Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style

by Benjamin Dreyer

Proofreading requires a good deal of attention and concentration, but it’s all very binary, very yes/no: Something is right or something is wrong, and if it’s wrong you’re expected to notice it and, by way of yet more scrawling, repair it. It’s like endlessly working on one of those spot-the-difference picture puzzles in an especially satanic issue of Highlights for Children.

An admission: Quite a lot of what I do as a copy editor is to help writers avoid being carped at, fairly or—and this is the part that hurts—unfairly, by People Who Think They Know Better and Write Aggrieved Emails to Publishing Houses. Thus I tend to be a bit conservative about flouting rules that may be a bit dubious in their origin but, observed, ain’t hurting nobody. And though the nonrules below are particularly arrant nonsense, I warn you that, in breaking them, you’ll have a certain percentage of the reading and online-commenting populace up your fundament to tell you you’re subliterate. Go ahead and break them anyway. It’s fun, and I’ll back you up. THE

After failed attempts to read Oliver Twist and Great Expectations—doubtless failed because it was easier, and quicker, to watch the movies—I picked up Bleak House, about which I knew nothing, and was immediately and utterly enthralled, starting with Dickens’s dinosaur shout-out. It always struck me as weirdly out of place in this most Victorian of novels, but as a Dickens specialist eventually pointed out to me, Dickens always had his eye on what the public found fascinating at that precise second and, showman that he was, made good use of it. Which is why one should not be surprised—though almost everyone I know who’s read Bleak House remarks on their utter WTF delight when they first got to it—at the eventual appearance in the novel of an instance of—spoiler alert—spontaneous human combustion. I mean, wow.

Before we get to what you do use apostrophes for, let’s recount what you don’t use them for. Step back, I’m about to hit the CAPS LOCK key. DO NOT EVER ATTEMPT TO USE AN APOSTROPHE TO PLURALIZE A WORD. “NOT EVER” AS IN “NEVER.” You may reapproach.

Numerals are generally avoided in dialogue. That is: “I bought sixteen apples, eight bottles of sparkling water, and thirty-two cans of soup,” said James, improbably. rather than “I bought 16 apples, 8 bottles of sparkling water, and 32 cans of soup,” said James, improbably. Which rather looks as if the next sentence is going to begin, “If James gives Louella half his apples,” and we wouldn’t want that.

SACRILEGIOUS One wants to spell it “sacreligious.” One can’t.

You’ll note as well, when you cast your eye back up to the text proper, that I’m about to opt for “ladle-like,” as (though the likes of, say, “catlike” or “cakelike” is dandy) “ladlelike” would, I think, try one’s eyes’ patience. (P.S. You can’t ever do “dolllike,” because look at it.)

Oh, and this is crucial: The important thing to remember about peeves and crotchets is that your own peeves and crotchets reflect sensible preferences based on a refined appreciation of the music and meaning of the English language, and that everyone else’s are the products of diseased minds. OK, let’s roll.

BAWL/BALL To bawl one’s eyes out is to weep profusely. To ball one’s eyes out would be some sort of sporting or teabagging mishap.

GUNS N’ ROSES That the name of this band is not Guns ’n’ Roses is vexing, but so, I suppose, is being named Axl, much less Slash.

KOOL-AID The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid,” meaning to willfully if heedlessly follow some dogma, must surely rankle Kraft Foods, particularly in that the cyanide beverage Jim Jones’s devotees drank in the 1978 mass suicide at Jonestown seems to have been concocted largely if not entirely from the also-ran brand Flavor Aid.

PORTA-POTTY There seem to be as many trademarked names for portable toilets as there are portable-toilet puns. Perhaps you should just make up one of your own and then check that it doesn’t already exist—as I once, for reasons I can no longer recall, concocted an Indian brand called “Vend-A-Loo.”

REDDI-WIP I’m trying to imagine the meeting in which someone inquired, “How much can we misspell two perfectly simple words?”

assless chaps The garment, that is. Not fellows lacking in dorsal embonpoint. I’m not sure how often this will come up in your writing—or in your life—but chaps are, by definition, assless. Look at a cowboy. From behind.

Copyediting FAQ Q. What’s the most redundant redundancy you’ve ever encountered? A. I recall it as if it were yesterday: “He implied without quite saying.”