Hyphens, dashes, minus signs

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) summarises the differences between these punctuation marks: https://cmosshoptalk.com/2024/01/23/hyphens-and-dashes-a-refresher/

Note, this is from CMOS (a US style guide) and other style guides may differ about spacing around such characters. However, most will agree on en dashes for ranges and em dashes for parenthetical points. For example, the Australian Government Style Manual has this guidance for the various dash symbols: https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/grammar-punctuation-and-conventions/punctuation/dashes

Many of my clients use negative numbers in their documents, so I have a PerfectIt wildcard find/replace set up to find <space><hyphen><number> and change it to a minus sign, if that is appropriate for the circumstance.

[Links last checked February 2024]

The problem with double-barrelled questions

“Do you love me and will you marry me?” Sounds innocent enough, right? But it’s actually two questions posing as one and there are several ways it can be answered. Yet the person asking the question only wants one answer—yes or no. The true answers are yes to the first part of the question and no to the second, or no and yes, or yes and yes, or no and no. The last two would give a straight yes or no response, but certainly not the first two.

This simple example is a double-barrelled question—one that disguises a single question, which actually asks two things but only wants one answer. Wikipedia has an easy to understand article on these types of questions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barreled_question. It’s a type of questioning that I learned NOT to use when setting tests for school students back in my teaching days—if you want a single answer, then ask a single question. If the question is actually asking two things, then ask two questions.

So, why am I writing about these sorts of questions today? Because yesterday (14 October 2023) Australia went to the polls for a referendum, just as we’ve done 45 times since Federation (1901). Referendums are held to change the Australian Constitution, and only 8 have attained a majority Yes vote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Australia).

The most recent that I’ve voted in were to allow Australia to become a republic (1999), and the one yesterday to recognise the First Nations peoples of Australia as the original inhabitants of this land. Except NEITHER question on the ballot paper actually asked these questions. Instead, both referenda questions were double-barrelled because they included other information on either how that should happen or what it would look like.

It distressed me back in 1999 that the question we were asked wasn’t just about becoming a republic, but also what that would look like. And it distressed me earlier this year when we found out the question we would be asked at the 2023 referendum. If you ask a double-barrelled question and the response is a yes/no or no/yes and not a simple yes/yes or no/no, then those who like one half of the question but not the other will tend to vote No. And so it was yesterday.

The 1999 question about becoming a republic was:  To alter the Constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with the Queen and Governor-General being replaced by a President appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament.

Actually, breaking it down, this question has 3 parts to it—become a republic (yes/no), replace Queen and Governor-general with a President (yes/no), appoint a President by a 2/3 majority of MPs (i.e. not direct voting by the people) (yes/no). Varying sides weren’t happy about one, two, or all parts of this question. At a personal level, I wanted a republic and to replace the Queen and G-G (I still do), but wasn’t sure about a President and certainly wasn’t sure about trusting MPs to make that decision for me. I voted No.

Yesterday’s question: To alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. (see the Australian Electoral Commission’s website for more information and proposed wording in the constitution: https://www.aec.gov.au/referendums/learn/the-question.html)

Again, there are two parts to this question—recognition in the constitution of First Nations people as the original custodians of this land (yes/no), and establishment, in the constitution, of a voice to parliament (yes/no).

It’s a travesty that such a simple thing as a double-barrelled question can result in a No vote—it can never be any other way as the general human response when you aren’t swayed to a clear yes/yes or no/no position is to err on the side of No. For all the cost of running a referendum, to have had 2 questions on the ballot paper would’ve been no more expensive—one question about recognition, and the other about how to implement it.

See also: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2023/oct/14/rejecting-the-voice-shows-australia-is-still-in-denial-its-history-of-forgetting-a-festering-wrong, where this sentence voiced a lot of what I’ve felt about this issue: ‘My adult child, standing in a long line to vote on Saturday, was overwhelmed with sadness. “Why are all these people deciding whether we belong or not?” they asked.’

[Links last checked October 2023]

Words matter: Systemic exclusion of women and their work

For many years now I’ve been hunting down various branches of my family tree (thank goodness for the internet!). Most recently, the US census forms from 1950 were released and made available to Ancestry.com members who have a subscription to the US data. Over the past couple of years, various states’ census forms have gradually become available on Ancestry as they’ve been converted/transcribed.

I’ve got a fairly extensive branch of my family tree in the US, so I’ve been gradually checking my records and adding the 1950 US census information, if I can find it. And if there’s other information missing for the person, I’ve hunted that out too and filled in things like dates of birth, death, marriage and other census data.

