Wait - do we already have a Copyeditor General?

My new hero is Annetta Cheek of the Center for Plain Language. She has helped push through the Federal Plain Writing Act (PDF), which mandates that government agencies should write plainly — that is, clearly and in a style that the target audience will understand — in all documents intended for the public.

The CPL website has some nice examples of government language before and after a good old-fashioned plaining.

My favorite:

Before
This rule proposes the Spring/Summer subsistence harvest regulations in Alaska for migratory birds that expire on August 31, 2003.

After
This rule proposes the Spring/Summer subsistence harvest regulations for migratory birds in Alaska. The regulations will expire on August 31, 2003.

The Plain Language Action and Information Network, a group of federal language nerds I would like to hug, has created a fabulous document (PDF) to help government agencies tighten their texts.

It covers everything from how to organize themes to avoiding passive voice to (let's get seriously basic here) how to write a topic sentence. Oh, and there's a whole section on writing for the web (yay!).

Frankly, I think every organization in the country, from hospitals (I'm looking at you, nice surgeon who advised that I take a pill sublingually) to banks to schools to businesses, needs to print it out, hang it on the wall, memorize it.

The Act goes into effect in October. Prepare yourselves, Feds!

Copyeditor General's ruling: Perhaps the first focus of the Act should be the Act itself, which begins:

To enhance citizen access to Government information and services by establishing that Government documents issued to the public must be written clearly, and for other purposes.

"...should be written clearly, and for other purposes"? What other purposes should it be written for?

Good grammar will make bath time lots of fun

Allow me to translate:

Ducky Is by the Dozen
Rubber Ducky You Are in Possession of The One

Who doesn't love rubber ducky is? They've been around since the created of the 1800 ...

It's even rumored that Queen Elizabeth owned a rubber ducky (which, being in the past tense, implies either Liz or her bath toy are no longer with us)!

It (Her Majesty's duck, apparently) became hugely popular ... and since then has achieved iconic status in the USA (which explains why Liz no longer has the duck; it's headlining at Caesar's Palace next month).

Now days (who needs extra vowels anywy?) ... it's one of our most popular theme baby gifts (any thoughts on this one? Popular theme-baby? No?).

Copyeditor General's ruling: This apparent ignorance of basic grammar makes me so tense. I need a tubby filled with water and nice fluffy suds.

Yogurt will not be duplicitous

One lunchtime last week, my boss Caren came over to my desk, bearing a pot of Greek yogurt.

"I've got one for you!" she said, triumphantly. "Take a look at this."



Yep, looks like yogurt.

"Now read the description."



Copyeditor General's ruling: There's nothing wrong with being a math-averse copywriter; I count myself in that number. But when you're dealing with percentages, it's useful to understand what "0% non fat" means.

Of course, this could just be the world's most unhealthy yogurt.

And congrats to Caren, partly on her upcoming nuptials, but most importantly on being Copyeditor General's Deputy of the Week!

There will be educated people in Harvard Square

When you think Harvard Square, what images come to mind? Okay, probably one of the following:

• Hordes of tourists in matching crimson sweatshirts from the cart in the subway station;
• Suburban a-haaaal-turrrnative teens practicing skateboard moves (oops, sorry, they've moved on to parkour now) in the Pit;
• An inexplicable line of people waiting to get into the decidedly underwhelming Border Cafe;
• Rami Salami

Okay, yes, those are all true. However, the answer we're looking for: Disciplined intellectuals thriving in a world of high educational expectations, with examples of academic excellence and exactitude at every turn.

Right? Harvard, right? Three hundred and fifty years of graduating people like JFK, T.S. Eliot, Benazir Bhutto, Margaret Atwood, W.E.B Du Bois, Robert Benchley? Shouldn't that somehow rub off on the rest of the population?

Maybe the educational vibes just don't make it as far as the offices of harvardsquare.com.







