New Year: is it capitalised or not?

It’s the most capitalised time of the year, with plenty of Eves and Days and News to contend with, and as you browse the internet and the shop fronts, you’ll no doubt see plenty of interpretations of how to spell them all. To be fair, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day tend to be capitalised properly, but it’s New Year’s Day that causes confusion, probably with good reason. Do all three words start with a capital letter? Are any words capitalised? And that about that apostrophe? Here’s your guide.

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My top twelve English corrections

English is always changing, so today’s common corrections can easily become tomorrow’s accepted forms. It’s precisely how we’ve arrived at where we are now. But there’s a core to the purpose of any language, and that is that we all understand it so we can communicate. We accept variations from the mean, but stray too far and meaning can change. Some people say we don’t need apostrophes as the meaning is always obvious from the context. I’d say that’s true 99% of the time, but there are always borderline cases where it can cause confusion, so it’s better to have a rule and accept that it might sometimes be disobeyed (wilfully or erroneously) than to simply abandon the rule altogether.

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Professional titles and positions – should they start with a capital letter?

People have always been flattered by having their positions start with a capital letter. It marks them out from their subordinates, and makes Persons look Very Important. Anyone from The Queen down to the Area Manager can access an exclusive capitalisation club that is ever out of bounds to the cleaners, sales assistants and copywriters of the world.

But at what point is it wise to stop? If the Area Manager is capitalised, should the Branch Manager? The Assistant Branch Manager? The Team Leader? And if the Chairman of Shell gets a capital, should the Chairman of Bob’s Plumbing Services (Bob)?

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Can you start a sentence with a conjunction?

“You must not start a sentence with a conjunction.” That has been the mantra of many an exasperated English teacher, especially since the oiks started getting state education. Any pupil brave, daft or naive enough to raise a hand and ask “Why?” would receive some explanation along the lines of “Because it is said.”

So now we’re all grown up, we’ll ask again – why? The honest answer is that there is no reason. It’s just an arbitrary rule that’s been passed through the ages. But all language is arbitrary, isn’t it? Words and letters are but abstract concepts. Understanding them can only come through the education of rules.

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Our changing language: are editors doomèd?

An article by David Shariatmadari in the Guardian has inspired a bit of a buzz these past few days. It’s about the mutability of language, and how the quest for perfect English is a forlorn one. Read “Why it’s time to stop worrying about the decline of the English language” here (it’ll only take about 15–20 minutes of your time).

Copy editors and writers are inextricably tied up with the changing language. In my 20+ years in the business alone, I’ve seen English change – new words coming in, words changing their meanings and so on. I like the concept described in the article about generational change; words and phrases (or particular usages) that seem normal to teens feel alien and “wrong” to the older generation. They probably forget that they caused equal consternation to their own parents’ generation back in the day with all their groovy talk.

Are we gatekeepers or facilitators?

What is the role of the copy editor faced with an ever-changing language? The instinctive answer would be to resist change, and to enforce correctness where we see grammatical wrongdoing. But that misses the point of language, which is to express meaning in the best possible way to the audience it’s aimed at.

Copywriters know that if we’re writing copy aimed at retired people, the language, pace and tone will be very different to copy aimed at students. It’s not because elderly people should be spoken down to; it’s just that the language they feel comfortable with is different. We are, after all, in the businesses of informing and selling; brands that share values with their customers have a head start over the competition.

As copy editors and writers are the ones who decide what material is put in front of readers, we therefore have a role in shaping language, but we must also take care to reflect it. If we try too hard to stick to the rules we were taught at school, we’re destined to get wronger and wronger as we grow. It’s a weird concept that people working with language can actually get less experienced as they get older, but it’s true of those who remain too set in their ways.

statue of mother holding baby

Thou shalt not …

A classic example is not starting a sentence with a conjunction. It’s a rule so drilled into the young me that it helped me to learn what a conjunction is. But look; I just went and did it. And I do it all the time. There are still those who complain about it, but they are swimming against the flow. Ultimately, just ask yourself: does starting a sentence with a conjunction actually damage English language? Or does it allow you to break concepts into bite-sized sentences with natural flow and pauses, rather like spoken English? It also removes the need to cumbersome words like “alternatively” or “additionally” every other sentence.

