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Biagi, Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media, Tenth Edition
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Lester, Visual Communication: Images with Messages, Fifth Edition
Overbeck, Major Principles of Media Law, 2011 Edition
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Davis/Davis, Think Like an Editor: 50 Strategies for the Print and Digital World
Hilliard, Writing for Television, Radio, and New Media, Tenth Edition
Kessler/McDonald, When Words Collide: A Media Writer’s Guide to Grammar and Style, Eighth Edition
Rich, Writing and Reporting News: A Coaching Method, Sixth Edition
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Drewniany/Jewler, Creative Strategy in Advertising, Tenth Edition
Hendrix, Public Relations Cases, Eighth Edition
Newsom/Haynes, Public Relations Writing: Form and Style, Ninth Edition
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Baran and Davis, Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future, Fifth Edition
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NiNth EditioN
When Words Collide
A Media Writer’s Guide to Grammar and Style
Lauren Kessler
University of Oregon
Duncan McDonald
University of Oregon
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When Words Collide, A Media
Writer’s Guide to Grammar and Style, Ninth Edition
Lauren Kessler and Duncan McDonald
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ISBN: 978-1-285-05247-2
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Printed in the United States of America
Print Number: 01 Print Year: 2014
Chapter 5 Working With the Verb: The Captain’s Crew 49
Nouns 49
Pronouns 50
Adjectives 53
Adverbs 56
Prepositions 58
Conjunctions 60
Interjections: Bwah-Hah-Hah! 62
Chapter 6 Making the Case for Agreement 63
Subject–Verb Agreement 63
Pronoun Reference: The Antecedent Search 70
Case: It’s All About Relationships 71
A Final Note 82
Chapter 7 Punctuation: Your Symphony of Signals and Stops 83
Some Basic Guidelines 83
Period 84
Comma 85
Semicolon 91
Colon 92
Dash 94
Quotation Marks 95
Hyphen 97
Apostrophe 98
Parentheses 101
Question Mark and Exclamation Point 102
Chapter 8 Clarity and Conciseness 105
Choosing Words 107
Putting Words Together 116
Making Sense 119
Clarity, Conciseness, Coherence 124
Preface
Online, on paper, on the air. Where will your writing appear?
Apps, podcast scripts, blog posts, news bulletins, essays. Speeches, ad copy. Investigative reports, narrative features, video documentaries, multimedia presentations. What will you write?
You may not know yet, and if you do know (and even if you are very, very sure), it’s more than likely you will change your mind and the direction of your career many times as you grow and change — and as the fast-paced world of communications grows and changes. What will remain, what is at the core of all of these endeavors, all these “delivery systems,” all the new and changing technology that will always be a part of our lives is this: correct, crisp, compelling prose. Good, solid writing. Writing that sparks discussion, ignites emotions, captures experience, tells stories. And do you know what is at the core of that? Good grammar. This brings us to the book you hold in your hands. Welcome to the new edition of When Words Collide, your friendly (yes, really) and authoritative guide to grammar and word use.
Whether you’re a veteran writer or a writer-in-training, a would-be, a wanna-be or a might-be, we welcome you to this book. We also welcome those of you brought kicking and screaming to a book on grammar. However you got here, we’re glad to have you. We’re glad to share our love of language and our commitment to great writing.
If you want to write well, When Words Collide can help you.
There are those who find the study of grammar endlessly fascinating. We wish them well, but we don’t number ourselves among them. Rather, we are writers who understand a fundamental concept: The better we know the tools of our trade, the better writers we will be. We don’t love grammar. We need it. We get frustrated, just like you, with its intricacies and inconsistencies, its sometimes finicky rules and occasionally exasperating exceptions. But we know from experience that the reward for mastering grammar is the ability to write with clarity, power and grace. And that means the ability to connect with an audience, to make people think and care—and maybe even laugh.
