Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
Lingua Franca-Circular Icon

Lingua Franca

Language and writing in academe.

300 Posts, Still Getting It Wrong

By Geoffrey K. Pullum October 11, 2017
geoff_as_dunce

I have just arrived at a small milestone: This post is my 300th on Lingua Franca (see the full listing here

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

geoff_as_dunce

I have just arrived at a small milestone: This post is my 300th on Lingua Franca (see the full listing here).*
In August 2011 we started publishing every working day of the year, and I’ve done 50 posts a year with no breaks. That’s a lot of practice. But I’ve hardly ever managed to write a post that is flawless in the eyes of our editor, Heidi Landecker.

The Chronicle does serious editing. We were all told from the get-go that we had to follow New York Times guidelines not only on matters like nomenclature, spelling, abbreviation, and punctuation, but also on profanity. No crude words or obscene oaths, even in quotations, and no coy asterisk-masking either. (I did see Lucy Ferriss get away with a discussion of some naughty stuff in this post, and to my amazement she was even allowed to call it “How ’Bout That Ass?” — but only with a picture of a donkey at the top as a distractor.)

I heard a rumor at the water-cooler that one editor many years ago wanted to outlaw all “contractions” (suffixally negated or reduced auxiliaries), even in the most casual writing. That would have been tiresome. Even editorials on serious topics in The New York Times alternate between do not and don’t, he will and he’ll, etc. And rightly so. There are reasons English evolved the two styles that I have called normal and formal. Sometimes you want something to read as if declaimed from a podium, and sometimes you want it to feel more like chatting over lunch. In a blog post it’s quite often the latter.

ADVERTISEMENT

Heidi allows me the full untrammeled syntax of my native language, I’m glad to say. She would never deny me a split infinitive if I desired one; my passive clauses do not suffer the indignity of being replaced by active counterparts; I can use hopefully as a modal adjunct; and so on.

The worst trouble I have is with a curious principle governing capitalization after a colon. In Britain, what follows a colon does not get uppercased. My early history (I was educated in England) exposed me to too much of the British practice, so despite decades of writing American English, I tend to do this:

The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.

For The New York Times (and a range of other American publishers) that’s an error. The correct version would be:

The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.

However, this example does not violate NYT style:

Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight.

The relevant regulation is interestingly abstract — you can’t even explain it to students unless they know basic grammar. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (2015, Page 66) says: “For consistency, capitalize what follows a colon if it is a complete sentence.” Now, this is badly put; what they mean by “complete sentence” is “independent clause” — a clause that could be a complete sentence if you used it on its own. But what’s interesting to me is that the edict cannot be enforced by current word-processing software.

ADVERTISEMENT

Although both Microsoft Word and our WordPress blogging platform handle conversion to “smart quotes” reasonably well,** identifying independent clauses calls for a grasp of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics that is beyond any current computational linguistics. To see this, consider a sequence of words that can be either an independent clause or something else. Take fruit flies, for example. This could be a whole sentence, but is more usually a noun phrase. You’d need to understand the context to know whether to capitalize the first word. It would be wrong to do so in this case:

fruitflies

There’s one species we can keep in the lab without the animal rights activists getting upset: fruit flies.

But in an example like this next one, the very same sequence of words should have a capital initial:

bananadrone

Something wonderful happens when you attach a banana to a drone: Fruit flies.

Since WordPress cannot identify independent clauses, Heidi has had to fix my postcolon capitalization hundreds of times. I’m sorry, Heidi. I enjoy writing for Lingua Franca, and after more than six years I ought to have trained myself to be fully NYT style-compliant. Be patient. I’m slow, but I’m quite sure I can be taught to follow a prescriptive rule.


*Long after this post was published, I discovered an error in my records: the post is not number 300, but number 301. Not much I can do about that now; the dunce cap in the photo is clearly deserved.

**The usual smart-quotes algorithm is not perfect: It fails on word-initial apostrophes, as in Lucy’s how ’bout that. To force a word-initial apostrophe in HTML you have to use the character code ’ instead of the apostrophe.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Protesters attend a demonstration in support of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, March 10, 2025, in New York.
First-Amendment Rights
Noncitizen Professors Testify About Chilling Effect of Others’ Detentions
Photo-based illustration of a rock preciously suspended by a rope over three beakers.
Broken Promise
U.S. Policy Made America’s Research Engine the Envy of the World. One President Could End That.
lab-costs-promo.jpg
Research Expenses
What Does It Cost to Run a Lab?
Research illustration Microscope
Dreams Deferred
How Trump’s Cuts to Science Funding Are Derailing Young Scholars’ Careers

From The Review

University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky
Photo-based illustration depicting a close-up image of a mouth of a young woman with the letter A over the lips and grades in the background
The Review | Opinion
When Students Want You to Change Their Grades
By James K. Beggan
Photo-based illustration of a student and a professor, each occupying a red circle in a landscape of scribbles.
The Review | Opinion
Meet Students Where They Are? Maybe Not.
By Mark Horowitz

Upcoming Events

Chronfest25_Virtual-Events_Page_862x574.png
Chronicle Festival: Innovation Amid Uncertainty
07-16-Advising-InsideTrack - forum assets v1_Plain.png
The Evolving Work of College Advising
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin