Compiling the list was a pleasure, and sharing it allows me to express my great gratitude to those who wrote and edited these wonderful books.

Here’s the list:

• On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. Funny, engaging, inspiring. Very sharp focus on writing uncluttered nonfiction.
• The Copyeditor’s Handbook, by Amy Einsohn. Clear, straightforward, lots of tips.
• Don’t Sabotage Your Submission, by Chris Roerden. Excellent. It’s not surprising that the author is an award-winning editor of fiction.
• The Chicago Manual of Style, the University of Chicago Press. A rich resource that’s now available online as well as in print.
• Guide to News Writing, by Rene J. Cappon. For professional journalists. It’s Associated Press style.
• The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. Fundamental.
• Writing from the Inside Out, by Dennis Palumbo (engaging, heartening)

Cheers,
Tara

http://www.taratreasurefield.com

“I’ve said no comment can’t comment and plain I really don’t know more times than I can count and your Mrs. Martin created some kind of furor at the marina.”

To fix it, I’d use single quotation marks to separate what the speaker is saying now from what he said in the past. Then I’d put the brakes on the run-on sentence with a semicolon, and add a few words to switch gears, like this:

“I’ve said ‘no comment,’ ‘can’t comment,’ and plain, ‘I really don’t know,’ more times than I can count; and by the way, your Mrs. Martin created some kind of furor at the marina.”

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Tara

How do idioms work? In particular, which of these is correct:

That seems up you and your wife’s alley.
That seems up your and your wife’s alley.

There’s no real ‘alley’, so the guidelines with respect to possession don’t apply.

The second example, “That seems up your and your wife’s alley,” is correct. In it, the possessive pronoun “your” indicates that Marc and his wife share the same interests or qualifications (their interests or qualifications are “up the same alley”), and that something of mutual interest has come to their attention (it’s up their alley”).

The first example, “That seems up you and your wife’s alley,” would never be correct, because neither “you alley” nor “you wife’s alley” makes sense.

I have never come across any rule stating that the guidelines with respect to possession don’t apply to idioms.

As always, I invite your questions and comments.

Blessings,
Tara

The steward was outside the laundry, enjoying a quiet cigarette.

My mind promptly seized on a quiet cigarette, and wouldn’t let it go. Fretful and anxious, the mind wondered if the author had ever known a cigarette to be loud. If so, how loud, and what kind of sound did the cigarette make?

Then a similar phrase came to mind: a quiet moment.

Though it never occurred to me until my mind balked at a quiet cigarette, a quiet moment doesn’t make much sense either.

Being the stickler for clear writing that I am, I’d probably change the offending sentence to something like this:

The steward was outside the laundry, quietly enjoying a cigarette.

That would make more sense. But it wouldn’t be anywhere near as entertaining or fun.

Cheers,
Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio

Which is correct?
the College’s associate’s degree programs or
the College’s associate degree programs?

First things first.

If the college uses associate degree programs, I’d recommend:

The college’s associate degree programs.

If the college uses associate’s degree programs, I’d avoid the double possessive by putting it like this:

The associate’s degree programs at the college.

You have probably noticed that I changed College (up style of capitalization) to college (down style of capitalization).

Amy Einsohn, author of The Copyeditor’s Handbook offers several examples of down style versus up style:

• down style: The president announced; The Truman administration; After the secretary of state left
• up style: The President announced; The Truman Administration; After the Secretary of State left.

Here’s another example of down style, from The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition:

Albion College was founded in 1835. The college has some illustrious alumni.

Chicago favors down style. So do I. With up style, my eyes strain over the many ups and downs.

What do you think? Any comments, questions?

Cheers,
Tara
Tara’s Writing Studio

Imagine how frustrated I felt when I came across the following sentence, which totally baffled me:

Under an old umbrella with a broken rib, Allison hurried back to the house.

“I don’t recall that Allison broke a rib,” I thought, and quickly flipped back through the pages, searching for the scene that I had apparently missed.

I never found that scene, and after re-reading the sentence that had stumped me, I realized my mistake: Allison didn’t have a broken rib. The umbrella did!

Now, I can well imagine that this was perfectly clear to you all along. But people such as I need extra attention, not only from those who give us directions and offhandedly declare with great certainty, “You can’t miss it,” when we usually do miss it, but also from writers and editors.

