One of the most-argued points in the history of grammar (perhaps that’s embellished just a tad) is the serial comma. A little-known fact about the serial comma is that it goes by several names:

• Serial comma
• Oxford comma
• Harvard comma

The serial comma (the most generic of the three names) is also known as the Oxford comma because it is in the Oxford University Press style guide and has been for more than 100 years. Writers who are less taken with the grammatical

Ham and eggs with a lovely garnish

influences of the Brits but who approve of the higher-brow tendencies choose to call the serial comma the Harvard comma. What about those lucky folks who went to The University of Kansas? The Jayhawk comma has a nice ring to it. How about the WuShock? Or the Wildcat comma? Do you see where all this naming madness could lead?

So — back to the topic at hand. The serial-Oxford-Harvard comma follows the penultimate word or group of words in a series. Check out these two sentences:

1. I had orange juice, hash browns, and ham and eggs this morning.
2. I had orange juice, hash browns and ham and eggs this morning.

The first sentence includes the serial comma, which groups ham and eggs as an integral item (which, in the United States anyway, it usually is) instead of two separate entries.

The second sentence does not include the serial comma, making the sentence look like it got out of the wrong side of the bed. Even though the AP Stylebook prefers no serial comma, it includes an exception for the inevitable black-sheep sentence — you know, the one with an integral element of the series requiring a conjunction (i.e., and).

For those who were raised under the iron fist of the MLA and who grew accustomed to including the serial comma, it may take you a short while to get used to its eradication (except in particular situations as noted above).

Should the serial comma be reinstated? If that happens, we’ll all still live in a non-black-and-white world, because as you are painfully aware, there’s always, always an exception to a rule, and the serial comma rule-breaker is no exception.

It’s true. Peruse these two sentences:

1. You almost ran over an electrician, Shad Zoober, and Tony Purpleface.
2. You almost ran over an electrician, Shad Zoober and Tony Purpleface.

In the first sentence: Did you almost run over two people (Shad Zoober + Tony) or three people (an electrician + Shad + Tony)?

In the second sentence, it seems fairly clear that you ran over three people. So the first sentence solidifies the point that a serial comma (in No. 1) doesn’t always clear up the meaning, whereas a lack of one does (or may). Lots of gray here, people.

So there the serial comma stands — clear as a rainy, foggy and gray day. After all this, if you still can’t figure it out, here’s a final suggestion: Rewrite!

Who doesn’t love the AP Stylebook?

An empty soundstage: Is there anybody out there? (Photo courtesy of Flickr user juliejordanscott)

Wait — don’t answer that. As a borderline OCD writer-editor-proofreader-blogger, I am over the moon in awe of the journalist/advertising bible. It’s absolutely true that a few of its rules drive the hoards of creative types wild — especially when I’m the messenger — yet I love it all the more.

The AP Stylebook lays down the grammatical and editorial laws that allow creativity to flow between and bounce off of those same laws. How else would all of the rogue writers out there prove their anti-establishmentarian tendencies if there were no establishment to mock? Editors are familiar with these rogues — make no mistake. Editors and writers sometimes have a tumultuous relationship. But the good ones (and there are a lot of good ones) marry the rules with the creativity, producing something truly spectacular and correct, all at the same time.

My 2011 AP Stylebook has not led me astray so far — even though it still wants me to put a period at the end of each bulleted sentence or phrase, no matter how unnecessary it may be — insanity.

So what else did the latest edition the AP Stylebook suggest? Here’s a short list of groups of words (two words or hyphenated words) that are now one word:

Cellphone

Checkout

Geolocation

Email (only an uppercase “E” if it starts a sentence)

Filmgoer

Firsthand

Handheld (noun)

Nonprofit

Postgame

Pregame

Serviceman, servicewoman (but still service member)

Smartphone

Soundstage

Tipoff

Unfollow

Videotape

If you’re at all into grammar or language, you’ve probably already heard that the hyphenated “e-mail” fought the good fight but ended up in the word graveyard. That one change alone made a whole host people very happy, indeed. The other words, such as filmgoer and handheld — didn’t cause as much of a stink, but here they are. Use them in good health.

