SamR's Writing Bugaboos

Here are a few commonly-misused and commonly-abused phrases and writing strategies that I expect you to avoid. Not all are incorrect, but all bother me in some way. Hence, it behooves you to avoid them in any writing you show to me.

I've listed these ``bugaboos'' alphabetically, since I didn't want to provide any implicit order-of-precedence.

couple used as an adjective

``Couple'' is a noun (meaning two or a few) or a verb (meaning join). Please don't use it as an adjective. That is, don't write ``a couple mistakes''. Rather, write ``a few mistakes'' (preferred) or ``a couple of mistakes''.

decimate

This is used too often as a synonym for destroy. However, it means something more, particularly because of its historical background. The origin of the term has to do with an ancient military practice (a Roman practice, I believe) of lining up the people in a village and killing every tenth person (or man), thereby demoralizing the populace. Use it only when you mean ``remove one in ten'' or ``harm to such a level that it demoralizes that which is harmed''.

facilitate

An overused word, that doesn't say much more than ``makes it easier for X to do Y''. Tends to lead to weak, inactive sentences.

data is

``Data'' is a plural noun (the plural of ``datum''). Hence, you should write ``data are''.

HTML programming

You do not program in HTML. HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. Markup languages talk about appearance or roles. Programming languages (typically) talk about actions. You might ``write HTML''. You might ``mark-up a page with HTML''. You do not ``program HTML''>

media is

``Media'' is a plural noun (the plural of ``medium''). Hence, you should write ``media are''.

real

Do not use ``real'' to mean ``very'', as in ``that's a real cute kid you have''.

user

I dislike this word for a number of reasons. One is that it is often too vague. We speak of ``users'' of particular kinds of software. However, at least on the Web, it may be more appropriate to speak of ``readers'' and ``authors''. While ``users'' may be appropriate for some forms of software (after all, people do use software), you might consider making it clearer what use people are making of that software.

A second reason that I dislike this word is that it is often used condescendingly, often leading to the term ``lusers''.

Yes, there are others.

utilize

"Use", dressed up, but with no additional meaning.

Multiple Adjectives

You should also be careful when using multiple adjectives to modify a noun, since there are fairly strict rules about meaning (and misuse of the rules can lead to you saying something other than what you mean).

There are three basic forms for two-adjective modifiers,

• adjective₁ adjective₂ noun (no extra puntuation). In this case, the second adjective modifies the noun (creating a noun phrase), and the first adjective modifies the noun phrase. For example, a ``red oak tree'' is an oak tree that is red. A ``cool mathematics class'' is a mathematics class that happens to be cool. A ``happy wild child'' is a wild child who is also happy.
• adjective<sub>1</sub>, adjective<sub>2</sub> noun (adjectives separated by commas). In this case, both adjectives independently modify the noun. For example, a ``red, oak tree'' is a tree that is red and a tree that is an oak. (Okay, that wasn't the best example.) Similarly, a ``cool, mathematics class'' is a class that is cool, and a class that is in math. A ``happy, wild child'' is a child who is both happy and wild.
• adjective₁-adjective₂ noun (hyphenated adjectives). In this case, the first adjective (okay, it's really acting as an adverb) modifies the second adjective, and the adjectival phrase modifies the noun. For example, a ``red-oak tree'' is a tree belonging to the species ``red oak'' and a ``cool-mathematics class'' is a class in a subdiscipline of mathematics known as ``cool mathematics''.

Obviously, for some cases, standards or custom allow you to violate these rules. For example, in ``Supreme Court justice'', it is clear that ``Supreme Court'' is intended as a logical whole, even though it is not hyphenated and probably shouldn't be. (Note, however, that ``supreme court justice'' refers to the most supreme of the court justices.) In other cases, the context makes the meaning obvious. However, in almost every case, you should punctuate your adjectives appropriately.

For my class, you should always use ``World-Wide Web'', even though convention is moving toward the incorrectly hyphenated version.

(The more obnoxious among you may be wondering why I didn't hyphenate ``incorrectly hyphenated'', since the third rule seems to imply that I should do so. However, ``incorrectly'' is an adverb, not an adjective (what is an ``incorrectly version?''), so the association of adverb to adjective is clear.

Some Formatting Bugaboos

As you will soon realize, I also care a lot about formatting, particularly formatting in HTML. Here are a few simple guidelines.

paragraphs

Use <P> and </P> tags to indicate paragraphs. Don't use <BR> with some non-breaking spaces.

underlining

Don't (except for links, which the browser should do automatically). Underlining has its roots in typewritten text, in which writers did not have different weights and styles available. If you want to underline, use italics, boldface, or perhaps a different font color (depending on intent). In addition, underlining on the Web typically means ``this is a link'', so you should not use it for other purposes.

I prefer to see syntactically correct HTML, even if I don't always write it. If you're not sure whether or not your HTML is syntactically correct, run it through the verifier at http://validator.w3.org. (Unfortunately, this page is not correct because of some difficulty my page generator has with description lists.)