more regularly again.)

Here's how it works:

• Phenomenon is the singular form: The blinking purple light hovering over the White House remains an unexplained phenomenon.
• Phenomena is the plural:  Three or four strange phenomena were occurring there every week, so the city banned food trucks in the clown cemetery.

Any time you find yourself saying or writing "a phenomena," pause and think. Unless you're using the word in some modifying phrase, like "a phenomena-explaining discovery," you want to use the word phenomenon instead.

I have generally been shying away from writing about words from a strictly prescriptivist point of view. I don't want to be the guy who tries to tell you how you must use your language. Rather, I'd like to be the guy who shows you how to do more with your language, and to use it to better effect.

But singular phenomena just won't float. Sure, a couple decades hence we might be having the same arguments we used to have about data being singular or plural, but we're not there yet. And besides, misuse of these two words might be more dangerous than data ever could be.

Legend has it that if you stare into a mirror and say "phenomena" three times in a row, a pair of eerie pink monsters will appear behind you.

Scarier still, if you say "phenomenon" three times, John Travolta will show up and try to recruit you to Scientology.

Although these phenomena are unproven, I advise you to use these words with care.

Homing In on Honing In

One of my readers suggested I tackle the unconscionable phrase honing in.

Unconscionable might be a little strong, but it's certainly one of those usages that drive editors bonkers.

I was all prepared to lambaste this obvious misuse, which is at best an eggcorn and at worst a sign of the collapse of English literacy, but then I started researching. And something strange happened: I got a more historical perspective on the two alternatives.

Don't get me wrong; I will stand by homing in to my dying day, but my vehemence will not be so, well, vehement as it once was.

You can draw your own conclusions after you read what I wrote about the subject at Copyediting.com in the post "Honing and Homing In: a History, a Choice, and a Future."

Copyediting.com: By Editors, For Editors

For twenty-five years, Copyediting.com has been a great rallying point and resource for copy editors in all media and at all skill levels. It offers daily posts about grammar, language, style, technology, and job opportunities; monthly educational audioconferences; a job board; and even information about editing Canadian versus American English.

Not to mention nearly three dozen posts by yours truly. (Last Friday's "(Nearly) Identical Twins" is a pretty fun word game, if I do say so myself.)

Politics, Second Homes, Hemp, and Vowels

First, check out my new post at Copyediting.com in which I talk about canvasing and canvassing. It's called "Canvas(s)ing: A Story of Politics, Second Homes, and Hemp."

Here's a hint that isn't covered in that article. If you're faced with using canvas or canvass, remember this: "Politics puts the ass in canvass."

Logophilius around the Internet

In the last couple months, I've been a substitute blogger at Copyediting.com for a few editor friends who needed vacations. Here are some of my posts that you might find interesting and educational. I encourage you to check these out as well as posts from other copy editors there.

Are Adverbs Really Evil?

Many a writer, editor, and wordsmithing guru has warned of the damage adverbs can cause to one's writing. Theodore Roethke once said¹, "In order to write good stuff, you have to hate adverbs." Graham Greene noted² how well Evelyn Waugh avoided "beastly adverbs — far more damaging to a writer than an adjective." And, of course, Stephen King famously stated³, "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs."

With such widespread anti-adverb sentiment, one might wonder why we have adverbs at all if we are not supposed to use them. Are adverbs really so evil that using one will, like a bad apple, spoil an entire sentence?

Rewriting prompt: Killing Four

Start with something you've written, 300-500 words. It doesn't even have to be anything you consider final. Go through it closely and rewrite it as and where needed so it contains no four-letter words. I don't mean that metaphorically; I'm not simply asking you to eliminate profanity. Get rid of all words containing exactly four letters.

Editors and That SEO Jazz

It's an understatement to say that a lot goes into creating and maintaining a website that appeals to both search engines and living, breathing humans. But when the separate areas of search engine optimization (SEO) and good content come together just right, it's like a good jazz combo. Many different parts combine to create something that really grooves.

• The first area of SEO is the underlying site design. This deals with elements like crawlability, mobile-friendliness, and page loading speed. This part of SEO is like the pianist laying down the chord structures that underlie the music created by the other instruments — the other elements of SEO.
• Then you have the content strategy — how often you publish, what topics you'll cover, what voice you'll use. All this is guided by research into your audience and their behaviors, desires, and needs. This part is like the drummer, establishing the tempo of your website and your content production.
• Marketing — both online and off — plays a big role in SEO. It gives many of the other website elements (especially content production) their direction. The marketing aspect of SEO is like a walking bass line: It gives the site content a foundation and drives the whole process forward.
• On top of this rhythm section are the melodic instruments — your actual content. Each jazz combo — and each website — has its own particular combination. For a website, it can include text, video, audio, infographics, apps, and more.

When all the parts of this SEO band work well together, it's more likely to attract some attention from Google, yes, but from your audience as well, which is your ultimate goal.

I'm not here to help you build a band, though. Although it's helpful to understand at least at a basic level how all the parts of your SEO jazz combo fit together, you need to focus on your part: the editorial content.

That's where I come in.

On May 13, I will present an audioconference through Copyediting.com called "SEO for Editors." In what I hope will be a delightful and informative 90 minutes, I will cut past the parts of SEO that word mongers like you and me have no control over and focus on the editorial aspects in our bailiwick. You'll get:

• A brief history of Google algorithm changes that have affected how we create content
• Guidelines for creating links that both people and Google like
• A look at how keyword strategies have changed over the years
• An overview of what titles and headings mean for SEO
• A discussion of what high-quality content means to a search engine
• The golden rule of SEO

One more apt comparison of SEO to a jazz combo: There's a lot of improvisation going on in both. Just as there is no formula for creating "the perfect song," there is no formula for creating "the perfect content" that will land in front of everyone who you think ought to see it.

