Grammar | is \ fun.
1. Look at this wonderful book mermaideyes has brought to my attention: Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. I will have it.
2. By the Angry Grammarian, Jeffrey Barg, in today's Philadelphia Weekly:
This week the Angry Grammarian comes to you live from ground zero of the grammatical universe, a New York City copyediting conference hosted by Copy Editor newsletter editor Wendalyn Nichols. It’s on.
In attendance: Twenty copy editors, including one guy who looks like Larry David, two guys who look like Moby and nine women who all look like each other.
9:15 a.m.: One participant intones, “I want to learn how to deal with people who don’t understand why you don’t capitalize ‘president.’” The room erupts in laughter.
9:35 a.m.: As an example of one editing style, Nichols cites the hyphenated spelling “teen-ager.” No one but me finds this funny.
9:53 a.m.: Individual punctuation exercises. Uneasy silence fills the room. Get something wrong and this crowd will ride you like a bull.
10:22 a.m.: Modifier fight! Even better: The fight is about ambigrams.
11:20 a.m.: Nichols recommends a few grammar/language-related books: Bill Walsh’s Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style; Patricia O’Conner’s Woe Is I.
11:21 a.m.: Anti-William Safire rant.
12:12 p.m.: We start in on commas with just 15 minutes to go before lunch. Who ever said copy editors don’t live on the edge?
12:18 p.m.: Words of inspiration: “When you can’t recast [a sentence], at least you can make a comma decision and feel like you’ve made a difference.”
2:15 p.m.: Comma fight! Does “too” get set off by commas? The room’s evenly split. This could get ugly.
2:17 p.m.: Caveat comma-remover: Taking out the comma before “and” could give you a sentence like, “I’d like to thank my parents, Jesus and Ayn Rand.”
3:03 p.m.: When quoting a printed source whose style differs from yours (for example, you spell “U.K.” with periods; they don’t), do you “fix” their period omission? Nichols says no: Those “quiet corrections” are a slippery slope. I say yes: As long as you’re not changing the words or meaning, you’re best serving the reader by not forcing them to subconsciously think about the punctuation (which they’d surely do if, say, it’s written “UK” in one line and “U.K.” in the next) and instead allowing them to focus solely on the message of what’s written. Nichols and I almost come to blows.
4:31 p.m.: Second time today the word “triumphalism” is used.
4:40 p.m.: Raffle for The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition. People are salivating.
4:41 p.m.: Larry David wins! Mazel tov, Larry.
Oh, the nerd in me finds such humor in this article! Thanks, Matt Clark!
2. By the Angry Grammarian, Jeffrey Barg, in today's Philadelphia Weekly:
This week the Angry Grammarian comes to you live from ground zero of the grammatical universe, a New York City copyediting conference hosted by Copy Editor newsletter editor Wendalyn Nichols. It’s on.
In attendance: Twenty copy editors, including one guy who looks like Larry David, two guys who look like Moby and nine women who all look like each other.
9:15 a.m.: One participant intones, “I want to learn how to deal with people who don’t understand why you don’t capitalize ‘president.’” The room erupts in laughter.
9:35 a.m.: As an example of one editing style, Nichols cites the hyphenated spelling “teen-ager.” No one but me finds this funny.
9:53 a.m.: Individual punctuation exercises. Uneasy silence fills the room. Get something wrong and this crowd will ride you like a bull.
10:22 a.m.: Modifier fight! Even better: The fight is about ambigrams.
11:20 a.m.: Nichols recommends a few grammar/language-related books: Bill Walsh’s Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style; Patricia O’Conner’s Woe Is I.
11:21 a.m.: Anti-William Safire rant.
12:12 p.m.: We start in on commas with just 15 minutes to go before lunch. Who ever said copy editors don’t live on the edge?
12:18 p.m.: Words of inspiration: “When you can’t recast [a sentence], at least you can make a comma decision and feel like you’ve made a difference.”
2:15 p.m.: Comma fight! Does “too” get set off by commas? The room’s evenly split. This could get ugly.
2:17 p.m.: Caveat comma-remover: Taking out the comma before “and” could give you a sentence like, “I’d like to thank my parents, Jesus and Ayn Rand.”
3:03 p.m.: When quoting a printed source whose style differs from yours (for example, you spell “U.K.” with periods; they don’t), do you “fix” their period omission? Nichols says no: Those “quiet corrections” are a slippery slope. I say yes: As long as you’re not changing the words or meaning, you’re best serving the reader by not forcing them to subconsciously think about the punctuation (which they’d surely do if, say, it’s written “UK” in one line and “U.K.” in the next) and instead allowing them to focus solely on the message of what’s written. Nichols and I almost come to blows.
4:31 p.m.: Second time today the word “triumphalism” is used.
4:40 p.m.: Raffle for The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition. People are salivating.
4:41 p.m.: Larry David wins! Mazel tov, Larry.
Oh, the nerd in me finds such humor in this article! Thanks, Matt Clark!