Copyeditor General's ruling:I suppose I shouldn't have such high expectations. After all, some talented and inspiring people may have wandered Harvard Square as students, but so did Antonin Scalia, Alberto Gonzales, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, Phyllis Schlafly, Bill O'Reilly, Ted Kaczynski ...

Fection will be controlled

Riding the Red Line yesterday, I spotted this ad:



And yes, I learned that it's easier to take photos when the train is not hurtling through a tunnel. Once we reached next station, I was able to get a clearer shot:



How should this have been handled? Take your pick:

• QC Pathfinder is the industry leader in infection control
• QC Pathfinder is the industry leader[comma] infection control
• QC Pathfinder is the industry-leading infection control

And I'm not completely convinced about the last one.

Copyeditor General's ruling: I hope their infection control solution is better than their copyediting. Otherwise it's Outbreak time.

Ice cream sites will not give me the chills

Ice cream is one of those summer staples that signifies nostalgia and innocence. Even towns otherwise carpet-bombed into chain-store homogeneity often have a mom-and-pop ice cream stand that opens on Memorial Day and serves up dairy delights throughout the season.

These days, of course, nostalgia needs to be upgraded with a website.

Which just means more tasty treats in the error icebox.

Let's start slowly, to avoid brain-freeze, with a basic typo from Lickety's Ice Cream Truck:



And then we'll ease in with another example from the same site, this time from a page of resources for kids. Or possibly just one specific kid.



Because we know how much kids enjoy fan.

The origins of ice cream are much debated (check out the lovely documentary Gelato: An Endless Passion for an overview). But at least we have some idea of the sacrifices of later creative spirits:



How on earth did he keep his balance?

And the prize for tasty typos goes to the Dairy Kastle in Louisville, Kentucky, where the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well:



Probably wise to move away from falvors anyway.

Best of all, though, is the same page's conclusion. Forget the stubbornly consistent refusal to accept the apostrophe. Ignore the fact that the second sentence is a fragment. Disregard the your/you're issue.

What, exactly, does the last sentence mean?



Copyeditor General's ruling: Is it wrong to critique the linguistic abilities of these small seasonal businesses? Should we overlook their typos on the grounds that they're not slick corporations with fancy-pants copyeditors and high-powered MarComm professionals?

Or does the fact that they're providing a service to children (who, frankly, need all the grammatical role models they can get) suggest they should be held to a higher standard?

Ah, it's too hot to think about this stuff.

Anyone fancy an ice cream?

Music moguls will control ingenues, not time

Dragon-boat goddess Ashley, who is seriously in the running to be my full-time deputy, alerted me to the fact that high-powered music industry executives are attempting to control time.

I'm not sure whether this is a scheme to increase the number of weeks a record stays in the Billboard Top 100 (does the Top 100 still exist? Do "records" still exist?) or whether they're trying to prevent the otherwise unstoppable, inexorable progress of mortality. Either way, it seems that, if you're rich and powerful enough, you can make one year last for five.

At least, that's what the BBC News website would lead us to believe, in a story about Mariah Carey's recent nuptials:



Copyeditor General's ruling: In fairness to Mr. Mottola, it's possible he doesn't actually control time; I'm sure one year being married to crazy Mariah Carey just feels five times as long.

Promises, not things, will be kept

More fun with fortune cookies:



Copyeditor General's ruling: I hereby promise everyone five bucks and nice piece of chocolate cake.

Cute kids will not go barefoot

Is this what we've come to? Clothing companies, under fire for exploiting children, are now going around stealing the shoes from their feet? And not only that, but they're also specifically targeting adorable tykes?

Spotted on Facebook:



Copyeditor General's ruling: If you see a cute kid wearing a single green Doc Marten, tell him I know where the other one is.

The New Yorker will not test my faith

I love The New Yorker for many reasons, chief among which is their renowned attitude toward accuracy. Every word is proofed; every fact is checked; every quote is verified with its progenitor.

The graceful writing, the clean editing, and the backbone of truthful reporting allow me to read without fear of encountering typos and grammatical foul play. (Though they also make every Seymour Hersh article about the Middle East extra-depressing, because it's all true.)

