Dashes are poor substitutes for words

Little grammar and usage issues that drive other people nuts don’t bother me. That’s because a lot of the “errors” that annoy a lot of people are superstitions – stuff like how you supposedly can’t use “like” to mean “such as” or how you supposedly can’t begin a sentence with the word “and.” Not true and not true.

A lot of real errors don’t bother me, either, because I know how hard it is to avoid every grammar, punctuation and usage pitfall in the world. So when I see “chomping at the bit” in place of the more accurate “champing at the bit,” it doesn’t bug me.

But that doesn’t mean I'm immune to petty feelings about other people's writing. It's just that my copy editing experience channels my peevishness toward other things — weird little issues that almost no one else would object to.

Like, for example, a dash or hyphen used as a word — specifically the word “to,” “through” or “until.”

Class is 1-3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. The camp is for children 5-9.

I hate that.

My reasons aren’t great. The most forgivable reason is I have to change these when I edit. In Associated Press style, you’re supposed to use actual English words in these constructions. “Class is 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.” “The camp is for children 5 through 9.”

This is a style thing. Technically, it’s not wrong to use punctuation here. But in running text, I think it’s awful. When you read, your brain expects to see words. Symbols throw off your flow of information processing.

That’s why I think the Chicago Manual’s style of writing out a lot of numbers can make writing more digestible than it would be with numerals. Compare “There were plenty of people at the concert, at least fifty of whom were passed out on the ground” to “There were plenty of people at the concert, at least 50 of whom were passed out on the ground.”

My two cents is that, when you’re reading, words flow and things that aren’t words break that flow.

In graphic elements like information boxes, dashes and hyphens in ranges or time spans are just fine. But in complete sentences, I think words are the better choice.

'As well as' can't handle all the jobs 'and' can

One of the most interesting things about editing work is it forces me to notice all the ways a sentence can go wrong. Here’s an example from an article I did recently: “The flu vaccine can help lower your risk of infection and may reduce both the severity of symptoms as well as the duration of illness.”

A lot of people will home in on the word “both” here, correctly pointing out that it’s unnecessary (at best). No doubt, the sentence seems a lot better if you just delete “both.”

But what interests me about the passage is “as well as.” Replace it with “and” and any problem with this sentence is immediately resolved. The question is: why? If “as well as” works just fine without “both,” why does it beg to be replaced with “and” when “both” is present?

Looking for answers, I checked Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, which contrary to its name is not a dictionary. It’s a usage guide that examines questionable, controversial and confusing uses of English, concluding about 99% of the time that the usage in question is sufficiently well established to be OK. I was surprised to see that it has an entry for “both … as well as …,” but disappointed to see that it focused mainly on examining the argument that “both” in this construction is redundant. The Merriam authors say it’s not, and when you consider that “both” before any pair of things is unnecessary —“both coffee and tea” — it’s clear that “both” is used for emphasis.

For the “as well as” part, Merriam’s doesn’t pay as much attention. They defend it in these constructions simply by saying it’s used “in a correlative manner somewhat like ‘and.’”

I don’t often take issue with this usage guide. Its authors went to much better schools than I did. But this time is different. I think that “both … as well as …” is problematic for a reason Merriam’s doesn’t address but that we can home in on by considering the guide’s own language: “correlative, somewhat like ‘and.’”

Being “correlative” doesn’t mean “as well as” can link things the way “and” does: “I like pizza as well as pasta.” Clearly, “as well as” has some, but not all, the properties of “and.”

Certain sentences bring this fact to light: “Peanut butter as well as jelly are good.” No doubt “is” would be the better verb here because “as well as” doesn’t have the same power as “and” to make subjects plural.

“And” is a member of a very exclusive little word group called coordinating conjunctions. Coordinating, not correlating. Coordinating conjunctions coordinate nouns and other parts of speech, as we see in lists like “red, white and blue.” A coordinating conjunction makes a list complete. “Red, white, blue, green, orange, fuchsia and brown”— a coordinating conjunction before the last noun makes the list grammatical.   

“As well as” can join things, but often it introduces additional information after coordinate terms: “red, white and blue, as well as gold,” “peanut butter and jelly, as well as banana.”

“As well as” doesn’t “coordinate” nouns, phrases, etc., the way “and” can.