Now ask yourself if the word or phrase you’re uncomfortable with is as bad as starting a sentence with “Or”. It’s probably no better or worse.

So what’s the point of editors?

All this brings us to the crux of the matter. If nothing is right and nothing is wrong, why pay people copy edit or proofread your work?

All marketing is the act of persuading potential customers that your product or service is the one to choose. An important factor is showing you’re trustworthy, careful, diligent and conscientious. Customers notice things like sloppy grammar, overuse of buzzwords (especially when trying to appeal to a younger audience) and awkward sentences. OK, some customers will notice. But why try to appeal to half an audience when you can attract the whole?

Don’t forget, the change of language is glacial – it’s not in a state of flux. As the article shows, it tends to change a bit every generation, but there’s always a core rightness that stays the same. Over time, those foundations shift, but stray too far and you lose your audience.

Analogy Time

Think of the scene in Back to the Future where [spoiler] the prom audience is given a sneak preview of rock ‘n’ roll in a blues-dominated era and they love it. But as soon as Marty drags the genre forward to one of rock ‘n’ roll’s offsprings (80s heavy metal) they stop dancing and stare at the stage in disbelief.

Something familiar has been modified, but there are enough anchors to where it came from for it to be understood. But in real life, people needed to understand the grammar of rock ‘n’ roll before they were ready for heavy metal. It took about ten years to happen.[/spoiler]

Another analogy is Formula One motor racing. Every year, the rules change slightly. Tyres change. RPM is limited. Aerodynamics get new regulations. But nobody would say that it’s no longer Formula One, even though watching footage from the 1950s makes it look like a different sport. But it’s this year’s rules you have to obey; not last year’s.

Write and edit for the moment you’re living in, because that will invariably be right.

Be natural

Good copy editors and writers understand this, and don’t try and preserve their style of reading and writing in amber. In fact, we love observing and using the changing language. We understand that there’s a natural pace to change, and that forcing modernity is just as bad as forcing tradition.


Image: Nick van den Berg

Using “a” or “an” before an abbreviation

Should we say “an NHS doctor” or “a NHS doctor”? There are two schools of thought on this subject: “vocalisation of the abbreviation” and “vocalisation of the first word”.

Abbreviation verbalised

By this rule, if the abbreviation starts with a letter that starts with a vowel when vocalised, the article used is “an”; if it starts with a consonant-sounding letter, it takes an “a”. This would give “an NHS hospital” and “a BBC documentary”.

Vowel-sounding letters (take “an”): A E F H I L M N O R S X

consonant-sounding letters (take “a”): B C D G J K P Q T U V W Y Z

(Note: H is pronounced “aitch”, not “haitch”, although this rule might be becoming more fluid.)

Word verbalised

By this method, the first letter of the first word as it is read out determines whether “a” or “an” is used. Here we would have “a NHS hospital” (“a National Health Service hospital”), or “an UV lamp” (“an ultraviolet lamp”).

The second method can look and read quite awkwardly but is just about acceptable as long as the style is used consistently, or where abbreviations are commonly fleshed out in the head and in speech. (For the record, I don’t think either of the examples here qualify.) Since the first method reads more naturally in the head, it’s easy to slip into it when the second style is supposedly being observed. The first method is by far the more popular.

Acronyms

An acronym is an abbreviation that is read out like a word, such as NASA, OPEC, NATO, etc. So here we would always have “a NASA spacecraft”, etc. These will always be treated as words, not abbreviations, so will always take the appropriate indefinite article.

Companies, teams and organisations: singular or plural?

are companies singular or plural?

A subject that never goes away is whether organisations should be treated as singulars or plurals. That is, whether we should say:

Tesco is the UK’s largest retail company
or
Tesco are the UK’s largest retail company

In this example, it seems pretty straightforward. The first reads more naturally and makes more sense. There’s no awkward disagreement between “are” (plural) and “company” (singular). And ultimately, Tesco is a single entity. Yes, it’s a collection of people, but it’s also the buildings, the trucks, the website, the light bulbs and everything else that gives it value.

