Punctuation: The 'so what?' question

OK, I admit it. I like punctuation. But what word lover doesn't? Bad punctuation can ruin a sentence.

A lot of students, and non-students, wonder why some people are so hung up on punctuation. The reason seems clear to me: Punctuation makes written communication easier to understand. Without proper punctuation, a sentence can lose its meaning, and that's the last thing a good communicator wants. Here's an example I used during the first week of classes this week.

Read the following setence aloud, and try to figure out what it means:

A woman without her man is nothing.

Got it? Good. Now, scroll down and read the same sentence with different punctuation, and see how the meaning changes.

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A woman: Without her, man is nothing.

See the difference proper puncutation makes? Hope you enjoyed that one.

Male author offers advice. Get it?

During the holiday break I taught an online sports writing class. It went well. Most of the students did all the work and showed improvement. I might just do it again next year.

So why am I going on about this? Well, I wanted to share a little something about our textbook for the course, “The Sports Writing Handbook,” by Thomas Fensch. It was a very good book. I think it provided a great overview of the subject. It even included a chapter entitled "Guidelines for Writing about Women." I was thrilled when I saw this. Then I read the chapter. I should have known what I was in for when I realized it was only four pages long. The book is more than 250 page in all. But I digress. Even though the chapter is short, Fensch does make some good points. He urges readers to avoid "othering," which means to write as if female athletes are the exception to the rule. An example Fensch uses is to avoid the following:

Arthur Ashe was a great tennis player. Billie Jean King is a great female tennis player.

I use similar examples in class. The above implies that when you say "tennis player," you're saying "male," and when you add "women," you're not really talking about "real" tennis players. It implies that because she is a woman, King is somehow less of a tennis player. I'm not saying King could beat Ashe, although she did kick Bobby Riggs' sorry behind, but that's another story.

And Fensch gives a great piece of advice when he says the following:

When you have completed a story about a woman, go through it and ask yourself whether you would have written about a man in the same style. If not, something may be wrong with the tone or even the conception of your article. Think it through again.

That's good advice for all writers, not just those in the sports section. It's all great advice when writing about people of color, those with disabilities, gay men and lesbians, and any other group that's taken it on the chin in the past.

One more thing about Fensch's book. The chapter that immediately follows the one on women is about writing advance stories. On the very first page of this chapter, in his list of guidelines for writing advances, Fensch warns reporters to be on the lookout for teams that schedule "weak sisters."

What does he mean by a “weak sister”? I’ve never heard this term before, but I guess it means a weak opponent. I wonder why it’s not a “weak brother”? I’m assuming that whoever came up with this term used sister instead of brother because girls are traditionally seen as weaker than boys. The fact is, however, that many girls are stronger than many boys. Furthermore, the use of the term, especially in sports writing, serves to reinforce the stereotype that girls are not meant to be athletes. Things like this turn girls off to sports and further the stereotype that sports are a male domain.

I’m not trying to nitpick the book to death. What I’m trying to do is show how important words can be. The way we use words matters. I find it ironic but sad that this example came right after the chapter on avoiding sexist language. Funny. Or maybe not. What do you think?

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.

Austria ... home of Olympic heroes

What qualifies one to be a radio DJ? Was driving home from work today and flipping through channels, as I am forced to do because my 1998 Honda Civic has neither satellite radio, CD player nor MP-3 capability. (And by the way, there's no AC.)

Anyway, whilst flipping, I came upon a couple of nincompoops prattling about the Olympics. These would-be news junkies, who "work" for some FM station in the Denver area, were discussing the medal count. First, the male voice boasted of the USA's medal haul, correctly divining that we'd won the most. Then he read the rest of the top five medal-winning countries. He claimed that "Austria" was fifth with 38 medals.

Close. Austria won three medals -- one silver and two bronze -- and was tied for 41st. The Austrians won medals for swimming, kayaking and judo. What the DJ meant to say was "Australia," the only country that's also a continent. The Aussies had 38 -- 11 gold, 13 silver and 14 bronze. Australians took home 20 medals in swimming alone. If I knew name of the station, I'd send these numbskulls an atlas and an almanac.

First thing tomorrow, I'm going to the library to get some books on tape. Maybe a history of Australia. Or a shorter work on Austrian Olympic heroes.

Add "editing" to my list of worries

John Tierney of The New York Times recently wrote an article titled "10 things to scratch from your worry list." What has me worried is how this column got past the copy desk -- it's full of half-truths and misused statistics. Daniel Luzer of Mother Jones picks Tierney's column apart piece by piece. Although Tierney supplied some of the facts, he left out some key particulars that might have yielded a more helpful column. This story wasn't written on deadline, so the desk certainly had time to check the facts. Even more disturbing is the fact that Tierney's piece was in the Science section, which should be full of editors who understand how to decipher scientific studies. I wonder if this is a common problem at The Times or an anomaly.

It's important for journalists to interpret research so the reader can understand it. That sometimes means turning academic gobbledygook into English. It also means putting the statistics into context. What does the science mean to the average reader? To do this well, you have to understand the basics of scientific research. Was the study conducted properly? If you don't know what to look for, you can't help readers very much. If you're like many journalists and have an aversion to math, check out Robert Niles' guide to common statistical terms. It's a good introduction.

Remember, if you don't understand something, your readers might not, either. If you're unsure, ask. Better to be embarrassed in private than to get something ridiculously wrong in the mass media.

That is so ... nevermind

This sounds too good to be true. A Christian news site's policy to change the word "gay" to "homosexual" led to an error of Olympic proportion when track star Tyson Gay became "Tyson Homosexual." Think he's heard that one before? Read this story by Washington Post blogger Mary Ann Akers and you too may laugh like a 12-year-old.

Reminds me of a story I heard from a prof at North Carolina. He told of an editor who routinely searched every article for the word "pubic" and replaced it with "public" to avoid embarrassing spelling mistakes. One story involved a police investigation. The published story included a reference to a "public" hair found at the scene.

Both of these stories should serve as reminders that editors must actually READ the articles they profess to edit. And that some rules are made to be broken.