Q. Several times lately I’ve written or revised copy to change the word in the prepositional phrase following “kinds of” or “types of” to the singular from the plural—from “what kinds of cats?” “three types of errors” to “what kinds of cat,” “three types of error.” And several times a client has treated the resulting phrase like an error. I haven’t found the answer to this usage question in CMOS. What do you think?
Q. Hello: I am working on writing and editing thank-you letters to faculty and staff participants in a curriculum session for
third-year medical students. Should I treat “data” as a singular or a plural noun?
I have been looking for a definitive answer to this question in online style manuals and grammar guides. If its answer is
already in the CMOS and you could refer me to the appropriate part of the website where this information is posted, that would be excellent.
A. If you type “data” into the search box on the CMOS web page, it will give you several places where the word is discussed in our Q&A, and you’ll see that
it can be either singular or plural. For questions like this, however, I find that a dictionary is a very helpful tool. Judging
from the number of queries we receive asking about the meaning or usage of particular words, it seems that people rarely think
of using a dictionary, which is surprising, considering that it is much quicker to look up a word than to search through style
manuals—or type a question to an online advice column. There are even online dictionaries, if turning
paper pages seems too old-fashioned or too big a nuisance. In honor of your question, I’m tempted to
create a new category of Q&A column called “You Could Look It Up” (in the hopes
that readers will take the hint).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I find that some of my writers start a sentence with the word “Because,” and I am tempted to change it to “Since.” For example, one writes “Because the object is selected, it changes as you move the slider.”
I would prefer to have them use the word “Since”: “Since the object is selected, it changes as you move the slider.”
But, I am not sure of the correct usage . . . I am only going on gut instinct.
A. For editors, like physicians, the primary goal should be “First, do no harm.” If you are not sure of the correct usage, it’s safer not to meddle with the copy. In this case, your writer is correct. In fact, “Since” would be considered incorrect by traditionalists who restrict its meaning to a temporal one.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Which one is correct: “alright” or “all right”?
A. Dictionaries and style manuals still tend to indicate that alright is less legitimate than all right. The quasi- or nonstandard status of alright might be compared to that of the one-word forms of the compounds under way and a lot, both of which, to varying degrees, have had to resist the urge to merge. Context is everything. Alright is all right for rock ’n’ roll, but if you’re concerned
about appearing to stand on the favored side of the “sociological divide,” as
Fowler’s would have it, you will want to write all right (see the third edition, s.v. “all right,” which notes, among other things, that
alright seems to be popular in the personal correspondence of “the moderately educated young”).
In the case of all right versus alright, however, all this is plainly rather arbitrary—as may already be altogether obvious.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. What is the rule for correct usage of “drive” and “ride”?
I was trying to explain this difference to a non-English-speaking colleague, but it appears somewhat illogical on the basis
of normal usage.
A. Sometimes new technologies force us into analogies. Perhaps people ride bicycles because they rode horses—particularly
at the time bicycles first became popular. Likewise, one is said to ride a motorcycle—sometimes called
a steel horse—more often than one is said to drive it. Cars, once called horseless carriages, are said
to marshal the power of many horses, and, just as one is said to drive a team of horses, one is said to drive a car. The distinction
between drive and ride doesn’t seem consistently to depend on whether the driver or the rider provides any locomotion. There
are better (worse?) examples of words that persist on the basis of analogy: how often do we dial a phone or ring up a sale
anymore?
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. In the US Army supply system, writers refer to requested supplies as dues-in (more than one due-in not yet received), and dues-out (more than one due-out not yet issued to a requestor). The GPO Style Manual (paragraph 5.7) seems to prescribe due-ins and due-outs as the correct plural form (examples they give are tie-ins, run-ins, come-ons). What do you say about these plural forms? Many thanks for your help!
A. If you are thinking of “due” as an adjective, then I agree that “due-ins” would be correct. If you think of it as a noun, however, then “dues-in” would work just fine. In any case, if “dues-in” is the army colloquial, there’s probably no use fighting it. If it annoys you, try to think of it as a charming bit of insiders’ jargon.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
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.]