This simplicity has made it a concrete rule that companies, teams and other organisations are singular, as Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out last week (and I tentatively agreed with).

When the singular rule starts to look shaky

As is so often the case with written English, the rules are often best bent. I usually find that wherever there’s debate in grammatical circles, it’s because there’s a jarring between a rule that someone has imposed and the way a language is actually spoken. Here are a few examples that prove the rule should be obeyed case-by-case.

Sports teams

The rule never looks more crow-barred in than when dealing with football and other sporting teams. Consider this sentence:

Manchester United was once champion of Europe, but now it languishes in fifth place in the league.

No natural speaker of English would be satisfied with this statement. Is it the grammar? No. Look at this:

Steve Davis was once world snooker champion, but now he languishes in 200th place.

When it’s a singular entity, there’s no doubt it’s grammatically correct. But didn’t we say organisations are singular too? Just like Tesco, Manchester United is a mixture of people (players and staff, and perhaps even fans), plus real estate (Old Trafford) and other physical and virtual assets. So why does it sound weird to be a singular? It’s probably because when we picture United in our minds, we see the players, the crowd and the management, not the listing on the Stock Exchange (look at the difference in language here, and how natural it looks).

It’s the same with national teams, too. “The United States has won the Women’s World Cup” sounds too dry for the circumstances, whereas “The United States has imposed trade tariffs on China” does not. What’s going on here? It’s probably down to the human factor. We’re thinking of the team sweating and bleeding to win the trophy, not some policy document.

Also, national team names are really just shorthand for something longer. When we shout, “Come on, England”, we’re really shouting “Come on, the England national football team”, not “Come on, the bit of land that juts out of the North Sea bordered by Scotland and Wales”. If I had my way, fans would be thrown out of the stadium for chanting anything less than the full title.

“England have done it! In the last minute of extra-time!”

John Motson at Italia ’90 after David Platt’s famous goal

Talking about your own company

Another situation where treating a company as a singular feels wrong is when you’re talking about your own business. How would you think about this fictional company if you visited its “About It” page and saw the following?

Ace carpentry was founded in 1972 by husband and wife Larry and Sally Ace. It has now grown to cover four towns and employs 44 people. It really prides itself on the quality of its work – no job is too big or small for it. Why not give it a call and talk to one of its sales team? You’ll be delighted with its “Ace” service!

It’s clearly wrong, but is the logical conclusion to always treating companies as singulars. And of course, no company, however large, ever has an “About it” page.

are companies singular or plural?

Do what comes naturally

The few examples here (and there are many more) illustrate why it’s unwise to apply a hard and fast “singular” rule on your company’s literature. There are times when your company will be best represented as a singular entity, and times when it won’t. If pressed to come up with a rule for a corporate style guide, I’d say it’s all down to the intent of the sentence. If you’re talking about the company itself, take a singular route. But if you’re referring to the actions of its people, use plurals.

If you’ve ever wondered why a lot of corporate literature starts with “At Company X, we …”, it’s usually to get around the singular rule. It takes the focus off the company as an object and onto its people, which is usually what they are actually referring to when they’re promoting themselves. As a reader, you’re immediately more empathetic towards the company. It’s no longer a faceless organisation; it’s a collection of people working to make your life better.

And that’s exactly what it wants you to think.


Image: Annie Spratt

Hyphens, en dashes and em dashes: how to use them

They might all look vaguely similar, but hyphens and dashes serve very different purposes. Here’s a quick rundown of their differences and how to use them.

Hyphen ‐

The hyphen is shorter than both dashes (although in some typefaces, it can look identical). It has two purposes in writing and typography: joining words and splitting words.

Joining words

When two words (or a word and a prefix/suffix) are being made into one, they are joined by a hyphen. Hyphens are often used to join two parts of an adjective to prevent ambiguity. Consider:

  • a cold-blooded animal (the blood is cold, not the animal that happens to have blood)
  • a second-hand clothes shop (the clothes are second-hand)
  • a six-year-old girl (the girl is six years old)
  • there were six year-old girls (there were six girls who were 12 months old)

When a hyphenated word comes into popular usage, it usually loses its hyphen. Nobody would describe an aircraft as being super-sonic any more.

