... critical of the way in which people speak or write? It isn't because I do either perfectly, I'll admit. Frankly, I don't know the answer; but someone uses the wrong verb tense or plays musical chairs with am-is-are-was-were and my ears instantly perk up.
What brought this up was an article I read today on dive into mark about final edits to Mark Pilgrim's upcoming book. Here are some of his writing habits that the copy editor flagged:
from The first thing we do, let's shoot all the copy editors
Here are the main things I've learned so far:
- I use "have to" when I mean "need to."
- I misplace the word "only." Instead of "you can only walk through a stream once," the copy editor prefers "you can walk through a stream only once."
- I use "lots" when I mean "a lot."
- I use "which" when I mean "that."
- I overuse footnotes to be cute. This is a bad habit I picked up from the interactive fiction version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the infamous footnote 12.
- I use "like" when I mean "such as."
- I use "then" immediately after a comma, when I mean "and then."
- I overuse semicolons for no particular reason except that I've always liked them.
- I use "note" when I mean "notice", and vice-versa.
- I use "we" when I mean "you." "As we saw in the previous chapter..." "We'll work through this example line by line." And so forth. Apparently we won't be working through this example. You will be working through this example; I will be in the Bahamas drinking my royalty check.
From my book writing experience [should be published yet this summer] it is a little unnerving when I think something sounds just right and my editor doesn't. But ultimately, I am the writer, he/they are the publishers; therefore I'll put my ego aside and just consider it a job! If I wanted complete control, well, I'd have to publish/market/whatever the book myself.
The second comment to Mark's article (prescriptive grammarian) is a classic quote from some gentleman's linguistic lecture. Worth the time you'll take to read it.
