Usage
Q. I have been using the title “professor emerita” with the names of retired female professors. Now one of those professors insists that I have confused sex with grammatical gender. She writes, “The phrase is Latin; the noun ‘professor’ is masculine and should be modified by the masculine form of the adjective—‘emeritus’—regardless of the professor’s gender.” Since the sixteenth edition of CMOS has used “professor emerita” as part of an example at paragraph 8.27, I’m assuming that this usage is correct. Can you weigh in on this? Answer »
Q. I am uncertain about the correct usage in the following sentence: “There is no solution, since the absolute value, by definition, can not be equal to a negative number.” I’ve looked through your book and it appears to me that it is a closed (or solid) compound word—cannot. The editor I work for insists that it is can not. Please advise. Answer »
Q. I have lived abroad now almost twenty years and fear my English may be tainted by other grammars. A friend, who has been married three times to three different women, recently wrote: “She reminds me of my first and third wives.” I feel that it should be: “She reminds me of my first and third wife.” In other words, “She reminds me of my first (wife understood but not expressed) and my third wife.” There are other languages with this sort of unexpressed noun usage where the adjective is marked by both gender and syntax. Am I totally off base here? Answer »
Q. In a recent William Safire column, “On Language,” in the New York Times, Safire devoted the column to addressing the mistakes he might have made during 2002, and his readers’ corrections. This is part of one of them: Answer »
Q. It grates on my ear to listen to the BBC (particularly sports) newscasts talk about countries in the plural form, e.g., “England are preparing for next week’s match.” Can this be correct? I only began noticing it a couple of years ago, and I seem to recall that the practice even extends to cities or team names (Bayern Munich are out of the playoffs . . .). Your assistance would be much appreciated. Answer »
Q. May I please ask if nouns can sometimes be used as verbs. For example, “His emotions nuance his words.” Thank you. Answer »
Q. A number of educated friends tell me that “sans” is archaic and affected; they frown when I use it and instead encourage “without.” What do you think? Answer »
Q. What is the proper use of “would” or “could” in sentence structure? For example, would you please close the door? Or, could you please close the door? Answer »
Q. When writing a document (or preparing a PowerPoint presentation), should “e.g.” be spelled out as “for example,” or is leaving it as an abbreviation OK? Answer »
Q. Could you please tell me the difference between toward and towards? Answer »
Q. I work for a software company catering to law firms. In a law firm’s name you might use “et al.” if the firm name is long. What is the proper way of doing so? Answer »
Q. Dear CMOS, I know you aren’t a grammar usage source, but for lack of knowing where to look, I wonder if you might know which word—“be” or “is”—would be correct here. “The senior management plan specifies that the lump sum rate in effect at termination (be/is) used to project interest to the regular retirement date.” I believe the correct word choice is “be,” but I’m not sure why. Can you offer any expertise? Thanks for your help! Answer »
Q. Hello! My question is regarding the following sentence. Answer »
Q. Do you have the definitive word on the following: “A is 29% greater than B” (as, for example, when A costs $1.29 and B costs $1.00)? I’m bothered by the use of a percentage less than 100, immediately followed by the “greater than” phrase, which I think is self-contradictory. In this specific case, I think A is actually 129% greater than B. If A cost less than B, it would be some percentage less than 100; if it costs more, then it must be some percentage greater than 100. Any comments? Answer »
Q. We are having a bit of a debate down here—in a manuscript, one of our authors refers to a person who keeps a journal as a “journaler.” The author prefers “journaler” to “diarist” because she feels that they are two separate things. The copyeditor wants to change “journaler” to “journalist” (the second definition of “journalist” is “a person who keeps a journal”), but I think that would be confusing to a reader. “Journalizer” appears in Webster’s but doesn’t seem right either. Any opinions? Answer »
Q. Dear CMOS, What is your opinion of the contraction “there’s” for “there has”? A sample sentence is “There’s been an explosion of scientific knowledge.” One on-line source says “there’s” has two meanings, “there is” and “there has.” If contractions were appropriate in a document, would you use “there’s” in both ways in the same document? Same paragraph? And by the way, when did the second usage creep in? Thanks. Answer »
Q. I am the copy editor for a nonprofit organization, and we recently hired a new publications director. One of his style preferences drives some of us crazy, and I was hoping you might help, as we are supposed to be following The Chicago Manual of Style. Anyway, I think this might be more of a personal choice instead of a style decision: the problem is that he insists on leaving in or adding unnecessary “thats,” even if the other editors feel they bog down the sentences. Example: I had a sentence that read, “It is important for mental health workers to understand the vital role companion animals play in their clients’ lives.” Per his choice, it now reads, “It is important for mental health workers to understand the vital role that companion animals play in their clients’ lives.” I know it’s not incorrect to add the “thats,” but I believe they make the text sound sloppy. What do you think? Answer »
Q. When is it correct to use “if” and when is it correct to use “whether?” Thank you. Answer »
Q. Help us out if you please. We are debating whether the following incomplete sentence (it’s used in a table) takes singular or plural verbs. “A tool applied to data that identifies consumer goods, defines their characteristics, and describes their method choice behaviors.” Answer »
Q. I am writing a nonfiction text in which I refer to the title of a novel written by a character in a novel. The fictitious title happens to be the same as the actual novel’s title. Throughout my nonfiction text I have been italicizing actual book titles. What do I do with the fictitious title? Do I put it in quotes or do I italicize it? Many thanks! Answer »
Q. An article I wrote recently was copyedited, and wherever I had begun a sentence with “Due to” the editor changed it to “Owing to” or “Because of.” What’s the difference? Answer »
Q. When should the written version of a number not be followed by that number in parentheses? Answer »
Q. I write for an engineering training company. My boss returned from a standards meeting where the members decided that conditional sentences beginning with “when” (e.g., “When the diameter symbol is placed next to a dimension . . .”) are incorrect and should be changed to “where” throughout the standard and our textbooks. I contend that examples like these refer to “if or when” conditions, not place. It’s tantamount to saying, “Where you are in Paris, you must obey the rules.” Is there a rule that covers the correct usage of “where” versus “when”? Answer »
Q. I keep encountering authors who insist on using the word “Yay!” It isn’t in the dictionary. What is the best substitute word, besides “Yes!”? Answer »
Q. I was recently confronted with the question a versus an. We used a; he insisted it should be an. In the 15th edition, in section 15.9, it shows that “when an abbreviation follows an indefinite article, the choice of a or an is determined by the way the abbreviation would be read aloud.” In the examples used, it shows “an NBA coach.” Why would you not use a there? “An National Basketball Association coach” doesn’t seem correct to me. Answer »