GrammarPhile Blog

Muphry’s Law and What to Look Out For

The author sent me a copy of her published manuscript. The acknowledgements page thanked several notable people, including her editor. I squealed with delight and flipped through the pages, coming to rest midway through the book. A typo glared up at me.

I groaned and shut the book.

Yes, the editor was me.

“Murphy’s Law” states “If something can go wrong, it will.”¹ For the sake of people cringing the world over, it’s been extended and adapted to various industries, including editing.

The similar and equally cynical “Muphry’s Law” is a summary of four editorial principles:

1. If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written. (I call this the Prepare to Eat Crow principle.)
2. If an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book. (Also known as Inflate and Deflate, as illustrated by the first paragraph of this post.)
3. The stronger the sentiment in (a) and (b), the greater the fault.
4. Any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.²

If you, like me, can confirm the truth of these statements, welcome to a large and humble group of people who love language even though it trips them up.

For the sake of reducing Muphry’s Law from a jack hammer to a mosquito-buzzing level of frustration, here are a few stumbling blocks we often miss in our own work.

Spelling with the sounds of letter C

The letter C is a big weirdo. Some people might even think it’s useless. It’s a K and S wannabe, but just not up to standing on its own, right?

First of all, how dare you insult such a cute letter. Second, no. Allow me to explain what this letter is all about, and how and when to use it.

5 Tips to Get and Keep Your Readers’ Attention

I have less than 8.25 seconds to convince you to keep reading. Less than 8.25 seconds before you click away. Less than 8.25 seconds before you…FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, COME BACK!

When it comes to our collective attention span, we’ve been beaten out by goldfish.

For all the writers out there, you feel my pain. In the age of endless distraction, writing about a boring topic seems worse than pointless. It’s like having someone hand you a coffin and saying, “Lie down in this and be lively.”

We get it. We’re a proofreading company, for gosh sake. Every time we talk about our work at a dinner party, we’re never invited back.

We know the stumbling blocks (or is it “crocks”), the most effective ways to make your readers roll their eyes, groan, and glaze over. But because we read and read and read, we also know the springboards—the approaches and tricks and strategies that make a huge difference in getting and keeping the attention of your goldfish…ahem…audience.

What’s the rule?

I have an incredibly smart friend who believed that onions should never be refrigerated.

He’d read something online that claimed if you stored a raw onion in a refrigerator, it would absorb toxic bacteria and poison you. I informed him that onions often require cold temperatures to grow properly, so that claim made absolutely no sense. And for all the refrigerated onions my family had eaten, we’d never once been ill. He laughed.

Sometimes we’re fed a partial truth (that whole onions are better stored outside the refrigerator, for example) and ingest it as a whole one (it’s dangerous to store onions in the refrigerator). Just like the commonly known rule for using “a” and “an.”

If you were told in elementary school to use “a” before words beginning with a consonant and to use “an” before words beginning with a vowel, you were on the right track. But the truth is a little more complicated, and it can come back to bite you in the onion.

The Hottest Topics from the PRN Archives

You’re a busy person. Like most people, you want value and convenience, and you want it 3.74 seconds before you thought about it. To that aim, we’ve gathered the Top 5 ProofreadNOW.com blog posts by view count over the past year. These are the topics our readers found the most helpful compiled into a single extremely convenient and bursting-with-grammatical-value list:

Quick explanations with simple examples

First, what’s the benefit of knowing the parts of speech? Isn’t this just nerd language about language, irrelevant to daily life? Nope. Learning what words do and how to categorize them will result in:

• Clarity. When you learn the building blocks of language, just like place value and the decimal number system in math, you’ll be less confused. Language becomes more of a friend instead of a stumbling block.
• Confidence. Once you have the basics down, you’ll be sure of your ability to wield language and stand behind your words.
• Communication. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll write and speak more effectively.
• Connections. Understanding the foundations of your own language will enable you to identify correlations in other languages.
• Conquest. Nothing will stand in your way. You’ll slice your way through every obstacle using only words. All your dreams will come true.*

So, let’s get down to grammatical tacks.

Which is Correct?