But something has been bothering/upsetting me for a while… and that’s the exclusion of the value of work done by women, as evidenced by excluding fields from forms or labelling them in ways that discount or dismiss that work. This can manifest in several ways in the official records:

• Totally ignoring that a woman may have an occupation (see the example below of an Iowa marriage certificate [from 1924], where the groom’s occupation is listed, but there isn’t even a line item for ‘Occupation’ for the bride). Many single women had occupations then, but obviously those jobs and/or the education involved in getting those jobs, don’t matter. It could be assumed by not reporting this information on official forms that educating women and acknowledging their work was for nothing, which was a prevailing attitude about women and education for generations.)
• Assuming that the head of the household is a man, and assuming those completing the census are male, as evidenced by the use of the word ‘he’ (see the 1950 census form). This was quite a departure from the 1930 census form (below), which referred to ‘he or she’ and ‘the person’, and perhaps is an indication of a more conservative/’traditional’ society in 1950.
• Completely discounting the unpaid work that women do, either by clearly stating to NOT include it in the working hours or definition of work on the 1950 census forms, or if not discounted in that way, by the enumerator either leaving that line blank for the women or writing ‘none’. Try telling the women raising 8 children under 10 without the mod cons we have today or little help from their partners that they didn’t spend any hours working! For comparison:
  • Australian electoral rolls from about 1910 to 1980 use ‘home duties’ (mainly; sometimes ‘housewife’ or ‘married’) for unpaid work in the home, which was almost exclusively done by women—this term was still used as an official occupation even if the woman was in her 90s and her husband had no occupation next to his name, acknowledging that she was still working even if he wasn’t.
  • UK census records (up to 1911) mostly use ‘domestic duties’ for work done in the home (again, almost exclusively done by women).

It would be easy to dismiss this as ‘that’s how it was then’ but WORDS MATTER:

• The words we use to describe work (or NOT describe it) matters.
• The exclusion of work as category in official forms (marriage certificates, census forms etc.) matters.
• The assumptions implied by using ‘he’ even when it’s for a woman’s record, matters.

I hope such official forms are much better now, but I’m sure there’s still implicit sexism, binary gendering, misogyny (among others) lurking in many government forms. If you can’t see it, you can’t measure it, and if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t have value. And therefore the message is that those who aren’t measured except by their name, age and gender, don’t have value.

(As an aside, I’m not singling out US official forms here–it’s just theirs are the most recent records I’ve been looking at. Australia’s 2016 census had a terribly worded question about religion, which after the outcry about it, I had hoped would have been corrected for the 2021 census, but it wasn’t [in a nutshell, instead of lumping the Christian religions under one heading, with perhaps the subsets under subcategories of ‘Christian’, they put the various types of Christian religions at the same level as the broad categories of other religions, such as Buddhism, Islam, Hindu etc. More information: https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/the-census-questions-australians-dont-want-to-be-asked/news-story/0a1cce28181208ae82ff5a053597660e)

Examples of official state and federal US forms

• Names blurred out, pertinent words highlighted in yellow
• Click an image to enlarge it

1924 Iowa marriage certificate

1930 census form (first half)

1930 census form (second half)

1950 census form (first half)

1950 census form (second half)

Example of how enumerators completed the occupation field for women (1930 census)

Note that a man who was a janitor had greater recognition of his work than any woman.

[Link last checked January 2023]

Impact as a verb versus affect and effect

I’ve had the delightful privilege of hearing Canadian James Harbeck speak at several ACES (editing) conferences in the US. His passion is language and its origins, and his presentations have left me in awe of that passion, his knowledge and understanding, as well as his ability to speak in old and middle English to illustrate his points. So it was with delight that I read his recent post on using impact as a verb: https://sesquiotic.com/2021/11/09/impact/

As someone who edits environmental impact statements, plans, and reports, impact is a word that’s used OFTEN. I certainly don’t have the problem with it that other editors and writers have, and in many cases, in the context of the documents I edit, affect or effect just wouldn’t work.

If you want to spend a couple of hours learning about the quirks of language, take a look at some of James’ other posts. There’s an index to his posts on specific words here: https://sesquiotic.com/word-tasting-note-index/ and to his articles here: https://sesquiotic.com/article-index/

 

Using personal pronouns in corporate and academic writing

There’s an unwritten rule (no doubt written, in some places) that you should never use personal pronouns (we, us, I, our, etc.) in corporate or academic writing. Instead, you need to use the third person (e.g. ‘the authors’), or eliminate altogether the person or organisation responsible. Blog posts are different—they’re more informal, so using personal pronouns is accepted there.

