Editor Mark's Blog

I’d like to say goodbye to “good-bye.”

The unhyphenated “goodbye” gets nearly five times as many Google hits. ”Goodbye” is the preferred spelling in the Associated Press Stylebook. The American Heritage and Webster’s New World dictionaries list goodbye as the first spelling. Bryan Garner in “Garner’s Modern American Usage,” compares the hyphenated form to the archaic “to-day.”

Merriam-Webster, though, includes only “good-bye” and “good-by.” Many style guides, including the Chicago Manual of Style, prefer a Merriam-Webster dictionary, so “good-bye” is with us for now.

The word in any form is only a few hundred years old, stemming from the earlier “good morning” and “good day,” etc., and a shortening of the phrase “God be with you.”

Everyone said it’s easy. I was up late trying to figure out how to include all my website information in one place, and I failed. Or at least fell asleep. All I succeeded in doing was transferring the URL to my blog, so my site exists only on a hidden server somewhere and on my hard drive.

If you are looking for www.markallenediting.com, I hope to have my information back up here soon. If you need anything in the meantime, I’m at markallen@copydesk.org, 614-961-9666, @EditorMark on Twitter and (sometimes) copyeditor1 on Skype.

If you are looking for editormark.wordpress.com, my blog postings are all below.

If you are looking for my archive of tweeted tips, most of them also are on this site — I copied them to my blog when I reached about 500. Scroll down to find them.

Thanks for your patience.

Mark

Grammar was not my subject. In high school English class, we did a unit on grammar every semester. It always seemed to be the same thing to me. The work was either obvious (I could recite “Grammar Rock” with the best of them) or unnecessarily confusing (English is like that). The book we used seemed authoritative, but there just seemed to be more rules and guidelines in there than anyone could possibly know. There wasn’t, it turned out, but it seemed that way.

I might be decades behind the time in my perception of grammar textbooks, but the criteria I would use to judge are the level of detail (less is more), the level of intimidation, and the clarity of the rules listed.

My first impression of Mignon Fogarty’s new student grammar is that it’s very orange. It’s inescapably orange with a cover reminiscent of the old Chicago Manual of Style (now blue) and a matching orange inside for headings, examples and shading. Its title opts for bravado over brevity: “Grammar Girl Presents the Ultimate Writing Guide for Students.” It has cartoon drawings, most featuring the familiar Aardvark and Squiggly (a snail) of previous Grammar Girl books. We can give it points for lack of intimidation right away.

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I strolled away from Google Plus to visit Twitter a few moments ago, and I pointed out that “for free” is criticized because “free” often works better in half the space. Usage guru Bill Walsh of the Washington Post pointed out that the real criticism is that “free” is not a noun, a more challenging argument.

The idiom forces “free” into the position of a noun, as if it is the same as “zero dollars” or “no pay.” It’s hard to reconcile, so it might always be considered nonstandard, or as Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says, “not used in writing of high solemnity.”

But the phrase, apparently only decades old, is very widely used. Blind condemnation sometimes takes an understandable statement and exchanges it for something confusing.

“I worked for free” is more clear than “I worked free” or “I worked for nothing.” “It is impossible to live for free” is not the same as “it is impossible to live free.”

If the meaning doesn’t change, “free” is the better choice. But “for free” is too established and too useful to be disallowed.

You are free to parade, grill, engage in pyrotechnics, and otherwise celebrate Independence Day, but don’t feel it necessary to call it that.

The celebration of the nation’s birthday has the distinction of being the only official holiday named for a date rather than a person or event. There is a temptation to write it as the more descriptive and proper sounding “Independence Day,” but the holiday was originally known by the date on which it falls.

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The best written works contain clarity, consistency and elegance. These are the goals of style books.

My first AP Stylebook was a 1976 edition acquired in 1979 when I started high school. I read every entry. I didn’t memorize it, but I at least knew where to look up whatever question I had. Over time, my knowledge of the book diminished rather than increased, but nowadays my online subscription means searching is just as fast as it was when I was 15.

Jojo Malig, an editor in Manilla, Philippines, wrote a column for the Poynter Institute’s website in which he asked several editors about the necessity of multiple style books, such as the Chicago Manual of Style and house style guides. I suggested that local style guides are an important supplement to the AP Stylebook or whatever style book a publication uses as its main guide.

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This list of links was presented as a handout at the “Freelancers Forum” session at the American Copy Editors Society conference in Phoenix in March 2011. It was compiled by Mark Allen, Kate Karp and Liz Smith. It’s not intended to be exhaustive, but it represents some of our favorite places to find help when we are editing at home.

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The “ou” spelling (loud, gout, rough) is more common than “uo,” especially when the combination forms just one syllable. Where this combination does appear, we sometimes struggle with the spelling.

If you tend to consult your toothpaste tube every time you have to spell “fluoride,” it might help to know that most words that start “flu” are related to the concept of “flow.” “Fluoride” comes from the element “fluorine,” from the Latin “fluor,” meaning “flowing.” “Fluor” was first applied to minerals useful as fluxes, a term familiar to anyone who has soldered a copper pipe. Flux (related to “fluctuation”) comes from the past participle form of the Latin “fluere,” which means “to flow.” The look of fluor-type minerals when exposed to ultraviolet light gives us the word “fluorescent.”

So, if you can associate the thing you find in toothpaste with the word “flux” (things may be “in flux,” a “flux capacitor” powered the time machine in “Back to the Future”), that might help you remember the spelling of “fluoride.” And “fluorescent.”

“Flu,” by the way, also related to “flow.” “Flu” is a shortening of “influenza,” which comes from “influence,” which had to do with astrology, or the effects that flowed from the stars.

I’m tempted to keep exploring the pathways I keep uncovering on this etymological journey, but I think it’s time I got back to work.

The word “fulsome” presents a problem that usage and etymology fail to sort out. It either means “abundant,” “offensive” or, perhaps as a compromise, “offensively abundant.” Dictionaries usually give at least the first two meanings while most usage guides insist on the third. The Associated Press Stylebook says “it means disgustingly excessive” and should not be used to mean “lavish or profuse.” The BBC News Styleguide says, probably incorrectly, that “fulsome is not a close relative of full, and does not mean generous.”

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If you missed the exciting celebrations of National Grammar Day on Friday, I urge you to   postpone any morning meetings and spend some time reviewing all that was written to mark the day in celebration of the underlying structure of the English language.

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