ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

are there any good reasons to use he's got rather than he has?

stylistically, it lends a colloquial informality to whatever is being written.

"she has the look" - prince

you know this is the first time I've read the opening post in this thread and it's a real doozy

you mean its a real doozy

it's a well established usage: shakespeare used it, johnson approves it, fowler quotes someone i haven't heard of calling it "not a real error but a counterfeit invented by schoolmasters"

which last i think paradoxically explains and perhaps validates the sense that it's more informal or colloquial

the other reason for choosing one over the other is, not rhythm exactly, since they're interchangeable in terms of syllables, but the sense of flow or of choppiness you need at that point

(either is fine, in other words: it's up to you)

sorry: xps to got vs have

fair. it's a tic of an otherwise terrible writer of my acquaintance and i wanted to hate it as well

tracer hand's recasting cracking me up

i am possibly going to take an editing test in the next couple of weeks for a special publications dept of a local newspaper

i have freelanced for years but haven’t written for Legit outlet like this before

can anyone recommend any websites or books to help me bone up on my editing/grammar etc. i’ve got functional skills but my knowledge feels v flabby

disclaimer: I am not a newspaper employee or journalism major

I expect you won't be required to parse grammar in detail just to demonstrate a technical knowledge nearly so much as to show the ability to edit for clarity and brevity, correct writers' incorrect spelling or improper homophones (to, too, two, etc.), and show some familiarity with whichever style guide the newspaper favors. Ask them ahead of time what style guide they use so you can figure out how they want you to do stuff like capitalize, hyphenate, and a few other arcane details along those lines.

If I were hiring you, I'd mainly want to know you can recognize bad, awkward, or flagrantly ungrammatical writing and can clean it up to a minimum level of readability, and since this is for a newspaper, how to make the article fit the space allotted to it without ruining its sense.

If they think they want someone who can call a gerund a gerund with consummate ease, or can name-drop the subjunctive case in casual conversation, they are probably just confused or wrong-headed. Or horribly snobby about grammar.

Good luck. Oh, and "special publications" might be code for paid advertising inserts.

it is - that’s kinda where my background is, hence why i’m going for that gig & not tryna be a stringer in the oughts or something :)

I keep a copy of the AP's Guide to Punctuation on my my nightstand. It's not the stylebook, which obviously can change from place to place, but does illustrate things like why the Oakland A's have had multiple MVPs.

Not bad for a book with only 93 pages, but maybe you can find something from this decade though.

https://www.amazon.com/Associated-Press-Guide-Punctuation/dp/0738207853

The style guide for Chicago is pretty compressed and good. It's sort of like a shortened version of Garland's Oxford guide to American English usage.

I hit the AP Stylebook online often. I don't agree with everything they come up with (though I do have to abide by their rules), but it is interesting to see at least why they write the rules they write.

thanks everyone, this is all v helpful <3

Just read my posts

then delete them

:o

this is an amaaaazing book on editing. it's about academic rather than newspaper editing, but there's so much helpful stuff

https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM1990StyleTowardClarityandGrace.pdf

When I was active as a copyeditor (USian term, sorry), the standard book to follow was Karen Judd's Copyediting: A Practical Guide. If I chance to leaf through it nowadays it seems dated, and very focused on practical aspects of paper-based work.

Speaking as an ex-newspaper employee and ex-journalism major, I agree with Aimless's post. It's more important to show you can make murky things clear (and correct the most howlingly egregious errors) than to master every nuance of using em dashes, en dashes, hyphens, etc. Most of those are issues of style rather than right/wrong.

I hire editors from time to time, and I like to look for a basically chill, audience-centric philosophy of editing. Vastly prefer that over dogmatic rigidity or encyclopedic memorized technical knowledge.

Consider one or more books by Bill Walsh, whose irreverent, pragmatic attitude is very much simpatico with my own. Look for The Elephants of Style if you can.

speaking as someone currently employed as a proofreader and someone who has taken (and passed) a lot of editing tests, you are almost definitely overthinking it. virtually every copy editing test I've taken has focused on basic grammar, punctuation and usage errors, possibly some AP/Chicago style points (for a newspaper, you're probably going to deal with AP). editing for clarity/brevity generally doesn't show up, probably because those things are A) subjective and B) harder to deliberately insert into a story than a misspelling. as far as style, I've taken a surprising amount of editing tests where they just give you a style guide and dictionary during the test.

so if I were to brush up on anything before an editing test for a print publication, it'd actually be proofreading marks.

katherine speaks wisdom

thank you!!!

it’s def prob just paranoia/overthinking. i just worry that i’m underqualified. i’ve been writing for a very small publication & i am not sure if my skills measure up, even tho i really want the job.

