Wednesday July 27, 2005
Mental prisons
I\’m a professional writer. I work with words – all day, every day.
I\’m also an editor – another person who works with words. There are about 2,000 of us in the Editors\’ Association of Canada.
When I first joined the Editors\’ Association, they elected me secretary. As my first official duty, I had 5,000 sheets of letterhead printed. With a punctuation error. I asked for “Editor\’s” instead of “Editors\’.”
Such a little thing. But professional editors care about these things. They like to use language correctly.
But because they care about language, they also recognize that language is constantly changing.
A former schoolmate recently took on the editing of her mother\’s memoirs. To make sure she got things right, she bought the Chicago Manual of Style, every editor\’s Bible. “I\’ve had to un-learn most of the things I was sure of,” she lamented.
Rules that aren\’t
Language keeps changing.
For example, should you write a decade as the 1980\’s or the 1980s – that is, with or without an apostrophe?
Don\’t assume you know the answer.
In 1943, Webster\’s Collegiate Dictionary required apostrophe-s for the plurals of numbers and symbols. By 1965, Fowler\’s Modern English Usage said, “There is no need for the apostrophe.” The Canadian Guide to English Usage now calls this use of an apostrophe an “older usage.”
The most inflexible and arbitrary people about punctuation and grammar rules are not editors, but those who, in one editor\’s description, “become obsessive about them; they think there\’s only one set of rules.”
Unfortunately, these people often hold influential positions. And they learned long ago never never never to
- Start a sentence with “and” or “but”
- End a sentence with a preposition
- Split an infinitive
- Write a sentence fragment
- Put a comma before the last item in a series.
Let me assure you, before you start arguing with me, that most of those never were rules. And if they were, the rules have changed. You can now get away with all of those.
Prisoners by choice To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to jimt@quixotic.ca. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing.
If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
It\’s also worth pursuing Richard Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
All rules change. Rules of language, of parenting, politics, manners, law – all rules change, period.
But many people refuse to accept that reality. They insist that the rules they learned long ago still apply. And they create untold misery for themselves, and their associates, by enforcing those rules regardless of the new context.
Possibly the most lasting misimpressions relate to religion. Children outgrow the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy. But adults are often unable– or unwilling – to outgrow notions of God and of Jesus that may have been appropriate when they were seven, but not when they\’re seventy.
So some cling to a father-figure who suits their adult situation about as well as an infant\’s soother.
Others, in rejecting their childhood images, claim they don\’t believe in God at all.
It\’s a tragedy whenever people become prisoners of their own past – about religion, grammar, politics, whatever. They choose to remain locked behind bars that exist only in their own imaginations.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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