An A to Z of Editorial Peeves: N

Today's gripes are brought to you by the letter N. If you're just joining us, why not start at the beginning and gripe along with us?

New

This word is simply overused. Not in the text that I edit, but on signs and in ads. How old can something be before it stops being new?

We have these other two great words that don't get used often enough: newer and newest. There's a big difference between, say, "Kurt Vonnegut's new novel" and "Kurt Vonnegut's newest novel." The difference is that the first is an outright lie, and the second isn't. Vonnegut died four years ago, and the last novel he wrote, Timequake, was published in 1997. It isn't new, but it's certainly his newest.

How about some truth in advertising? Anyone?

Nonplussed

Face it: nonplussed is just a troublesome word. If you're nonplussed, you're flummoxed to the point of inaction. A nonplussed person might also be flabbergasted or gobsmacked and just stand there gaping.

I wrote a whole blog post about nonplussed and why I think it's such a tough word to use. The point, though, is that you either need to learn how to use it, or don't use it at all.

Numbers vs. Numerals

Numbers are the abstract ideas of quantity and subdivision. Numerals are the characters we use to represent those abstract numbers.

When you think about the size of a standard jury, you hold the abstract concept of "twelve" in your head -- that's the number twelve that you're thinking about. When you write it down, you can use a numeral or numerals, normally 12, but if you're feeling quirky: XII, 1100 (binary), or C (which is twelve in hexadecimal notation, but the Roman numeral for 100). The numeral 12 isn't the number twelve any more than your name written on a piece of paper is actually you.

I'm not a total snooty, prescriptivist grammar snob. You can get away with an occasional number when you really mean numeral, especially in speech but also when numeral would seem unnecessarily clinical. But if you ever try slip in numeral when you really mean number, you're asking for a six pack of editorial whoop-ass.

The Anti-Esquire List

Last week, Esquire published "The 75 Books Every Man Should Read," which was billed as "An unranked, incomplete, utterly biased list of the greatest works of literature ever published." It seemed innocent enough at first, even the type of post that should be encouraged if it gets more men to read great fiction.

But then we started taking a closer look at the books that made the list. We got rankled, and rightfully so. The author warned us that the list was biased, so we were expecting to see more books of a particular genre. Thrillers, maybe. Or mysteries. Or sci-fi. Or even erotica.

But the bias apparent in that list of 75 "of the greatest works of literature ever published" was of an entirely different and unexpected sort.

Of the 75 books on the list, only one was written by a woman (Flannery O'Connor).

(Although I have no proof, I'm convinced that Ms. O'Connor's appearance on the list was itself accidental. Flannery isn't a common name; perhaps Esquire's author thought Flannery O'Connor was a man. Because, with all respect to Ms. O'Connor, there are a few female authors who should have made the list in front of her, Harper Lee being the first. How can To Kill a Mockingbird not be in the top 75 greatest works of literature ever published?)

Though I don't have nearly the reach that Esquire does, I'm here to do what I can to balance the scales. Here is my anti-Esquire list, a collection of 75 other authors whose works are just as great and just as important as any named on Esquire's list. It, too, is "unranked [it's in alphabetical order], incomplete, [and] utterly biased."

75 More Great Authors Who Could Have Made Esquire's List

Isabel Allende

The House of the Spirits
City of the Beasts

Laurie Halse Anderson

Speak

Maya Angelou

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale
Oryx & Crake

Jean Auel

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Jane Austen

Nothanger Abbey
Pride and Prejudice

Simone du Beauvoir

The Second Sex

Judy Blume

Forever

Erma Bombeck

The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank

Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre

Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights

Gwendolyn Brooks

Annie Allen (poetry)

Pearl S. Buck

The Good Earth

Willa Cather

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Kate Chopin

The Awakening

Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express
And Then There Were None

Mary Higgins Clark

On the Street Where You Live
Where Are the Children?