For that reason, it doesn’t necessarily pair with the word “both.” Checking the definition of “both” in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary (not the usage guide), we get to the heart of my objection to the original passage: “‘both’: used as a function word to indicate and stress the inclusion of each of two or more things specified by coordinated words, phrases, or clauses.”

Note they said “coordinated.” In other words, “both” works with the coordinating conjunction “and.” It might work OK sometimes with “as well as,” but usually not.

What, then, did I do with that sentence I was editing? Deleting “both” was an option, but it seemed important to the writer’s meaning. So I just changed “as well as” to “and.”

The state-of-the-art in spell-checkers

I’m an ornery consumer. I resent the idea that I need to shell out for a newer, shinier version of a thing I already have that works fine. My last car was a prime example: I drove it for 16 years until the paint on the roof began to oxidize and rust, at which point I seriously considered just having the roof repainted.

So when my 2017 MacBook Air laptop became obsolete, I vehemently did not care. I particularly resented the repeated warnings from Microsoft Word that my computer’s operating system was too old to allow me to update that software. Why did it need updating? The old version, which I used every day for editing projects, worked fine. I stuck with my old technology as long as I could. But eventually, after airline websites stopped letting me log in to my frequent flyer accounts, I knew it was time.

Today I write to you from my brand-new, not-cheap laptop that serves me exactly as well as my old one did for the first six or seven years I owned it. I was finally able to update my version of Microsoft Word, which comes with Copilot, an icon on the screen that I haven’t figured out how to remove yet and that offers me advanced AI options to “structure and refine this document,” “make this more concise,” and “refine this to be clear and professional.” That’s my job, literally, and if AI were as “I” as it claims, it would know I don’t need its insights in this arena.

What I do need — what every human needs — is help catching mistakes. So I figured I’d put my pricey new technology — purportedly functioning with an “intelligence” far superior to the spell-checkers I’ve been using for decades — to a test by writing the following passage. (Forgive the illogic in the paragraph below. I was looking for any flimsy structure in which to test the software on some specific words.)

“I went to City hall one day when the counsel was in season. The were there to reign in out-of-control, spending. Budget oversight was assigned to a click of Ivy league accountants, whom the mayor knew were good at peaking the curiosity of the attorney generals in every state. They had also been pedaling false information, particularly about the Bearing Strait and events in Bogata, Columbia.” 

When I ran spell-check and grammar-check, the spelling was dubbed 100% correct. And the only “error” grammar check caught wasn’t even in the error-riddled passage. Instead, Word told me that in the phrase “for the first seven years I owned it” there should be a comma after “years.” Nope.

It didn’t notice that “City” and “hall” should be capitalized the same. It should have known that I meant the “council.” A human editor would have known that body was “in session” and not “in season” and that I meant “they” at the start of the next sentence. The “intelligent” software didn’t know the correct term is “rein in.” It didn’t catch the misused comma before “spending,” and it didn’t catch “click” in place of “clique,” the lowercase “league” or the incorrect use of “whom” (a tricky one that I’ve discussed before in this column). The software should know that “peaking” should have been “piquing,” the plural of “attorney general” is “attorneys general,” “pedaling” should be “peddling,” and Bering has no “a.” The one that shocked me most: Bogata is the capital of Colombia, not Columbia, which Word didn’t catch with or without the correct Spanish accent mark in the city name. To be fair, it did flag two errors I tried to insert: “Bering Straight” and “sneak peak.” But the other egregious errors eluded this supposedly brilliant technology.

So instead of getting real value out of my recent purchase, it’s more likely I’m just a victim of digital extortion.

Drive safe

Here's an e-mail I got a while back from a guy who runs a car service: "I've been telling our chauffeurs to always 'drive safely,' while others tell them to 'drive safe.'  As an instinctive grammarian, I feel comfortable saying 'safely,' but am I right?"

It's a good question, with no good answer. Yes, "safely" is the syntactically correct choice and undeniably more proper. "Drive safely" uses an adverb because it's actually modifying an action -- describing *how* the driving is to be done.

However, I told Gary, there exist things call "flat adverbs" -- adverbs without the ly tail -- that are also acceptable. And, as often as not, these are words we usually think of as adjective forms: drive slow, think quick, shine bright, hold me close, and others simply choose the form without the "ly" and use it in the place of an "ly" adverb.

It's an established practice in English, going way back to Shakespeare days, meaning that "drive safe" is in fact a safe way to go. On the other hand, because so many people think it's an error, it may not be worth the grief.