The DK Stylebook: Common-sense grammar rules

I am not claiming I’m the best editor in the world, earth’s foremost expert on grammar and language. I’m not. But I am someone who has spent a lot of time performing the act of editing, and as such I’ve formed some pretty firm opinions on some of what we do in grammar.

A lot of our grammar makes sense! For a weird-ass language like English to have some hard-and-fast rules is a good thing, and many of them have evolved over time. I’ve written before about how we need to just acknowledge the fact that “very unique” is a valid framing. There are some things we do with our language that just don’t make sense, whether because they were handed down from an earlier version of the language or that we’ve never really considered it.

So today, I’m offering up a few things that I prefer that might be grammatically incorrect but shouldn’t be, dammit. You might disagree with them, because you were told the other way was correct or whatever, but I bet if you come in with an open mind you’ll realize that the old ways are not necessarily the right ways.

The Oxford comma should be universal

For the less nerdy: If you write a list (“For dinner, I had a cheeseburger, fries, onion rings, and a soda”), the comma before the “and” is the “Oxford” or serial comma, and there is debate as to whether it should be used as a matter of course.

Now, the examples commonly given as evidence in favor of the Oxford comma are largely flawed. “Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall” is a list without the Oxford comma, but obviously that can also be read as though Merle Haggard (the subject of the sentence) had as his two ex-wives Misters Kristofferson and Duvall. There are countless humorous examples in that vein, and … they are bad. They are bad because the problem with that sentence is not the presence or absence of a comma, but rather structure. You could write the exact same sentence much more clearly as, “Among those interviewed were Kris Kristofferson, Robert Duvall and his two ex-wives,” and it clears up the problem with no need for a controversial comma.

(“The Controversial Comma” is going to be the title and main character of my comic strip geared toward editors. It will sell four copies and be a massive flop.)

No, humorous examples of comma confusion are not the evidence in favor of the Oxford comma. The evidence in favor of the Oxford comma is the entire reason for commas in the first place. What is the first thing you learned about punctuation? It’s that they indicate the flow in reading. A comma indicates a pause. A period indicates a larger pause. Yes, there are reasons for the marks outside of just when and how to pause, but that is one of their base duties. If you read a list (“cheeseburger, fries, onion rings, and a soda”), you pause after each entry. If you read it without the comma (“cheeseburger, fries, onion rings and a soda”), you still should pause after each entry, but if you’re reading aloud the natural inclination will be to speed up at the end (“onion ringsandasoda”), because the comma is not there forcing the pause.

Use the Oxford comma. Not because you might marry off Merle Haggard and Robert Duvall. But because you need to pause for breath when reading, and that’s what a comma is there for.

Capitalize every word in a title

The rules of capitalizing a title, like a book or a song or whatever, are that you capitalize:

  • The first word

  • The last word

  • The important words:

    • Adjectives

    • Adverbs

    • Nouns

    • Pronouns

    • Verbs

    • Conjunctions of more than four letters

So basically, you capitalize everything but conjunctions (“and,” “but,” etc.), articles (“a,” “the”) and short prepositions. And to that I say … why the hell not? A title is not decided upon lightly; every single word in the title of a composition is important. On top of that, why do we need extra nonsensical rules that just lead to people making mistakes?

Here are the rules we should follow for capitalizing titles: Capitalize every word. A Farewell To Arms. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. There’s just no logical reason for not capitalizing all the words. Do it.

The singular ‘they’

Especially as pronouns have become a more difficult topic for some people, we’ve had to be more careful in our usage of them, leading to a proliferation of “he/she” and “him/her.” This is a failing of the English language. We’ve tried to solve it over the years — “e,” “E,” “ey,” “hu,” “peh,” “per,” “thon,” “ve,” “xe,” “yo,” “ze,” zhe,” and “sie” are among the attempts at a gender-neutral pronoun we’ve tried over the years, but clearly none of those has caught on.

Let’s make it simple: “They” and “them.” Yes, those are historically plural pronouns. You know how you change that? You just change it. Start saying “Each student must finish their assignment.” The pedants will hate it for a month, feel a twinge of disapproval for a couple more months, and then literally everyone will adjust. Just do it.

It’s fine to end a sentence with a preposition!

To be clear, this has always been the rule. In the 1600s and later, some weird linguists tried to force English to conform to rules of some of the classic languages, because pedantry is actually the world’s oldest profession. The thing is, English is its own language, but for whatever reason, the weird linguists succeeded in getting “don’t end a sentence with a preposition” (and its sister not-a-rule, “don’t split an infinitive”) embedded in the collective grammatical psyche. And it’s for no reason. There is literally nothing in the English language that says not to end a sentence with a preposition, except when it might introduce confusion … but then “don’t introduce confusion” is basically a rule of grammar of every part of speech in every usage.

You can end a sentence with a preposition. It’s definitely something to get on board with.

One space after a sentence

This one has largely been resolved. Microsoft Word will even give you the angry squiggly if you hit two spaces after a period these days. But it’s worth reiterating. The reason we started putting two spaces after a period was a formatting thing — typing done on a typewriter used a font that allotted the same amount of horizontal space for every letter or space. A “w” and an “i” took up the same amount of space, as did an “m” and a comma. Putting two spaces gave the benefit of indicating a greater space after a sentence for pause reasons (basically the same as my above argument for the Oxford comma).

Today? Unless you’re typing in Courier (and why the heck are you typing in Courier?), your font is proportional, meaning the “i" takes up a teeny-tiny space and the “m” is a big old wide fat letter. It also means that two spaces don’t actually mean much. It floods inconsistent and uneven white space in a document.

And if nothing else, almost literally every style guide in the world insists on a single space.

(This was also the cause of the biggest fight I ever had with my siblings, with them telling me I was wrong and two spaces were correct, and culminating in me calling my sister a bitch. I … might have overreacted.)

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