Photo: http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m164/bridgetjane12/Hunter_Gatherer_cartoon.gif

The proliferation of the Internet, email and texting has, in their own particular ways, increased people’s frequency (if not ability) to communicate across borders and time zones. The written word carries with it certain caveats — a major one being the variance between the implication of what’s written and the inferred meaning that’s taken away from the communication.

For an example, let’s focus on a writer who has just written a book. This writer chose particular words and phrases in a particular order. Those particular words and phrases in that particular order were meant, no doubt, to get across a particular meaning; the writer way trying to say something to the audience. By trying to get across that meaning with those particular words, the writer writing implies meaning. The same could be said of a speaker, who implies meaning by the particular words in the particular order.

In both of these scenarios, an audience is targeted. The audience must read or listen, and in so doing interpreting. The audience is, thus, inferring something from those words.

One way to look at it is the hunter-gatherer relationship. The hunter is the one who implies. The hunter brings the meat (the meaning) to the table and says, “Here it is. I’d like to see a steak for dinner, but do what you will with it. My work here is done.”

The gatherer is the one who infers. The gatherer accepts the meat and may or may not hear the request for steak. But perhaps the gatherer has a great beef stew recipe or is in the mood for tacos, or perhaps the gatherer cares not a whit for steak and throws the meat to the lurking wolves, preparing instead a bowl of garbanzo bean soup, sans meat. The interpretation of what was implied becomes what’s inferred by the gatherer, and the hunter often has no say in what’s for dinner.

Another way to look at it is that “to imply” is more active, while “to infer” is more reactive (the one doing the inferring is actively doing something, too — inferring — but doing so in reaction to something that has come before — the words). The argument could be made that the writer or speaker who wrote or spoke with implication did so in reaction to some previous stimulus. Yes, that’s true. That’s also a philosophy lesson for another day. Here are the guts of it:

• To imply is to mean something with the chosen words.
• To infer is to gather the meaning of the chosen words.

The AP Stylebook folks state it more simply, for sure, so if that’s your bag (and really, why wouldn’t it be?), here it is:

Writers or speakers imply in the words they use. A listener or reader infers something from the words.

See? Nothin’ to it.

Writing headlines can cause even the most seasoned writer high anxiety.

The job of the headline is to concisely sum up the article in such a manner as to stimulate interest in the accompanying article or story. But writers know that the hardest thing to write is often the thing that requires the least amount of words. Compare it to telling a story versus telling a joke; many folks can tell a story halfway well but can’t tell a joke to save a drowning kitten.

Not exactly sure why this needed quotes at all (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xurble/59305536/)

Advertising executive extraordinaire David Ogilvy noted, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.” Ain’t that the truth? The headline is the baited hook. The headline draws readers’ interest in enough to encourage them to go on and read the article. In these times of rapid-fire communications and über-multitasking, that’s some feat.

But “How to write the ideal headline” isn’t the title of this entry. And that speech belongs to someone else. So — what is this entry about? Quotation marks in headlines! And it’s really a simple thing:

If you must use quotation marks in headlines, use single quotation marks. Captions (i.e., cutlines) follow the same M.O. as body copy.

Many moons ago, when typesetters had to manually set type, space was golden. Now, space is still golden, but a myriad of fonts and new-fangled software programs help typesetters (or designers or graphic artists) mess with the kerning and leading and such in order to maximize what little space there is. There still isn’t much room to fiddle with, but at least it can be fiddled with, whereas it wasn’t an option not long ago.

Highfalutin double quotation marks are appropriate for quotes in articles, stories, blogs and captions — just not for the headline.

Check out this example headline from The Washington Post:

Iran warns that it will deal ‘fiercely’ with protesters.

Makes sense, yes? While the single quotation marks may look a bit odd at first, they do grow on you. And here’s a fun little factoid: Many people don’t like to use quotations in headlines. Many, too, have done research that shows headline quotes as increasing readership and sales; the same research also shows that quotes in a subhead, rather than a headline, increase readership and sales even more.