But why not everywhere?

I certainly don’t have an answer for that, but saying ‘it’s traditional’, ‘that’s how it’s always been done’, ‘that’s the rule’ just doesn’t cut it, in my opinion.

I’m sure the plain language people, and others, have done studies on this, but it was brought to mind when a client asked What are your thoughts on using personal pronouns in a scientific publication? I’ve occasionally seen it but it’s an unwritten rule that scientific publications are written from the point of view of a third party.

Their question reminded me of a 300p government report on hydrogeology I’d edited recently, which DID use personal pronouns. It was a refreshing change! As I wrote back to that client: ‘… I also like how you used ‘we’, ‘our’ etc. in a government report—it made it much more readable, and far easier to edit because I wasn’t trying to figure out or add who (person, department, role) was responsible for doing things.’

An example from that 300p report (‘we’ refers to the authors of the report):

‘We measured the initial groundwater level in all bores …

Before 2016, we had opportunistically monitored ….

Because the water levels in bore [XYZ] were likely to be tidally influenced, we recorded water levels hourly …’

Back to corporate/government writing… Often the third person is used to hide the person/entity responsible for an action or a response, and it may be quite deliberate. Government and corporate reports are very good at this—it’s CYA* at its best! By saying something was (or should be) done, but never saying WHO did it or is to do it, or WHO is responsible for any actions arising from it, no-one bears responsibility if it fails. The proverbial buck can be passed around forever, without ever stopping on someone’s desk.

My recommendation: Unless your style guide (in-house, external) says otherwise, consider using personal pronouns in your corporate/government/academic writing. And if your in-house style guide says not to, question WHY the authors of the style guide recommend this. ‘It’s tradition’ is not an acceptable answer, in my opinion. Your responsibility as a writer or editor is to your readers and ensuring they can not only read but also comprehend the material they’re reading.

* CYA = cover your arse (‘ass’ for those in the US)

Non-breaking spaces

Tip: To insert a non-breaking space in Microsoft Word for Windows, press Ctrl+Shift+spacebar

I’m a big fan of non-breaking spaces. They force two things that should be kept together, together, and stop them from splitting at the end of a line onto the next line.

Because I edit technical documents that include values with a measurement unit (e.g. 35 mm), I need to make sure that the value stays with its unit of measure. I also use these special spaces to keep the day and month together (e.g. 24 April), to keep the initial for a genus with the species in Latin binomials (e.g. E. coli; T. rex), and for other elements that must be kept together for readability reasons (e.g. I’d insert a non-breaking space instead of a standard space in each part of this: 100 x 100 m).

Recently, on a Facebook editors’ group, someone asked what members of the group used non-breaking spaces for. Here are some of the various uses gleaned from that discussion:

• Between currency numbers and their amounts, e.g. $5 million
• Between initials, like W. E. B. Du Bois
• Between named events with numbers, e.g. World War I
• Between names of popes/emperors/kings/queens and their numerals.
• Between ellipsis dots so they have proper spaces but don’t break over lines
• Use them in:
  • dates (including eras: AD/BC; BC/BCE; ranges of years)
  • times
  • common Latin notation (e.g. c. 1850)
  • initials
  • titles/honorifics
  • numbers
  • measuring units
  • mathematical equations
  • other scientific notation (e.g. E. coli)
  • legal notation and statutes
  • proper nouns that include a number (e.g. Boeing 757; Mercedes-Benz E450 Cabriolet)
  • addresses (e.g. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, 10 Downing St)
• Between day and month or month and day (e.g. 13 April; April 13)
• Between item numbers and write-on lines (e.g. Complete the sentences: The cat 1) ___ sitting on the mat. It was waiting 2) ___ its dinner.)
• In legal section citations (e.g. § 15600 et seq.)
• In biblical verses (e.g. 2 Corinthians 1–2)
• To prevent a/an at the end of a line
• Before em dashes to prevent them at the beginning of a line
• Between ‘I’ and the next word, to keep ‘I’ from being alone at the end of a long line
• Between a number and a fraction (e.g. 3 ½)

 

You can change attitudes, one word at a time

One word. That’s all it was. One small word, but a word I’d seen used by those working for my main client a couple of times in the past few weeks (I’ve been working for them for 13+ years, and this was the first I’d seen the word in this context). To me, this word was SO out of context in how they’d used it that I wondered where it came from and why it was used in that way, and why it was starting to proliferate.

