Old Navy, USC and Your Editing

 I nearly always include at least one editing tip in my Sharing with Writers newsletter. And sometimes a tip on the craft of writing, too. This is an example of one I came up with after reading a fun article in the LA Times. It was amply illustrated with a picture of the shirt--complete with booboo--in color! (-:

The LA Times business section reported on an editing booboo made by Old Navy. They printed up T-shirts for USC and at the top of the design it said “Lets Go.” They felt it necessary to explain to readers that “...’lets’ is missing its apostrophe, which is necessary to create the intended contraction of ‘let us go.’ Without the apostrophe, ‘lets go’ means to release something.”

I had to laugh. They must have been in a hurry to get the news out (sort of like Mindy and me when we publish this newsletter!) because it would have read better if they’d said “Without the apostrophe ‘lets’ is a verb that means ‘to release something.” The lesson here is that editing isn’t only about catching typos. Sometimes it’s also about clarifying. Maybe I should send them a copy of my The Frugal Editor, www.budurl.com/TheFrugalEditor.

 By the way, anyone who would like to subscribe to the Sharing with Writers newsletter may do so by going to www.howtodoitfrugally.com. There is a freebie offer there in the sign-up box--and there is a sign-up box on every page.


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults. and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success (How To Do It Frugally series of book for writers). Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com/writers_books.htm , where writers will find lists and other helps including Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips on the Resources for Writers page. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at her Sharing with Writers blog. She tweets writers' resources at www.twitter.com/frugalbookpromo . Please tweet this post to your followers. We all need a little help with editing. (-:

Don't Let Word Trip You Up on Curly Apostrophes!

It took me forever to learn this trick and I didn't know it to put it into The Frugal Editor.  All I knew was that I struggled with it because all my books are written colloquially rather than like texts.  (-:  So, here is a link for information on colloquial contractions which have curly apostrophes that go the opposite way from the ones that Word wants to put in your manuscript. 

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-guide-to-colloquial-contractions/

Having said that, here is the absolutely brilliant trick to use that will save you tons of time as you type your manuscript. Most people just avoid the need for them or think that the copy and paste function--one mistaken apostrophe at a time!--is the only way to go.  

Here it is. Picture the colloquial use of 'em for "them."  Now picture the curly ' instead of the straight one.  Your Word program will get it wrong every time.  The Daily Writing Tips above tell you :

"[The punctuation mark used in these cases] is the same as the one used for apostrophes. However, if you use smart, or curly, quotes, your word processing program will probably incorrectly render an apostrophe not preceded by a letter — as in the last word in the opening sentence — as an open single quotation mark, so you have to outwit the witless program by copying and pasting a closed single quotation mark or an apostrophe, or typing a character followed by the proper mark, then deleting the first character."

Trust me on this. Your best editors may not catch this because we're also so used to working with straight quotes and apostrophes. But your book's manuscript should use the straight ones. So read this twice, if you need to, and then print it out where you'll see it every day so you don't forget. (-:

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults. and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success (How To Do It Frugally series of book for writers). Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com/writers_books.htm , where writers will find lists and other helps including Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips on the Resources for Writers page. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at her Sharing with Writers blog. She tweets writers' resources at www.twitter.com/frugalbookpromo . Please tweet this post to your followers. We all need a little help with editing. (-:

Grammar Question: Ol' or Ole' Gray Mare

I am always so elated when one of you Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor readers lets me play Ann Landers of the editing/publishing world. The trouble is, most times your questions come to me via my regular e-mail box, even though I know you are people who subscribe to this blog. Ahh, well. I'll take them any ol' way I can. Here is one that came to me recently:

Carolyn, how you doing my dear? I have a question for you. Which one would you say is correct? Ol` or Ole` , as in "The ole`/ol` gray mayer ain't what she used to be."

Thanks, Hon.

Pee Wee, author of The Kahills of Willow Walk: A Novel Novel
Writing as S.K. Hamilton
Get ready— the sequel is coming! It's For the Love of Willow Walk

The short answer for this, PeeWee, is:

It's "ol' gray mare" if you're writing in American English. It's "ol' grey mare" if you're writing for Brits. Note the difference between the spellings in grey/gray.

Also note that if you want to lengthen the sound of "mare," to make an accent more pronounced as example, you might very well choose to spell "mare" "mayre" as you have above.

Generally the rule for eliminating a letter is that you replace the eliminated letter with an apostrophe. That's what we do when when we push words like "are" and "not" together. We eliminate the "o," replace it with a "'" and end up with "aren't." You do the same with "Ol'" even though you aren't using two words.

Having said that, we often have style choices. Rules aren't always clad with grammar armour. You've heard me talk about this on other posts. So, again--in the interest of emphasizing a country accent--you just might choose "ole." I doubt anyone would fault you for it, at least no one but those who are hung up on the idea that grammar is not a thing of beauty and flexbility but a thing designed to make people crazy.


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978515870. Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com, where writers will find lists and other helps on the Resources for Writers page. She blogs on all things publishing (not just editing!) at her Sharing with Writers blog.

Apostrophes Anyone? Sometimes rules aren't rules and if you're over 40 the rules might have changed!

Today I'm blogging--if you can call it that--with an excerpt straight from The Frugal Editor. Actually from one of the sidebars.

Most of us know this stuff but we're also not aware that even the stylebooks disagree on some of the basics. And, even though we know a lot, we still get tripped up on it--often. I know from the editing I do. (-: And there is one among these that we don't often think about or need but when we do, we can get confused. I know that because I get letters. Ha!

AND, one of these rules has changed slightly since some of us were in the sixth grade. Can you tell which one?



Making Possessives So Simple the Gremlin Can't Fool with You (c)

1.Add 's to a singular form of the word, even if it ends in s. Example: Travis's uniform. (Yes, the stylebooks do disagree on this and there are what I call seat-of-the-pants exceptions. Sound seems to be the determiner, or an individual publisher or journal's style guidelines.)

2.Add 's to plural forms that do not end in s. Example: children's.

3. Add only the apostrophe to the end of plural nouns that end in s: Example: several eggs' yolks or writers' program.

4. Add 's only to the end-syllable in compound words. Example: sister-in-law's children.

5. Add 's only to the last noun in a series to show joint possession of a single object. Example: Nancy and Ted's house. Rarely two people will possess two items; in that case each of the owners would get a separate little marker for a possessive. Example: Nancy's and Ted's cars.

6. Do not add an apostrophe to a possessive pronoun. The words yours, theirs, his, etc., already indicate possession. In this case, the gremlin usually coaxes you into an error only when you have a prepositional phrase. Example: He is an enemy of yours (not an enemy of yours' or your's).

Note: These rules may be slightly different--especially the rules with plurals--from the ones you learned in school. The updated ones are easier. Rejoice!


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits, consults and speaks on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978515870. Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com.