Beverly Cleary

Dear Mr. Henshaw

Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games trilogy

Emily Dickinson

Collected Poems

Joan Didion

Democracy
The Year of Magical Thinking (nonfiction)

Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Living by Fiction (nonfiction)

Lois Duncan

Killing Mr. Griffin

Jennifer Egan

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Helen Fielding

Bridget Jones's Diary

Cornelia Funke

The Inkworld trilogy

Nadine Gordimer

The Conservationist
Burger's Daughter

Jane Hamilton

The Book of Ruth

Lorraine Hansberry

A Raisin in the Sun

S.E. Hinton

The Outsiders

Alice Hoffman

Fortune's Daughter
Practical Magic

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Erica Jong

Fear of Flying

Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees

Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible
The Bean Trees

Maxine Hong Kingston

The Woman Warrior

E.L. Konigsburg

A View from Saturday
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth

Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies

Anne Lamott

Imperfect Birds
Bird by Bird (nonfiction)

Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird

Ursula K. Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness

Lois Lowry

The Giver
Number the Stars

Katherine Mansfield

Short story collections

Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca

Toni Morrison

Beloved
The Bluest Eye
Song of Solomon

Alice Munro

The Love of a Good Woman

Iris Murdoch

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

Anaïs Nin

Henry and June

Joyce Carol Oates

them

Dorothy Parker

Death and Taxes (poetry)

Ann Patchett

Bel Canto

Katherine Paterson

Bridge to Terabithia
The Master Puppeteer

Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar

Katherine Anne Porter

The Collected Stories of Katherine Ann Porter

Annie Proulx

The Shipping News

Anna Quindlen

Object Lessons

Ayn Rand

We the Living
Anthem
Atlas Shrugged

Jean Rhys

Wide Sargasso Sea

Anne Rice

Interview with the Vampire
The Vampire Lestat

J.K. Rowling

The Harry Potter Series

Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things

Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones

Anne Sexton

Live or Die (poetry)

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein

Carol Shields

The Stone Diaries

Jane Smiley

A Thousand Acres

Betty Smith

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Mary Stewart

The Crystal Cave

Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge

Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club
The Kitchen God's Wife

Anne Tyler

The Accidental Tourist
Breathing Lessons

Alice Walker

The Color Purple

Eudora Welty

The Optimist's Daughter

Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome
The House of Mirth

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway


I hope that the women of the world understand that Esquire does not represent what real men are really like — especially men who read.

And I hope that Esquire's editors recognize that they are doing a disservice to their readers by providing such a limited definition of "great literature."

An A to Z of Editorial Peeves: M

I'm up to the Ms in this list: the end of the first half of the alphabet, and the first half of this series. And I'm going to make something of it.

Make Certain

Ninety-nine percent of the time, the phrase make certain — and especially make certain that — is unnecessarily wordy and, to my mind, horribly awkward. If you really want to make something of it, make sure is a more acceptable colloquialism, but you can un-make the phrase altogether with double-check, ensure (but not insure), or even just be certain. Sometimes, though, you can just delete the phrase entirely.

As with a some of my other peeves, this isn’t a grammatical issue but a word choice issue. I'm sure someone will make certain to include make certain in a comment to this post. Or maybe not, since I beat them to the punch.

Make Settings

You might never have seen this ghastly phrase if not for this post. (If that's the case, I apologize.) I see it too often, though, in how-to articles about computer software.

Say, for example, that you want to set up your color printer so that, by default, it always prints in grayscale. You go online looking for help, and you find a few articles about how to do just that. An article written by someone whom I didn’t edit might direct you to open your printer’s Preferences menu and "make settings on the Color tab." (I shudder just typing that.)

The problem is, you don’t make the settings. The programmers who designed the software make the settings. You adjust them, customize them, tweak them, or just change them.

Make Use of

Make use of is only slightly better than utilize. I hate them both.

Most of the time, changing make use of to simply use can create a more streamlined, fluid, and understandable sentence. But why stop there? Use is such a dull word; with a little thought, you might be able to create a more straightforward and interesting sentence.

For example, only a lawyer would ask, "Do you ever make use of your computer to watch adult videos?" It’s only marginally better to ask, "Do you ever use your computer to watch adult videos?" Better yet, and more interesting: "Do you ever watch porn on your computer?"

I wrote a little about make use of about a year-and-a-half ago in a post called "Make Use of the Red Pen." It also comes into play a little later.

On the Make

The main problem that I have with both make and use is that, even though they are active verbs, there isn't a lot of action in them. Make and use by themselves don't tell you anything about what's going on; the words around them define what they really mean.

Of course, they can't be completely avoided. Make and use both have active lives in verb phrases ("You should make up with your girlfriend even if she uses up all the toothpaste.") and in idioms ("Use your head, boy! I told you to make the bed!"). But too often they're used just as sentence lengtheners, pushing the actual action farther from the beginning of the sentence.

