Month: August 2011

FAQs on Style

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This article, by Philip B. Corbett, originally appeared on the After Deadline blog on the NYTimes.com site on 4/18/10.

Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style.

Many topics come up repeatedly in reader comments and e-mail messages to After Deadline. Unfortunately I’m not able to offer a direct response to each comment (truth be told, After Deadline is a sideline for me). But one thoughtful reader suggested that I compile answers for some of the most common questions.

Here’s a start in that effort. I’ll add other topics as they come up, and I’ll link to this item from each week’s column so readers can find it easily.

[UPDATED on Dec. 28, 2010; newest item on top.]

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‘None’: Singular or Plural?

Should “none” be used with a singular or a plural verb?

Some readers of The Times and After Deadline insist that “none” must always take a singular verb. They argue that “none” means “not one,” and so is inherently singular.

But as I’ve pointed out before, most authorities, including The Times’s stylebook, disagree. Here’s our entry:
 

none. Despite a widespread assumption that it stands for not one, the word has been construed as a plural (not any) in most contexts for centuries. H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) endorsed the plural use. Make none plural except when emphasizing the idea of not one or no one — and then consider using those phrases instead.

‘Like’ or ‘Such As’?

After a discussion about the use of “like” as a conjunction, several commenters took issue with a different use of “like,” including instances from The Times’s stylebook.

These readers object to the use of “like” as a preposition to mean “including” or “as for example”: Anyone else with an earned doctorate, like a Ph.D. degree, may request the title …

The objectors contend that “like” in this construction should mean “similar to” — so that this example, strictly speaking, would be referring to doctorates similar to a Ph.D. but not including a Ph.D. They would change this phrase to “such as a Ph.D. degree.”

Editors have long been divided on this point. But “like” is widely used, and recognized in all dictionaries, in the sense of “as for example.” Many writers find it more natural and less stilted than “such as,” at least in some contexts.

Both versions seem acceptable to me; The Times’s stylebook tends to favor “like.”

Are Split Infinitives Acceptable?

 

 

Read the rest of the article on NYTimes.com.

First Month Sales Report – How'd I Do?

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This post, by traditionally- as well as self-published author Tracey Edwards, originally appeared on her Tracey Writes site on 8/1/11.

Well the month has just finished and while 5 Simple Rules has only been up since the 8th July I thought I’d report on my progress so far.

As of today I have sold 10 copies.

10 copies that I’m actually pretty thrilled with given it’s my first month (indie authors usually notoriously have low numbers in the first few months) and that it’s a book on the stock market (not exactly a hot topic right now).

So for 10 copies at $2.99 my royalties are: $18.34 (8 @ 70% + 2 @ 35%).

$18.34

(Less the stupid 30% tax that they’ll take out before they send me a cheque because I’m not a US citizen and haven’t bothered to fill out all the IRS tax forms yet – but which I can still claim back through the Australian tax system under foreign credits so am wondering if I really will bother about the forms anyway).

Anywaaaay.

What does this mean? Does it mean that you can make money being a nonfiction indie author or not?

Ahh do not give up grasshoppers because like I said this is my first month. Plus it’s the only book I have up on Kindle so far (actually that’s not entirely true – I just uploaded a romance erotica short story under a pen name – just to see – too early to tell about this genre yet though).

The real key to making money with the Kindle is to have lots more books up.
 

Read the rest of the post on Tracey Writes.

Economical, High-Impact Fiction: Follow The Leaders

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Today I came across an article on Slate about scientists seeking video clips to elicit specific emotional responses from test subjects, "Saddest Movie Scenes of All Time". From the article:

Smithsonian.com’s Richard Chin reports that, in the late 1980s, psychology professor Robert Levenson and then-graduate student James Gross began looking for film clips that would reliably elicit emotions from test subjects…Levenson and Gross spent years researching, combing through 250 films and testing their final contenders with nearly 500 undergraduates. The key was finding clips that could stand on their own, without any context, and would evoke a single, strong emotion.

It’s that last part, "clips that could stand on their own, without any context, and would evoke a single, strong emotion," that got me thinking about what a useful tool such a catalog of clips could be to writers of fiction. I’ll concede that the visual and audio aspects of film can definitely heighten the emotional impact of a scene, and of course the performances are critical as well, but I still think writers can learn quite a bit from these masterful miniatures. A single scene that can pull the viewer in quickly and strongly enough to evoke a strong emotional response, regardless of the viewer having zero context or background on the characters or story, is a very well-written scene.

I’d encourage writers to take a look at the clips provided and listed in the article (which also includes clips for amusement, disgust, anger, fear and more) and think about them analytically. Why is the scene so powerful? What specific words or bit(s) of action moved you? In other words, what was important about the scene, in terms of inspiring the desired response in the viewer? Now imagine what those same scenes would be like with more dialogue, more action…more anything. Finally, go back to your own work and see if you might be gilding the lily to your work’s detriment in any of your scenes that are intended to have a strong impact.

Think of impact like a bullet: to be effective, it needs to be fired at high speed and on target. If it has to travel through layers of stuff en route, its power will be lessened and it’s less likely to make it to the target at all.