The easy thing would be to say nothing, do nothing, and let it slide on by. But I couldn’t, because that one word held a lot of very negative meaning in other contexts, a meaning that was offensive to many Australians and made others, like me, uncomfortable.

In other contexts, it’s a perfectly fine word, but it was out of place in the context where I’d seen it used.

So I spoke up. I emailed two people further up the chain to make them aware that this word was being used, that it was often offensive (uncomfortable at the very least) to many Australians, and suggested other perfectly fine words that could be used instead in that context. Speaking up always carries with it risk, but I’ve been emboldened by what I’ve seen in other situations this past year or so (political, BLM, LGBTQI+, sexual harassment etc.), so I figured the risk was worth it.

Here’s a summary of my email (identifying information removed) and the response I received—it shows that speaking up CAN change attitudes and perspectives. It’s just one small step to a kinder, more inclusive society.

My email

As you are well aware, [company] has policies on inclusion and diversity, including sensitivity to others’ cultures and experiences. In light of this, I’d like to bring to your attention something I’ve noticed recently from some in your team, and that’s the use of the term ‘native’ / ‘natives’ when referring to original Word documents. I’ve seen it used in emails and in folder names in the past few weeks. I don’t know where this has come from as it’s the first I’ve encountered it in 13 years working with [company] docs.

The problem is that this word has multiple meanings, not all of them good or acceptable or appropriate for the context, and for some people, this word is offensive. Macquarie Dictionary has this to say as a usage note: ‘The use of the term native to refer to an indigenous person is associated with European colonialism and is often regarded as old-fashioned and offensive.’

While that usage note refers to usage specifically in regards to indigenous people, it’s a term that is increasingly tainted with its colonial past even when used in other contexts. In terms of documents and their lifecycle, I see no reason to use this word (which could be offensive to many) when there are perfectly fine words that can be used instead—words that don’t have multiple meanings, or that don’t cause offence to others. Words such as ‘original’. The lifecycle of a document as it goes through revisions could be ‘originals’, ‘current’, ‘archived’, ‘in progress’ or similar, with no need to use the word ‘natives’.

I ask that you consider whether this term should be used or if it should be substituted with other, clearer, terms that are more appropriate to the document lifecycle. If you decide to not use this word in this context (it’s fine in regard to describing species), could you please pass on that decision to others on your team.

Response I received

… thank you for taking the time to help me understand that the term has been [is] offensive. I am checking in with our internal Document Control lead to determine the prevalence of this term in our internal systems. … its use here may have originated from our US parent office. As an immediate step, I will ask my team to stop using this term, and I will stop using the term also. … my apologies for any offence caused. And thank you for your ongoing support.

My follow-up email included this

Language use is cultural too—for example, those is the US may not have the same reaction to ‘native’ as we do in Australia, just as we use ‘thug’ here with little understanding of how offensive that word can be in the US.

It’s only by being aware how language can exclude or marginalise people that change can happen. That’s not to say that every word with multiple meanings needs to be sanitised, but that word usage needs to be considered when writing to ensure it doesn’t ignore, offend, or marginalise large sections of the readership.

Update August 2021: A major professional organisation for editors has made a statement on the use of ‘native’ in terms of ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ English speaker: https://blog.ciep.uk/ciep-terms/

[Links last checked August 2021]

Aptronyms

An aptronym is where a name matches some characteristic of a person, typically their occupation. The first I ever experienced was when I was a kid—the town’s only butcher was… Mr Butcher!

More recently, I’ve come across other names that match their occupations or areas of expertise. For example, authors Whiting and Salmon have both written on fish, Swann has written on birds, and today I came across Fangue, who has co-authored an article on a species of sea krait!

See also: https://cybertext.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/names-suiting-occupation/

Australian Style Manual update

The Australian Style Manual (ASM) was last published in 2002. There have been pushes to get it updated for a long time, and finally, it’s been done. Although it was written for government writing at all levels, the reality is that it’s been the only ‘official’ style manual in Australia and is used by Australian editors, especially for nonfiction writing.

The ASM (and Macquarie Dictionary) are the foundations for the style decisions I make when editing writing written by my Australian clients (as with any style guide, I base my decisions on the ASM, and have exceptions where the client’s preference conflicts with that in the ASM, or where the ASM doesn’t cover the issue).