Not only can weeding out bland, unnecessary makes and uses lead to more fluid, readable prose, but it can help you avoid sounding like an equivocating, double-talking, untrustworthy politician.

Muphry’s Law

No, that’s not a typo. Muphry’s Law, aka Skitt’s Law, aka McKean’s Law, aka Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation states that whenever you write something that is critical of editing or proofreading (such as this ongoing list of editorial peeves), there will be an editing or proofreading error in what you’ve written. (You can find a big stupid example of Muphry’s Law on this blog by following that link to "Make Use of the Red Pen," above.)

As all blogging editors know, online grammar trolls live on Muphry’s Law. Say you write a well-researched, beautifully written essay about what Chaucer’s poems reveal about the changing syntax of the English language and how it directly relates to how William Shakespeare coined new words. Wonderful stuff. Pulitzer-worthy stuff. You then post that essay to your blog and tweet it to your followers, hoping to spark some interesting conversation, and what’s the first comment that some anonymous troll leaves under your masterwork?

"You used who where you should have used whom . . . "

And they, of course, extrapolate from there:

". . . If you’re going to write about grammar and syntax, you should learn about grammar and syntax. Mistakes like this make me distrust both your facts and your opinions on such topics."

Well, that’s what the trolls mean. What actually shows up in their comments is closer to this:

"its WHOM, dickwad!! learn 2 speak fuckin english b4 you start spouting off with this shit!!! you don’t know what the hell your talking about!!!!"

Oh, the infinite variability of the English language.

But of course, a grammatical or usage mistake in a post about grammar and usage isn’t a sign that the writer is a hack; it’s a sign that the writer is human. Sometimes our heads work faster than our fingers, or vice versa. Sometimes muscle memory takes over when we don’t want it to. (The -tion suffix is so ingrained in my hand muscles that I can’t type the word ratio without first typing ration and then hitting the backspace . . . if I notice the mistake.) And when we edit or proofread our own writing, sometimes we see what we meant to type instead of what we actually typed.

I don’t believe a book has ever been printed that didn’t contain some error in it — from a missing apostrophe to a malaprop. (If you ever do find printed material that is ridiculously error-free, let people know. That book’s editorial team deserves praise, because that is a notable accomplishment.) So we will write on in the shadow of Muphry’s Law, hoping that we can lessen its effect, but knowing that, like the common cold, we can’t really hope to extinguish it altogether.

An A to Z of Editorial Peeves: L

L is for LATE, like this post. The plans I laid for my long Memorial Day weekend fell victim to, well, me and my personal issues. Nonetheless, here is this week's list of language lamentations.

Latter vs. Last

There were a few missions carried out under Fred, such as the attempted theft of plans for an orbital laser cannon, an attack on Zartan, and an attack on Destro's castle in Scotland. None of these missions were successful, however, and the latter of the three resulted in Destro taking control of Cobra, with Fred and the rest of the Cobra hierarchy in executive positions. (link)

More than a year ago, I was introduced to hardcore punk with bands such as Dayglo Abortions, Toxic Narcotic, Black Flag, and Aus-Rotten, the latter of the four being my favorite punk band. (link)

Between August 1988 and March 1992 six at‐sea experiments were performed in which sea surface backscattering strengths were measured from ∼70 to ∼1000 Hz utilizing explosive (SUS) charges. . . . The latter of the six experiments (CST‐7) was particularly interesting. . . . (link) (This also holds the dreaded utilize, a word I detest.)

Although you have no problem understanding what the writers of these three excerpts were trying to say, each excerpt suffers from the same error: Each of those latters should have been lasts.

Latter refers to the second of two options; last refers to the final item in a list of indefinite length. If you think about it for a moment, you’ll notice that latter/last follows the same pattern as some other adjective pairs you know: younger/youngest, elder/eldest, and even former/first. (Although the histories of these words might not play out any actual etymological links among these pairs, there’s no reason you can’t link them in your own mind to help you remember.)

I talked about latter a bit back in January in Eleven Words That Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean. That’s a fun little blog post; go check it out.

Regarding the blatant misspelling of latter as "ladder": That’s a mistake native English speakers are allowed to make only once.

In the fourth grade.

On a Monday.

