Read the fucking manual

When programmers see message-board postings with questions that could easily have been answered by a few minutes of research on the part of the person posting, they'll sometimes reply with RTF (read the fucking manual).

Perhaps that strikes some people as a tad aggressive. I think it points to a terrific ethic: Take some responsibility for your own learning and show respect for the value of others' time.

And a funny thing happens when you do a bit of hunting around, a bit of reading, a bit of thinking: You internalize what you learn.

Now, we all make mistakes. I have no tolerance for editors who like to play "gotcha" and trot out a writer’s errors in a way that is supposed to inflate the editor's sense of superiority. (Watch closely: Those editors are often the ones who end up making pretty heinous errors themselves.)

But some writers don't bother checking with the style guide or the dictionary before sending their material off to be edited. They'll sniff that these details are beneath their great craft.

This obviously makes life harder on the editors. But here's the other thing: When you discipline yourself to turn in clean copy, you become a stronger writer because you're thinking about how your work should come together in both big-picture and small-picture terms. You develop a command of grammar that heightens your sentences. And you learn enough to avoid embarrassing spelling errors (altar/alter, coulee/coolie) that just might slip by the editing desk on a hectic night.

The writers I edit who routinely turn in clean copy are usually the most interesting folks to read. I don't think that's a coincidence.

How do I compare?

Quick tip on usage conventions: Use "compare with" when you're analyzing differences. Use "compare to" when likening something to something else.

The company's profits were 50 cents per share, compared with 45 cents this time last year.

He compared this cheese to a urinal cake.

The ass in harass

Improve your spelling! Amaze your friends! Time for more fun with mnemonic devices:

anoint: to anoint is to apply an ointment or liquid to something, so think "an oint(ment)" and you'll avoid the misspelling "annoint"

embarrassment: the R's and the S's trip folks up; remember that the embarrassment is extreme enough to accept doubles of both (this is similar to my tip on spelling "accommodate")

harass: this is another word where the number of R's and S's causes confusion; think of "sexual harassment" and the "ass" in "harass" (you'll never forget this one again)

Wrangling about ranges

When you're using the construction "from X to Y," make sure it's an actual range you're talking about. A geographic range such as "from Seattle to Los Angeles" clearly has starting and ending points -- and the crucial points in between. So do the ranges "from joy to devastation" and "from head to toe."

But avoid it when you're simply listing examples. "From ham to cranberries" doesn't suggest a spectrum; it's simply two foods. Better alternatives: "such as ham and cranberries" or "including ham and cranberries."

Another logic error to avoid is listing three items in a range. A range has a start point and an end point. Not two starts or two ends. If you're expressing a range such as "from Seattle to Los Angeles," there's no need to list a point in the middle. Take the bloated "from Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles." San Francisco is implied in the range -- as is every other point between Seattle and Los Angeles. If what you really wanted to do was list these three cities, then do that. "The trip covered much of the West Coast, including Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles."

For an excellent discussion on this topic, see Bill Walsh's post on false ranges.

Peikoff's Principles of Grammar course

If you're looking for a clear, basic overview of grammar in audio format (with written exercises to boot), consider Leonard Peikoff's Principles of Grammar course.

I received the audio-tape set as a gift years back and truly enjoyed it. Peikoff presents the lectures as grammar lessons for writers, explicitly excluding matters of style (which vary from publication to publication) and more in-depth grammatical analysis. He provides a good summary of grammar basics and addresses ways to adjust your writing's structure or diction to elicit various rhetorical effects.

Very worthwhile -- for a writer or an editor.

Log on. No password required?

In many cases, "go to Web site X" is more accurate than "log on to Web site X." If you're entering a username and a password, fine. But beyond that, there's just no "logging in" going on.

And then we have the question of using one word or two.

"Login," "logon," "logout," and "logoff" function as adjectives:
This is our logout page.
Update your login information.

"Log in," "log on," "log out," and "log off" function as verbs ("verb phrases" if you want to get technical):
Log in here.
You should log off before you leave work.

You also want the two-word forms for verbals (a verbal is a noun or an adjective that was derived from a verb):
Logging in is easy. (Here, "logging in" is a noun. It's the thing that is [verb] easy [adjective].)

The emperor's new asterisk

So you're reading along and you come across something like this:
When Joe Schmo thought the microphone was off, he said, "Proposition 90 is s**t."

My hunch is your brain reads "s**t" and readily understands it as "shit." Am I wrong? I don't think I'm wrong.

So let's figure that we all easily understand "s**t" as "shit." Effectively we have an alternate spelling of "shit."

If you really wanted to make the profanity obscure, you'd use something more along the lines of:
When Joe Schmo thought the microphone was off, he said, "Proposition 90 is [obscenity]."

Unless you're legitimately concerned that your publication will be read by children, it seems silly to protect adults from the offensive character set "shit" when you print "s--t" with the understanding that they'll fully comprehend it as an alternate spelling.

But the funny thing is, I sense that adult readers are happier reading "s**t" and comprehending "shit" than being confronted with the horror of those extra two letters.