So when The Boy said to me last week, "I think I found an error in The New Yorker," (and yes, he said the title in italics, because that's how we work at CGHQ) my heart sank. How could such a thing happen?

It was in the April 7 Financial Page column:



(I'm doing this slowly, because it's so painful. Okay, here goes):



But is it an error? First glance suggests there's a preposition missing from the second sentence: it should read "That will probably mean that we end up with fewer business failures ..."

But this being The New Yorker, which doesn't let me down ever ever (right?), I'm willing to believe (read: hope) that the meaning of the sentence is "That means we, as a society, can self-identify as failures on fewer occasions."

Copyeditor General's ruling: What do you think? Does the sentence make sense without the preposition, or is this a test of my faith in the infallibility of my editorial role model?

Nothing will dangle. Nothing at all.

I'm beginning to suspect it's possible to have an entire blog based around things that dangle; modifiers, participles, whatever. They're just so damn prevalent. And it's especially annoying when you understand the intended message and realize the end result is really just laziness.

This sign was in our hotel room in Aruba:



Is the hotel being courteous by thanking us for not smoking? Obviously not; but that's the literal meaning.

And today, this sentence, in (yet another) AP story:



It's a tad small, I know, so let me repeat:

And in Penn Hills, Pa., Nancy Monahan, 54, who creates floor displays for a discount chain, says her "real job" begins in the evening when she returns to her creaky yellow house and her black cat, Maxine, turns on her computer and starts sleuthing.

That, my friends, is one smart cat.

Copyeditor General's ruling: Don't let it dangle. That's how accidents happen.

Thoughts will not go unfinished

The AP is at it again. In this morning's news was a story about a Chinese government request to make Everest off limits so the Olympic torch can reach the summit unmolested.



Buried in the middle of the article was this intriguing note:



Did someone have more to say about China? Or was the writer having a senior moment, the journalistic equivalent of walking into a room and forgetting what you were looking for?

Copyeditor General's ruling: If there's an editorial counterpart to tying string around one's finger or making a knot in one's handkerchief, I suggest the AP look into it.

All online content will be proofread first

I know: a lofty goal, to be sure. And it would be wishful thinking on a fantastical level to expect every MySpace comment and blog response to be typo-free.

But it should certainly be true of, say, commercial ad copy posted in, say, Facebook--especially when the ad itself is so vague as to be meaningless:



Did they just finish breakfast or brunch?

Okay, perhaps we can excuse this; plucky online entrepreneurs may be so engaged in the whirlwind of their start-up that they forget to check spelling.

Massively successful, Google-owned video-sharing websites, on the other hand, should have a grammar gatekeeper to check for, say, dangling modifiers:



Copyeditor General's ruling: The Copyeditor General considers herself to be more or less completed already, thankyouverymuch.

Small birds will be monogamous

I don't know what disturbs me most about this caption: the fact that these three bluebirds have been shacking up for the last two decades, or the fact that this report of avian immorality comes from the BBC News website ...



Copyeditor General's ruling: Hey, BBC online editor! Your participle is dangling!

Good URLs will go to heaven (and I'll stop with the puns)

You know when you meet someone for the first time and you realize it was just meant to be?

That was the mood at CGHQ today with the discovery of Good URL Bad URL, the creation of self-confessed nerd and URL-aholic Aaron Goldman. He knows how URLs should be presented for maximum readability and comprehension, so it drives him nuts when he sees addresses that are broken up, illegible or just way too long.

He takes pictures! He points out what needs fixing! He's a little obsessed! And he's okay with that!

Copyeditor General's ruling: Call off the search for the Associate Copyeditor General in charge of URLs. We have a winner. Everyone else, go read the list of best practices on GoodURLBadURL.com and apply what you learn. Let the poor guy take a break.

