October 6, 2026

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.

Click player above to listen to the podcast

September 28, 2026

'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.”

Click player above to listen to the podcast

September 14, 2026

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.

Click player above to listen to the podcast

August 31, 2026

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.

Click player above to listen to the podcast

August 24, 2026

Can one person make a 'concerted effort'?

Ever hear someone say that he’s going to make a concerted effort to do something -- finish a project, make good on a New Year’s resolution, something like that?

Well, here’s an interesting fact about that term: Technically, one person can’t make a concerted effort. That’s because most definitions of concerted require more than one person to do it.

This is from Webster’s New World: Concerted: Planned or accomplished together; combined: "We made a concerted effort to solve the problem."

And here’s Merriam-Webster’s: Concerted: 1.  mutually contrived or agreed on: "a concerted effort"; 2.  performed in unison: "concerted artillery fire."

I’m omitting some of the definitions that have to do with music because they’re not what we’re talking about. But the very idea of a concert nonetheless illustrates why some people might object to the idea of a single person making a “concerted effort.” There’s no mutual contriving or agreeing. There’s no one to perform in unison with.

Sure, you can get away with saying, "I made a concerted effort to arrive on time." But it's probably not the best way to say it. If you want to describe the effort of one person and you find “concerted effort” on the tip of your tongue, consider replacing “concerted” with “concentrated” or “deliberate” or “strenuous” or any other word that actually means what you want to say.

Click player above to listen to the podcast

August 17, 2026

Capitals and symbols in business names

If businesses had their way, news media would serve no purpose other than to promote them.

Front-page articles would be dedicated to the rich, satisfying flavor of this or that brand of cigarette. Headlines would tout how a sale at a local retailer blows away the competition and is, in fact, the greatest thing to ever happen to readers of that publication. Company names would be in 30-point type everywhere they appeared and bolded and surrounded with dollar signs, too.

Companies’ interests simply aren’t the same as readers’ interests. So for that reason, editors like to keep them reined in. And editing styles include rules to do so.

For example, E*Trade, the online brokerage firm, uses an asterisk in its name. If I were an exec at that company I would, of course, want it to be written that way in print. Helps grow the brand, and all that.

Other companies have different approaches. Capital letters are a big favorite among ATTENTION-SEEKING COMPANIES. Some make their names all caps (ARIA resort), others go all lowercase (smart fortwo), and still others get funky with their caps (iPad). Caps can cry “look at me, know my brand” in the pages of an article that should be serving the reader, not the people who want to take advantage of the reader’s attention to sell him something. That’s what ads are for.

That’s why in many cases editing styles advocate capitalizing and punctuating company names as though they were garden-variety proper nouns. In my editing work, whenever there's mention of those little two-person golf-cart-like cars, I make sure they're written Smart Fortwo, with the first word of each proper noun capitalized. E-Trade gets a hyphen, not an asterisk, and Macy’s gets an apostrophe. And the self-proclaimed ARIA resort is the Aria in any page I’m editing.

Of course, you can’t always get away from funky tradenames. Both Chicago and AP styles say to uppercase the second letter of iPad and iPhone. AP says that, at the beginning of a sentence, IPad and IPhone start with a capital I, even though the P remains capped. Chicago lets you keep the first letter lowercase even at the beginning of a sentence.

If you don’t have a stylebook handy, you can just follow this simple principle: Don’t let companies use your publication as a marquee. Whenever possible, treat them like most proper nouns, beginning with a capital, proceeding with lowercase and containing no smiley faces, snowflakes or peace signs. When that looks too weird, you can cave a little.

Click player above to listen to the podcast

August 12, 2026

Flat adverbs

I’ve written a lot about flat adverbs in the past. But the subject still generates a lot of reader questions. So it's always worth revisiting. Here's an e-mail I got a while back on the subject, followed by my reply.

Hi June,

Just read your column in the Burbank Leader and I have a question.  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?

Thanks,

Gary

Here's how I replied to Gary:

"Drive safely" is more proper. You use an adverb because you're actually modifying the action -- describing how the driving is to be done. (In other words, "drive" is not a linking verb. It's a garden-variety action verb.)

HOWEVER, there exist things call "flat adverbs" -- adverbs without the ly tail -- that are also acceptable. So "Drive safe" is arguably okay. Though personally, I don't recommend it in formal contexts. A lot of people think it's an error and so it may not be worth the grief!

Click player above to listen to the podcast

August 3, 2026

'Irregardless' and other words that aren't wrong but are OK to hate

I have a friend who uses the word “irregardless.” I hold my tongue. Sometimes I think it would be in her best interest to know she’s using a word so universally despised. But, as I’ve learned the hard way, people don’t appreciate having their language nitpicked — even if the criticism is dressed up as constructive.