It is from our perspective as committed writers, avid readers, and (we hope) thoughtful teachers that we offer this ninth edition of When Words Collide. We want you to stick with us, read the book carefully and use it as a reference while you write. Learn grammar not for its own sake, not—please—to pass some test, but rather because grammar is one of the foundations of good writing. This is the best When Words Collide yet. We—your authors—have continued to grow and to challenge ourselves as writers and teachers. We’ve tracked, studied and been an active part of the new and ever-evolving world of cross-platform, multimedia journalism. This new edition comes out of our unshakable belief in and passion for the extraordinary power of crisp, clear, compelling prose. You will read, in the first chapter, why honing language skills is more important in today’s media world than ever before. We think you’ll be surprised why this is so. You’ll find that we’ve simplified grammatical rules and regulations throughout the book without sacrificing the goal of mastery. You’ll find that we talk to you. We don’t lecture or preach. We talk. We offer examples from a wide range of work including song lyrics, advertising copy, blogs and (just for the fun of it) worst-writing-ever contests as well as straight ahead journalism. In this edition we include boxed material to highlight, illustrate and entertain. We have also reorganized the grammar workbook so that it correlates more closely to the chapters in the text. Reading a book about writing should be a pleasure. We hope this one is. We hope this book helps you become the best writer you can be. We hope you keep it on your desk for years to come.
Resources
This text is accompanied by a printed student workbook that features detailed, hands-on exercises designed to reinforce each chapter’s key grammar and style concepts. The workbook is available for purchase at www.cengagebrain .com. Instructors can find the answer key to the workbook on the book’s Instructor Companion Site, at www.login.cengage.com. If students would like additional practice with the book’s grammar and style concepts, tutorial quizzes are available on the Student Companion Site, at www.cengagebrain.com.
Acknowledgments
We thank the following reviewers for their ideas and comments: Bernard Armada, University of St. Thomas; Susan Case, West Virginia University; Catherine Cassara, Bowling Green State University; Frank Coffman, Rock Valley College; Dan Connell, Simmons College; David Dixon, Malone University; Darryl Ewing, University of Houston; Jennifer Follis, University of Illinois; Neal Haldane
Madonna University; Rachel Kovacs, College of Staten Island; Jan Larson, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire; Kathy Olson, Lehigh University; Syrenthia Robinson, Virginia Tech; Robin Street, University of Mississippi; and Joanne Washington, Clarion University. We especially thank the many teachers around the country who have enthusiastically supported our efforts and have made When Words Collide a part of their classes. We thank the thousands of students who have struggled with the complexities of the English language on the road to becoming professional writers. We dedicate this book to them and to our families.
Lauren Kessler
Duncan McDonald
Eugene, Oregon
Part 1 Understanding Grammar and Style
1 Grammar Lives!
Grammar.
I know, right?
If you winced when you read, “I know, right?” (and we hope you did), it’s because, although that expression is common in conversation, it is eminently wince-worthy in writing. Actually, it’s wince-worthy in conversation too, but that’s another matter. The point is, conversation and written expression, though they both use words, phrases and sentences, are very different beasts. We have much higher expectations for written expression—and not just “writerly” writing like the high-class prose found in prize-winning books and “New Yorker” magazine stories.
Clear, concise, focused writing is essential in reports and proposals, in emails and blog posts and, yes, even in tweets. Correct and careful language use not only leads to solid (efficient, meaningful) communication in all of its many forms, it also directly reflects on your character.
Yes, your character. By taking the time and the care to use language correctly, you show yourself to be the kind of person who knows the value and importance of taking time and taking care. Your crisp use of language shows you to be a clear and direct thinker, the kind of person someone would like to mentor or hire or promote, the kind of person whose project some organization might want to support and fund.
Is there a secret to writing with clarity and crispness? Is there a key to crafting the kind of powerful yet conversational, information-rich yet occasionally witty writing valued in traditional media, digital media, social media and just about everywhere else? Happily, yes: The key is the mastery of grammar.
But wait a minute. We’ve all heard and read so much about the gutting of newsrooms and the demise of traditional book publishing and the increasingly fickle world of magazines. We’ve been deluged with reports about how social
media is more important than media, about how “citizen journalists” are usurping the duties of journalist journalists and how this thing we call journalism is gasping its last breath. Given all this, how important is writing well anyway? Do we really need to study and perfect our use of words?
In a word: Yes.
In fact, now more than ever.
Let us explain. We (that is, the trustworthy, hardworking, media-savvy authors of the book you are reading) would like you to consider these three compelling reasons that mastery of grammar and word use is more important and more relevant today than ever before.
