a blog about ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere
STRUNKANDWHITEN IT! is named after William Strunk Jr and E.B. White, the authors of The Elements Of Style, arguably the single most important guide and reference book a writer in the English language can own.
Here are essays and articles on the use, misuse, and abuse of our lovely if baffling language in advertising, in newspapers, and on the internet. There are also pieces on spelling and grammar, and on constructing sentences and paragraphs.
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LAST NIGHT’S SLUGFEST consisted of ninety minutes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton calling each other names (“liar” popped up more than once) and declaring each other untrustworthy and unfit for office. Policy differences and other matters that should concern these two candidates were set aside so that each could impugn the basic character of the other! READ MORE
THE LAST WORD ANYONE would use to describe me is “conservative”—at least not regarding most issues related to politics. But there’s more to life than politics: I remain old-fashioned on the issue of prescriptive versus descriptive dictionaries (strongly believing in the former) and the misuse of the designated hitter in major league baseball (not at all what you think).
And I am adamantly conservative about the correct use of grammar and punctuation and opposed to piss poor writing in all sizes and shapes. READ MORE
EVERY READER OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE has seen those three dots in the midst of an otherwise normal sentence that tells them something special is happening. These dots are called an ‘ellipsis’ and are usually associated with text quoted from another source. Most readers know that these dots indicate that words in the original text have been deemed unnecessary and omitted from the quote. READ MORE
I CAPITALIZE EVERY WORD in every title that I write in the text sections of my books and essays. That includes capitalizing the definite and indefinite articles and those perky prepositions! I always have and no doubt I always will. I do this for several reasons, which I share here in a gesture of bonhomie. But beware: this approach is at odds with most style guides. READ MORE
LAST YEAR, I published an article titled “on william strunk and elements of style (and concise vigorous writing)” here on Neal Umphred Dot Com. It’s as boring as the title makes it sound—you’d have to give a damn about the most important figure and the most important book in the history of American writing on the inses and outses of writing readably! READ MORE
I PUT DOWN MY MUG OF COFFEE and reached into my desk drawer and dexterously pulled out my miniature samurai-sword letter-opener with the dropbear-tooth handle. After staring into space for a few seconds and mumbling, “That’s not a knife—this is a knife,” I took a few swipes in front of me with the foot-long blade, voicing the appropriate martial-arts-movie swooshing-sounds as it cut the air. READ MORE
MY PREVIOUS ARTICLE ON DASHES was titled “On Those Pesky Dashes As Punctuation Marks” and addressed the em-dash (—), the en-dash (–), and the hyphen (-). It should have included some suggestions on the proper use of the forward leaning slash (/). After all, graphically the forward-slash, or virgule, is just an upright, slanted dash! READ MORE
USE OF THE DASH FOR PUNCTUATION is a lost art in contemporary American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) for many writers and apparently many typesetters. It’s a shame, as a well-placed dash or ten can ease the flow of reading and therefore lead to increased understanding and pleasure. Here I address the way that I—who use the dash with a near promiscuous disregard for the consequences—use both the en-dash and the em-dash in my work. READ MORE
CBDRILONCWRC IS NOT AN ACRONYM! It’s gobbledygook, or at least an initialism that looks like gobbledygook. But it’s CBDRILONCWRC that inspired “Meet the Acronym That Just Might Save the World,” an article by Robinson Meyer that arrived this morning in my Mother Jones email newsletter. And it comes with a sub-title: “It’s 12 letters long. Good luck pronouncing it.” READ MORE