November 3, 2025

Color me fuchsia

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Here’s a word that came up in an article I was editing the other day: fuschia. The article was describing the color of something, and I blasted right through the sentence without a second thought. When I got to the end of the article, I did what I always do: I read it again. (Copy editors should always read everything at least twice. Do this enough and you’ll see why. It’s pretty much impossible to catch every error and every questionable issue on the first pass.)

Reading through the article a second time, I noticed a few little things that needed questioning. But I didn’t hesitate at “fuschia.”

Finally, just before I was about to send the story back to the editor, I ran spell-check.

Say what you will about spell-check. I know it’s downright stupid at times. Its ignorance of how prefixes and suffixes work is especially annoying: Spell-check doesn’t get that a prefix or suffix can create words that aren’t in the dictionary but are nonetheless legitimate. So it tells you that perfectly fine words are wrong.

But, weaknesses aside, spell-check has one strength: it can scrutinize every letter of every word much more easily than a human can. And guess what it stopped on: fuschia. So I fixed it and took another quick look at the rest of the document. Then, out of reflex, I hit spell-check again. It stopped on just one word: fuchia, which is how I had “corrected” the spelling of fuschia.

I got it wrong when I wasn't trying, then I got it wrong again when I was.

Turns out, it’s spelled fuchsia, which I will ever after remember as “fuk-see-ya.”

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October 27, 2025

How to write more efficiently

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A big part of any editor’s job is tightening sentences and paragraphs. After a while, cutting out needless words becomes a compulsion, which can make it difficult for editors like me to function day to day in our increasingly verbose world.

Have you looked up a recipe online lately? They’re about 8,000 words long and start with either a poorly told story about someone’s Nana in the old country or a long list of things a stranger’s kids or spouse likes to eat.

Online reviews are often wordy to the point of being unreadable: “My friend and I were looking for a place to eat and we had heard about Mel’s Diner and had driven by it many times, so we decided to try it. We had heard good things. So we made a reservation.”

I usually stop reading around this point. Obviously, the reviewer wanted a place to eat. Obviously, she decided to try it. Obviously, they made a reservation. Obviously, a user on an online restaurant review site had probably heard about the restaurant and wouldn’t be trying it if all the things she heard were bad. There’s just no way I can focus on the message when, in my mind, I’m drawing a red line through every word.

But editors aren’t the only people affected by flabby prose. Unnecessary words blunt the impact of the writer’s message and waste the reader’s time. And because these days everyone’s a writer — either via email, social media, blogs, ecommerce sites or some other outlet — keeping prose tight can give you an edge in getting your message across.

Here are a few tips for writing more efficiently.

Don’t say things the reader already knows

My made-up diner review above shows how longer passages can be packed with unnecessary information. But this is a problem at the sentence level, too.

“XYZ Company is a company that makes widgets.” The heart of this sentence is: the company is a company. You’ll have a much greater impact on your reader if you state only the facts that aren’t self-evident: XYZ Company makes widgets.  

Here’s another wordiness problem I see a lot: “The company has been in business for 60 years, having been founded in 1965.” That’s like saying six of the donuts had been eaten and six were left of the dozen. If your reader wants to know how long it’s been since 1965, they can do the math themselves.

Don’t reference what you already said

Here’s a passage I saw in a finance article recently: “As I said above, Joby is a pre-revenue company. That said, the company is not just twiddling its thumbs, waiting for FAA approval.” Note the triple whammy: “As I said above,” followed by a repeat of what was said above, followed by “that said.” 

Terms like “aforementioned,” “as previously stated” and “as noted above” are almost never worth your reader’s time.

Don’t rate what you’re about to say

“Finally, it's worth pointing out that Joby had about $991 million in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet at the end of June.” As a recovering abuser of the phrase “it’s important to note that,” I understand the impulse to write these needless words. But they should almost always be cut out.

Scrutinize every adverb and adjective

A lot of writers use adverbs unthinkingly, as if they were going for a rhythm without regard for meaning. A real example I saw recently: “experts were decidedly uncertain.” I can’t think of a single adverb that could improve the word “uncertain,” and I can’t think of a worse one than “decidedly.” Adjectives are less fraught, but they’re often redundant, as in “armed gunman.” Every opportunity to delete a word like “armed” is an opportunity to make your writing more palatable.