Yes, Google and its ilk use algorithms (just a fancy word for formulas) to power their search results, but

1. Those algorithms customize results for the listener (the searcher), not the band. Every new search is like a different ear listening for a great tune. (And not everyone will be interested in your jazz.)
   
2. They aren't singing. Search engines are tight-lipped about exactly how their algorithms work, releasing only the information they think website owners need to know to help search engines connect searchers with the information they're looking for. Why so reticent? Because people are selfish jerks. With every big search algorithm change, short-sighted SEOs rework their strategies to try to game their way up the search engine results pages (SERPs). Then, when the next change comes along, those short-sighted strategies — much like the once beloved keytar — all but disappear.

My hope is that, in this audioconference, I can show you today's basic best practices of on-page editorial SEO — the right scales and chord changes, if I may extend the metaphor further — so that your content has a better chance of reaching the ears that want to hear it.

So if your job relies on writing and/or editing online — whether you're a blogger, a journalist, an ad copywriter, a corporate word-slinger, or the editor in charge of any these folks — nag your boss into paying for the professional development opportunity that is "SEO for Editors."

See you there.

Rewriting prompt: You're a poet and don't recognize the fact

Rewrite a scene — yours or someone else's — as a rhyming poem. Couplets, quatrains, sonnets, whatever — just not haiku, okay?

Rewriting prompt: Another opinion

Today's rewriting prompt is short and imageless because I've been spending all my free time preparing for my presentation at the 2015 annual conference of the American Copy Editors Society, otherwise known as ACES 2015. If you're going to be there, make sure you find me and say hello.

Rewriting prompt: Indulge in grandiloquence

In today's rewriting prompt, I ask you to do the opposite of good editing.

Start with about 300 or 400 words — fiction or essay, it doesn't matter. Rewrite it using the most multisyllabic, sesquipedalian verbiage you can muster. Stretch both the language and yourself.

Rewriting prompt: A Moody Rewrite

Find a scene or story that has a strong mood to it and rewrite it to give it an opposite mood. Make a somber scene light-hearted, or a scary scene funny. Or at least fun.

Rewriting prompt: Not to Be

In a blog editing tip way back in September 2013, I wrote that "No word in the English language is as insidious as is is." What I meant is that the forms of to be, whether as helping verbs or linking verbs, can become like table salt: you can use it with almost anything, but too much of it can make the whole thing unpalatable.

That might be a bad metaphor.

Rewriting Prompt: Trying These Times

You've seen this done countless times by well-known authors. You've even seen it done and not known that you've seen it. It's been done to entire novels, but for now, maybe just focus on a scene.

Rewriting Prompt: You First

Start with a scene or short story (your own or someone else's) that has a fair amount of action in it. It doesn't have to be intense action, but the main character has to do some thing and have things done to her. Rewrite it in second person, present tense.

Rewriting Prompt the First

If you dropped in on Monday, you saw the first of my weekly writing prompts. Today, I launch another feature: REwriting prompts.

Can This Be Smoothed Out?

At least share! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We know that a baby teethes and a good bourbon soothes the nerves, but when your significant other finds out you spent almost $400 on a bottle of 23-year-old Evan Williams Kentucky bourbon, you might be looking for an expensive gift that smoothes things over with him or her.

Or do you need a gift that smooths things over?

Which is it, smoothes or smooths?

It depends on whom you ask, because the evidence is surprisingly inconclusive. I've written all about it over on Copyediting.com, so learn more about this difficult little word over there.

Social Media Optimization (Catch-up) Tip

Last week, I was recruited to be a backup blogger for Copyediting.com. In all the hubbub that was the last seven days (long, aggravating story), I forgot to promote that post here. So that's what I'm doing.

Public Speaking at ACES 2014 and Things to Come

At 10:45 am Vegas time (1:45 Eastern) today, I will be presenting a breakout session with the admittedly dry title “Editing Online Content for the New SEO” at the annual conference of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES). 

This is my first time presenting and only the second time I’ve been to the conference. My nerves are starting to get edgy, but it’s still nowhere near the worries I had about getting through airport security to get here. Apparently, I fear the TSA.

(Frankly, the main reason I’m writing this post is because it has been too long since I’ve put anything up here, and I don’t want anyone who visits this blog after seeing my presentation to find it stale.)

At any rate, if you were unable to attend the ACES conference and want to get a glimpse at what my presentation is about, check out my recent post over at DigitalRelevance, 5 Reasons Hummingbird Could Bring Back Copy Editors.

And don’t worry; I’ll soon be posting with more regularity once again. You can look forward to a conference wrap-up post or two, wherein share some of the great information I learned, complain about an overlong, labyrinthine lunch walk too and from an In-N-Out Burger, and get al fanboy about rubbing elbows with some of my editorial heroes.

For those of you who attended my presentation, welcome to Logophilius! Please comment below and tell me what I did right and what I did wrong.

In Search of Awesome: The Four Types of Quality

I am republishing here a blog post I originally published at DigitalRelevance back on February 6. I'm gearing up for my presentation at the American Copy Editor's Society's annual conference at the end of March, and a discussion of quality will certainly play a role in that presentation.

How do you judge quality, both of your own creations and in what you find from others? Do you consciously hold your own work to a higher (or, Cthulhu forbid, lower) standard than the work of others, or do you expect others' work to live up to your own skills?

Here's the post: