I’m delighted to welcome TTAC commentator factotum to the other side of the WordPress platform. When Jeff volunteered to perform endless search-and-amend missions on our typos, bad grammar, factual mistakes, variance from the Chicago stylebook, punctuation transgressions, etc., I leaped at his offer. He stepped to one side. I hit the floor. Nothing new there. I freely admit that I get sloppier at the keys as I get tired, and man do I get tired knocking out this stuff. To that end I’m off the Lexapro. And man do I get dizzy. With Jeff sweeping up behind the circus elephants—what? and give up show biz?—I’m hoping my OCD won’t return with such a vengeance, so I can restore the personal energy levels that helped propel this quirky little car site to its million man per month march. OK, so now that I’ve done the TMI bit, I surrender the recently cleaned floor to Mr. Puthuff to introduce himself.
“I was infected with the auto enthusiasm bug when I was about the age of eight. My father (employed by GM/EDS) was transferred to Warren, MI, where we moved into a house close to the GM Technical Center. Squeezed in between a cemetery and the Detroit Arsenal, the neighborhood was like a miniature company town—if you didn’t drive a GM, there was something odd about you.
“Dad was a lifelong Chevy man; my childhood was spent in a succession of Chevy cars and trucks. My favorite was dad’s four-door sports car: the Celebrity EuroSport.
“On a whim, after our return to California in 1987, my dad bought a ’61 Beetle. It spent years in our garage waiting for me to turn 16. Meanwhile, I enjoyed my early teens with my grandfather off-roading in the Sierra Nevada or on BLM lands near Carson City, NV, and practicing shifting in the Bug while making my own engine noises. (I was caught a few times by Mom.)
“The Beetle served me poorly. It broke down every week. But every time I see one, I wish I still had mine. These days, I drive an Infiniti I30. I couldn’t be more pleased.
“When I was a senior in high school, I bought a book entitled “Car Secrets Revealed.” It was so riddled with errors I tracked down the author (in Canada) and berated him until he agreed to let me re-edit the text. I had found my niche. At the tender age of 17, I was a published editor.
“Since then, I’ve worked for Boeing, MCI, EDS, the Seattle Times and a commercial printer in various capacities. I’m now self-employed as a technical editor, currently working on a large, multinational project for Levi Strauss & Co.
“I’ve enjoyed TTAC for a couple of years. During that time, I’ve viewed every typo and grammatical mistake as a shortcoming that betrays the site’s overall quality and mission. It got the point where I was mad as Hell and couldn’t take it anymore. And so I’ve got the keys to the garage.
“Feel free to email me if I miss something @ editTTAC[at]gmail.com. Thanks.”
Welcome!
And tHank God someone is willing to fix this stufff!
Seriously, I totally agree with you Jeff that the overall quality of the site is hindered with typographical errors and blatant grammatical miscues. It’s something that you notice, but it’s usually not so appalling that you want to call it out.
I guess I’m saying that I’m glad there’s finally a warden to keep all the prisoners in the yard.
It got the point where I was mad as Hell and couldn’t take it anymore.
I know what you mean.
It got the point where I was mad as Hell and couldn’t take it anymore.
You capitalized “Hell”, which is telling.
Now, tell me where the comma after the quotation marks above should have gone?
Welcome Jeff! Thanks for becoming mad as Hell… it’s the only way anything gets better!
The Sierra Nevada mountains should be the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Jeez.
Welcome Jeff.
Now the sentence structure here will be as evolved as the thoughts generally are.
Will RF pay you more to check comments to posts, or may we remunerate you directly?
Welcome Jeff! I look forward to you fixing my shit, but I’ll try to behave.
Welcome, welcome, welcome! This is fantastic news.
I say this not only as a member of the Facebook group “If You Can’t Differentiate Between “Your” and “You’re” You Deserve To Die”, but also as a Kraut with an underdeveloped sense of style.
No_slushbox,
I’ve always written it as posted. I’ve also seen “Sierra Nevadas.” It’s personal preference, but I appreciate your feedback.
There. Their. They’re.
Discuss.
psarhjinian,
I like the Chicago Manual of Style’s guidance which states:
As nicely expressed in William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White’s Elements of Style, “Typographical usage dictates that the comma be inside the [quotation] marks, though logically it often seems not to belong there” (p. 36) …
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/ch06/ch06_sec008.html
The seven paragraphs following “I was infected” should each open with a quotation mark (but should not have a closing mark). Just saying.
Bob the Angry Flower would be pleased by factotum’s new role.
TTAC now published in high definition grammar!