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October 20, 2025

A AAA-rated hotel or an AAA-rated hotel?

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Remember three-dimensional colleagues? People you used to work with who were more than just a bunch of letters followed by an @ sign and a “.com”? They had faces and voices and a Scotch tape dispenser on their desk that they hadn’t used since the early ’90s?

They were great, but you had to get dressed in the morning and drive someplace to see them, which wasn’t great.

Still, those people were always there for me when I wanted to walk from desk to desk asking them to say aloud something I’d written on a piece of paper. For example, there was the time years ago when I approached multiple co-workers to ask them to read aloud the words “The 1,100-square-foot property is for sale.”

They looked at me like I was playing a trick on them. But I wasn’t. I just wanted to hear how, without thinking about it, they would pronounce “1,100.” In their minds, did that number sound like “eleven hundred” or “one thousand one hundred”? And though pronunciation usually has little to do with editing, in one instance it does: the choice between “a” and “an.”

We all learned in school that the indefinite article “a” goes before consonants: a cat, a person, a dozen donuts. The indefinite article “an” goes before vowels: an octopus, an individual, an angel food cake. But if you were listening closely, you remember that the teacher didn’t say exactly that. It’s not about the letter that follows, it’s about the sound.

Some words that start with a vowel are spoken as if they start with a consonant. For example, “universe” starts with a U, but it’s pronounced as if it starts with a Y: yoo-ni-verse.

Some words that start with a consonant are spoken as if they start with a vowel. The most famous example is “historic.” Do you say it was “an historic event” or “a historic event”? People are bitterly divided on this question. In fact, either is correct. In American publishing, style guides say to pronounce the H and use the indefinite article “a.” It was a historic event.

But there are other, more problematic terms no one’s sure how to handle.

Initials account for a lot of these. “I read a Federal Bureau of Investigation report” clearly takes “a” before “Federal” because F creates a consonant sound. But when you say the letter itself, you start with a vowel sound: eff. “I read an FBI report.” Speaking aloud, everyone gets this right. But when it’s in print, writers and readers may not know what rule applies: Do you treat F as a consonant: “a FBI report”? Or do you write it the way people speak it: “an FBI” report?

In this case, there’s a clear answer: Choose your indefinite article based on sound, not spelling, even when you’re writing. So “an FBI report” is correct.

To get these right, though, you have to know how the terms are pronounced. That’s not always easy.

The weirdest example I know is the abbreviation for the American Automobile Association. The word “American” starts with a vowel sound: an American Automobile Association perk. That doesn’t change when you use just the first letter of American, A, which is also pronounced as a vowel sound. So all the rules say it should be “an AAA perk.”

But most of my co-workers who read this aloud off a sheet of paper didn’t pronounce the club ay-ay-ay. They pronounced it triple-a. And because “triple” starts with a consonant sound, it takes “a” as its article: “a triple-a perk.”

In odd cases like this, it makes sense to go to the source. So I checked the AAA website, where I saw, in their own words, “Become a AAA Approved Auto Repair Facility.” They pronounce it “triple.” So did most of my former co-workers. So that’s how I treat it now in print. And as for that “1,100” survey, I don’t remember what the consensus was. Choose whichever pronunciation seems more natural to you.

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October 13, 2025

Mysterious plurals

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Sometimes I think that the only difference between me and all the people who feel utterly overwhelmed by grammar is my inclination to open a dictionary. This idea hit home recently after a friend emailed me with a question about plurals.

This friend is not just a professional writer but also a longtime copy editor. In fact, she’s the person I ask to cover for me on some of my freelance jobs when I go on vacation. She knows her way around the language. But she felt she needed my help recently. She was proofreading a manuscript of a novel for a friend and needed to know how to form the plural of “ho,” as in the slang term for “whore.”

“Any thoughts on this?” she asked.