Lay vs. Lie

You would probably expect me to harp on this oft-botched pair. I can't . . . I have too many problems with them myself. The only thing I can ask is that you recognize that this is troubled ground. When you encounter this minefield in your writing, do what I do: Find a good map. (That is, look it up in a source you trust.)

Less vs. Fewer

I have my preference, you have yours. The secret is really no secret at all: Don’t be a jerk about it. See my earlier entry, fewer vs. less.

Light Year

A light year is the distance that light travels in a year.

Chant it with me: "A light year is a measure of distance, not time. A light year is a measure of distance, not time. A light year . . ."

Liquefy

If liquefy looks weird to you, then you've probably been spelling it wrong for a while. (I'm talking to you, creators of the Photoshop "Liquify" command!)

Literally

People have been griping about the misuse of literally for a long time. AMbrose Bierce was complaining about in 1909 in his Write It Right. Ninety-some years later, the now-defunct MadTV series even created a series of sketches that took the misuse to extremes, as in this video from May 2000:

More recently, Robe Lowe’s Parks and Recreation character, Chris Traeger, has made an artform out of misusing (and overusing) literally:

It appears that using literally to mean its opposite — figuratively or metaphorically — has become a part of the modern English language (and I here use a very broad definition of modern).

People who defend the idea that literally can mean “figuratively” or can otherwise be used as an intensifier in descriptions of non-real actions and situations aren't helping. With all respect to Mark Liberman, Benjamin Zimmer, Jesse Sheidlower, and other learned linguists and lexicographers, I just don’t buy it. From the viewpoint of examining usage both among the general population and by the greatest writers of English, their arguments make sense. But from an editorial point of view, I just can’t let it pass.

We need a word that means “in truth, without exaggeration.” Truly no longer cuts the mustard. (Have you ever stopped to think about what "Yours Truly" means?) Really is long gone. We still have genuinely, but how long can that hold out in a world where people buy and sell “genuine reproductions” every day?

No. We have to make a stand somewhere before all we’re left with is the horrible phrase “in actuality.” I stand by the literal meaning of literally in both my writing and my editing. If I'm editing something of yours and you want to use literally to mean figuratively, you had better be prepared to defend it. If you show any signs of wavering, your literally will bleed red.

Or purple, depending on what color pen I'm using to cross it out.

Loose vs. Lose

Loose — the opposite of tight — rhymes with goose, which leads to “loosey-goosey.” It also rhymes with noose: You might be able to cheat the hangman and slip out if the noose is loose enough.

Lose — the opposite of win — rhymes with snooze: If you do the latter, then you do the former.

Looser and loser are often mixed up, too. People like me who grew up in the ‘80s should remember that posers and hosers are losers (the first two rhyme with each other, but neither rhymes with the last).

I have no such mnemonic for remembering looser except to equate it with nooses and gooses, er, geese, and then adding an R at the end. If you have a better mnemonic, please leave it in the comments!

An A to Z of Editorial Peeves: K

My ongoing alphabetical list of editorial peeves, those little things that people do with their words that rub me the wrong way.

If you're just joining us, why not start from the beginning?

Words that really start with C (or worse, Q)

This isn’t so much a problem in written works, but in company naming. But it’s a deliberate word-choice issue that really bugs me, so I’m putting it here.

I grew up in a small farm town nestled between the Indianapolis suburbs to the north and acres of cornfields to the south. Most of the businesses in my hometown, like the shops in many hamlets and villages around the country, were little family-run affairs. One such business that appeared in the mid-80s was a “salon” that the owners called Korner Klips.

Even at that young age (let’s say I was about 8), the name of that establishment irked me. I had seen K-sounding Cs replaced with Ks before so that multiple words started with the same letter. King’s Kars, maybe. Or Kids’ Kuts. I would roll my eyes at these “creative respellings” but then quickly move on.

But Korner Klips was different. Here, they took two words that already started with the same letter and respelled them with a different yet still matching letter. Why? Presumably because a K looks like a pair of scissors. (A C, on the other hand, looks more like a pair of calipers,* and no one wants to know how much of a fathead they are when they get their hair cut.)

It doesn’t take long to compile a list of similarly mangled business names online. There’s Korner Kuts (which also bears the unwanted association with cutting corners), Kleen Kars (a double-whammy, with the extra misspelling of clean), Khaos Krew, and myriad others. I hate them all.