Funny what you learn when you read more than just a headline, huh?

“Live in the now!” That’s one of Garth’s many quotes from “Wayne’s World” that has managed to survive — nay, thrive — for nearly 20 years since the movie’s release. It is also an appropriate concept to apply to the short line of copy that typically lingers below an article’s photograph: the caption, or cutline. For those who follow the AP Stylebook to the T, you may prefer to use the term “caption.” No matter what you call that line, though, it tells the reader the who, what, when, where, why and how of the picture.

Consider this: Captions are read more often than the articles they accompany, second only to headlines. What do you tend to read? If you’re like most people, you check out the headlines and captions to determine whether you want to spend your time delving into the entire article. (Read an entire article? The horror.) Although many captions are only one sentence, a second sentence in the caption is completely acceptable, and it may be written in either the present or past tense. The first sentence, however, should almost always be written in the present tense.

To ponder:

• Why must the first sentence of a caption be in the present tense? Since the photo captures a specific moment in time, the present tense gives a feeling of immediacy that makes what happened in the photo seem more relevant than if it happened several days, weeks or months ago. Using the past tense may stir up the feeling of receiving old news. And who wants old news? Not most readers.
  

  A beagle allows a kitten to snuggle in Curitiba, Brazil, on Jan. 21, 2007. The dog provided comfort and shelter for its tiny companion, who had become separated from its mother during the previous night’s storm. (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmatsuoka/2582269821/)

• What rare situations would require a cutline to employ the past tense? Well, that’s a tough one. The AP Stylebook website and style guide don’t refer to the past tense concerning that first sentence. One guess is that the AP Stylebook is not referencing the first sentence in a cutline, but the second. It’s apparently OK to write the second sentence in either present tense or past tense, depending on the publication’s or client’s preference. Weird, weird stuff.

So — if you have AP Stylebook-documented proof of a reason to use the past tense in a caption or cutline in the first sentence of a caption or cutline, please send it our way.

This caption, while not 100 percent factual, for the purpose of this entry gives all the pertinent information required of a cutline — who, what, when, where and why.

Your caption, of course, will be on the up-and-up, factually speaking. It will draw your readers in, coercing them to read the accompanying article. And you will be the caption-writing hero to your client. Let it be.

Happy caption writing!

Today is Friday, April 22, and it’s Earth Day!

It’s time to get and enjoy what this world has to offer, time to celebrate this fantastic, giant planet we all live on, time to make at least one modification to your everyday life to help sustain, improve or protect the earth, and time to take action on a local level.

“Think globally, act locally.”

What can you do as an inhabitant of Wichita (or one of its surrounding areas) to help the sustain the earth so that it can be around in its best form for you,

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Steve Snodgrass.

your children and your children’s children? Here are a few easy-to-do ideas:

Reduce

Going green includes incorporating the trifecta of environmental sustainability —reduce, reuse and recycle — with the first tenet perhaps being the most important. By reducing consumption, you reduce your carbon footprint and require fewer natural resources to be extracted from the earth. You learn to exist well with fewer things, which is not only an admirable ethical goal but also an economic necessity in this era of making do with less. So how do you reduce consumption?

• Buy in bulk (less packaging, usually lower prices); such big-box stores as Target and Walmart offer bulk purchasing, as well as the larger warehouse stores (think Sam’s).
• Use power strips to quickly switch off such electricity-eating electronics as TVs and stereos when not in use.
• When it’s cold outside, set your thermostat to 55 degrees during the night; when it’s hot, shoot for 78 degrees or higher.

Reuse

Figuring out how to use items more than just once is a terrific way to help inhibit the overflowing of landfills. What items can you — or someone else — reuse? Anything that doesn’t endanger your health (or anyone else’s):

• Take plastic grocery bags to a local daycare to use for toddler’s soiled clothes; reuse them as household trash bags or doggy poop bags; keep several in your car to collect random trash that inevitably builds up; or, better yet, forgo plastic bags at the market in favor of taking your own reusable bags to haul groceries.
• Repurpose the Wichita Eagle’s Sunday funny papers as wrapping paper.
• Compost food scraps.
• Use cleaned plastic containers (e.g., sour cream, butter, cottage cheese) for leftovers or to hold buttons or rubber bands.
• Sell or give away gently used items that you do not want anymore on Craigslist or eBay, or have a garage sale — your junk is someone else’s jewel. (Check to see if your neighborhood holds a group garage sale day to help increase foot traffic.)
• Donate old cell phones, eyeglasses, clothes or appliances to local charities that distribute items to others who could use them.