Is it all right to use “alright”? We’d say so, with a few qualifications:

• Both “alright” and “all right” are words.
• “All right” is considered more correct in that it is the preferred form, especially if you’re writing.
• If you are writing for business or a professor, stick with “all right.” If you aren’t, it’s all right to use “alright.”

Some people believe these words have slightly different meanings. For example:

Q: Were the directions all right?

 A: Yes, all of them were correct. Not a single one was wrong.

Q: Were the directions alright?

 A: They weren’t specific enough to my taste, but it’s okay.

We’d argue that the implied meaning of “all right” in the first example includes the meaning of “alright” in the second example, so the split use isn’t necessary.

Then there’s the similar but jauntier version “all righty.” Besides the fact that this is only used as an adverb, while the other two can be used as adverbs or adjectives, there’s no real difference in meaning.

To sum up:

• Use “all right” when you’re impressing people.
• Use “alright” when you’re wearing sweatpants.
• Reserve “all righty” for when you’re being sarcastic or cute or you’re extremely excited.

Alright?

And other words that don’t (or sometimes do) need an “s”

Who knew a single letter could cause so much confusion? Here are five pairs of words that cause eyebrow furrowing for English speakers and writers. Learn when to keep the “s” and when to toss it with these brief explanations and helpful examples.

Beside vs. Besides

Both are valid and both are correct, in certain cases.

Use “beside”:

• As a preposition.* If you sit beside me at lunch, I might steal your pudding.

Use “besides”:

• As a preposition (with a different meaning).** There’s nothing to eat besides pudding.
• As an adverb. I don’t want pudding, and besides, it expired in 2005.
• As an adjective. Besides eating expired pudding, what other things can we do?

Supposably…

First things first. As soon as I typed “irregardless” into a Microsoft Word file, a red squiggle of death appeared. You know the type. That alone should give you pause, though the Editor/Spell Check tool is admittedly problematic.

Let’s break this conundrum into bite-size pieces:

Irregardless has a prefix (ir), a main root (regard),* and a suffix (less).

“Ir” is a variant of “il,” “im,” and “in,” all meaning “not.” Why so many options for the same thing? That’s simply based on the etymology of the root word and its spelling — “im” is used before words beginning with “b,” “m,” and “p,” for example, and “ir” is used before words beginning with “r.”**

“Regard” in this form is an adverb, which is a word that modifies or clarifies the meaning of a verb, adjective, or another adverb.

“Less” is a suffix meaning “without” or “not having.”

So the prefix and suffix mean the same thing. This is essentially a double negative, which is why I didn’t even bother to define “regard” above. Because if you know the meaning of “regardless,” you know the intended meaning of “irregardless,” despite its nonsensical construction. If you right-click on the red squiggle of death, it will prompt you with the replacement “regardless.” If you text “irregardless,” autocorrect will more than likely change it to “regardless.” In fact, if you search “irregardless” in Merriam Webster, the listed definition is — you guessed it — “regardless.”

So why is “irregardless” in the dictionary, if not as a testament to its veracity as a legitimate word? Because Merriam Webster is as much responsible for reporting information based on usage as it is for the judicious treatment of those words. People persist in using “irregardless,” and Merriam Webster has magnanimously declared the word “nonstandard.”

Our take is a little less generous.

The Grocer’s Apostrophe

If the use of apostrophes has you scratching your head, you’ve come to the right place.

First, let’s start this subtraction problem with some simple addition. There are three situations when you do need an apostrophe:

1. Omission. To indicate that one or more letters are missing. For example: “Doesn’t” instead of “does not,” “hasn’t” instead of “has not.”
2. Possession. To indicate that something belongs to somebody (loosely, since it could be a somebody that belongs to something). For example: ProofreadNOW.com’s amazing proofreaders, the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt’s crew, the dog’s enormous nose.
3. Plurality. To indicate the plural of letters or figures. For example: Mind your p’s and q’s. Plot those x’s and y’s. On the contrary: There were no ifs or buts. Beware the dos and don’ts. In letter puzzles, s’s are used more than other consonants and e’s are featured more than other vowels. As noted elsewhere on our site, some people do not consider the third use as correct.*)