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If I Knew 'Only'
By Sé J. Reed
Only if I knew. If only
I knew. If I only knew “only!”
The English language
is a tricky son-of-a-gun and no one knows that better than copy editors.
Even those of us who make a living wielding our command of grammar and
syntax sometimes have a hard time with even the basic “who” and whoms.”
That’s where Merrill
Perlman comes in.
Perlman, director of
the New York Times Wire Service, led an interactive workshop Thursday,
“If I knew ‘only,’ ” on the grammar demons that plague us all.
Perlman presented examples
of the most common mistakes in usage from newspaper across the country.
Attendees worked through handouts and drills, tackling the traditional
“who” vs. “whom” and “which” vs. “that.”
“The thing about language
is that eventually the bad usage will become acceptable,” Perlman said.
Words such as “alright” vs. the proper “all right” are constantly being
muddled. “‘Alright’ is already accepted in a lot of dictionaries, because
it’s been used incorrectly for so long.”
The trick is, Perlman
said, is to look at grammar rules as guidelines instead of rules.
“ ‘Does this break
a rule?’ is the first question and ‘Does it work?’ is the second question,”
she said. “If ‘Does it work’ outweighs ‘Does it break a rule,’ then it’s
OK to break the rule.”
The perils of punctuation
were also discussed – not the basics of use and misuse, but the philosophy
and theory behind them.
“Ellipses and brackets in quotes are dishonest,” she said. “The reader has no way of knowing what you took out and what you paraphrased. And in every single instance there is a way around it.”
Perlman has presented another panel, “The Big Picture” editing section, at ACES’ national conference for three years, but this is the first time she has tackled the topic of usage.
Knowing the correct usage is important, she said, not just to spot the mistakes, but so that editors and reporters can work together to produce clean copy.
“If you understand what’s wrong with the reporter’s story and can explain it and suggest a way of fixing it you’re going to get a lot better response from most reporters than if you just say, ‘Your lede sucks.’ ” Perlman said. “You’ve got to be able to understand what you’re critiquing and criticizing in the story.”
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Sé J. Reed is a student at
Cal State Long Beach. She can be reached at egersis@hotmail.com.