Q. Hi. We are having a debate at work. We live in Madison, the capital city of Wisconsin. We recently moved into a new office
space and named the main conference room the Capital Room. Many of us think it should be “Capitol”
because it is named after the state capitol. Others think only the capitol building can be spelled with the “o.”
Please advise us so we can get back to work. Thank you.
A. If the room is named for the state capital (city), it should be spelled with an a; if it’s named for the capitol building, it’s spelled with an o. I doubt that your state constitution restricts the use of the word “capitol”
to the capitol building. In fact, I’d be surprised if it’s not being used by a
pub or two.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Is it correct now to use “woman” as an adjective? I know dictionaries list it as such, but dictionaries are reflectors of common usage, not arbiters of proper grammar. I have an author who insists on using “woman activist,” rather than “female activist,” because according to her that’s the common usage in her professional field. I hate the usage because I see it as both incorrect and undesirable—unless we’re going to start using “man activist” as well.
A. Any editorial objection to woman as an adjective must come up against the reasons that woman activist is more common than female activist. Many of these reasons probably have less to do with grammar and more to do with the history of American activism (Merriam-Webster, for example, includes an entry for the phrase woman suffrage, dating it to 1846). In fact, there is no rule against using a noun attributively. Moreover, even the most descriptive (as opposed to proscriptive) dictionaries tend to flag bad grammar, and none that I’ve checked note any objections to using woman as a modifier. So the question is one of usage—why is woman used attributively so much more often than man?—and not one of grammar.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I have noticed that the adjective “archival” is frequently used as a noun. For
example, “How do we proceed with the archival of last year’s documents?”
A search on Google.com for the phrase “archival of” reveals that as many as 17,000
sites use the phrase in this way. Is this an acceptable usage?
A. Such usage might seem reasonable in the face of popular practice. And, to complicate matters, the legitimate noun form retrieval often occurs in the same context (e.g., the retrieval of information from an electronic archive). But according to several
dictionaries, the word archival can properly be used only as an adjective. Unlike retrieve, which is only a verb, archive is both a noun and a verb. It is important to reserve archival as an adjective. When it is a matter of making or adding to an archive, then, write archiving.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. My editorial staff is split over whether “the job will take a while” or “the
job will take awhile” is correct. Some of us argue that “awhile”
is an adverb modifying the verb “will take.” Others of us maintain that “a
while” is a noun and is the direct object of the transitive verb “will take.”
We all swear by Chicago here, so if you could clarify the usage of “awhile” and
“a while” with regard to transitive verbs, that would be great.
A. Write the job will take a while. It is true that either an adverb or an object can follow a verb. But the adverb awhile means for a while, which clearly should not follow will take (compare stay awhile, which survives expansion to stay for a while). By a related logic, it is important to avoid using the adverb awhile following a preposition (use the two-word form and write, e.g., for a while or in a while).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Which is correct, “If I were you . . .” or “If I was you . . .”?
A. Write “if I were you.” This is an example of the present subjunctive, which uses the past-tense “were” to express something that’s impossible or hypothetical. The past subjunctive uses “had”: e.g., “if I had been you.” The construction “if I was you” should be considered colloquial. See CMOS 5.120, 5.125, and 5.126 (i.e., chapter 5, on grammar, by Bryan Garner) for more on the subjunctive mood.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I work for an organization that uses a fair amount of corporate lingo in its publications. The expression “visibility
into” seems to be widely used in place of the expression “insight into”
. . . this confuses me (okay, it also annoys me). Based on the common definition
of “visibility,” does it really make sense to say that one has “visibility
into” something? Before I start a campaign to eradicate what I see as an unsightly phrase, can you tell
me if the phrase “visibility into” meets the standards of acceptable usage?
A. Sometimes it’s necessary to avoid turning your nose up at a word or phrase that seems to be the awkward
brainchild of new ventures—unless, of course, something old and standard does the job as well or better.
A glance at the first hundred or so of the 147,000-odd Google hits (as of Monday, October 20, 2003) for “visibility
into” suggests that the phrase is being used these days primarily to do a couple of things: (1) convey
that whatever is going on—corporate accounting, say—is entirely transparent, or
(2) indicate that software can offer some understanding of activities that are difficult to conceptualize or see—such
as data from myriad sources moving over a network, or products moving along a supply chain. An example of the second use might
go like this:
Without the kind of software that provides continuous visibility into activity across a range of networks using a variety
of protocols, you might as well send your entire staff on a field trip, asking them to report back every few seconds with
a question: “Can you hear me now?”
This sort of usage can easily turn into jargon (or euphemism; think “surveillance”),
but I wouldn’t automatically rush to find a substitute. First, the phrase itself doesn’t
violate any grammatical rules. Second, in technical contexts that involve physical monitoring, “visibility
into” might be more appropriate than the relatively metaphorical “insight into”—a
phrase that’s lost most of its visual roots.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Please help resolve a debate: Is it proper (or good) academic form to begin a sentence with a conjunction: “And I believe that is true.” “But editors differ on this rule.” “Nor is this uncommon.” I say it is improper in academic writing that is heading for publication, while others with journalism training say that it is correct. We are editors for an academic law review.
A. CMOS includes Bryan Garner’s opinion that there is “no historical or grammatical foundation” for considering sentences that begin with a conjunction such as and, but, or so to be in error (see paragraph 5.203). Fowler’s agrees (3rd ed., s.v. “and”), citing examples in the OED that date back to the ninth century and include Shakespeare. The conjunctions or and nor can be added to the list. None of this means that it is not possible to abuse the privilege. Sentences should begin with a conjunction only when the result is perfectly clear and more effective than some other alternative. What about academic writing, then? Good academic writing is of course difficult to produce, and there is no guarantee that allowing sentence-starting conjunctions improves matters. But the alternative—enforcing a baseless restriction—probably doesn’t help.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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 CMOS uses “professor emerita” as part of an example at paragraph 8.28, I’m assuming that this usage is correct. Can you weigh in on this?
A. The professor has a point. But one of the nice things about the Latin word professor is that it has survived absolutely unchanged into contemporary English. And most people intend the English word professor in the phrase “professor emerita.” In that case, though professor is invariable and therefore neutral for gender (but not for number), it is perfectly acceptable to adjust emeritus to suit the gender (and number) of the professor(s): emeritus, emerita, emeriti, emeritae. But in this case of grammatical correctness coming up against political correctness, there is no clear winner. If you need to cite another authority, Merriam-Webster includes an example with emerita—without any warning about usage problems.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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?
A. When “and” is used to group modifiers that refer to more than one instance of
the same noun, plurality is generally conferred upon the noun: “My first and third wives were just as
nice as your seventh and tenth husbands.” This can be done seamlessly in English because adjectives
(like “first” and “third”) do not
vary according to the number of the noun they modify. A common instance of this usage, especially in academic writing, involves
centuries. Note the differences in the following sentences:
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were alike in at least one respect: both were lived out, in some corners of the globe,
to the music of Mozart.
and
The first through the eighteenth centuries are all characterized by being entirely lost to the art of photography.
but
The year 2000 was in the twentieth or twenty-first century, depending upon your sense of numbers.
and
Léon, a historical region and former kingdom in northwest Spain, was united with Asturias from the eighth
to the ninth century.
“And” and “through” tend to impart
plurality; “or” and “to” tend not
to.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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.
A. The negative form of “can” is “cannot” or, contracted, “can’t.” The two-word phrase “can not” is rarely necessary: e.g., “I can eat this slice of pizza, or I can not eat it: the choice and its consequences are entirely mine.” In your example, certainly, “cannot” is correct.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]