By Francis Moran
The Chicago Manual of Style, that is. And, believe it or not, it’s often quite the humorous journey.
Those of you who are regular readers of this blog will know that we take considerable pride in being word nerds, and that strong, effective and precise writing is the hallmark of our work here at inmedia. But even the best and most practised of us needs to refer to an unimpeachable expert every now and then. We make heavy use of dictionairies — my Pocket Oxford Dictionary has been my desk-side companion through four decades, and its missing spine and dog-eared appearance is testimony to my continued reliance on it — as well as style guides such as CP Style Book, and all the online tools we can get our cursors to.
The best of these is the Chicago Manual of Style, or simply Chicago, as its devotees call it. We regularly go to Chicago, if you will, to check the finer points of grammar and punctuation and settle the very occasional difference of opinion that might crop up here between writer and editor.
As subscribers to the online edition of this style guide, we get monthly emails listing questions that have been put to its editors by readers. They reply with a certainty and conviction that is reassuring, while maintaining a cheeky sense of humour; many of their answers are good for a chuckle.
Take this recent exchange, for example:
Q. The assistant editor of my local newspaper wrote the following sentence in a column: “My parents had my little brother and I later in life.” I said I believe it should be “my brother and me.” She remains adamant that she is correct and referred me to your book. How is this possible?
A. It’s not possible; she’s flat-out wrong. (And we rarely say that anything is flat-out wrong.) Ask her if she would write “My parents had I.”
Or these two that had the word nerd in me chuckling:
Q. I’m going to have signs made for the tennis courts at my rather academic club. I want one of them to say something like this:
Tennis Players:
1. Please sign in at front desk.
2. Groom your court after play.
Thank you.
I have lots of questions! Is it fine in an application like this to omit articles to save space? How should I capitalize and punctuate? Is it awkward to have a list like that? I wanted to make it absolutely clear to the reader that he has TWO duties (that is, I don’t want him to stop reading one long sentence and not register his second duty).
A. It’s easy to answer when the writer already has everything down just fine. It’s all fine—really! Sticklers might think that having “your” would mean you have to have “the” to be parallel, but I would argue that “your” isn’t optional and that adding “the” on a sign like this isn’t necessary or even conventional. Maybe you could have another sign pointing that out, just in case.
And:
Q. In a technical proposal, would you say “400-ton-per-day scrubber” or “400-tons-per-day scrubber”? Thanks a bunch!
A. The first construction is the more usual one. (Btw, what is a 400-ton-per-day scrubber, exactly? And where can I get one?)
Who says grammar can’t be fun?
By Francis Moran
Although no inmedianauts were stranded yesterday when Ottawa-based Zoom Airlines suspended operations as it sought bankruptcy protection in the face of actions by several of its leaseholders and creditors, we very easily could have been. Ever since our Danny Sullivan repatriated himself to his native Scotland and set up office for us in Glasgow a few years back, we have been enthusiastic and regular passengers on this quirky little airline that offered good prices, excellent service and a peculiar schedule that gave us direct, non-stop flights for most of the year between Ottawa and Glasgow. It’s as though Zoom was made for us.
Our best experience happened when we flew Danny on Zoom to Ottawa on fairly short notice when a long-time client hired a new marketing vice president and wanted to talk about an aggressive new program. The veep, who had flown in from San Jose, did not believe that Danny had come to town just for that meeting. Turned out, however, that it cost less and took less time for Danny to get there than it did for the veep!
Zoom was a favoured carrier for my family, too. In the winter, Zoom used to offer non-stop weekend service between Ottawa and St. Maarten that could see a winter-weary citizen of this frozen northern capital get on a plane at about 6:30 a.m. and be frolicking in the warm Caribbean by noon. And three summers ago, we flew Zoom to Scotland for a family vacation in England, Scotland and Ireland.
From a PR and crisis communications perspective, though, Zoom does not seem to be managing this potentially fatal setback nearly as well as it managed its early growth and success. News stories have focused on the suddeness of the shut down, the lack of communication to stranded passengers and the apparent abandoning of their posts by Zoom personnel at airports. This does not create the kind of forgiveness and understanding a company needs to successfully emerge from such a crisis. And that would be too bad for Zoom and those of us who enjoyed flying with them.
By Francis Moran
I was hoping to find the time today to blog about how Canadian packaged goods company Maple Leaf Foods Inc. has been responding to the outbreak of listeriosis linked to one of its meat-processing plants. In general, I have been impressed by the company’s upfront and forthright approach.
However, I really can’t improve on what Dave Fleet has written so I’m happy to provide this link to his post.
By Francis Moran
While we here at in
media have long maintained there is
little difference between bloggers and conventional journalists when it comes to pitching, we do appreciate that many bloggers do not care at all to be pitched by us PR types. That’s not usually an issue for us; as an agency specialising in business-to-business marketing public relations for technology companies, we’re interested only in those bloggers who have real influence in our clients’ markets. These folks are often journalists who have simply moved to this new channel, or
de facto technology news sites, like
engadget or
gizmodo, that welcome properly crafted pitches.
Still, many bloggers are looking for a nice, polite way to tell us PR folk to stay away and Todd Defren is again advocating that bloggers be explicit about their wishes. It’s an approach, as Defren says, worth looking at.
By Francis Moran
“If you persevere long enough, if you do the right things long enough, good things will happen to you.”
This is such a gorgeous quote, I simply couldn’t resist blogging about it even though it has absolutely nothing to do with technology or public relations.
This marvelous sentiment came yesterday from Canada’s oldest Olympian, Ian Millar, who, at 61, has finally snagged an Olympic medal, the only significant trophy in equestrian competition that had evaded him. It wasn’t for lack of trying; Millar has competed at nine games stretching all the way from the era of Spitz in Munich in 1972 to Phelps in Beijing in 2008.
Congratulations, Ian. You’re an inspiration and a testament to the value of perseverance.