Recycle

When an item has reached the end of its useful life, recycling is the next green step. While not all items are easily recycled (yet), many are:

• Get in touch with your local trash company; Waste Connections and Waste Management both offer recycling programs. Find out what can go into your recycling bin; each company has its own requirements. Most take glass, paper and at least some forms of plastic (determined by the number in the triangle usually located on the bottom of the container).
• Take your recyclables to a local recycling center or drop-off bin. Wichita-area Dillons stores accept steel and aluminum cans, as well as paper goods, such as old telephone books, catalogs and newspapers, in outside bins. Dillons and Walmart both accept plastic grocery bags. Target stores have bins inside that accept aluminum, glass, plastic PET bottles and bags, and small electronics, such as cell phones, batteries, ink cartridges and MP3 players. Take used compact fluorescent lights inside of local Home Depot stores and used batteries to Lowe’s.

These suggestions are by no means exhaustive. A little research will uncover that just about anything you’re done with is recyclable. Visit www.sedgwickcounty.org/environment for a list of items you can recycle and where to take them. Get the environmental ball rolling — go green and go lean, and you will be helping the earth and those who live on it.

Happy Earth Day!

Photo courtesy of Flickr user martinbowling.

It is, as they say, all in the details.

I recently wrote a new-information sheet for a client. While doing so, I learned that the preferred term for a said new-information sheet is news conference, rather than press conference.

Why does news claim victory over press?

Because, as Mark Chamberlin, our director of marketing and public relations extraordinaire told me, a press (think printing press) is not typically at a conference. Folks who are about to be presented with news are waiting with eager anticipation. Those calling the conference are presenting news that they hope will go seriously viral. And because so many types of media are prevalent today, press is simply too narrow a term. The pièce de résistance is that the AP Stylebook hails news conference as the preferred term. Thus, it is as it should be — news conference.

Does the same thinking govern news release vs. press release?

Alas, there’s no mention in the AP Stylebook of press releases or news releases. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find on the AP Stylebook website a little nugget: a page dedicated to previous press releases. You read it correctly — press releases! It almost jumps off the monitor, it’s so blunt. Press Releases tops the page in a striking sans font.

There it is — news conference and press release. Now get out there and make some happy news worth shouting from the rafters.

Advertising agencies don’t usually make an announcement when they say goodbye to a client. Today, we are making an exception.

Wichita Mid-Continent Airport has become more than a client over the past five years. Like others we have served for a longer period of time, they have become part of our extended family.

We have shared successes that went way beyond traditional advertising. By any measuring stick you might choose, Armstrong|Shank over-delivered on the advertising goals, while we under-spent the annual budgets. Among our accomplishments:

• Initiating a courtesy crew team to provide positive experiential marketing
• Increasing awareness of the airport to unprecedented levels
• Reducing leakage of travelers to other airports
• Building social media promotions to reach our community in new ways

It has been a busy, and rewarding five years.

Now, as this very special client moves on to another agency chosen by the City of Wichita, we want to wish them well. Our hope is that they will have an exciting journey, filled with new adventures.

And, of course, we want them to return safely home to us someday.

Because that’s what we do at Armstrong|Shank: wish our clients well, and hope to see them again and again.

Many thanks to our friends at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport (Victor White, Valerie Wise, the fabulous Courtesy Crew, and the Airport Advisory Board). You have made each challenge a joy to tackle together.

Bon voyage.

