Month: June 2011

by Jennie Ruby

Lately I've been hearing a lot of people use expressions like Jennie and I's house. The most alarming use, perhaps, was in a sentence very much like this one: "All of the editing and proofing is handled by Jennie and I's department." When the head of the editing department struggles with a grammatical issue, you know it is a bad one.

As I discussed last week, having a person's name and a personal pronoun in the same sentence seems to make our normal ear for grammar go out the window. Surely no head of an editing department would ever say "I's department." So the solution to this problem is just about the same as the solution I offered last week: leave the other person's name out, choose your correct pronoun, and then add the other person back in: "Jennie and my department.*"

However, that is not quite where the grammar books leave us [my source is The Gregg Reference Manual]. We need to also make sure that it is clear that Jennie also has ownership of the department.

Separate possession with two names:

Jane's and Sam's cars are in the parking lot.

[They own separate cars.]

Joint possession with two names:

Jane and Sam's car is in the parking lot.

[They co-own one car. Think of this as taking the phrase Jane and Sam and adding an apostrophe-s to it.]

Joint possession with one name and one pronoun:

Jane's and his car is in the parking lot.

[They co-own one car, but since the pronoun "his" doesn't really apply to Jane, you have to add an apostrophe s to her name to make it clear that she is also one of the owners.]

Separate possession with one name and one pronoun:

Jane's and his cars are in the parking lot.

[Notice that this looks the same as joint possession, but the use of plural for cars makes it clear that they each have a separate car.]

So the right way to say the problem sentence we started with?

All of the editing and proofing is handled by Jennie's and my department.

Note: The asterisk (*) indicates an example illustrating incorrect grammar or usage.

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

by Jennie Ruby

First, a point of clarification re last week's contest: we had more than two dozen entries, not just several. Second, an excellent question was raised on the blog: how much re-writing can be allowed on something like this before the meaning is changed?When I set up the contest, I did have in mind just ridding the existing text of redundancies. That is exactly what the majority of contestants did, and I categorized those entries as "editing." The other entries were complete rewrites; in other words, they were substantive edits. I rewarded those entries because they went above correcting the text and attempted to address the needs of readers in new and creative ways. However, that kind of editorial rewrite is not always welcome.

The distinction between substantive editing and copyediting is important in any kind of publishing or editing work, and it goes straight to the question of your level of authority over the text.

If you are the writer of a text, you typically have complete authority over it. That means you can do anything you want: delete words, delete entire sentences, shorten or lengthen sentences, change word choices, change the tone, make it say something entirely different from the original version, change the overall length, and so on.

If you are editing someone else's writing, your level of authority differs with the situation. Magazine or newsletter editors whose main goal is to serve the needs of their readers may have complete authority over the text writers submit for publication. Academic copyeditors, on the other hand, have little authority over the content, organization, and meaning, but have a great deal of authority over the mechanical details, such as how to define acronyms on first use, whether to italicize or underline book titles mentioned in text, whether to spell out numbers, and the like.

Level of authority is something to clarify with your supervisor, with the writer of the text, or with the client who hires you as an editor. Pinpointing your level of authority may involve factors such as whether you are the boss of the person who wrote the text, whether you are lower or higher in the organizational hierarchy than the writer, whether you are an authority on the content, and what stage of production the material is in. If the material is in its final production stages and the deadline is tomorrow, you will minimize your editorial changes regardless of your authority level.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the contest. It was great fun to see person after person nail all of the redundancies. We'll do another one soon.

About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

by Jennie Ruby

The results of last week's redundancy contest were astonishing. We received several replies, all of them excellent improvements on the original redundant (and wordy) example. To judge the contest, we had to be brutal.

Contestants were asked to send in a list of the redundancies in the following paragraph, along with a rewrite:

You walk up to an ATM machine and enter your PIN number. While you are there, you print out a hard copy of your statement so you can check on the past history of your account. The reason you need a printout is because your total balance seems too high, and you want to make absolutely certain your rent check has cleared.

The first cut was made by disqualifying everyone who changed "walk up to" to "walked to." Some prepositions following a verb are redundant (as was "check on" in our example), but others actually complete or change the meaning of the verb. Think of the difference between "to follow up" and "to follow" or between "to throw out" and "to throw." Here, removing the word "up" changed the meaning from "approach" to something more like "hike to."

Second, the entries fell into three categories: editing the text to remove the redundancies, rewriting the text to make it more concise, and rewriting the text as a training document.

In the editing category, anyone who missed a redundancy (e.g. ATM machine or PIN number) was cut. Second (I said we had to be brutal), anyone who made a punctuation error was eliminated. The most common punctuation boo-boos were adding a comma in a compound predicate and adding a comma before a trailing subordinate clause.

In the rewriting category, the competition came down to cleverness and word count. And in the training category, cleverness and conciseness won the day.

And so, without further ado, here are the winners of the redundancy elimination contest:

In the editing category, coming in third at 36 words, is Sheri Kraft:

You walk up to an ATM, enter your PIN, and print out your statement so you can check on your account because your balance seems high and you want to see if your rent has cleared.

In the rewriting category, coming in second at 28 words, is Karla Marsh:

You want to view your account history to be certain your rent check has cleared, so you go to an ATM, enter your PIN, and print your statement.

In the rewriting category, coming in first at 25 words, is Jim Dages:

While at an ATM, you notice your balance seems too high so you print a statement to verify the rent check has cleared.

In the training category, coming in first at 16 words, is Charles Ormiston:

To make certain a check has cleared: 

1. Approach an ATM

2. Enter your PIN

3. Print your statement 

And our overall winner, from the rewrite category, is again Charles Ormiston, with 24 words:

You want to make certain your rent check has cleared, so you walk up to an ATM, enter your PIN and print your statement.

Thanks to all who participated.

About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.