Steven Seagal will keep his juices to himself

Has this ever happened to you: it's a sweltering summer day, you're feeling a little tired, and you think--perhaps not for the first time--why hasn't the star of Marked for Death, Half Past Dead and Today You Die created a delicious energy drink?

Well, wake up and smell the goji berries, baby, because I bring good news: he has.



(You can't see it on the still image, but the lines around the logo above actually throw out pulsating bolts of light energy. It's electrifying.)

According to the website for Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt Energy Drink, the neck-punching actor spent years traveling Asia to collect the ingredients for his all-natural beverage.

Unfortunately, someone spent considerably less time creating the website.

I could analyze everything that's hilariously wrong (or wrongly hilarious) about the site, but I'm a busy person. Instead, I'll just point out (and laugh at) the best parts. I invite you to laugh along.

Steven Seagal now can add “Energy Drink formulator” to a list of talents that already includes veteran actor, singer/songwriter, guitarist, and Aikido black belt [...] His album, Songs from the Crystal Cave, released earlier this year, has already hit the pop charts in Europe."

"...hit the pop charts in Europe." Did real well, too.

... Steven Seagal is a popular action movie hero ...

(which is why 11 of his last 17 movies were self-produced and made for video).

... whose films combine spiritual concepts and social/environmental consciousness with high-voltage violence."

He saves cleans up toxic waste *and* kicks a guy in the throat!

What else? Ah yes:



Should I mention the apostrophic nightmare? Moving on:

Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt is an energy drink as unique as the man who created it. It has pioneered the way for nutritional, all natural energy drinks and emerged as many “firsts” ...

Can a single item "emerge as many firsts"? What does that look like? And does it hurt?

The first "first" is that the drink contains the Tibetan goji berry. Little-known fact: this is another name for the wolfberry, which is apparently a common ingredient in energy brews. Here's one, though the name is a little off-putting. But the name of this one actually means wolfberry, which should have been a bit of a giveaway.

It is also one of the very few energy drinks to be offered in multiple flavors ...

Yeah, it's always a good idea to check before making a statement like that. I did. And hey, looky!

XS Gear drinks comes in three flavors, just like Stevie's brew.

Zipfizz also has a trio of taste sensations.

Naked Juice has kicked it up a notch (but probably not using nunchaku).

My favorite is Odwalla; I'm currently celebrating the seasonal return of their Super Protein Pumpkin drink, which tastes like punkin pie and is only available through the holiday season (after which the stupid government takes it away).

But I digress. Suffice it to say that a quick Goog for natural energy drink flavors throws doubt on "first-emergence" claims.



The name "Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt" was an inevitable afterthought?

Okay, kids, as we're online, let's check dictionary.com:

af·ter·thought /ˈæftərˌθɔt, ˈɑf-/ –noun
1. a later or second thought; reconsideration.
2. reflection after an act; an appropriate explanation, answer, expedient, or the like, conceived of too late for the occasion.
3. something added, as a part or feature, that was not included in the original plan or design: The vestry was added to the church as an afterthought.

Or, as it were, the name was hastily appended to the energy drink as an afterthought. Inevitable, really.

When Steven Seagal finished creating a drink that holds untold natural power, there was only one equivalent in nature - The Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt.

Let me make sure I understand: Seagal created a potentially supernatural drink that has only one equivalent in nature: the drink he created. Wow, maybe the man is a god ...

Both mysterious and powerful, it's a symbol of the untold energy the earth has to offer - Such is Steven Seagals Lightning Bolt energy drink.

It's mysterious! It's powerful! Its mystery is exceeded only by its power!

Its name was an inevitable afterthought!

Oh, and I love that the "Latest news" has been updated twice: in October 2005 and January 2006. Overdue for another announcement, aren't we?

Copyeditor General's ruling: While the audience for this beverage undoubtedly expresses a preference for head-butting action and awesome pecs over careful grammar and factual accuracy, and while Steven Seagal could probably turn CGHQ into a pile of smoking rubble in seconds, websites promoting products intended for human ingestion should project a strong, consistent tone of authority and credibility.