Why Grammar is More Important Than Ever
1. Learned disregard for correct word use. An entire generation— yours—has grown up using words in ways past generations have not. You write more in your personal life than your parents or their parents did (although perhaps less in your academic life). Texting, messaging, tweeting, posting updates: You use the written word where past generations used the spoken word. That is, they gabbed and gossiped face to face and on the phone. For them, casual communication between friends meshed nicely with the casual way we use speech, the I know, right? construction.
But consider what can happen when we consistently use the written word to communicate immediate, off-hand remarks, when most of our daily practice in written communication is in dashing off supercasual quips and comments. Here’s what happens: an erosion of, even a disregard for, the niceties of language. When you’re in a hurry, when the communication is taking place between people who know each other, when the stakes are pretty low—all those factors conspire against careful construction, correct grammar and precise wording.
They are almost never priorities—or even considerations. That’s probably just fine for casual communication. But if you’re serious about a career in any field that involves writing (which is just about every field, from journalism and communications to law and business), you are faced with this challenge: Learn to distinguish between how you are accustomed to using written language to communicate casually from how you must learn to use written language to communicate publicly and professionally.
2. The culture of traditional journalism versus the culture of online journalism. There’s a clash of cultures going on right now between the embedded, time-honored values of traditional journalism and the newer,
emerging values of today’s uber-mediated world. People have been talking and writing about this clash of cultures for years, mostly from the point of view of economics and, more recently, ethics. But there’s also a clash in the trenches, where journalism is reported, written and produced.
Traditional journalism has long depended on the “luxury” of time— the need to produce only one newspaper a day, one evening broadcast, one magazine a month—and sizable trained staff to oversee the creation and crafting of material. This careful crafting depends on time to report, write, edit, revise and rewrite. But in the new world of journalism, time has been redefined. Or obliterated. The news cycle is 24/7. Reports and images zip around the globe almost instantaneously via social media. The Pope tweets. Immediacy is the core value.
Amid this often frantic activity and the rush to get out news and information at lightning speed, attention to correct, concise word use and clear, grammatical construction may seem like a luxury. It isn’t. Given the constant bombardment of information, it is even more of a necessity.
Also, let’s face it: The barriers to publishing work on the Web are much lower (almost nonexistent) compared to publishing work in traditional media. Hooray for low barriers when it comes to expanding ideas and including diverse voices and views! But low barriers also mean nominal— or no—expectations for correct, concise, powerful language use. You quickly learn that, in terms of written expression, you can get away with almost anything on the Web. This is not a lesson to take to heart.
3. The decline and fall of editing. It used to be that a grammatically challenged journalist could count on—not to mention fear—the long arm (and keen eye) of an editor. Editors, from section editors to departmental editors, to copy editors, to proofreaders would comb through the journalist’s prose for clutter and clunkiness, for weak word choice, for misplaced modifiers and lack of parallelism and for errors of both fact and usage. But at today’s struggling newspapers, buyouts and layoffs have vastly reduced the number of editors on staff. In the musical-chairs worlds of magazine and book publishing, editors come and go with dizzying regularity. Increasingly, it is difficult to find an experienced, long-time editor who has both the time (now that there are so few of them) and the expertise to make weak prose strong.
Veteran journalist and University of Maryland Professor Carl Session Stepp calls this the “quality-control quandary.” Quality control as it relates to the accuracy and veracity of information and the correctness of language use is an issue—a big issue. The safety net in terms of catching and fixing poor, incorrect or otherwise flabby language use is either
nonexistent (on the Web) or disappearing (in traditional media). Guess what? That means it is up to us—journalists, writers, communicators, creators of content—to step it up. Now is absolutely the time to commit to mastering the tools of the trade.
You don’t have to wait for an assignment in class. You can start right now. You can start close to home, with email and your personal media habits.
What Does Your Email Say About You?
Compared with texting and messaging, email seems old fashioned, stodgy even. Although not as impossibly quaint as an actual letter placed in an actual envelope and deposited in an actual mailbox, email is nonetheless comparatively prim and proper. You may have moved away from email as a primary means of communicating with friends, but you should know that close to 2.5 billion people use email worldwide and that on an average day these folks send about 150 billion emails. Email is vital to global communications, commerce and conversation.