Worse still are names like Kwik Kopy, Kwik Kleen, and Kwik Lok, with the qu- swapped out for a kw-. (Makes me shudder just to look at them.) I don’t know why people are so averse to Q words. I see no sign of the opposite (let’s call it the “alternate misspelling”) catching on: no “Quick Qopy” or “Quick Qlean” or “Quick Loq.” (If you qatch sight of one, snap a kwik piq and let know please!)

Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I don’t think names like these say “We are creative and witty.” They say “We kan’t spell.”

And for what it’s worth, I never got my hair cut at Korner Klips.

Karats and carats and carets and carrots

Homophone heaven!

A karat is a measure of gold fineness equal to one-twenty-fourth pure gold in a metal alloy. This means that a chunk of pure, unadulterated gold is 24-karat gold. If someone tries to sell you a 28-karat gold ring, run-don’t-walk away. A carat is a measure of weight (equal to 200mg) of precious stones. So an expensive ring might have 5 carats worth of diamonds set in 24-karat gold.

My dictionary also lists karat as a variant spelling of carat, but not vice versa. If you’re dealing with a jeweler, you’ll want to keep the two separate.I don't know how you'll keep it straight, though. If you have a mnemonic that helps you keep your carats separate from your karats, feel free to leave it in the comments.

A caret is a little wedge shape that editors and proofreaders use (or used, before everything was done on computers) to indicate where some new text needed to be inserted. The caret shares a key with the 6 on your computer’s keyboard.

And finally, a carrot is a pointy, edible root that apparently got named after they named the orange.**

If you have a hard time keeping them straight, don’t feel too bad. Leave it to Bugs Bunny to exchange karats for carrots.

Kerfuffle

A kerfuffle is a disturbance, a ruckus, a brouhaha. I like this word and I wish people would use it more often. It sounds like someone farting in a church pew.

* Note:Tangent: “X-Kaliper,” is a trademarked name for a laser caliper used to measure large objects. I love the play on the name Excaliber (which doesn’t contain a K), plus it gets a bonus for the X because it measures XL-sized objects. But why in the world did they change the C, the only caliper-shaped letter in the name, into a K? Does the madness never end?

** I stole that joke from Demetri Martin.

An A to Z of Editorial Peeves: J

In my opinion, J is an underused letter. More words should start with J.

But they don't. Which is why this week's list of editorial peeves is so short.

Jargon

When I started researching this post, I learned that the word jargon has a number of different (and downright contradictory) definitions. I had planned on peeving all over the use of jargon in general text, but the more I researched, the more I realized that jargon deserves a post of its own here on Logophilius. I hope it will come soon, don't you?

But the use and avoidance of jargon boils down to the basic tenets of good writing: write for your audience and be clear. It's as simple and as difficult as that.

Just Deserts

This is a shining example of a popular eggcorn. The phrase is "just deserts," not "just desserts" (they're pronounced the same, though). It's not too difficult to remember once it's been pointed out to you. If someone gets their just deserts, they're getting what they deserve. The relation between deserts and deserve isn't accidental; deserts used as a noun this way comes from the Old French word for "deserve."

The eggcorn makes sense, though, doesn't it? Dessert is what one gets at the end of the meal, and just deserts is what one gets in the end. Because the eggcorn version makes so much sense (more sense than the original, in my opinion), I don't expect "just desserts" to go away anytime soon.

Coping on the Job, Editorially and Otherwise

Every job involves some bit of repetition. Some jobs, like trash collecting and assembly-line work, consist almost entirely of repetition. Other jobs, like, oh, President of the United States, involve little repetition: Every day is something new.

For copy editors, that repetition is the continual correction of common grammar and usage errors and style choices.

There are, to be sure, shining moments in a copy editor's life when the art of editing shines through the science of it. It might be a headline that manages to be both witty and SEO-friendly, or the perfect pun that lightens the mood without getting in the way, or the metaphor that reveals in two sentences what would otherwise take two paragraphs to explain. Those sparkling moments happen occasionally, but the bulk of a copy editor's efforts are spent on those common, niggling errors, on the reptition.*

Lately, this repetition has been getting under my skin. (If you've been following my A to Z of Editorial Peeves series, you already know some of the things that I'm tired of fixing.)

