A business letter worth admiring

There are a few things in this letter I would correct: deeply-valued shouldn't have a hyphen; the men's names should have probably appeared in the same order throughout; and the family may be close, but there does need to be a space in "TheOrton." All in all, though, I thought the letter was wonderful. The message was warm and sincere, despite the sentimental content, and the picture of the company that emerged was solid.

I was especially happy to see that

• the right case (objective) was used in "No matter whom you're shopping for this holiday season";
• parallelism was preserved in "you'll find truly unusual gifts that evoke happy days, promote warm feelings, and bring a beaming smile to the face";
• a hyphen was used in the adjectival compound "a family-owned business";
• no comma separated adjectives in "special young person";
• no comma appeared before the restrictive clause "when young ones raced downstairs"; and
  
• that was used to denote the restrictive in "a family and a tradition that have endured."

The diction of the letter is also deserving of mention, I think: cherished; authentic; precepts of ardent, honest customer service; gratitude for…kindness, privileges, and opportunities. And note that three sentences toward the end begin with we:

• We will celebrate being part of a family and a tradition that have endured through hard work, frugality, imagination, and ingenuity. [The last four nouns are nothing special by themselves, but together they are fresh and strong.]
• We will celebrate the vast and growing audience of customers who today are part of that tradition, expanding it through their own deeply-valued stories and memories.
• We are delighted to welcome you to this tradition and to our family.
  

When the reader finally gets to "Enjoy!" the exclamation point does seem fitting.

More about parallelism (and a little about diction)

On page two of the handout on semicolons ("Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location") is an interesting example of parallelism. In this case, paragraphs are made parallel, with a bit of variation.

After reporting Neil Neches's insertion of the semicolon in NY subway placards and explaining how it came to be, author Sam Roberts presents comments by various authorities on grammar and punctuation. The section reads:

Louis Menand, an English professor at Harvard and a staff writer at The New Yorker, pronounced the subway poster’s use of the semicolon to be “impeccable.”

Lynne Truss, author of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” called it a “lovely example” of proper punctuation.

Geoffrey Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, praised the “burgeoning of punctuational literacy in unlikely places.”

Allan M. Siegal, a longtime arbiter of New York Times style before retiring, opined, “The semicolon is correct, though I’d have used a colon, which I think would be a bit more sophisticated in that sentence.”

The linguist Noam Chomsky sniffed, “I suppose Bush would claim it’s the effect of No Child Left Behind.”

Let's look at the structure of these paragraphs:

name of authority / identification of profession / verb / comment

As you'll notice, there is a bit of variation here within the parallel structure: in the last paragraph, Roberts uses a restrictive appositive--"the linguist"--instead of following Chomsky's name with a modifier. He could have easily written "Noam Chomsky, noted linguist and philosopher…" Why didn't he? I think one answer might be that Chomsky is such a towering figure, Roberts felt there was no reason to identify him beyond "the linguist." You'll notice too that out of all the verbs paired with the authorities, the most condescending follows Chomsky's name.

Pronounced and called are neutral in tone, praised is positive, and opined is, in this context, overly formal, suggesting, as sniffed does, something about the authority's character. Opined and sniffed comment on Siegel and Chomsky, respectively, just as their statements comment on Neches. Roberts selected these verbs with care--this is what we mean by diction--and we can see that his sense of humor emerged when he got to the last two authorities.

How should the copyeditor handle something like the last paragraph? I would say that he or she could assume that given the parallelism of the first four paragraphs, Roberts was making a deliberate stylistic choice. Was it a good choice, though, one that should be respected and allowed to stand? I would say yes, but I wonder if Eleanor Gould might disagree…

Neil Neches in one of the cars he helped civilize with the semicolon.

more dirty words

I was listening to NPR, and this story comes on about a controversial word written on the first page of a new children's book: scrotum. At first I thought this was a little over exaggerated because scrotum is the anatomically correct name for a male body part, but I am not the parent of a third grader. The book is this year's Newbery Medal winner The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron (story link). The author explained that the word was crucial to the overall meaning of the rest of the story, and was not just used to push the envelope of what words are acceptable.

I imagine that the word scrotum was discussed by the author, copyeditors, and editors before publication since it is children’s literature. The story got me thinking, and it seems to relate to Sarah's Risky Business post from last week on the role of diction in writing. I think this is another good example of how changing just one word could have far reaching consequences, and not only in copyeditor—author correspondence. A single word can change the message or vitality of a work, or can upset and offend readers, and this word doesn’t even have to be a four letter word.

Things

I've been taught that you should avoid using the word "thing" (things, something) in academic or professional of writing. On the second midterm, the authors used the word "thing" a lot. I noticed that that wasn't copyedited in the first midterm. Am I wrong in thinking that I shouldn't use the word "thing"?

Question on diction . . .

I've been thinking a lot about diction lately, especially after the last assignment. I found myself excising nearly everything. I am assuming that few manuscripts would need such a profound overhaul, but what if a manuscript has a lot of annoying passive constructions. Perhaps these constructions do not read awkwardly, but do stick out. Could a copyeditor justifiably fix them? I suppose a better question: would a copyeditor spend the time?