Lopez' or Lopez's - both look, not great.

The latter is correct (per Chicago at least)

de Lopez

kidding; definitely the second.

apostrophe s unless you're dealing with an archaic set phrase ("good friend for Jesus' sake forbear")

thanks all. makes sense.

i tend to go without additional s tho have some rules that i can’t remember right now where that doesn’t hold. failed at lopez tho without the s looked wrongerer.

in fact why i ever began to think it might be lópez’ is now alarming me. i haven’t been sleeping much recently.

I tend to follow Chicago on this, as in most things. But there is another school of thought that how you punctuate should reflect how you would say it. Which may vary depending on your dialect, your speech community, and the tone of what you're writing.

That is, if you would say "Jennifer Lopezzes career" then write Lopez's. If you would say "Jennifer Lopezz career" write Lopez'.

But that approach is too loosey-goosey for me.

If the 's' at the end of the word sounds like an 's', than use apostrophe-s.

If the 's' at the end of the word does not make an esss sound, just use the apostrophe.

"Illinois' roads are better-constructed than Arkansas' roads."

But Lopez is so close, but not exactly an 's', so I'd use an apostrophe. We have an editor here, let's say her last name is Fritz, and we use only the apostrophe for its possessive form.

Wait a minute, I think I confused myself there.

S at the end of the word - don't use an apostrophe.

huh?

the basic gist of the Chicago rule (at least in the 16th ed.; I don't have the 17th) for possessives is that you leave off the second s only when the word is plural, so "Illinois's roads" versus "many states' roads." No need to follow CMOS of course, but using pronunciation as a guide could get tricky as YMP said. For example, I'd be curious how pplains's rule would work in the part of Illinois where I grew up; there we pronounced Des Moines, "duh moyn," and Des Plaines, "dess plains."

I favor making every singular noun possessive with apostrophe s, no matter what sound they end in, including s and z. I have never (until now) heard anyone advance the claim that a silent s should be treated differently.

The historical set phrase thing is an exception that I grudgingly accept if people think it's important.

Every regular plural noun gets s apostrophe. Irregular plurals (like people or children) generally get apostrophe s.

Usually this discussion bogs down around weirder cases like Joneses', where you have an existing s or z sound plus an additional s/z sounds that signal plural and possessive usages. Usageses. Usages's's. DAMMIT

my spouse bought me a magazine containing this sentence:

"Either/Or, her stylish North Williams breakfast bar-cum-drinking den."

do you think this was on purpose?

that is a correct usage afaik

but I would have used a different phrase in that context...

It would only be correct if there were a hyphen between drinking and den, imo.

Oh, and breakfast and bar too.

sorting out how to properly hyphenate that lengthy series of modifiers is reason enough not to try it tbh

Or just drop the hyphens altogether. Xpost

In this case, cum is used as an unassimilated latin word rather than an English one (as in summa cum laude) and it means "with". I wonder whether the drinking den really is attached to the bar as a separate entity, or if author is just cheerfully misusing the word to mean "that might also be regarded as a".

that is a correct usage afaik

It is normal for a sentence to have a verb. Although, it is possible that where rushomancy called it a sentence and inserted a period it would have been more accurate to call it a phrase and inserted an ellipses.

ellipsis, ellipses is plural

you're right.

as for the phrase at issue, i would rewrite, because i don't think the unwritten linkage in the phrases "breakfast bar" and "drinking den" -- while it's certainly there, which is why they don't absolutely demand hyphenation -- us strong enough to override the written linkage of the hyphens round cum: the problem isn't that you can't decode it on reread, it's that you stumble (and chuckle if you have an evil mind) on first read

hyphenating everything puts all the linkages at the exact same level, which doesn't get rid of the hiccup
no hyphens is asking for dirty-mind trouble

"drinking den and/or breakfast bar" works i think (certainly it dodges the slight weirdness that Aimless is noting, that "cum" is arguably slightly misused here? and also the "he said cum teehee" thing)

us s/b is