Words Fail Me (13 page)

"There is a pedant on your staff who spends far too much of his time searching for split infinitives. Every good literary craftsman uses a split infinitive if he thinks the sense demands it. I call for this man's instant dismissal; it matters not whether he decides to quickly go or to go quickly or quickly to go. Go he must, and at once."

I've come across this story many times on the Internet. I can't guarantee that it's true but I still like it. Male and female college students were given these words
—woman without her man is nothing
—and asked to punctuate them as a sentence.

The men wrote:
Woman, without her man, is nothing.

The women wrote:
Woman: without her, man is nothing.

Don't overlook the power of punctuation. It's not just window dressing; it can change the meaning of a sentence 180 degrees. This is what I mean:
Jack said Harry wrecked
the car.
Or perhaps:
Jack, said Harry, wrecked the car.
And look what a difference a hyphen can make:
The stolen sofa was recovered.
Or:
The stolen sofa was re-covered.

Sometimes reading a sentence aloud and listening for pauses can help you punctuate it. A slight pause might be a comma; a longer one, a semicolon; an even longer one, a period. (That sentence is an example.) But remember, the point of punctuation is to make writing clearer and easier to read. A barrelful of exclamation marks can't equal one juicy adjective or verb.

I certainly can't tell you in a few paragraphs everything you need to know about punctuation. But I can hit the high spots, the problems that show up most often. If you don't see it here, look it up.

• A comma by itself usually isn't enough to hold together two expressions that could be separate sentences:
Jack broke his crown, Jill wasn't seriously injured.
(This is sometimes called a run-on sentence.) If you want to join those expressions with a comma, add a linking word, like
and
or
but: Jack broke his crown, but Jill wasn't seriously injured.
There's more on joining parts of a sentence in chapter 12.

• The semicolon may be the most unappreciated and underused punctuation mark. If you find semicolons intimidating, relax. They're handy for joining expressions that could stand alone, like the ones above:
Jack broke his crown; Jill wasn't seriously injured.
Semicolons can also be used to tidy up a series of items with commas inside
them. Imagine how hard it would be to read this sentence if only commas were used:
Jack broke his crown, which was fractured in two places; scraped his knee, nearly to the bone; and ruined his lederhosen.
Lincoln found the semicolon a "useful little chap"; you will, too.

• Dashes and parentheses shouldn't be abused. They do roughly the same thing—they let the writer say something (like this) in an aside—though dashes are somewhat more in-your-face. If your writing breaks out in dashes, try using parentheses for variety (and vice versa). But if commas would work as well, as they often do, use them instead.

• The exclamation point is a squeal, the "Eek!" of punctuation. It's the equivalent of a flashing neon sign on a sentence. If you're writing something astonishing, remarkable, astounding, or horrific, you'll land a bigger punch by letting your words do the job. A startling statement is all the more startling if it's delivered without an elbow in the ribs. So use exclamation points sparingly. A little punctuation can go a long way.

Incidentally, go easy on the italics. If you have to use slanty print
like this
for emphasis, perhaps your words aren't dramatic enough on their own. It's all right to use italics once in a while, but don't go bananas.

The most dynamite résumé in the world won't get you in the door if you've misspelled "curriculum vitae." Crummy
spelling is more noticeable than crummy anything else. It irritates readers and embarrasses writers. Yet spelling goofs are the easiest to fix. Unless you're dead certain about a word—is it
pretentions
or
pretensions? wierd
or
weird? gauge
or
guage
?—look it up. Reaching for your Funk & Wagnalls should be a reflex action. Wear it out; thumbit to bits. The best writers I know own the grimiest, most tattered dictionaries.

Dictionaries aren't foolproof, though. Read the fine print when you check the spelling of a word. Lexicographers include troublemakers like
irregardless, alright, ahold,
and
anywheres
. That's because a dictionary is supposed to include words that are widely used, even if they're clearly wrong. But the editors also caution us when these words are nonkosher versions of correct ones (
regardless, all right, a hold, anywhere).
Don't just look up a spelling and stop there; read further, in case it's not the accepted one. Watch for warnings such as "substandard," "nonstandard," "obsolete," "variant spelling," "vulgar," "obscene," and so on.

What about computer spell-checkers? I'm glad you asked. The speller in your machine has a very small IQ and you shouldn't rely on it entirely. First, it may tell you to misspell a word. (Mine doesn't recognize
restaurateur
and tells me to spell it
restauranteur.
) Second, your speller won't stop you from using the wrong word if it's spelled right. (Mine passed this sentence with flying colors: Eye trussed their are know miss steaks hear, four my come pewter is all weighs write.) Third, it's all too easy to hit the wrong key and wreak havoc. On my speller, the Skip Once key is just below Replace. The other day I was ripping
through a piece with the spell-checker, repeatedly hitting Skip Once (I thought). But my mouse had drifted up a zillionth of an inch, and I was actually hitting Replace. The discovery prompted me to shout several words that my dictionary describes as "vulgar" or "obscene."

As for grammar-checkers, they've come a long way, but they haven't arrived yet, baby. Like spell-checkers, they overlook many mistakes and encourage you to make many more. There are grammar-checkers that accept "between you and I," "most unique," and "Politics are my favorite subject." When I ran a sentence from the Declaration of Independence through my grammar-checker, it found so many "errors" that I can't list them. Among other things, it suggested changing "all men are created equal" to "God created all men equally." Jefferson would not have approved.

I once edited a book review in which this sentence appeared (details have been changed to protect the guilty): "Oglethorpe Carrothers was one-third journalist, one-third statesman, one-third war hero, one-third humanitarian, and one-third playboy." Granted, math isn't my strong suit, but I know enough to raise an eyebrow when I meet five-thirds of a Carrothers.