I didn’t want to think. I wanted to know. So I went to Merriam-Webster’s website, m-w.com. (I chose Merriam-Webster because I knew she was editing a book and books are usually edited according to the guidelines in the Chicago Manual of Style, which uses MW as its go-to dictionary.)

I’ll confess, I was a little surprised to see what happened when I typed in “ho.” I got this.

ho – plural hos or hoes – slang: whore

There it was.

Dictionaries always list their preferred forms first. So from this we know that Merriam-Webster considers hos the standard plural. But personally, if I had the leeway, I’d go with hoes. Its similarity to the garden tool makes it easier to recognize the sound, unlike hos, which looks more like it would rhyme with Ross.

I told my friend so. She agreed. And I got to be the answer lady, just because I knew where to look for an answer.

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October 6, 2025

'The Careful Writer' and prepositions

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Of all the old-fuddy-duddy books in my language library, one of the fuddy-duddiest is Theodore M. Bernstein’s “The Careful  Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage.” I don’t recommend it. There’s some good information in there, there's also a lot of opinion presented as fact. And because you can’t tell where research-based advice ends and the writer’s biases begin, this book can leave unwary readers misinformed.

However, there’s one little nugget of wisdom in this book that I find myself citing over and over. No other source I know of expresses it as well. In fact, most don’t address the topic at all. It has to do with prepositions.

Is it:

I have an affinity with him or I have an affinity for him?

I am uninterested in that subject or I am uninterested by that subject?

She differs with her husband on that point or She differs from her husband on that point?

Are you enamored of a certain person or enamored by him?

Are you embarrassed by something or can you be embarrassed of something?

These are the types of questions that leave English speakers baffled. It seems like there’s nowhere to turn because, in a lot of cases, there isn’t. Sometimes the dictionary will drop a hint. But when it doesn’t, you’re left high and dry. There is no Big Book of Which Preposition to Use With Which Adjective, Noun, or Verb. As a comprehensive listing, the information just isn't available.

Bernstein is one of few who dare to offer a blanket solution. And it’s a good one. Here’s what Bernstein says about all these preposition conundrums and more:

“These are questions that cannot be answered with rules. The proper preposition is a matter of idiom; and idioms, if they do not come ‘naturally,’ must be either learned or looked up. ... If a desired idiom cannot be found here or in an unabridged dictionary (and dictionaries do not in all instances provide this kind of information), the only thing to do is to consult three knowing friends and get a consensus.”

In other words, whenever you're wondering about a matter like "I'm angry at him" vs. "I'm angry with him," there is no better authority than the ear of a native English speaker, except of course that of four native English speakers.

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September 29, 2025

When Oxford comma fans jump the gun

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A Variety headline posted on social media drew some laughs recently. “Trammell Tillman on ‘Severance’ Delays, Coming Out as Gay and Tom Cruise.”

“He’s gay AND Tom Cruise?” one observer mused. “He really can do it all.”

It’s the kind of phrasing Oxford comma fans love to seize on because it affirms their belief that their preferred punctuation is superior. You see, if there had been one more comma — an Oxford comma — no one would have read it the funny way. See for yourself.

“Trammell Tillman on ‘Severance’ Delays, Coming Out as Gay, and Tom Cruise.”

That comma before “and,” called an Oxford comma or serial comma, makes it impossible that the name Tom Cruise was an object of the phrase “coming out as.” There’s literally no way the writer could have meant that Tillman was coming out as Tom Cruise.

That’s a great argument for the Oxford comma. But there’s a flaw in this point of view that overeager Oxford comma fans might miss: The headline was 100% unambiguous without the extra comma. There was only one possible meaning, only one role the name Tom Cruise could play here — it’s an object of the preposition “on,” not an object of “coming out as.” And the reason we know this has to do with the lack of the word “and” after the word “delays.”

“And” has a special job signaling the last item in a list. We don’t say, “I ate beans, rice.” We say, “I ate beans and rice.” We don’t say “I ate beans, rice, vegetables.” We say, “I ate beans, rice and vegetables.” No matter how many food items you add to my meal, the last one will be teed up with the word “and.”