My biggest gripe is wordiness, and (at least with what I'm working on now) it's the most common problem. Why are you writing with participial phrases when simple present tense is clearer and more succinct? Why are you making use of things instead of just using them? And why oh why do you favor long, nested strings of prepositional phrases instead of single-word adjectives?

And if I have to change one more utilize . . .

It seems like every time I open a new file, I make the same edits I made in the previous file, and the one before that, and the one before that.

But I'm not going to spend this time griping about all the problems I have to fix over and over again — I have a 27-part weekly series just for that. What I'm interested in is how other people — specifically you, dear reader, whether you're an editor or a garbage collector — deal with the dull drudgery if repeating the same task again and again and again.

Do you look to social media for commiseration, sharing your pain with Twitter and Facebook (I do that) or throwing the worst offenses into the blogosphere, like Shit My Students Write? Do you shout profanities — either literally or online in comments sections (not mine, please)? Do you take a more passive-aggressive approach and sabotage your coworkers? Do you take two smoke breaks an hour?

How do you calm the creative side of your mind long enough to get the auto-pilot stuff finished? How do you keep from going crazy?

Comments are open. Please help before I punch a hole in my cubicle wall.

* The truth of this statement is dependent on the skills of the writer, of course. If you're working with a good writer, copy editing can be like polishing a gold statue. If the writer stinks, it's more like regrouting a shower.

An A to Z of Editorial Peeves: I

A cluster of textual problems that annoy me to no end, each fronted by the 9th letter of the alphabet.

i.e. vs. e.g.

If you don't know how to use these, don't. See e.g. vs. i.e.

Impact

Impact ought to be reserved for craters and wisdom teeth, and it ought to remain a noun and an adjective.

I started writing a long bit here full of examples of how people use impact to mean "have an effect on," but I thought better of it. Just trust me: Every editor and avid reader and listener of the English language will be a little bit happier if everyone stopped using impact as a verb.

Hell, if you really love the word impact, you can still use it. Just say that something "had an impact on" something else. That's fine. It's ambiguous and unoriginal, but it's fine.

And don't even get me started on impactful.

Heed my words: If you continue using impact as a verb and impactful as anything, the only listeners who won't immediately tune you out are those who are just one incentivize away from a Corporate Jargon BINGO.

In a ______ fashion

The English language has evolved to include an ingenious little animal that lets you bypass this four-word prepositional phrase — indeed, any number of lengthy prepositional phrases — with a single word. That animal is known as an adverb. You should learn about adverbs.

If you're a frequent reader of this blog, you might have already deduced that I am a big fan of efficiency. Though I'm not a fan of how they phrased the "rule," I completely understand the sentiment behind Strunk and White's admonition to "Omit needless words" in The Elements of Style. Many word nerds have misconstrued this "rule," I think unfairly, to mean that any word that isn't needed to convey the meaning of the sentence should be deleted, and then attacked the concept based on that misconstrual.

I think this is a much too limited definition of needless. There is, after all, more to a string of words than just their meaning. By that limited definition, all redundancies, for example, are "errors" and should be eliminated. And indeed, if you were to eliminate all redundancies, the stark meaning of a sentence would be clear, and the words would be efficient. But then so much would be left out — ironically, what most people would refer to as a writer's style. "His mother made him clean up all the popcorn he spilled," conveys the acts, but it has no style. It isn't as telling as, say, "His mother hovered over him as he painstakingly picked up every last, little speck of the spilled popcorn, which, like in the moments following the Big Bang, seemed to have spread with inconceivable speed to the four corners of the room." The difference between the former and latter sentences isn't just needless words.

Lest I preempt my own discussion about redundancies (it'll come when I get to the Rs), let me curve back around to the foul phrase at hand: "in a ______ fashion." There's certainly nothing grammatically wrong with this phrase, and in a few cases it might even be the best choice. But, overall, I think it contains a lot of needless words that ought to be omitted.

Don't place your doilies in a dainty fashion; place them daintily. Don't harvest your coffee beans in an ethical fashion; harvest them ethically. Don't plop onto the couch in an exhausted fashion; just collapse on the couch, exhausted.

Sometimes, you save only one word but create a much stronger sentence. Imagine Rush Limbaugh crawling around on all fours in a dog-like fashion. Nuh-uh. He's crawling around on all fours, like a dog. (See how that conveys not just what Rush Limbaugh is doing, but how you I feel about Rush Limbaugh?)