You can find the free beta version here: https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/ (By the way, Macquarie Dictionary online is available for an annual subs of ~$40; they’ve just released their latest print edition [8^th], but with 2 hefty volumes, I’ll pass! https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/)

I haven’t gone through the online ASM extensively, but I’ve noticed a couple of things related to numerals:

• all numbers 2 and above should be written as numerals (no more ‘if it’s under ten, write it out in full’)
• thousands should now be written with comma separators (the previous ASM said to have no punctuation for 1000-9999, and a nonbreaking space as separator for 5 numerals and above; e.g. was 4567 and 25 678 943 – now 4,567 and 25,678,943)

I don’t know when the ASM will be released as a final version or whether they’ll charge as subscription fee for it, but I’ll likely start following its guidelines over the next few months as I become familiar with it.

Gender-neutral (and other alternative) terms

This list is for me for future reference. There are plenty of lists out there of gender-neutral terms, but some apply much more to the work I do than others, so I’ve started to keep a running list.

• chairman — chair, chairperson
• craftsman / craftsmanship — artisan / artisanship  artistry, expert / expertise, skill, mastery, craft, craftspeople
• fireman — firefighter
• fisherman — fisher, angler (only in reference to recreational fishing), commercial fisher, fish harvester, fish industry worker, fishing licencee
• foreman — supervisor, team leader
• fraternity — community, camaraderie, guild, affiliation, club, fellowship, house, kinship, order, solidarity, family, society
• man (as in ‘man the desk’) — staff, supervise, manage, lead, handle, cover, run, oversee, work, person
• man basket / man box — crane basket, suspended personnel platform, crane cage, construction basket, personnel basket, workbox
• man-hours — person hours, work hours
• man-made — artificial, manufactured, machine-made, synthetic, human-made, human-caused, handmade, hand-built, fabricated, constructed, factory-produced
• manhole — access hole/hatch, utility hole, maintenance hole, sewer hole (if specifically related to a sewer), utility access hole, personnel access hole/hatch, work hole, inspection hole; also, consider if ‘point’ or ‘hatch’ is more accurate than ‘hole’
• mankind — humanity, humankind, humans, human beings, people
• manned — staffed, occupied, crewed, piloted, operated, human-operated
• manning — staffing
• manpower — workforce, human effort, labour, staff, workers, human resources, personnel
• manway — see manhole (see also: https://web.archive.org/web/20200811041433/https://www.petropedia.com/definition/7477/manway)
• masterful — expert, accomplished
• middleman — intermediary
• patrolman — patrol, guard
• policeman — police officer
• unmanned — unpiloted, uncrewed, robotic, automatic (see also manned)
• vessel master — captain, skipper
• watchman – guard
• workman — worker
• workmanship — handiwork, craft, application

And others:

• become blind to — ignore
• black and white — monochrome
• blind faith — unswerving belief
• blind to — oblivious to, ignoring, overlooking
• deaf to — ignoring, disregarding, unwilling to acknowledge, unwilling to hear or listen, callous
• fresh eyes — fresh perspective
• mecca — hub, hotspot, magnet
• minorities — see the advice for ‘underrepresented’
• put blinders on — limit (This one created some discussion on a Facebook group for editors as most said they only thought of that term in relation to limiting a horse’s vision. My response was that I’d wondered about that one too, but then I realised that there was another perfectly acceptable other word for the context that didn’t make me stop and think about it. If the reader has to hesitate to figure out the meaning, or to stop and think about the context, then I believe my job is to help take some of that hesitation away. In the context, it was used when referring to geologists who only see in rock formations what they want to see, and wasn’t related to preventing distraction [i.e. the geologists’ perspective was limited to what they’d learnt at university or in earlier jobs].)
• spineless — cowardly, weak, unprincipled, corrupt
• that’s lame — ridiculous
• totem pole — organisational hierarchy, organisation chart (org chart)
• underrepresented — check this one for context; if talking about groups of people, it may really mean ‘historically excluded’ or ‘traditionally excluded’ or just ‘excluded’

See also:

• Conscious Style Guide: https://consciousstyleguide.com/
• NASA History Style Guide: https://history.nasa.gov/styleguide.html
• More on NASA’s terms: https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/seat-cockpit-gender-inclusive-language
• For those working in technology, INCITS (InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards) has this: https://standards.incits.org/apps/group_public/download.php/131246/eb-2021-00288-001-INCITS-Inclusive-Terminology-Guidelines.pdf

[Links last checked June 2022]