Typesetters actually used to “set” type and fonts and weights (thus, the moniker). Back when such design capabilities were not just a quick keystroke away as they are today, old-school headlines were written with every word — or nearly every word — initial-capped on every word:

• Jane Doe Relocates To Denver, Buys Mountain

Such stylized formatting helped readers back in the day know that the headline was, indeed, separate from whatever followed. More robust. More important. More headlinerish. The mix of uppercase and lowercase letters was a technique that was supposed to draw readers in, hopefully to have them become engaged with whatever followed. And that technique taught readers that the headline was a headline simply because every first letter of every (or nearly every) word was bigger than the rest. Sometimes, though, that technique focused more on the presence of the headline than on what followed.

In this modern world of faster-than-Superman wordsmiths who can craft headlines as they go, type treatment has evolved — so says the AP Stylebook. For some time now, the go-to writer’s guide has mandated initial caps only for the first word in the headline, as well as any proper nouns:

• Jane Doe relocates to Denver, buys mountain

Easy, simple and clean.

Character design overload: down style, all caps, all initial caps and an improperly used ellipsis, to boot.

Tiny articles (e.g., a, an, the) and prepositions (e.g., to, of, for) no longer receive preferential initial-uppercase treatment. The size of the initial letters no longer suggests heightened meaning. Now, writers must truly offer compelling text that lures casual passers-by, drawing them into their mystical world of words. Headlines must make the reader want to read more, not only the headline.

Viva the down-style headline! If nothing else, it’s easier on the reader’s eye. It invites readers instead of coercing them. It implies a (slightly) higher level of understanding rather than speaking to the audience as if it’s a first-grade teacher reading a held-up book. That alone must count for something.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Alamosbasement.

I had just started working here at the agency and was excited to start things off right with an updated AP Stylebook at my fingertips. Since my own copy of the veritable writer’s bible was the 2007 version, I thought that getting a newer version was the wise thing to do. Staying current with the 2010 version (even though it’s already 2011, thank you very much) seemed like a grand idea, especially since the 2011 version wasn’t going to be published for a few months yet.

For those with inquiring minds, the 2010 version is the first style guide put out by the AP folks with website spelled as one word and an uppercase “W” on the first word. That change alone was a monumental advancement. Ask any writer or editor (or even an opinionated designer or two — they’ll freely offer their stance on the subject); he or she will probably be able to explain in enormous detail the good, the bad and the ugly concerning the one-word-versus-two spelling format.

Now — back to the crapshoot.

As a wordsmith in my new gig at Armstrong|Shank Advertising, I thought it necessary to get my hands on the latest AP Stylebook. The office manager said, “Absolutely — no worries. I’ll order one of those thingamajiggers today.”

Yay!

The spiral-bound guide arrived and I settled in, prepared for whatever freakish grammar query may pop up.

[Ominous background music kicks in.]

Just a few days ago, though, the AP Stylebook powers that be sucker-punched me by deciding to give in to the hoards of people who relentlessly complained about constantly having to hyphenate the word. The new rule? The unhyphenated email kicks its hyphenated cousin e-mail off the stage.

And that, readers, is monumental. Even more newsworthy than Web site changing to website. It’s so monumental because, in the English language, compound nouns that start with a single letter do not lose their hyphens. For example:

• A-frame
• G-string
• S-curve
• T-ball
• T-shirt
• U-turn
• X-ray

It seems strange to me that the hyphen is missing in email, too, because for the three people who still don’t know what electronic mail is, reading the word without the hyphen encourages improper pronunciation: ehMAIL. And that, as the rest of us in the know already know, isn’t correct. And now, to add insult to injury, I have an out-of-date stylebook! Oh, the humanity.

Why should email take over? Perhaps because the majority of people, while tweeting and texting and e-mailing (er, emailing) on a daily basis, decided that it’s just too complicated to add the hyphen to a word that gets communicated on such a frequent basis, and those people bended the AP Stylebook editors to their will.

So — lazy wins.

And you know what? That’s probably OK in this case. It may not be a decision based on correctness, but many, many folks will be much happier — and faster — tweeters and texters with this new rule in their back pocket.

One last detail: Email with an uppercase “E” is the correct way to begin a sentence; email with a lowercase “e” is correct in all other sentence constructions. Good times.