Emailers spend far more time (and use more words) constructing messages than texters. They are more likely than texters to write in full sentences and less likely to use shortcuts (b4, gr8), abbreviations (lol) or contractions that may, with enough use, confound correct spelling (thx, ur). Adhering to grammatical conventions makes sense because email is, in fact, more formal than texting. It is an integral part of the business and professional world.
Dependence on email in the workplace combined with its limboland status—less formal than the business letters or memos of old, more formal than friend-to-friend texting—is creating big problems, say those in the business world. In a lengthy story on the subject in “The Wall Street Journal,” the headline of which read “Thx for the IView! I Wud (heart) to Work 4 U!!,” recruiters and personnel managers railed against too casual communication. One national recruiter quoted in the story said that she had interviewed a particular candidate and thought she had found the perfect intern until she received the candidate’s thank-you email. It was laced with words like “hiya” and “thanx” along with three exclamation points and a smiley face. The candidate did not get the job. What some think of as “casual,” business people think of as unprofessional
The laid-back, offhand (choose your adjective), short-cut way of communicating that many millions of us use everyday is, when used in the workplace, considered a mark of immaturity and thoughtlessness, an indicator
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He passed on, but took a position where he could watch the man without himself being observed.
It was hot in the workshop. Beads of perspiration came out on Barsky’s forehead, and as he mopped them away with a big, blue handkerchief, Tom, from his hiding place, saw something that made him exclaim:
“The fellow’s wearing a wig!”
Wild ideas ran through Tom Swift’s mind.
“I’ll set a trap for him,” he decided.
The quitting whistle blew. True to his statement, the Russian worked on, though other men laid aside their tools. Tom remained in his hiding place, but it was now getting dark in the shop and he could see little.
It was not until shortly before noon the following day that Tom had a chance to put into operation his plan of laying a trap for Barsky. In the meanwhile nothing new had developed in the matter of discovering the red-haired man.
Carrying out his plan, Tom went to a small room in the rear of his office where he sometimes carried out delicate experiments. From there he caused to be sent to the suspect a message that he was wanted.
The approach to this little room was along a narrow corridor where there was not room for two to pass. When Tom heard Barsky approaching in answer to the summons, the young inventor hurried out, timing himself to meet the Russian in the corridor. To keep the matter secret, Tom had arranged to be alone in this part of the building.
“Ah, you sent for me, Mr. Swift?” asked the man. “Eet is a plaisair for to come to so distinguished an inventor.”
Thus the man exclaimed as he saw Tom coming toward him out of the little room. But Tom gave the fellow no chance to do anything, had such been his intention.
Brushing up against the suspect, as though to pass him in the narrow corridor, Tom raised his hand and brushed the big mop of black hair on Barsky’s head.
A moment later the wig of hair came off and with it the bushy black beard that all but hid the fellow’s face.
“Ah, I thought so!” cried Tom, as he saw closely-cropped red hair, heretofore hidden by the wig. “You’re a prison bird all right, Barsky or whatever your name is. I’ve found you out!”
For a moment the man was so taken by surprise that he could only stand with open mouth, gasping.
Then, suddenly, rage seemed to take possession of the redhaired rascal—the same sort of rage that must have actuated him in his attack on Mr. Swift, Eradicate and Mrs. Baggert. Before he could speak, however, Tom cried:
“You’re through here, you dirty scoundrel! Get your time and clear out! And don’t think you’re going to have it end there. I’m going to have you arrested!”
“Oh, you are, eh?” sneered the man, and, realizing that his disguise had been effectually penetrated, all trace of his pretended Russian accent disappeared. He spoke ordinary English. “So you think you’ve found me out, do you? Well, you’ve got another guess coming, Tom Swift! I’m not half through with you!”
“You mean I’m not through with you!” replied Tom. “You’re an imposter! I have been suspecting you for some time, and my father has from the first. Now we’ll have a settlement!”
“But first I’ll settle with you!” cried the fellow, whose rage was on the increase. His lips closed tightly and he clenched his hands. These should have been warning signs to Tom, but they were not.
