The StuSie: Stet Offensive

Donnerstag, Februar 01, 2007

Stet Offensive

If you're familiar with Harper's magazine, you know that they have a section up front titled "Readings" in which they publish interesting or amusing pieces, often excerpts. In the current issue (Feb 2007), one of the readings is titled "Stet Offensive" and reprints some of the Q&As that have been posted on the Chicago Manual of Style website. They're super sweet and I got quite the giggle out of them. Admittedly I'd enjoyed a sherry or two at the time, but I think it's still worth reading.

Question: When I began learning English grammar from the nuns in or about 1951, I was taught to NEVER use a comma either after or before independent clauses or compound sentences. Did the rules of English grammar and punctuation change while I was in that three-week coma in 1965 or in the years that it took to regain my basic and intellectual functioning before I returned to teaching?

Answer: I’m sorry I can’t account for your state of mind, but standard punctuation calls for a comma before a conjunction that joins two independent clauses unless the clauses are very short. Please see CMOS 6.32. I would go further and suggest that it’s a good idea to reexamine any rule you were taught that includes the word “never” or “always.”

Question:The menu in our cafeteria shows that enchiladas are available “Tues.–Fri.” However, when I ordered one on a Wednesday, I was informed that enchiladas are available on Tuesday AND Friday, not Tuesday THROUGH Friday. When I informed the cafeteria manager that this was incorrect, she seemed shocked and refused to change the sign. Please help determine who is correct!

Answer: Although the sign was incorrect, I’m not sure you should annoy the person who provides the enchiladas.

Question: My question is, is there any standard for the usage of emoticons? In particular, is there an accepted practice for the use of emoticons that include an opening or closing parenthesis as the final token within a set of parentheses? Should I (1) incorporate the emoticon into the closing of the parentheses (giving a dual purpose to the closing parenthesis, such as in this case. :-) (2) simply leave the emoticon up against the closing parenthesis, ignoring the bizarre visual effect of the doubled closing parenthesis (as I am doing here, producing a doubled-chin effect :-)) (3) put a space or two between the emoticon and the closing parenthesis (like this: :-) ) (4) or avoid the situation by using a different emoticon (Some emoticons are similar. :-D), placing the emoticon elsewhere, or doing without it (i.e., reword to avoid awkwardness)?

Answer: Until academic standards decline enough to accommodate the use of emoticons, I’m afraid CMOS is unlikely to treat their styling, since the manual is aimed primarily at scholarly publications. And the problems you’ve posed in this note give us added incentive to keep our distance. (But I kind of like that double-chin effect.)

Question: Is there an acceptable way to form the possessive of words such as Macy’s and Sotheby’s? Sometimes rewording to avoid the possessive results in less felicitous writing.

Answer: Less felicitous than “Sotheby’s’s”? I don’t think so.

Question: A friend and I were looking at a poster that read “guys apartment.” I believe it should read “guys’ apartment.” She claims that it should read “guys’s apartment” and that the CMOS specifically gives the example of “guys’s” to make “guys” possessive. I looked through every section on possessives and did not find the word “guys’s” or any rule that would make this correct. Some people say “you guys’s apartment”—did I overlook the word “guys’s” as used in the attributive position? (I don’t think I did.)

Answer: “Guys’s” is acceptable in the way that “youse guys” is acceptable; that is, neither is yet recognized as standard prose, and if your friend can find it in CMOS, I’ll eat my hat. Plural nouns that end in s (like “guys”) don’t add another s to form the possessive, e.g., the students’ lounge. “Guys’ apartment” is the standard spelling. If you want to make “guys” attributive, you can get away without the apostrophe, but you might test the idea with a plural noun that doesn’t end in s to see whether the attributive actually works: I doubt you’d write “the women apartment,” so you shouldn’t write “the guys apartment” either. And shame on your friend. It must make you wonder what else she’s capable of.

Question: Oh, English-language gurus, is it ever proper to put a question mark and an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence in formal writing? This author is giving me a fit with some of her overkill emphases, and now there is this sentence that has both marks at the end. My everlasting gratitude for letting me know what I should tell this person.

Answer: In formal writing, we allow both marks only in the event that the author was being physically assaulted while writing. Otherwise, no.