Speak Out with Your Geek Out: Word Nerdy

I am a total grammar geek, a complete word nerd. Back in high-school English class, kids around me would groan when our teacher began her annual grammar lesson – but I secretly gave my grammar geek flag a hearty wave. I was good at grammar the way some people are good at math, and probably for the same reasons. Grammar, like math, follows a clearly defined set of rules, and if you simply apply those rules, you’ll always get the right answer.

Grammar is just that black-and-white for me. For the most part.

See what I did there? That sentence fragment? Yeah, I can break the rules sometimes. My grammar instructor in my first-year of college – a brilliant editor and inspired teacher – framed it this way: “Learn the rules, and then you can break them on purpose.” The on purpose part is the thing that trips most people up; they break the rules accidentally, and all we have then are mistakes. And I hate mistakes.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that not everyone has the same passion for proper punctuation (or the same ardour for apt alliteration) that I do. I don’t expect the average person to understand all the many ways a comma should, and should not, be used. I have higher standards for professional writers and communicators, but no one is perfect. Mistakes happen.  

People like me enjoy finding and fixing mistakes. Yes, enjoy. But despite the giddiness I feel when I attack prose with a red pen, I’m going to share my personal punctuation pet peeves here in the hope that I will see fewer of them in my daily reading:

Fewer versus less. Fewer is used when objects are countable; less is used when objects are not countable. Fewer peanuts; less peanut butter. Fewer busses; less transportation. Fewer mistakes; less aggravation. Yes, the express line sign at the grocery store is incorrect: “10 items or less” should be “10 items or fewer.”

Exclamation marks. My grammar instructor in college – the brilliant editor – said that every writer gets to use three exclamation marks in the course of his or her career. Even so, I see the offending points in brochures and articles and on web sites and advertisements. People use the exclamation marks because they think they add “pop,” but in most cases, stronger word choice or sentence structure will add more impact than an exclamation mark. Anyone who feels the need to use an exclamation mark in their professional prose should seriously consider a rewrite. After all, a writer only gets three, and it would be a shame to waste one.

The Oxford (a.k.a. series) comma. I said pet peeves, not mistakes. I know that the Oxford comma is optional, but I like it. I use it all the time. One of my other grammar mentors – a former journalist for whom I worked – always said that it’s never wrong when the Oxford comma is put in, but it’s sometimes confusing when the Oxford comma is left out. The example he always used is this: “I like jazz, blues, pop, rock and roll and heavy metal.” The list is just a tiny bit more confusing for the briefest of moments without the Oxford comma before the second ‘and.’ And since the purpose of grammar is to make writing less confusing for the reader, I always put the Oxford comma in.

Parallel lists. I busted a dear writer friend of mine for this last week. Well, actually, I said, “I saw a digital copy of this poster and noticed that the list isn’t parallel. Just wanted to give you the head’s up in case you hadn’t printed a bunch of them already.” I was trying to be helpful! Honest! (There’s two wasted exclamation marks. Damn.) He said he hadn’t had time to proof it carefully; I admitted I was being obnoxious; we forgave each other. See! I’m not completely unreasonable! (I went over my quota there. Damn.)

Anyway, here’s the example I cited him for: “Try taking the free public transit, cycle, walk, carpool or run to school or work.” The list isn’t parallel; there are (potentially) two different verb forms there. I think what the sentence is telling me to do is to “try” these various forms of alternative transportation. If so, the sentence should read as follows: “Try taking the free public transit, cycling, walking, carpooling, or running to school or work.” One could argue, I suppose, that try is the verb, in which case the sentence would technically be parallel – but I prefer to think about it in terms of a bulleted list. And my way just makes more sense bulleted.

I.e. Now, there is a time and a place for i.e. It means “that is” or “in other words.” It does not mean “for example.” Only “for example” means “for example” (though e.g. will work in a pinch.) Writers should only use i.e. when trying to clarify something: “I am disinclined to acquiesce to your demands (i.e., no.)”

  

There you have it: the rules for some of my personal pet peeves. But even though you now know the rules, please don’t break them, if only for my sake. My husband doesn’t like it when I pull my hair out. Or cry. Or drink a whole bottle of wine while lamenting the state of the world today.