Oh, and if some big dude with a ponytail comes around asking questions, you haven't seen me.

Emergency instructions will not cause panic

Spotted in an elevator:



How many ambiguities can you find, kids? Here's my list:

1) The sentence is hard to parse: I had to read it a couple of times to make sense of it. ("To operate emergency elevator, phone depress button"? "To operate emergency, elevator phone depress, button and hold"?)

2) "Depress button." Do I really have to bring the button down, man? Can't I just press it? Or push it?

3) "Depress button." But which one? Not shown in the photo are the seven buttons on the control panel: the numbers 1 through 4, the "open" and "close" buttons, and one marked "alarm." By a process of elimination, it appears the latter is the appropriate choice. Still, the label suggests it's intended to trigger a noise, not initiate a phone call.

2) "Hold until answering service answers." Um, isn't that what you'd expect from an answering service? And do we really need that extra detail? I suspect someone felt it important to explain that the response wouldn't come from inside the building--that Mr. Stucky Unlucky shouldn't expect help to arrive within minutes. But to me, it suggests an impersonal, and possibly uncaring, distance. Where exactly is this answering service? New York? Ohio? Bangalore?

3) "Indicating your location." Yeah, hello? I'm inside the elevator. I don't remember seeing the details elsewhere inside the metal box, but the info they're looking for--building address, elevator number, or anything else that might help a rescue crew locate a trapped vertical traveler--isn't posted near the sign.

So let's review: you're in the elevator. The doors have closed, you're descending slowly--and then, with a gentle lurch, you come to a halt. You wait a while, panic building (you were the last one to leave the office! It's Friday night! On a long weekend!). And then you read the sign a couple of times, check the buttons, look around to make sure there aren't any other buttons you should push instead, and finally, sadly, depress the alarm. You have a brief conversation with a disembodied voice.

And then you wait.

After a while, you take out a Sharpie and write on the metal wall:

"If you need help, push the "alarm" button and hold until someone answers. You'll be okay."

Copyeditor General's ruling: Signs directing behavior in unusual, unexpected and potentially frightening situations should be simple, clear and devoid of unnecessary detail. Also, it's always a good idea to carry a granola bar. Just in case.

Dogs will have better role models

Spotted yesterday at the pet groomery:



Mmmm-mmmm! Has anything ever sounded more delicious? But why describe it as "cooked in its own juices"? Doesn't that just mean baked? Or roasted? Wouldn't it have been more compelling to call it roast beef? At least until you notice the section further round that notes it's "in loaf form." Yuuuum-meeee!

What caught my eye, of course, wasn't the utterly unappetizing description. but rather the big fat apostrophe right there in the middle of the can. I guess they assume dogs don't care about punctuation.

This sign is posted in the park near our house:



Of course I understand what it means, but the literal translation is all dogs must be on a leash, and all dogs must clean up after your dog.

I'm all for community collaboration and equality of responsibility, but I have trouble believing that the dogs that, um, patronize this patch of greenspace will start carrying plastic bags and pooper scoopers. Not with all the squirrels distracting them.

Copyeditor General's ruling: If dogs are going to the trouble of learning English, the least we can do is lead by example.

"World's best" will not be a regional distinction

In the market for a sparkly something to wear to our Texas wedding, I wandered into So Good, a magpie's dream of a costume jewelry store in Boston. Oh, they have everything: oversized Lisa Simpson-style bead necklaces, diamante anklets, lucite bangles, pendants with skulls and kitties and crosses and guitars and hearts and stars ...

Perhaps, then, they're justified in claiming to be the best in the world. Or the best in Boston. Or is it the best in the world, Boston division?

Sheep will be bold

I know sheep are, by their nature, timid beasts. But it's sad that, according to the Massachusetts Agricultural Fairs 2007 schedule, this trait is now being exploited for the benefit of onlookers.



Copyeditor General's ruling: Sheep should learn to stand up for themselves.