Incorrect Word Usage Equals Lazy Thinking

"Action plan" is redundant; action is inherent in the word plan.

"Impactful" is not a word; it is slang and an example of lazy thinking. The words "effective" and "influential" are correct and should be used.

Copyediting and the Audience

Copyediting and the Audience

One thing you need to keep in mind when copyediting is the audience of the piece that you are editing. Is it a piece for anyone? Or is it targeted to a specific audience? All writing needs to be clear, but there are situations in which you must leave in industry-specific language or other idioms to ensure correct communication. If you're copyediting something and find unfamiliar terms or idioms, or words used in an unfamiliar way, ask the author before deleting or rewriting!

Style

Style is what distinguishes one piece of writing from another, but more especially one writer from another. Henry David Thoreau's style is different from Henry James' which is yet again different from G.K. Chesterton's. Jane Austen's style is a rippling stream or bubbling pool and Charlotte Brontë's is an erupting volcano. Style must occur naturally. If it is put on, the reader will notice, and be put off. As Zinsser writes, "Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it by put will-power. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going" (26).

Quiz

1. Whose work is this? "We became--at least I became--dressy. It was the age of the "knut": of "spread" ties with pins in them, of very low cut coats and trousers worn very high to show startling socks, and brogue shoes with immensely wide laces. Something of all this had already trickled to me from the College through my brother, who was now becoming sufficiently senior to aspire to knuttery. Pogo completed the process. A more pitiful ambition for a lout of an overgrown fourteen-year-old with a shilling a week pocket money could hardly be imagined; the more so since I am one of those on whom Nature has laid the doom that whatever they buy and whatever they wear they will always look as if they had come out of an old clothes shop. I cannot even now remember without embarrassment the concern that I then felt about pressing my trousers and (filthy habit) plastering my hair with oil. A new element had entered my life: Vulgarity. Up till now I had committed every other sin and folly within my power, but I had not yet been flashy."

2. In what novel do the following characters appear? Clara Middleton, Vernon Whitford, Sir Willoughby Patterne

Answers to the previous quiz
1. A more concise version of this sentence would be Many people attended the subscription series' third concert.
2. The characters Sir Harry Otway, Mrs. Butterworth, and Mr. Floyd appear in E.M. Forster's A Room With A View.

Clutter and Conciseness

Clutter is simply too many words for the meaning. Sometimes it comes in the form of too many overused expressions, or passive verbs, or too many prepositional phrases, or garbled sentence structure. However it appears, it clogs up things and makes it difficult for the reader, and, ultimately, the writer, because what's the good of writing when your writing doesn't communicate properly?

Quiz

1. Make this sentence from an Elements of Style example more concise: "The third concert of the subscription series was given last evening, and a large audience was in attendance" (25).

2. In which novel do the following minor characters appear? Sir Harry Otway, Mrs. Butterworth, Mr. Floyd

Answers to the previous post's quiz:

1. I will always remember my first visit to Boston.
2. The characters Mr. Skimpole, Mr. Krook, Miss Flite, Mr. Carstone, and Mr. Bucket appear in Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

National Grammar Day

I just read on the 'net about today being National Grammar Day.
Another way to phrase it is "National Write Clearly For the Readers Day," because that's your goal when you write. And my goal when copyediting is to make sure that writing is clear.

What Works

After so many posts about what doesn't work, it's time to have some posts about what does work, and why. Eventually I'll find a well-written article on the 'net and post the link. I do
know of one very well-written article--a superb comparison/contrast article about EastEnders that appeared in Vanity Fair in the early '90s, but that was so long ago that it's not even in their online archives (yes, I checked . . . just in case).

Here's a sentence with correct punctuation: "After all, Alfred ruled in the late 800s and then only in Wessex, a southern English kindom centred on Winchester."

There aren't any problems in the above sentence. A comma follows the introductory phrase, and a comma precedes the explanatory clause. The only thing different is the spelling of centred, and that only because this sentence is from an article in a magazine about Britain.

More positive examples tomorrow.

Note

Hargan, Jim. "The England That Alfred Made." British Heritage (September 2004): 36.

Hyphens

"Choose from a delicious Italian, Mediterranean, and Tex-Mex dishes, hot and crusty oven baked pizza, sizzling steaks, and, of course, expertly prepared Gulf Coast seafood."

Sometimes a hyphen is needed . . . as in the case of "oven baked pizza," in which two words are paired to describe what sort of pizza: Choose from a delicious Italian, Mediterranean, and Tex-Mex dishes, hot and crusty oven-baked pizza, sizzling steaks, and, of course, expertly prepared Gulf Coast seafood.


"Explore more than 25-acres of lush indoor and outdoor gardens."

And sometimes a hyphen is not needed, as in the case of "25-acres" because the information tells us how many acres of gardens there are, rather than describing particular gardens, and so the corrected sentence reads Explore more than 25 acres of lush indoor and outdoor gardens.