Splitting words

In typography, if a word is so long that it would cause unacceptable word spacing if it were to go on the next line, it can be split with a hyphen. In word processors, you can specify that a hyphen is optional. That means that if the whole word fits on a line, it will not be broken, but if it doesn’t you can specify where it will split.

It’s good practice to split words as naturally as possible, so the reader gets an idea of the pronunciation. That usually means splitting at the end of each syllable.  For example:

  • man-slaughter, not mans-laughter
  • co-operate, not coop-erate
  • Mersey-side, not Mers-eyside
  • proof-read-ing, not pro-ofre-ading

Don’t split words with one syllable.

As a copywriter, I don’t really need to worry about this kind of hyphenation because I don’t really know where individual words will appear on the page. It’s a job for typesetters and designers.

Splitting hyphenated words

If a word is naturally hyphenated, it is bad practice to split it anywhere else if it doesn’t fit on the line. If the natural hyphen cannot be used to break to word, consider changing the letter spacing or word spacing.

Hyphens and word counts

A hyphenated word counts as one word. However, most word counts are specified for visual reasons, so don’t worry if you have a lot of hyphenated words and the count seems low. Usually, a single hyphenated word will count as two from a design perspective.

Do Hyphenated Words in Title Case Have Capitals?

Whether hyphenated words in title case* have both component words starting with a capital depends on the style. Technically, a hyphenated word is one word, so only the first letter should be capitalised. However, some styles demand that both, or all, component words, plus prefixes and suffixes, start with a capital.

* “Title case” is the heading style to this section, where each major words starts with a capital, as opposed to “sentence case”, where normal capitalisation is used (like all the other headings here).

En dash –

The en dash has three main purposes: as a bridge between items in a range; as a type of parenthetical symbol; or in place of a colon or semicolon. Its name comes from the fact that it’s the length of a lower-case letter n.

Bridging with an en dash

Where there’s a range of numbers, they can be shown with an unspaced en dash in place of the word “to”. It also works with letters, when they are being used alphabetically. So we can write:

  • The job will be ready in three to four days or The job will be ready in 3–4 days.
  • Complete sections A to E or Complete sections A–E

Note that there is no space before or after the dash. Typographically, however, the dash can be used to break over two lines, like a hyphen.

An en dash can also be used to denote journeys, periods of time or pieces of infrastructure. Again, the dash replaces the word “to”:

  • The Stockton–Darlington railway
  • The Victorian–Edwardian eras

Using bridging en dashes with units of measurement

If you’re using a dash to show a range of units, you only need to use the unit once.

  • 56–62 °C, not 56 °C–62 °C
  • 3–6 o’clock, not 3 o’clock–6 o’clock

If you want to avoid ambiguity by mentioning the unit twice, use the word “to” instead.

Note: a bridging en dash means “to”, not “and”

Avoid using an en dash to replace the word “and”, particularly when following the word “between”.

  • between 6 and 8 years, not between 6–8 years

En dash as a parenthetical symbol

The second use of the en dash is as a parenthetical symbol. Parentheses are the ( and ) symbols, often called brackets. That gives a clue to the use of en dashes in this context – they are used to separate a word, phrase or clause from the sentence that surrounds it. It’s useful for giving additional information or reminding the reader abut some previously mentioned fact. In most cases, the en dash can be swapped with parentheses, em dashes or commas and the sentence will work perfectly well.

Note that these en dashes are spaced; that is, they have a space before and after them.

  • The farmer – who had been watching closely – took aim and fired.
  • The farmer—who had been watching closely—took aim and fired.
  • The farmer (who had been watching closely) took aim and fired.
  • The farmer, who had been watching closely, took aim and fired.

However, if a sentence is long and convoluted, with several nesting parentheticals, it’s good to mix up the types to aid clarity.

