“If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.” —The Oxford Style Manual, via The Economist Style Manual
Welcome, and thanks for stopping by The Style Guide, a blog about writing and editing.
As a professional editor, I’m fascinated by the peculiarities and idiosyncracies of language. My office bookshelves are filled with works that examine the minutiae of the English language, down to its commas and semicolons, participles and conjunctions, and fragments and phrases. And I’m of that odd breed who’s captivated by it all. I find established rules worthy of study in and of themselves, but am also struck by the way common usage–whether in speech or literature–so often diverges from the consensus of experts. Many an enjoyable afternoon has passed at my desk roaming from one reference work to another, trying to track down a definitive ruling on some question regarding hyphens, relative clauses, or the exact difference between “among,” “amid,” “amongst,” and “amidst.”
In my work, I strive for a combination of authority–that is, knowing the reasons one might make one choice over another–with a respect for common usage, both in speech and in writing. I also have a healthy respect for tradition: I’ve studied Latin and Ancient Greek, and I’ll often use my knowledge of etymology to make judgments about usage, meaning, and connotation. On the other hand, when I turn to reading fiction from 50 or 100 years ago, I often see the “rules” professional copyeditors follow today broken by writers I respect and admire. Thus, I don’t think of editing or copyediting as a mallet with which to beat a writer about the head, or as some kind of punitive measure that restricts creativity. At their best, writing and editing balance a preoccupation with grammatical precision and tradition against a scrupulous respect for clarity and creative expression.
In short, putting the philosophy aside for a moment, I’m an editor, and I simply enjoy thinking about language issues. So that’s what this blog is about. Look for future posts about my favorite editorial references, from the authoritative and helpful to the quirky and entertaining; what a style guide is, how they’re helpful, and the guides I use most; and “controversial” copyediting topics such as the use of which vs. that, starting a sentence with a conjunction, and when it’s appropriate to use sentence fragments in your work.
If you have a question, whether simple or complex, I’d love to hear from you, and I may try to answer it in a future blog post. Send a message here. Discussion is encouraged in the comments as well.
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Happy writing,
Kristie Reilly