Tools and Insights – Page 7

To Whom It May Concern

Stephanie Whetstone2023-04-18T10:02:56-04:00

To Whom It May Concern On the road these summer days, you might encounter a very confusing car magnet. It is confusing not in its message but in its grammar. "Who" is a subject pronoun, meaning it should only replace the subject of a sentence – in this case, the person or animal doing the rescuing. It cannot replace the object of a sentence – in this case, the person or animal being rescued. What is needed is an object pronoun, namely, "whom." And so the magnet should read, "Who rescued whom?" "Who" and "whom" are a source of endless confusion in [...]

To Whom It May ConcernStephanie Whetstone2023-04-18T10:02:56-04:00

Familiar Versus Unfamiliar Words

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:03:51-05:00

Familiar Versus Unfamiliar Words by Dana Eckstein Among the many choices we must make as writers is whether to serve up words our readers will digest without a thought or to broaden their palates with words that may be strange to them. In this guest post, Dana Eckstein from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory explores the tension between "efficiency" and "invention." When I was little, I entertained a regular argument with my father. He earned a living as a lawyer, well-coiffed with a gray suit, satin tie, and a gleaming leather briefcase in which he neatly stored all his legal briefs [...]

Familiar Versus Unfamiliar WordsStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:03:51-05:00

Pick a Number

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:07:15-05:00

Pick a Number In The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster's classic ode to learning, the rulers of Dictionopolis and Digitopolis are at loggerheads, each believing that words and numbers, respectively, are paramount. "Never mention numbers here," King Azaz the Unabridged declares. "Only use them when we absolutely have to." In actuality, numbers play a critical role in the wordsmith's craft. Much of English poetry, including dramatic verse, is metrical and thus reducible to lines, feet, and syllables, most commonly expressed through iambic pentameter, a line with five feet, each containing two syllables -- the first unstressed and the second stressed. Shakespeare was a [...]

Pick a NumberStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:07:15-05:00

Am I Lying or Laying?

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:08:15-05:00

Am I Lying or Laying? As summer begins to reveal itself and temperatures climb, you may want to lay down your paperwork and lie out in the sun—wait! Is it lie or lay? When should you use which verb? Lie versus lay is one of those grammar issues many of us struggle with. The present and past tenses of each seem to overlap, so when in doubt, most people go with lay. That's not always the best choice. Growing up before anyone considered the daily use of sunscreen, my sisters and I spent our summers “laying out” in the sun. I [...]

Am I Lying or Laying?Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:08:15-05:00

On Writing Badly

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:09:09-05:00

On Writing Badly There is a horrible myth, one that has long persisted, that writing is a mystical occurrence, that the writer is visited by the beautiful muse and merely takes a sort of spiritual dictation. The implication is that if you are not putting forth best sellers in a meditative state, if you are actually struggling to get the right words on the page, you are not a “real” writer. Or maybe you’re a real writer, but you’re not a good one. This idea causes a lot of unnecessary grief and consternation. At keyboards from coast to coast, writers hover [...]

On Writing BadlyStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:09:09-05:00

A Restless Language

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:10:01-05:00

A Restless Language One of the delights – and occasional frustrations – of English is its protean quality, its limitless capacity to embrace and abandon words and usages. In 2011, an article in Science, “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books” (courtesy of Google), estimated that our lexicon grew by some 8,500 words per year between 1950 and 2000, though many of these additions will never make it into a dictionary. Even as words are born or employed in new ways, others wither from disuse, and what was familiar and acceptable to our grandparents may well be alien to us, and vice versa. Take the [...]

A Restless LanguageStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:10:01-05:00

William Jennings Bryan on Eloquence

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:11:20-05:00

William Jennings Bryan on Eloquence William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president and secretary of state in Woodrow Wilson's first administration, was among the foremost public speakers of his day. His "Cross of Gold" speech of 1896 has been described as "one of the greatest pieces of American political oratory ever," and he played a starring role in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In In His Image (1922), he devoted a chapter to "The Spoken Word" and the attributes of eloquence. Here is an excerpt: "Eloquence may be defined as the speech of one who knows what he is [...]

William Jennings Bryan on EloquenceStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:11:20-05:00

Defining, Understanding, and Embracing the Serial Comma

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:12:52-05:00

Defining, Understanding, and Embracing the Serial Comma The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma or the Harvard comma (because the Oxford and Harvard University Press style guides require it), is the final comma before the coordinating conjunction "and" in a list of three or more items. While many presses in addition to Oxford and Harvard favor the serial comma, newspapers have historically omitted it to save space on the printed page. Reflecting this journalistic preference, our own Office of Communications recommends its omission in the case of "print and electronic materials written for and about Princeton University" unless "it [...]

Defining, Understanding, and Embracing the Serial CommaStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:12:52-05:00

Best Practices: Avoiding Jargon

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:13:36-05:00

Best Practices: Avoiding Jargon Sometimes, particularly in the business world, we hear a different brand of English. It sounds something like this: “It's time that we became uber-efficient with our integrated reciprocal consulting. I can make a window to discuss your interactive management options. Our upgraded model now offers homogenized incremental programming and knowledge-based modular innovation.” Huh? It’s hard to decipher what the sentences above are actually trying to communicate. They came, by the way, from the “gobbledygook generator.” They are made of jargon, which is proliferating at an alarming rate in the business world, the sports world, the university, and most [...]

Best Practices: Avoiding JargonStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:13:36-05:00

Petards and Wringers in the Limelight

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:14:27-05:00

Petards and Wringers in the Limelight To sit on the fence. To miss the boat. To spill the beans. To kick the bucket. These are idioms – phrases whose meaning cannot be deduced from the words that form them, much to the chagrin of non-English speakers. Notwithstanding their concreteness, expressions such as these belong to the realm of figurative language, which, to paraphrase Shakespeare, age cannot wither, nor custom stale. Indeed, idioms are capable of enduring long after their source has lost all currency. Take, for example, the expression, "to be hoist with one's own petard." Were it not for Shakespeare, the [...]

Petards and Wringers in the LimelightStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T14:14:27-05:00

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