  • The farmer – who had been watching closely and concluded (wrongly) that the foxes were after his chickens – took aim and fired.

is preferable to:

  • The farmer, who had been watching closely and concluded, wrongly, that the foxes were after his chickens, took aim and fired.
  • The farmer (who had been watching closely and concluded (wrongly) that the foxes were after his chickens) took aim and fired.

As a rule, the sentence should work equally well with or without the part that’s parenthesised.

  • The farmer took aim and fired.
  • The farmer – who had been watching closely and concluded that the foxes were after his chickens – took aim and fired.

En dash as a colon or semicolon

A spaced en dash can often replace a colon or a semicolon, and can be advisable if there are already (semi)colons in the sentence.

  • There was only one possible solution: jump.
  • There was only one possible solution – jump.

 

  • I like the summer; it reminds me of home.
  • I like the summer – it reminds me of home.

Em dash —

The em dash is the longest of the dashes, supposedly the length of a letter m (hence its name). It can be used parenthetically or to replace missing words or letters.

Em dash as a parenthetical symbol

The em dash has exactly the same parenthetical purpose as the spaced en dash above. Its use is purely a matter of style. Even parenthetically, it can be either spaced or unspaced, but note that unspaced em dashes do take up a lot or room and can look unsightly. The em dash is generally favoured in the US, whereas in the UK the en dash takes precedence; but there are no set rules here.

Em dash to replace missing words or letters

The em dash can be used to show hidden or missing text. That might be:

  1. to carry a plot (where the writer doesn’t want the reader to find something out
  2. where text is unknown or unknowable
  3. where expletives are used.

Examples:

  1. She finally worked out that C— was the murderer
  2. The ancient engraving said “Lorem I— dolor sit amet, c—tur adi—od tempor
  3. “Come back here, you f—g m—r,” she requested.

Photo: Kristaps Grundsteins

Readability analysis: accept, consider, ignore?

readability analysis computer

Imagine the scene. A graphic designer submits some branding materials to a client. The client’s marketing guy feeds the image into a scanner and takes a sip of coffee as the computer does his its work. Ten seconds later, the progress bar reaches 100 and a bullet list in red, amber and green fills the screen. The visuals have been thoroughly assessed, and it’s not looking good.

Two of the rectangles have long edges that are 3% below golden ratio 
The model’s smile has an ecstasy coefficient of 0.73, 0.02 below optimum
The yellow glow is hex #f6f600, not the more pleasing #f6f300
28% of the image is in the passive voice
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” is not standard English
The kitten image satisfies the Schrödinger cuteness pudding by 95%

This isn’t a scene from Black Mirror. It is happening right now to graphic designers from Reykjavik to Wellington. And they’re mad as hell.

Actually, that’d be a lousy episode. But it is starting to happen to copywriters. I’m hearing of writers having their work fed through readability algorithms by clients as a first step to being signed off. I wouldn’t say it’s a common phenomenon just yet, but who knows. As a worker with words, I’ve been here before …

Spell Czech 😂

Back in the day, their was a debate among proofreaders a bout weather there daze whirr numbered thanks to spell chequers on whirred processors, and sentences like this one were commonly scene on many an Internet massage bored. Proofreaders would even discuss whether they themselves would ever consider using one. Naturally, most were offended at the mere suggestion of it (but of course we used them – why wouldn’t you?). Once the limitations and undeniable benefits of the spell checker became obvious, we all calmed down. And anyway, we laughed, there would never be such a thing as

Grammar Check!

Yes, we did know that the sentence was fragmented. We even considered correcting our correlative conjunction mismatches. But the rise of the grammar checker still took the writing and editing community by surprise. Checking grammar was much more difficult than comparing words with a dictionary (and ignoring homophones). It required an understanding of language that is extraordinarily difficult to achieve.

Flawed though grammar checkers are, I must admit to finding the technology remarkable, and I occasionally have a Kasparov v. Deep Blue moment when a particularly complex structural flaw gets flagged, even if 99% of the time it’s a flaw I’d have noticed on second reading. (And never forget that Kasparov lost 4-2, not 6-0. Grammar check mate.)