“Irregardless” is one of those words that strikes us as just wrong. But the twist is: It’s not. It’s a real word, listed right in the dictionary. It means “regardless.” So we can hate it because it’s unnecessary. We can hate it because it’s likely some users are conflating “regardless” with “irrespective.” But we can’t say it’s not legitimate.

Quite a few words work like this. We hate them. We’re right to hate them. But we can’t condemn them because they’re not wrong. Here are some more to loathe and let live.

Impactful. I’ve been criticized for using this word. Until that moment, I thought “impactful” was great, especially when writing about writing. What better way to say a sentence hit home than to call it “impactful”? But that one brief, fleeting criticism spoiled the word for me. I now cringe when I hear it, even though it’s perfectly correct.

Enormity. This word sounds like it’s closely related to “enormous,” so people use it to refer to size. Logophiles know that’s not the primary meaning. In its primary form, “enormity” means “great wickedness.”  To anyone privy to that fact, “enormity” is about as elegant as “huge-ity” or “biggity” — pure silliness. But in fact, one of its definitions is “the quality or state of being huge.”

Spectate. Yuck, right? Here’s a real-world example of “spectate” originally from NBC News cited in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: “Clark and Daly met outside Joe’s Pizza, both unable to spectate from the sidelines.” If this sounds to you like a word that people with bad taste willed into existence only recently, you’re right. It is a newish word. But it’s real nonetheless.

Enthuse. I consider this word an occupational hazard. Writers I edit try to find alternatives to “said” when they’re attributing quotations, and this is one of their creative solutions: “This pizza is great,” she enthused. I replace it with “said” every time, and I have an excuse. Traditional journalism doesn’t get fancy with speech tags. The words should never upstage the information. So … chop, chop. But I can’t tell the writers they’re wrong because “enthuse” is, in fact, a verb.

Burglarize. If “burgle,” is a verb (and it is), and “burglar” is one who burgles, then surely “burglarize” is both unnecessary and wrong — like saying that dancers “dancerize” or that sculptors “sculptorize.” It’s a good bet that this process explains the origins of the word “burglarize.” But regardless of whether you could call its birth a mistake, it’s a real word now.

Incentivize. Speaking of words that use “ize” to make verbs where they perhaps should not, “incentivize” rankles language lovers far and wide. It sounds slapped together by people who were more interested in sounding business-fancy than speaking well, and in fact it was slapped together kind of recently. But we’re stuck with it. “Incentivize” is officially OK now.

Conversate. If you can’t believe I’m about to defend this abomination, well, neither can I. “Conversate” is awful. Surprisingly, though, it has its fans, like a listener to a 2023 episode of the “A Way with Words” radio show. But if you want to hate it, know that plain-language media like journalism hate it, too. There aren’t a lot of editors in the English-speaking world who wouldn’t change “conversate” into plain-old “talk,” “chat” or “discuss.”

Click player above to listen to the podcast

July 20, 2026

Couple, each, politics: Some words make subject-verb conjugation hard

If you think everyone’s out to get you, you’re paranoid. But if you think words are out to get you, you’re right. English has a lot of words that seem custom-made to undermine your ability to make verbs agree with subjects, creating a grammatical error called subject-verb disagreement.

Even if you’re not familiar with the concept, you’re already pretty good at making your verbs agree with your subjects. You never say, “I is here.” You never write, “The dogs has puffy tails.” You never say, “He be the man I’ll marry.” Instead, you know instinctively that the verb should match the number of the subject: “I” is singular, requiring “am.” “Dogs” is plural, so it takes “have.” “He” is singular, so it takes “is.”

But some words make this simple process so difficult that we all make mistakes, or at least find ourselves uncertain how to phrase something. Here are some terms that, if you’re not careful, will mess up your subject-verb agreement.

Couple. This word means two of something. But is it plural? Yes and no. Compare these two examples, both of which are correct: “The couple is in therapy.” “The couple are going their separate ways.” In the first, we use the singular verb “is.” In the second, we use the plural verb “are.” That’s because “couple” is what’s called a collective noun, a category that includes “family,” “group,” “team,” “band,” “bunch,” “minority” and “majority.” Many collective nouns can change number depending on whether you’re focusing on a single unit or whether you’re talking about people or things acting independently of each other. Go with your gut and you won’t go wrong.

Politics. Her politics are very reasonable, but politics is a difficult profession. If “politics” were plural, you would say, “Politics are a difficult profession.” If it were singular, you’d say “Her politics is very reasonable.” But obviously those are wrong. The correct verb form is whatever works best in your sentence. Other words, notably “ethics,” work the same way.

Each. “Each is able to choose for himself.” But “A number of families will attend and each have their own objectives.” Just like “politics” and “couple,” “each” seems to be sometimes singular and sometimes plural. But unlike those other words, “each” has a strong leaning: It’s almost always singular unless that’s just too weird.

