ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

I generally just speak in terms of sensitivity to target audience.

I would place this in the province of rhetoric rather than grammar, and within the bounds of rhetoric prescriptive rules can be quite valuable. If there were a board called I Love Rhetoric I would be all over it.

Yeah, that's pretty much what David Foster Wallace says about Bryan Garner here. Wallace was sometimes kind of unhinged about this topic (I say that with affection), but the central argument is that A Dictionary of Modem American Usage was rhetorical in its approach. Not saying "this is the rule because I said so," but saying "if you want a certain kind of person to take you seriously, follow these guidelines."

I make my living by writing persuasive prose for generally conservative audiences. As a result, I have to cultivate a somewhat formal register. And I have to follow "rules" that I know are often pretty silly and baseless.

Me, too, which is actually pretty satisfying because it's a good outlet for my erstwhile grammar dorkery and I can get my prescriptivist ya yas out pitching fits about Oxford commas and the like in a safe space for pedantry.

I really try to avoid grammar/punctuation pedantry but one thing that always bugs me is "that" instead of "who"; e.g. in this headline: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/880-five-women-in-hip-hop-that-deserve-their-own-biopics/. I don't even know if it's wrong per se but it always irritates me.

can't solve that problem but lately been using what instead of who/that to comedic effect

you should always use 'who' with people
that's a rule i can get behind because it distinguishes people as special, and i find that an amusing grammatical narcissism

That's not what we teach

here who can be restrictive or nonrestrictive; that is for restrictive clauses, which is for nonrestrictive

xp. you mean who's not that we teach

which that who we teach that which we teach

feel like there's an epidemic recently of ppl who are never phased by anything

I hear there's a big demand for that talent in the torture and execution industries.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/06/steven-pinker-alleged-rules-of-writing-superstitions

good writing depends an ability to imagine a generic reader 

sounds like a good way to write a generic book

that is so wrong I can't even begin

I mean tbf it's probably not bad advice for someone trying to write mass audience non-fiction.

Personally, I only write for left-handed dental hygienists with Swedish ancestry. Everyone else can go suck it. For extra obscurity I generally write a first draft in pig latin, then have it translated into hieroglyphics and then into Swahili.

Perhaps if "generic" is the part that bothers you, why not substitute "ideal"?

Or just "intended."

I submit there is a world of difference between "generic" and "intended".

Railing against the split infinitive "rule" at this point is almost as dusty as the rule. However, generally speaking, careful usage is an indicator of, though by no means inextricable from, careful thought. "Entering the room, it was nice to see my old friends" may not be unclear, but "Entering the room, Jessica came into my view" is -- is the speaker entering the room or Jessica? Following the usage "rule" prevents that kind of sloppiness.

Agreed (to both Aimless and man alive)

is the speaker entering the room or Jessica

wait, LOL

I rest my case.

I find this bit irritating:

Any competent copy editor can turn a passage that is turgid, opaque, and filled with grammatical errors into a passage that is turgid, opaque, and free of grammatical errors.

A good copy editor can (and should) also keep it from being turgid and opaque. Or, if the passage cannot be rescued, recommend its deletion or query until the meaning is clear.

As man alive notes, these pop rule-refutations are themselves ancient. Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins is my age (we were both published in 1971). I guess this may be news to some readers out there, but no editors or writers are surprised by them in the year two thousand fifteen.

yeah i'm not sure who pinker is railing against. i actually find myself agreeing w/ him much of the time, but he seems to fuel his own writing by heaping a lot of straw men on the fire.

imo things have shifted over the last ten to fifteen years - it might be my internet bubble, but a (loosely) descriptivist or usage-driven version of advice for clarity feels on top right now. Pinker's trailing this larger shift, & it seems fine - having a noisy pop academic on side is useful because the straw-men really are out there - useless usage rules seem to be extraordinarily sticky.

btw I don't disagree in principle about dangling participles – I'll only leave them if I'm editing to a pretty informal style - but I don't think "Entering the room, Jessica came into my view" is unclear. Jessica is entering the room.

& that's not because of a style-guide rule, but more because of descriptive grammar: the participle latches on to the subject of the sentence; with a dummy subject, it attaches to the implied speaker. (not a linguist, that's a rough guess at the working rule)

"As she entered the room, Jessica came into the room" is 1000x as clear.

otm

editing non-writers in the past couple years, i saw an ENORMOUS amount of '[ me ] arriving at the location, the associate [ i.e. someone else] greeted me warmly'

"As she entered the room, Jessica came into the room" is 1000x as clear.

― I might like you better if we Yelped together (Phil D.), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 2:57 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ugh, see, everyone needs an editor.

let's get back to the topic of entering Jessica

"Entering the room, Jessica came into my view" is 100% clear if you assume the writer is writing with proper usage. That's my point. If you don't stick to that rule, then you can wind up writing one thing when you mean the other.

I mean in Pinker's example it works ok because the "it" doesn't represent a specific thing or object, just an idiomatic way of saying that he felt happy. 95% of the time, it actually would be unclear to write that sentence without the subject of the sentence following the comma.

After entering the room, who came into my view but Jessica!

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/comma-queen-spelling-insurance?mbid=social_twitter

this woman regularly infuriates me

"true, ensure and insure mean different things, but we use insure for everything, why because the style guide some says to use the 'in-' form for every 'en-/in-" prefix, well that is not counting this long list of exceptions"

DIE

Wait, so this person has been proofreading for the country's leading high-middlebrow rag since 1978 and still doesn't get the difference between these two words? How can this be?

i think she understands the difference, she just defers to the style guide

Help! What the hell is the plural of Lopez? Par example: Mr. and Mrs. Lopez bought a care. The Lopezs (Lopez's?) love their new car.

I used to know this shit but then I went to grad school, which has made me dumber.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/19/sports/la-sp-oly-taekwondo-lopez-20120520

lopezes?

Lopezes

Los Lopez

I would actually love to use Los Lopez, but Lopezes it shall be. Thanks! I tried writing it with the -es at first and it just looked so damn wrong. I do very muchprefer the grammarians of ILX to the ding-dongs of Google. Muchos gracias.

Now would anyone like to finish writing this paper about Los Lopez for me

had a similar brain hurdle with the plural of "yes" today but it was for a comment on a blog spot so i wrote yesses (yeses? yes’s? yeezus?) and moved on.

Along those lines, copyedited someone this morning who referred to the Peoples' Republic of China.

I mean, you could almost convince yourself that's right, even though it's not. Much like Communism.

Is there any implication of events being related if you use the word 'subsequently'? Or am I conflating it with 'consequently'?
Someone's drafted something similar to the following but it seems off to me:
"We wrote to you setting out your situation and explaining that we would do X. Subsequently, we did not receive any objection."

Maybe the word is in the wrong place? I've looked at it for too long now and it's become meaningless

I think "subsequently" is used correctly there, in terms of its meaning, but it sounds officious and maybe a little passive-aggressive.

"Since writing, we have not received any objection" or something like that would have a more neutral tone.