So, when you sit in front of your computer or put pen or pencil to paper, please carefully review every word in every sentence for anything that could possibly be misleading. Even then, you will certainly miss something. But do your best.

One last thing. If I had written the mystery sentence, I would have put it something like this:

Under an old umbrella that had a broken rib, Allison hurried back to the house.

Cheers,

Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio

caging (1556).   1 : to confine or keep in or as if in a cage  2 : to drive (as a puck) into a cage and score a goal

The point of voter caging is to prevent certain groups of qualified registered voters from casting their ballots by essentially “putting them in a cage.” The usual targets are voters who are unfamiliar with their rights under the law, soldiers deployed overseas, and people who lack the time and other resources to prove that their registration is valid.

In this 2008 election, voters who have lost their homes due to foreclosure are especially vulnerable to caging; when they arrive at their polling places, challengers may charge that their registrations are no longer valid because their addresses aren’t current.

For more details, take a look at Wikipedia’s writeup on caging. Also take a look at NOW’s recent program on caging.

If you believe that you are at risk of being challenged at your polling place, take action:

• Vote early, if possible. This will give you time to resolve any issues that may arise

• Call the Election Protection Hotline at 1 866 OUR VOTE

• Call your county registrar of voters, or county elections office

• Avoid using a provisional ballot, which may not be counted.

This is a particular important and exciting election year. Happy voting!

Cheers,
Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio

What about when yourself and someone else are in possession. Do you say “me and Sarah’s house” or “Mine and Sarah’s house” or “Sarah’s and my house”?

In this case, I would choose “Sarah’s and my house.”

To review, the rule for indicating joint possession for compound nouns is to make only the second noun possessive by adding ‘s to the end. But when one of the possessors is a personal pronoun, it doesn’t make sense to follow that rule. Here’s how the online Guide to Grammar and Writing puts it:

When one of the possessors in a compound possessive is a personal pronoun, we have to put both possessors in the possessive form or we end up with something silly: “Bill and my car had to be towed last night.”

* Bill’s and my car had to be towed last night.
* Giorgio’s and her father was not around much during their childhood.

If this second sentence seems unsatisfactory, you might have to do some rewriting so you end up talking about their father, instead, or revert to using both names: “Giorgio and Isabel’s father wasn’t around much . . . . ” (and then “Giorgio” will lose the apostrophe +s).

Also keep in mind that “me” is the objective form, not the possessive form, of “I.”

Finally, according to the Chicago Manual of Style, “mine” is the absolute, or independent, form:

[Mine] can stand alone without a noun . . . The independent form does not require an explicit object: the thing possessed may be either an antecedent or something understood {this dictionary is mine} {this cabin of yours} {Where is hers?}.

Cheers,

Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio

Dr. Gonstead was a pioneer in the chiropractic profession, developing equipment and a method of analysis that used more than one criteria to verify the precise location of vertebral subluxation.

Tim wrote that the plural form, “criteria,” is not correct. It should be the singular form, “criterion,” as below:

Dr. Gonstead was a pioneer in the chiropractic profession, developing equipment and a method of analysis that used more than one criterion to verify the precise location of vertebral subluxation.

Tip: There can be two, three, or more criteria, but there is only one criterion.

Tim also noticed an error in one of my September 2008 posts, in which I offered the following as an example of a sentence with a nonrestrictive dependent clause:

People whose thoughts are mostly positive are happier than people whose thoughts are mostly negative, in my opinion.

In fact,  as Tim wrote, “in my opinion” is a prepositional phrase. Here’s a correct example of a nonrestricitve dependent clause. Notice that the clause begins with a subordinate conjunction (if) and has both a subject (you) and a verb (want):

People whose thoughts are mostly positive are happier than people whose thoughts are mostly negative, if you want my opinion.

Cheers,

Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio

In any case, diagramming is a valuable tool for writers and editors who want to know not only how, but why, one way of putting thoughts on paper is “correct” English usage and another is not.

I often go to the web pages below to make sense of what’s going on in puzzling sentence constructions. Perhaps you will find them useful too.

Large powerpoint presentation
(the link to this presentation is at the center, and also at the bottom, of the page)

Brief powerpoint presentations

This last page offers a full menu of powerpoint presentations, for diagramming, punctuation, sentence fragments, quizzes, and more.

Powerpoint menu

Enjoy!

Tara Treasurefield

Tara’s Writing Studio