Inside the Little Plastic Castle

I’m stumbling along at 40% power. You may have heard it’s been hot in these parts. I am so grateful for air conditioning and MyGuy Taxi. Yesterday I did nine laps and was in the pool for 28 minutes. That was at least two minutes too much.

Luckily today I just inhaled Dreyer’s English: an utterly correct guide to clarity and style by Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at Random House, known as bcdreyer online.

It’s not a standalone reference. As per his advice, use Words Into Type, Webster’s Collegiate, and the Chicago Manual of Style for actual reference. This book is an amusing rant by an experienced copy editor, and I recommend getting it from the library right now.

He contemplates the delicate task of making authors sound more like their best selves. And he has tons of quotables.

Therefore, tidbits re: misused, misspelled, and extraneous words:

INCENTIVIZE The only thing worse than the ungodly “incentivize” is its satanic little sibling, “incent.”

ONBOARD The use of “onboard” as a verb in place of “familiarize” or “integrate” is grotesque. It’s bad enough when it’s applied to policies; applied to new employees in place of the perfectly lovely word “orient,” it’s worse. And it feels like a terribly short walk from onboarding a new employee to waterboarding one.

REDDI-WIP I’m trying to imagine the meeting in which someone inquired, “How much can we misspell two perfectly simple words?”

ASSLESS CHAPS The garment, that is. Not fellows lacking in dorsal embonpoint. I’m not sure how often this will come up in your writing—or in your life—but chaps are, by definition, assless. Look at a cowboy.

From behind.

END RESULT I can appreciate the difference between a midprogress result and an ultimate result, but “end result” is cloddish.

FETCH BACK To fetch something is not merely to go get it but to go get it and return with it to the starting place. Ask a dog.

LESBIAN WOMAN Come on, folks. Think.

RISE UP If you think I’m going to pick a fight with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who uses the phrase “rise up” repeatedly in Hamilton’s “My Shot,” you have another think coming

Here’s a fun weird thing: The word “namesake” works in both directions. That is, if you were named after your grandfather, you are his namesake. He is also yours. Who knew.

Back in the 1990s, it seemed as if I couldn’t turn a manuscript page without running into the words “inchoate” and “limn,” and I began to shudder at their every appearance. Oddly, I can’t recall the last time I ran into either. So, by all means, please start using “inchoate” and “limn” again. I rather miss them. [Then a footnote, reading:]  Copy editor’s addendum: “For me, it was candles ‘guttering’ and ‘tang’ used for smell; both were used so often in literary fiction, I’d begun to think they were handed out with the MFA.”

The book is available in print, audio (amusingly read by author and helper) and electronic formats. And his site features 14 pictures of his lovely dog.