ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

i was gonna manspread on the subway the other day but then i noticed with horror that i didn't have a florid, rock-hard boner

what has become of my life

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, July 14, 2016 4:17 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I <3 u

"I just love using my boner again"

sold

adventures in radio copywriting: http://sabotagetimes.com/life/superscreen-the-best-radio-commercial-ever

quick, help needed pls!
this "should no longer have been provided" vs this "should have no longer been provided"
which is correct? been looking at it so long they both look wrong.

latter is split infinitive if you care about that sort of thing, and the first sounds better to my ears

First sounds better of those two. But I might try to recast it. "We should not have continued providing chipmunks with rocket launchers," or more conversationally, "We shouldn't have been providing chipmunks with rocket launchers anymore. Our bad!"

cheers
That's what I was thinking but hesitated to correct it..

I only realised today that it's "for old times' sake" rather than "for old time's sake".

someone used 'polyamorous' when they meant 'polymorphous'

how perverse!

Please don't use apostrophes to denote plurals

A noble but losing battle in the arena of restaurant marquees and menus across America.

apostrophe's are fun

http://www.cjr.org/the_feature/copy-editor-internet-celebrity.php?Newsletter

Admittedly, the copy editor’s lot generally remains a lonely one; whether working in graphite or keystroke, practitioners don’t often endear themselves to their writers. Ask John McIntyre, who served two terms as president of ACES from 2001 to 2005. Recently, he recalled the organization’s first conference 20 years ago in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for CJR.

“There were maybe 300 people,” he says, “and someone said that was probably the largest gathering of copy editors in one place in history. I came back and told that to my wife. And she said, ‘Except in hell.’”

awww that makes me sad. As a former line editor, I counted on and blamed copyeditors in equal measure. Most valuable role ever to everyone else on the editorial team.

I said line editor and meant content editor. Like, I was supposed to make the science correct, not having to worry excessively over the dotting and crossing. But it was also nice not to have the final word, i.e. "I dunno it wasn't my job to review final draft, sorry u have problem,*shrug*"

"In contrast, patients with acute aortic regurgitation have a small left ventricular cavity and cannot significantly increase forward stroke volume to accommodate for the regurgitant blood flow"

using accommodate as an intransitive verb here is really weak, right?

compensate?

yeah that's definitely a better choice

One would never say "accommodate for." I would either say "accommodate" or "allow for."

"Compensate for" is fine as English but I'm not sure it's synonymous with "accommodate." Compensating carries the connotation of counteracting, while "accommodate" just means "make room."

Also I'd probably change "significantly" to "sufficiently." In order of preference I'd probably suggest:

1. "Patients... cannot sufficiently increase forward stroke volume to allow for the regurgitant blood flow."

2. "Patients... cannot sufficiently increase forward stroke volume to accommodate the regurgitant blood flow."

2. "Patients... cannot sufficiently increase forward stroke volume to compensate for the regurgitant blood flow."

YMP otm.

Ya it's the for that's great issue there

That and autocorrect

Another possibility (which occurred to me a second too late) is "...HANDLE the regurgitant blood flow."

Handle, a good honest Anglo-Saxon word.

"allow for" might make sense grammatically but is nonsensical given the medical physiology the sentence is describing

for similar reasons i don't like just using accommodate as a transitive verb -- increasing stroke volume is an active counter-response of the heart, not a passive one. "compensate for" world better for this reason -- "overcome" might be ok too. sentence probably just needs to be recast

world = works

Wd be stronger if you ditched the "for" that follows but not sure if that changes the meaning of your sentence

whoops major crosspost, 'scuse me

instead of "accommodate for", maybe "adapt to"?

Washington Post copyediting guru Bill Walsh has died. He was sensible, undogmatic, polite, funny.

He was open with his readers about the limited scope of editorial judgment, and about prescriptivism's limitations. But he also acknowledged the professional necessity of making some judgment calls--the need to draw some lines in the shifting sand. And he would defend the placement of those lines with gentleness and humor. And he was willing to change his mind, graciously, when needed.

I never met him in person (I think I exchanged emails with him once or twice). One of my personal heroes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/bill-walsh-copy-editor-and-witty-authority-on-language-dies-at-55/2017/03/15/6bf9dea4-002e-11e7-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_ob-main-walsh-5pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.5dc99fe5a4ca

anyone got a pointer to a good style guide for writing sensitively about chattel slavery?

how do people even get it in their head to write out "tow the line"? do they call the little things on their feet "tows" too?

Obscure though it may be, canal boats on the Erie canal, flat boats on the Missouri River, and some portages used to be accomplished by attaching a tow line to the vessel and pulling it. This required everyone's effort, so there is a some legitimacy to this misinterpretation of "toe the line".

i call them piggies

love isn't always on time

I wondered if we both thought of that, not because the song is "Hold the Line", but because it's by Tow Toe.

no no no

lol i just looked up the lyrics and i had assumed my whole life it was love isn't always on time/no no no but apparently it's oh oh oh

woah woah woah

On August 30th, the day that Hamilton dropped Abush off at Sullivan Street, the Court of Appeals published its decision; Barone did have standing as a parent.

should be a colon, not a semicolon, right?

also i just thought about the thread title for the first time: "copy editor" is two words

colon is better, yes -- semi-colon kind of implies the second is something other than the decision publishe

Hamilton became a part-time office manager at Shasty. She still had a career as a photographer: in addition to magazine and corporate work, she had a sideline, which had grown out of a personal art project; she made commissioned portraits of women who, often for therapeutic, confidence-building reasons, wished to be photographed unclothed for the first time.

another questionable one from a few paragraphs later! i think this sentence just needs to be recast

idk if the new yorker has a certain house style re: semicolons that i'm just unaware of but i feel like i would have noticed and objected a long time ago if so!

Hamilton became a part-time office manager at Shasty. She still had a career as a photographer. In addition to magazine and corporate work, she had a sideline, which had grown out of a personal art project: she made commissioned portraits of women who, often for therapeutic, confidence-building reasons, wished to be photographed unclothed for the first time.

^^^is how i'd rewrite it, but the one you posted isn't wrong, just a bit fussy?

"not wrong, just a bit fussy" is new yorker board description of course

the semicolon seems wrong and its placement in a sentence that already has a colon just makes everything way too messy imo. yours is better

As someone who often writes very involved sentences, I use semi-colons after colons now and then. Colon to introduce a list, but the items in the list are elaborate and wordy, so you use semi-colons instead of commas to separate them. This is close enough to that to seem OK to me at first glance -- and it's not unclear, which is always the main sin -- but it isn't actually a list, as the sentence after the semi-colon is an expansion of the sentence before it (ie calls for a colon, hence the rewrite).

Colon to me implies logical link or progression; semi-colon is a toughened up comma. Fiercer sub-editors might well put full stops everywhere.