The Elephants of Style : A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English

250 Pages·2004·5.05 MB·English

by  Bill Walsh

THE
ELEPHANTS
of STYLE
A Trunkload of Tips
on the Big Issues and Gray
Areas of Contemporary
American English
Bill Walsh
author ofLapsing Into a Comma
For my mom,Molly Chilinski,who didn’t raise no dummies
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
What We Talk About When We Talk About Style
ELEPHANT NO. 1
Remember That You’re Not Using
a Typewriter 1
Style Begins With Form and Format
Also, Remember That You’re in the United States
ELEPHANT NO. 2
Letters of the Law 9
Common Missteps in Spelling
ELEPHANT NO. 3
What’s Up? 17
All About Capitalization
Everything’s Generic
What’s in a nAME?
v
vi Contents
ELEPHANT NO. 4
What to Abbrev.? 43
The Short and Shorter of Truncations,Acronyms
and Initialisms
Initial Reactions and Second Thoughts (IRAST)
ELEPHANT NO. 5
Which One Is Right Again? 51
A Quick Review of Problem Pairs (and Trios and ...)
ELEPHANT NO. 6
Lies Your English Teacher Told You 61
The Big Myths of English Usage
ELEPHANT NO. 7
Some Gray Areas 71
Proceed With Caution
ELEPHANT NO. 8
Agreed? 81
Making Sure the Parts of Speech Get Along
ELEPHANT NO. 9
Cover Your S 93
Possessives and Plurals
ELEPHANT NO. 10
A Number of Problems 107
Counting on 100 Percent Correctness
Contents vii
ELEPHANT NO. 11
The Adventures of Curly and Stitch 125
The Comma,the Hyphen,the Headaches
ELEPHANT NO. 12
Flair! Elan! Panache! 135
A Few Potshots About Style-With-a-Capital-S
Colors Are Pretty, but How About Just Giving It to Me in
Black and White?
What Is, Is: Can’t Argue With That
The Spin Wins: Great Moments in Obfuscation
Madam Chairman and That Friggin’ Masseuse: Taking
Linguistic Evolution Like a “-man”
ELEPHANT NO. 13
Writers, Typists, Thieves and Liars 157
Plagiarism and Its Kin
ELEPHANT NO. 14
Writing and Rewriting 163
A Writer-Turned-Editor Writes About Editing
and Being Edited
From From to To: Everything’s Ranging
Snarky Specificity
Literal and Conservative: George Washington Wasn’t
Really Our Father
The Curmudgeon’s Stylebook (Continued) 177
A Web FAQ
Bibliography 225
Index 227
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Acknowledgments
It wouldn’t be incorrect to call this book a one-man effort.But
then there are all the women who deserve credit: my agent,
Sheree Bykofsky,and her associates,Janet Rosen and Megan
Buckley; my editor at McGraw-Hill, Judith McCarthy; my
Washington Post colleagues Nancy McKeon and Autumn
Brewington for their proofreading assistance;and most of all
my wife,Jacqueline Dupree,who endured countless nights of
staying upstairs and being as quiet as possible while I sweated
over my computer in the downstairs den.
Considering my harsh words about plagiarism, I must
come clean and admit that I wasn’t born with an opinion on
split infinitives or the hyphenation of compound modifiers.I
take pride in making original observations about the language
(or “concocting new maxims,” to paraphrase one amateur
critic),but my views have been influenced by countless teach-
ers,colleagues and fellow authors.Barbara Wallraff,my com-
petitor on the bookstore shelves and my editor when I write
for the Copy Editor newsletter,has been especially generous
when I’ve needed second opinions.John McIntyre and Mer-
rill Perlman also continue to shape my thinking.
ix
Copyright © 2004 by Bill Walsh. Click here for terms of use.
x Acknowledgments
Some of the quotations that begin the chapters came
from my memory,my music collection or my personal library;
others, I found and cross-checked using a variety of online
sources.
My bibliography lists the books that I have found most
useful; any omissions should be considered not a snub but
rather an illustration of the limits of my budget and my shelf
space.