The Oxford comma is the one that goes before the “and” preceding the last item in a list of three or more things: beans, rice, and vegetables. But this comma is not required. Lots of editing styles, notably the Associated Press, don’t use it, writing instead “beans, rice and vegetables.”

With that in mind, let’s look at the Variety headline: “Trammell Tillman on …” What follows could be one thing, two things or 100 things. But if it’s more than one, we know that the last one will be preceded by “and.” 

There’s just one “and” in the headline — the one before Tom Cruise’s name. The “and” tells us that Tom Cruise is the final item in a list of things the interview is “on.” The interview is Tillman on X, Y and Tom Cruise. So Cruise’s name can’t be a thing Tillman “came out as.”

Now imagine that the comma after “delays” were replaced by an “and.” That would signal that the interview is “on” just two things: show delays and coming out. In that case, there would be no other role for Tom Cruise in that sentence than to be a thing that Tillman came out as.

No Oxford comma is needed to ensure this headline has just one possible meaning. But would an added comma be better anyway?

As an editor who works in Associated Press style, I avoid Oxford commas. But I’m also keenly aware of AP’s rule that says anytime an Oxford comma would aid comprehension — or even just prevent a momentary misreading — use one.

This comes up a lot in lists in which one of the list items contains its own “and.” For example, if you’re listing sandwiches and the last one is “ham and cheese,” I’d write it like this: “Their sandwich selection includes tuna, turkey, and ham and cheese.” That way, no one thinks for a moment that you serve a cheeseless ham sandwich and a hamless cheese sandwich.

Oxford comma fans who say their preferred punctuation is necessary to make meaning unambiguous are wrong. But those who say that this comma sure can help at times are right.

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September 22, 2025

Commas after states, years, and Inc.

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Proofreading is very different from reading. At least, for me it is. When I’m proofreading, I’m looking for commas and skipped words and extra words and sentences without subjects and faulty parallels and a million little things like that.

In that mode, I can read a whole article twice and learn nothing from it. A piece on a restaurant, for example, could contain lots of information on the food it serves, the chef’s background, its history, and on and on. But if you quizzed me on any of it I’d flunk. Reading for information and reading for errors are two very different mental processes.

Interestingly, the other mode doesn’t quite work the same. When I’m reading for content – articles, books, etc. -- certain typos and editing matters jump out at me. I suppose it’s just because I’ve invested so much energy into whatever mental faculty scans for typos that it’s hard to turn off.

And that’s unfortunate because the minute a misplaced comma or other typo catches my eye, it flips a switch in my mind, turning off the brain engine that reads for substance and powering up the part that scrutinizes form.

Then it’s hard to get back into whatever I was reading.

The most common errors that do this to me have to do with commas. They’re illustrated in this sentence:

It was March 14, 2009 when Widgets, Inc. moved its headquarters from Flint, Michigan to Detroit.

I guess if we’re being technical, the comma choices in that sentence aren’t really errors. But from an editing standpoint they are. And when I see them in published material, I think: This piece was not edited by professionals well versed in style.

It’s an instant prejudice that will color my perception of the source forever.

Here’s where the commas in that sample sentence fell short. In professional editing, years, “Inc.,” and states after cities are considered parenthetical information. They’re set-asides, if you will.

Compare:

My wife, Mary, works in entertainment

with

My wife, Mary works in entertainment.

The name Mary is just an aside — a “by the way, the person I just referred to as my wife happens to be named Mary.”

A similar principle applies to years, Inc., and states. They’re often included parenthetically. But that’s not as intuitively clear. They’re actually a little different. Mary, in the example above, is something called an appositive, whereas years, Inc., etc. are not. So, unlike with the Mary business, the comma rules for Inc. and states you actually have to know. Lately it seems that fewer and fewer of the people producing written content do.

Here are the rules of most professional editing:

* Years after a specific date are set off with commas: “March 14, 2008, was a good day.” But a month and year without the date does not take commas: “March 2008 was a good month.” The same is true of seasons. No comma: Spring 2008 was a good time for me.

* Inc., LLC, and items like that don't need commas. Widgets Inc. had a great quarter. That’s purely a style matter — and one that doesn’t come up much in journalism because Inc. is usually omitted altogether. But if a comma comes before Inc., one should always come after.