A moment later, kicking aside the wig and false beard, the fellow made a jump for the young inventor. Whether he held concealed in his hand some object like a black-jack, was never found out. But the fellow gave Tom such a blow on the head that the young inventor crumpled up and went down in a heap. Blackness closed over him and in his ears a multitude of bells seemed to ring.
CHAPTER XVI
BOUND IN DARKNESS
NED NEWTON was rather puzzled over Tom’s long absence from the office. The day had passed and the young inventor had been at his usual desk for only a brief period in the morning. He had told Ned he was going into the little testing room and would soon be back.
Ned knew that Tom did not like to be disturbed when conducting experiments and tests in this “cubby-hole,” as it was called, for it was made small purposely to avoid air drafts and vibrations. So when noon came and Tom did not appear for dinner, nothing much was thought of it, as he frequently missed a meal.
“But this time I have chicken and dumplings,” complained Mrs. Baggert. “And Tom is so fond of them!”
“He doesn’t know what he’s missing,” commented Ned, who always ate lunch with the Swifts, as time was saved by not going to his own home.
“I’ll save him some,” remarked the kind-hearted housekeeper.
Noon passed, and the afternoon was waning when a message came over the telephone that needed Tom’s personal attention. He had left orders that, no matter what he was doing, he should be summoned when this call came in. So Ned, believing his friend was in the little experiment room, hastened there, leaving Mr. Newton, who was back in Shopton, looking white and worried, to hold the wire.
But Tom was not in the little room. Nor was he in the corridor where Barsky, in a fit of rage at being discovered, had knocked the young inventor senseless.
“Hum, this is queer,” mused Ned. But no suspicion as yet entered his head. “He must have gone back to the office by the outside way,” for this was possible.
Hurrying back to the main room Ned did not meet his chum. Then began a hurried search for the missing youth, still with no
thought that anything was wrong. It was merely believed that he had left the experiment room to go to some other part of the works, as he often did. Accordingly, the intercommunication telephone system was worked to the limit. But from the foreman of each department came the reply:
“Mr. Swift isn’t here, nor has he been here.”
From the pattern room came the report:
“Mr. Swift not here, but he ought to come here.”
“Why?” asked Ned.
“Because,” replied the foreman, “that new Russian workman he hired has gone away and left a valuable pattern half glued. It will be ruined if it isn’t finished and placed in the vise to set. But none of the men knows anything about it, and I don’t either. Mr. Swift gave special orders that Barsky was to be allowed to work in his own way on that train-stop matter, and we don’t like to interfere. But I know enough about pattern making to feel sure this one will be spoiled if it isn’t finished soon.”
“I’ll see if I can find Mr. Swift and send him to you,” promised Ned.
But Tom could not be found in any of the shop departments, nor was he in his rooms at home. He had not been seen there since early morning, Mrs. Baggert stated.
Still no alarm was felt. Often in the excitement of following up a new idea or completing an invention on which he had been working a long time, Tom would slip off by himself, either to be alone with his thoughts or to try out something that had occurred to him. And often he said nothing to any one of his intention.
“That’s probably what he’s done now,” remarked Ned, and so little was thought of the matter that Mr. Swift was not informed, for it did not occur to any one but that Tom would come back by evening.
“He might be over at Mary Nestor’s house,” suggested Mr. Newton, when the person who had called Tom on the telephone had been told to ring up later in the day.
“That’s so,” agreed the young manager. “It’s the most likely place to find him. I should have thought of that before.”
But Mary also answered in the negative. Tom was not there.
“Is anything the matter?” she asked, influenced to do so perhaps by an anxious note in Ned’s voice.
“Oh, no; nothing wrong,” he said. “It’s just an important message for him. He’ll be around soon, I guess.”
But Tom Swift was far from “being around.”
Ten thousand years seemed to pass while the young inventor lay in a fog of incoherence. At least, it appeared to Tom to be ten thousand years—perhaps longer.
Slowly he opened his eyes, but the darkness about him was so intense that he thought it was still an effect of the cowardly blow, which he now remembered. But in a moment he knew that his eyes were open and that he was staring out of them, but without seeing anything.
The blackness was profound—like a piece of black velvet wrapped about him.
And then, as he tried to move and found that he could not, Tom knew that he was bound—bound with ropes and in a dark and strange place.