Readability analysis: the final insult

So here we are. We’ve had our spelling and grammar autocorrected, and now we’re having the very fruits of our trade – our sentences – analysed by emotionless digital gatekeepers. In fact, many of us are willingly submitting our work to the machines whenever we blog. We are allowing our sentences to have their essential components – verbs, voice, adjectives, flow, lengths – judged for correctness by computers.

Is there such a thing as good copy and bad copy? I hope so. No, I think so. Let’s just say you know it when you see it. We can probably agree on that.

But can the measure of good or bad copy really be determined by how far it strays from some arbitrary mathematical mean?

This development doesn’t seem to be satisfying demand from grammarians, publishers or website owners. It seems to be more like the spawn of the SEO sector. I’m not going to argue about SEO. I’ve met and worked with enough SEOs to recognise that they know exactly what they are doing. Their actions have tangible, measurable results, and they are lovely people.

It just seems to me that the rise of readability analysis comes from that mindset – from people who are sure that if they can optimise everything until any rough edges are removed, success will follow.

readability analysis computer

The cursed passive voice

I’m yet to be convinced that readability analysis has reached the stage where its results should be taken as gospel, just as spelling and grammar checkers can still make awkwardly clever mistakes.

The passive voice is a particular favourite of the tests. Yes, it’s good to be active and to have all your subjects and objects actively working on the sentence’s behalf. But passivity often carries a subtlety, a quiet confidence, a sense of not having to try too hard, a feeling that not every sentence has to be a call to action. It’s also a useful way of referring to previous statements without having to restate sentence objects or their pronouns. And it can bring the focus of a sentence to the object rather than the subject, because sometimes it’s the subject that’s more important. This guy gets it.

It can’t simply be stated that the passive voice is bad. Indeed, PV is good enough to be allowed in a recommended[by whom?] 10% of sentences, but go over that and all of a sudden your copy is suboptimal. Do you buy that?

Ultimately, it’s quite easy to identify passive voice algorithmically, and that’s where its prominence in tests comes from. If a sentence feels right to you, the human, it’s right. By all means run your copy through a readability checker, but have an open mind about its results – you risk destroying something beautifully imperfect.

Not the same as reading levels

I’m quite interested in reading levels when it comes to copy. Writing copy that a typical 11-year old would understand (even if it’s for an educated adult audience) seems like a sound concept to me. Your speech patterns and, to a large extent, your everyday vocabulary, are pretty much set in stone by that age. Great copywriters don’t necessarily know loads of fancy words – and they certainly don’t use them in their copy. They’ve learnt to use the words everybody understands efficiently, possibly in unexpected ways that carry new meaning.

Copywriters’ clients usually tell them who their target markets are, but frankly, if you can’t work it out for yourself, you probably shouldn’t be in the business. Good writers know their audiences just as well fashion designers, film-makers and comedians do, and accept that there’s certain language you can’t expect a given audience to respond to.

I think there’s probably a place for machine learning and algorithms to determine good reading levels, and the results I’ve seen can be useful; but the ultimate test of the quality of copy is how well it informs, entertains and converts in the wild. Here’s some good analysis from an avowed rival.

We’re not there yet

Anyway, I’ve said my piece. As I mentioned at the start, it’s still uncommon for clients to reject work on the basis of digital readability analyses. People might not all understand the intricacies of grammar or spelling, but they know when something is readable because, well, they can read it. Any danger comes from people using a digital readability test as their first sweep (as they would with a spell checker) and rejecting perfectly good work on the basis of its results.

Like all creatives, copywriters are good at taking criticism on the chin, and frankly we have it easy – rejected graphic design often means starting again from scratch, whereas we might just have to re-jig a few sentences. (I don’t even know how sculptors ever get to the point where they can submit their work.) Criticism from another human is real and valuable.

In terms of SEO, readability also isn’t a ranking factor per se, although an unreadable site will suffer a higher bounce rate, which is a ranking factor. It would have to be quite dire to cause noticeable bounce compared with, say, slow loading times or bad mobile friendliness, though. The best readability test you can do is to read it yourself and let a few other people read it and to act on their comments. They will be correct roughly 100% of the time.


Image: Sean Batty