* States after cities get the same treatment. Any time there’s a comma before “Michigan” one should come after, too.

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September 15, 2025

Don't fear the sentence-ending preposition

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Here’s a tragic-yet-terrifying story for you: Once upon a time, a wicked old witch disguised as a benevolent seer told an aspiring wordsmith that it was wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. And this sentence was the result:

“That's not all for which kiwi is good.”

Full disclosure: I don’t know for sure it was a witch instead of, say, a warlock or a demon or an English teacher from the 1950s. And we can’t know whether this sentence, which appeared on a health and nutrition website, was the mangled offspring of the writer or an editor. All I know is that these are some ridiculous acrobatics to go through to avoid writing the simple: “That’s not all kiwi is good for.”

For decades, people have been taught that it’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition like “for,” “at,” with,” or “from.” This mangled sentence demonstrates all too clearly how bad this advice is.

And it illustrates another bad call as well: dogged allegiance to rules, real or fictional. Any writer or editor who valued clarity and readability would have ended the sentence with “for,” even if she thought it was against the rules.

Happily, there is no rule against ending a sentence with a preposition. Even if there were, violations wouldn’t carry a prison term. And sentences like the one above would offer quintessential examples of the old saying that some rules were meant to be broken.

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September 8, 2025

She literally couldn't hear me

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The newspaper column that I write always ends with an e-mail address where readers can contact me. And they do, often to cheer on my fight against bad grammar and to ask me to tell people to stop engaging in some linguistic habit that drives them nuts.

That would be lovely if 1. I had ever given the tiniest indication that I was in fact “fighting” against bad grammar, and 2. I had any desire to tell people how to use the language.

I don’t do either in my column. Never have. I just talk about questions that come up and the answers I find.

Usually those answers are not what grammar-cop types want to hear — research almost always proves them wrong in matters like whether you can use “hopefully” to mean “I hope that” or “healthy” to mean “healthful” (answer to both: of course you can).

Lucky for them, the things I actually say needn’t stand in the way of their hearing whatever they want to hear.

For example, a while back I wrote a column about the word “literally.” In it, I explained that some dictionaries allow the word to be used as an intensifier — that is, figuratively. According to those sources, it’s fine to say, “I literally flew out of the room.” And I said so in the column.

What happened next shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Not one but two readers wrote to congratulate me on my column railing against people's excessive and wrong use of “literally.”

“Thank you SO much for addressing the overuse of “literally”! That’s been bugging me for some time now. At work, I’m surrounded by young women who use that word constantly."

She wasn't done.

She asked me to consider writing a column telling people it’s wrong to say, “filing bankruptcy” instead of “filing for bankruptcy” and “graduating college” instead of “graduating from college.” You won’t be surprised to hear there’s nothing wrong with those expressions.

I wrote back that neither of her peeves was an actual error, but I suspect that when she got the email she interpreted it to mean the opposite.

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September 1, 2025

Have commas gone out of style?

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Are commas too scarce these days?

That’s the gripe of a reader who wrote to me a while back. Here’s what he said: “I find that in today's writing, (even in professionally edited books), there seems to be a lack of what I call 'comma sense.' I find it more difficult to read something when commas have been omitted; or perhaps the author or editor doesn't see the need for them.”

I agree with him that commas are in somewhat short supply these days. But it doesn't seem to me like that's a problem.

Some commas are optional, like the one after a short introductory phrase. For example, “On a recent afternoon I went to the park.” You could put a comma after “afternoon” or not. It’s up to you.

Because rules allow people to make many of their own comma calls, the comma’s popularity runs in trends. Right now, sparse comma use is the reigning aesthetic.

Personally, I like fewer commas. To my eye, unnecessary commas do more harm than good: They break up the flow of the sentence. They slow down the reader. They take a unit that could have been a snapshot of a single idea and break it into chunks the reader has to assemble himself into a single message. So in the publications I edit, I lean toward fewer rather than more commas.

But really, as long as clarity or correctness isn't on the line, it's a matter of taste ... and fashion.

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