Ode to an editor

Copy editors receive little praise. They mostly get noticed when they don't do a perfect job. This piece, therefore, made me smile and say thanks. In What My Copy Editor Taught Me, author Dorothy Gallagher recounts learning how to read sentences and how to make her words count. The essay appeared in today's New York Times Book Review. Here's a passage that gets to the heart of what I think good editors ought to do:

Helene had no literary theories — she had literary values. She valued clarity and transparency. She had nothing against style, if it didn’t distract from the material. Her blue pencil struck at redundancy, at confusion, at authorial vanity, at the wrong and the false word, at the unearned conclusion. She loved good writing, therefore she loved the reader: good writing did not cause the reader to stumble over meaning.

Happy National Comma Day

Did I miss the proclamation of National Comma Day? In this morning's news writing class, I discussed the use of commas after cities and states. When I returned to my office after class, I opened an e-mail from a Boston reader who had a question about that very subject. Coincidence? You decide.

Here's the conundrum. Read the following sentences aloud, and see if you need a comma:

• John is a Weston, Conn., native.
• Mr. Smith, the former Greeley, Colo., city manager, has a flower shop.
• Jane Jones has opened an office in Milford, Conn., representing clients in appeals cases.

If you said yes, you're a comma guru. Now try these:

• The Nov. 1, 2005, event went off without a hitch.
• He arrived on Nov. 1, 2005, and immediately began working at the firm.

Yes again. You are so smart!

The Associated Press Stylebook addresses these points in entries titled "state names" and "years," but it does not include the reasons behind the rules. George T. Arnold cites the same rule in the "Media Writer's Handbook: A Guide to Common Writing & Editing Problems," but like the AP, he provides no reasoning.

I tell my students that commas are necessary in each case because what follows modifies the preceding word or phrase. For instance, "Conn." explains where Weston is located, and "2005" describes the year in which the date occurred. If you take out the year or the state name, you do not need a comma. So the following would be correct:

• John is a Weston native.
• Mr. Smith, the former Greeley city manager, has a flower shop.
• The Nov. 1 event went off without a hitch.
• He arrived on Nov. 1 and immediately began working at the firm.

The only example from above that does not follow this rule is the Jane Jones sentence. The sentence simply wouldn't make sense without the comma, even without the state name. I'd change it to the following:

• Jane Jones has opened an office in Milford, where she represents clients in appeals cases.

Remember, commas are our friends. They come in handy when you want readers to pause. The best way I know of figuring out if a comma is needed is to read the sentence aloud. If I pause, I need a comma. If your ear doesn't catch the pause, for whatever reason, you might want to invest in a grammar and usage guide. At UNC, we require all journalism and mass communications majors to buy Arnold's book. The AP Stylebook features a thorough punctuation guide. Both are must-haves for all future journalists.