Like that reviewer, many people are more concerned about the sound of their words than the sense of their numbers. The words read well, but the numbers don't add up. Beware of any figures you haven't checked and double-checked. Count on your fingers if you must, but be sure the math makes sense.

What do you make of this sentence?
The stock price jumped 200 percent in less than an hour, rising to $50 from $25.
Something's wrong here (even if you got in on the stock early). Do you see why?

When you start with $25 and you increase that by $25, you've doubled the original figure, to $50. But that's a jump of only 100 percent, the original number increased by itself once. When $25 goes up 200 percent, it increases by itself not once but twice—that gives us the original $25, plus $25 and another $25, for a total of $75.

Goofy percentages whiz past us every day. They routinely appear in newspapers, TV broadcasts, and magazines because nobody stops to count.

Doubling, tripling, and quadrupling are all clear enough: a number is multiplied by two, by three, by four. But tossing in percentages leads to trouble. A number that's doubled goes up 100 percent, a number that's tripled goes up 200 percent, a number that's quadrupled goes up 300 percent, and so on. Go figure.

This is a case where being right isn't necessarily the answer. If there's an alternative, avoid using percentage increases of more than 100, especially big round ones that look wrong even when they're right. It may be correct to write,
Scalpers sold the $10 tickets for $50,
a 400 percent increase,
but this is better:
Scalpers sold the $10 tickets for $50,
five times the original
price. When there's no better way, at least make sure the figure is right:
The police arrested 156 scalpers this year,
a 140 percent increase
from the 65 arrested last year.

Never use
decreases
of more than 100 percent, however, unless you're writing about mathematics. A 100 percent drop gives you zero, so any greater decrease would leave you with a negative number. Outside of math class, your chance of being right is less than zero.

Two times two is four, and that will never change, at least not in our times. But
times
is tricky when you're writing about numbers. What do you make of the calculation here?
Mort owns two Chihuahuas but Rupert owns eight, or four times more.

If that looks right to you, look again. Rupert actually has
three times more
Chihuahuas than Mort. Think of it this way: Rupert owns six more than Mort. And that's
three times more
than Mort's two, not
four times more.
Chihuahuas don't multiply that fast.

We run into trouble using the expression
times more
when we forget that we're adding the
times
calculation to whatever it's
more
than. The problem is so widespread that I'd suggest ducking it altogether. Why not drop the
more
and use
times as many
or
times as much
? A math teacher—and an English teacher, too—would give you an A for this effort:
Mort owns two Chihuahuas, but Rupert owns eight, or four times as many.

We also go wrong when we write that a number is umpteen
times less
than another:
Baby Leroy weighs twenty pounds, five times less than his mom, who weighs a hundred.

The problem is the same; it's just going in the other direction. You could say that the baby weighs
four times less
than his mom (think of it this way: his weight is eighty pounds less, or
four times twenty less,
than his mom's). But even that wording gives me a headache.

Again, I recommend copping out. Drop the
times less
and rephrase the sentence, using
as many as
or
as much as
instead:
Baby Leroy weighs twenty pounds, a fifth as much as his mom, who weighs a hundred.

The most common
times
problems involve
more
and
less.
But the same principle applies whenever you use numbers to compare things. Instead of saying,
So-and-so is x times richer than what's-his-name,
make it:
So-and-so is x times as rich as what's-his-name
(or
as tall as, as old as,
and so on).

If you take my advice, you' ll find it comparatively easy, more or less.

How many sheep are in this fold?
Babe's flock of ten sheep increased threefold last year.
No, the answer isn't thirty, although that's probably how most people would interpret the sentence. The answer is forty—the original ten, plus three times that number.

And that's the problem with using
fold
to say how much something has increased. Attaching
fold
to a number is just another way of saying
times,
and it can be just as confusing. Even if you get it right, you'll probably be misunderstood.

The solution? Don't use
fold
to say something has doubled, tripled, or quadrupled. Just say that it has doubled, tripled, or quadrupled:
Babe's flock of ten sheep tripled last year.
Or you could make it:
Babe's flock of ten
sheep increased to three times as many last year.
This solution is definitely preferable with larger increases. If Babe ended up with 150 sheep, make it:
Babe's flock of ten sheep increased to fifteen times as many last year.

By the way, don't use
by
when you mean
to.
They're not the same, not by a long shot. If Babe's flock had increased
by
fifteen times as many, he'd have 160 sheep—the original ten, plus fifteen times as many. Way to go, Babe.

As if
fold
weren't confusing enough, it's even woollier to say,
Babe's flock often sheep increased three times last year.
You run into the same problem, and another besides: You might mean that three lambs joined the flock last year, or that the flock increased on three separate occasions.

All right, we've counted enough sheep. One more thing before I fold. Whatever you do, never use
fold
to describe a decrease. I recently read that a country's food supplies had fallen sixfold. If you know what that means, please explain it to me.

As I've said, I'm not a whiz at math. I make it a practice to check my figures two times, maybe three, with even the most elementary arithmetic. If I get the same number twice, I go with it. But numerically clumsy though I am, I once worked at the
Wall Street Journal
, where every number had to be perfect. If I can get my numbers straight, so can you.

A tip that I learned as a business journalist has stuck with me over the years. It's worth passing on, and it's useful for writing about more than money.

When a number changes, whether it's going up or
going down, it moves from one point to another. So we're tempted to write things like this:
As El Niño arrived, the temperature rose
from
5
to
10 degrees.