This is not a call to cease using "in a ______ fashion" completely. If you're obfuscating, deflecting blame, or intentionally and intensely trying to maintain neutrality, "in a ______ fashion" might be the way to go. But if you're writing something that you want people to show some interest in (e.g., fiction of any type), "in a ______ fashion" is a cop-out. It leaves the interpretation up to the reader, and that interpretation may be the opposite of the story that you're trying to tell.

If you want your readers to see and feel a certain thing, you can't do it by equivocating.

Yes, it means more work. But if you find yourself typing "in a ______ fashion" (or its feeble brother, "in a ______ way"), take a second look at it. You can probably build a stronger, more streamlined sentence.

Incentivize

I still don't know what the hell this word means, whether it's the employees who are incentivized or the desired outcome that's incentivized. Or something else. This word sucks. Don't use it.

If you're thinking about jumping down into the comments and giving me a definition for incentivize, don't. I don't want to know what you or anyone else thinks it means. There's nothing you can say about this word that will convince me that it has any worth.

Look, I'm a huge fan of wordplay. I love taking words apart and putting them back together like Legos. But all neologisms are not created equal.

Read that again: All neologisms are not created equal. New words are created every day. Some rise to the top and are adopted by the masses; others sink to the bottom and disappear. Incentivize is down there deep with mondo, shibby, and phat, only somehow it refuses to die.

Do us all a favor and kill it whenever you can.

Inflammable vs. flammable

There really is no "vs." here. They're on the same team. See flammable vs. inflammable.

Irregardless

I won't be so irrational as to declare that irregardless isn't a word, or that it has caused irreparable damage to the language, but it would be irresponsible of me not to mention this irregular, irredeemable little editorial irritation.

I don't entirely understand why this piss-ant of a word has become so irrepressible as to become irremovable from the lexicon. But that's irrelevant. You can find plenty of irrefutable evidence that irregardless is the wrong word choice, unless you really want to sound stupid (or irreverent). The word you want is regardless.

And if you're still irresolute about using irregardless, feel free to use irrespective instead.

Today's Word: factitious

I had intended to complete and publish a bit of flash fiction today about how I think the first test of a time machine might go. But responsibilities and distractions piled up, and I haven't finished it yet. (Watch for it next week!)

So instead, I bring you a word I wish I had known 20 years ago: factitious.

If you notice that fiction and fact are opposites, you might come to the conclusion that fictitious and factitious are also opposites, thus making factitious an overlong synonym of factual. It's a perfectly reasonable and logical conclusion to draw, but it's wrong.

If something is factitious, it is unauthentic, artificial, a sham. Rush Limbaugh's recent "praise" of President Obama after the death of bin Laden, for example, was factitious praise — it wasn't actual praise. Factitiousness often goes hand-in-hand with sarcasm, and scare quotes like the ones used earlier in this paragraph are a sign that you might be dealing with something factitious.

It's not always about sarcasm, though. Laugh tracks and applause reels are factitious responses added to some TV shows that either don't have a live audience or just aren't very good. I bet North Korean sitcoms use them a lot.

I could make plenty of jokes about how the GOP, the TEA party, FOX news, et al. can always be relied on for factitious information, but I'll leave that to my more hilarious, less reserved readers.

An A to Z of Editorial Peeves: H

Have a healthy helping of a few of the errors that writers make that they need to stop making right now!

In my opinion.

Harebrained

Note the spelling. It's harebrained (as in, as foolish as a hare), not hair-brained. Just keep a particular long-eared cartoon rascal in mind to keep it straight.

As you write about Donald Trump's forays into presidential politics, feel free to use "hair-brained"; just recognize that you'll be making a homophonic pun. "Rug-rat" is a nice choice, too.

Hail vs. hale

More often than not, the word you want is hail.

Hale means "being in sound health," and it often appears in the alliterative and redundant phrase "hale and hearty" — and it's "hale and hearty," not "hale and hardy."

Hale can also mean to "compel to go," most often in "haled to court." (While people complain about being hauled into court, haled is what will show up on official records.)

And, just to be complete, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" were reportedly the last words of Nathan Hale before being hanged by the British.

Everything else uses hail: You hail a cab. Hail covers your car in dimples. Barack Obama hails from Kenya Hawaii.