And. In simple sentences, this conjunction makes subject-verb agreement a breeze: Raoul and Sven work together. But there are lots of situations in which “and” can complicate matters. Consider “Their high water and fiber content makes these vegetables heart healthy.” Is the subject of the verb the singular “content”? Or is it the implied plural “fiber content and water content”? I don’t know.  

Or. Like “and,” “or” is a coordinating conjunction. But unlike “and” it can’t make a subject plural. “Jenny and Trey have your keys,” but “Jenny or Trey has your keys.” In more complicated sentences, this fact gets lost: “Crossing tracks or trespassing on private property are two of the most common occurrences.” The “or” creates a subject-verb agreement error because only one of those two things is the subject of the verb.

“As well as.” Expressions like “as well as” and “along with” work like “and.” They connect nouns. “Steve, as well as his dogs, love the park.” But the commas are your clue here that these nouns aren’t connected the same way that “and” would have connected them. The dogs are not part of this sentence’s subject. Steve is the only subject of that verb, so it should be the singular “loves.”

Of. The preposition “of” is handy for tacking descriptive information onto nouns: A flock of birds. A team of rivals. A bunch of grapes. Notice how in many cases the head noun can be singular even though the noun after “of” is plural. That can make it tough to know which one the verb works with. When in doubt, go with whichever best captures your meaning: A flock of birds is overhead, but a team of rivals are fighting among themselves.

Click player above to listen to the podcast

July 6, 2026

Subtle tells for fake news

When I started as an editor, the only things that looked like news articles were news articles. You could rest assured that the people who wrote and edited them were journalists whose job was to follow a very specific, regimented procedure called journalism.

Those days are gone. Now, even savvy news consumers find it hard to know whether they’re reading quality information produced exclusively for readers’ benefit or something with an agenda.

The agendas may not be nefarious. They may not even be hidden. Sponsored content, for example, is clearly labeled (or it should be) and may contain real value for the reader as incentive to sit through the sales pitch. Think: an article like “10 Fun Things to Do in Austin” sponsored by just one of those things, like a concert venue, or by the local visitors bureau.

But most not-really-journalism articles are much worse — everything from deliberate spin and sensationalist clickbait to scams and foreign propaganda.

In all those years of editing, I learned a few subtle tells of (let’s call it) fake news. Here are a few red flags to look out for.

Facts reported in quotations. “Peptides are short chains of amino acids,” said Dr. Murray. Writers who aren’t experienced journalists see nothing wrong with a quote like this. But real reporters understand their job is to verify facts and stand behind them — not palm off this responsibility onto a speaker. Quotations are for opinions, reactions, unique insights and facts that can’t be attributed to a better source. “Our research has shown peptides may do such and such thing. It’s remarkable,” Murray said.

Titles capitalized — or there at all. I attributed the last quotation to just Murray, not Dr. Murray. That’s because journalism outlets aren’t keen on using titles. “Dr.” is unpopular with a lot of news styles, which prefer to give a clearer explanation of a doctor’s credentials: Alicia Murray, a pediatrician at St. Larry’s Hospital. Business titles are usually lowercase in real news: “said Moneybank vice president Jeff Reed.” 

Poor use of single quotation marks. Most writers I've worked with haven't fully mastered the use of single quote marks. Most editors I've worked with have. So a writer will put single quote marks around a word they're calling attention to, like 'boomer,' and an editor will change it to "boomer." When you see single quote marks used this way, it often means you're looking at an article that didn't come from real news pros. Similarly, professionals know that the punctuation here is wrong: “He turned around when Kim yelled ‘ouch’.” The period goes before the single quote mark, not after.

Initials in parentheses. This one is far from universal. Some quality publications including magazines write: The Association of Retired Tuba Players (APTP). But most news organizations observe this Associated Press Stylebook rule: “Do not follow an organization’s full name with an abbreviation or acronym in parentheses or set off by dashes. If an abbreviation or acronym would not be clear on second reference without this arrangement, do not use it.”

Dashes in ranges. Forget what you've heard about dashes being a sign of AI writing. There’s no basis for that. But dashes in number ranges can be a clear sign you're not reading professional journalism. “Children ages 5–8 are admitted free.” Many journalism outlets are steeped in a tradition of using words instead: “5 to 8.” The dash is especially telling when a number range is preceded by the word " between,” which logically pairs with “and,” as in “between 5 and 8 years old.” Even if you could argue that a dash can represent the word “to” in 5–8, in no circumstance does it mean “and.”

Present tense speech tags and fancy speech tags. Speech tags, or quotation attributions, are terms like “the mayor said.” Many news agencies prefer this past-tense approach to alternatives like “says the mayor.” And when “said” is replaced by a fancier word like “enthused” or “reflected,” that’s a red flag, too.

Click player above to listen to the podcast