I like the Chicago Manual of Style’s guidance which states:
Oh no! A sentence fragment before a colon! That should be a complete sentence.
Kidding. I welcome your edits.
Do you know how to diagram sentences?
Tahnk You!
factotum:
The Sierra Nevadas is fine, but not the Sierra Nevada mountains; a common noun that is part of a proper noun should be capitalized. For example, the Golden Gate Bridge is correct, not the Golden Gate bridge.
As someone whose grammar often needs to be corrected I cannot let a grammar corrector’s grammar go uncorrected.
However, your services are important here. Undermining valid arguments with grammar scrutinization is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and there are many scoundrels trying to undermine valid TTAC arguments.
Can you guys hire that Ezra Dyer guy?
Or maybe ask Jeremy Clarkson to write one small column for you guys a week, that will increase traffic in here 5 fold.
This makes me very happy. For much the same reason I’ve swept up after the elephants a few times in the past. Good to see someone has volunteered to do so continuously.
The Sierra Nevadas is fine, but not the Sierra Nevada mountains; a common noun that is part of a proper noun should be capitalized.
You proceed from a false premise. The real problem is that “Sierra Nevada mountains” is redundant. It’s like saying “Rocky Mountains mountains.”
It got the point ……. It got TO the point.
Which is correct?
Welcome Jeff. Your craft is appreciated. Maybe Robert will pay you enough to get that Bug someday?
OK, we’ve got “you’re” down. Now tell us about “it’s”.
Sadly, badly and DEFINITELY needed.
Strippo is correct. Sierra Nevada translates as “snowy mountain range,” so I will edit the post to clarify.
RichardD, I thank you! I will fix that, too.
see next
And while you’re at it, lose the expletives.
IT REALLY IS NOT THAT HARD.
There; see how I did that?
As nicely expressed in William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White’s Elements of Style, “Typographical usage dictates that the comma be inside the [quotation] marks, though logically it often seems not to belong there” (p. 36)
That always bugged me.
I have the singular misfortune of holding a major in English and a minor (and subsequent diploma in) Computer Science. The quote/punctuation sequence question was one I could never, ever come to grips with.
Were English akin to a programming language, this would be valid:
She said “Would you stay with me?”.
Except that it got me red ink on several essays.
Anyway, good to have you on-board and kicking tail. I’ve worked with colleagues in your profession and in my experience, your expertise is golden.
Good to have you on board. Now I’m paranoid about screwing something up in this post.
/Is it “on board” or “on-board”? Shit.
I too will say “Welcome, Jeff”. (And worry about being corrected on capitalization and punctuation.)
For anyone interested in the subject: Lynne Truss’ “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is a fun read.
Not that I want to be fascistic; “This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.”
An editor’s welcome to you, Jeff. It’s what I do, too.
In my cube I have two small homemade signs, both quotes from editors’ newsgroups. I offer them to you as guidance.
“We are what they read; what would you like to be?”
and
“If it’s crap, just change it.”
Both have served me well.
It’s not that fucking hard — but it is necessary!
Fight the good fight!
I am humbled by the number of comments this post has received. I feel (and I think RF would agree) that comments should not be scrutinized. I appreciate and want to preserve your individual voices, regardless of grammar or spelling. I’m here to enhance TTAC’s readability and the last thing we want is to make participating in the dialogue a chore. Our passion should continue to be car-related, not whether or not our comments are perfect.
Regarding this post’s graphic, if you think it’s bad, you should have seen our first choice. Do a Google Image search for “Spelling Nazi.”
Ah the Celebrity EuroSport. I owned a 1986 in dark gray for 9 years. It was a nice looking car, a take-off on Audi’s seminal 5000. Better looking than its A-body compatriots the Tempest, the Cutlass ,and the Buick something or the other. It had my favorite set of wheels ever.
I would not have called it a “four-door sports car”. I would have called it a nice medium sized sedan with good handling, and enough power to make it lively, but not enough to provoke true torque steer. The motor a 2.8 L OHV V6, put out 125 hp. Which was enough, because the car only weighed about 2600 lbs.
Like most GM vehicles of the last generation it was completely lacking in mechanical sophistication. The motor was an antique, the three speed auto-matic ditto. And it did not have rear disk brakes. At that time anti-lock brakes and air-bags were only found on Mercedes Benzen.
My biggest gripe with the car was that it began to rust within 30 days of the day I brought it home in January, 1986. It was the last GM car I would ever buy.
Before the content volume of this site went gonzo the grammar and spelling was almost unfailingly excellent. But as volume (and the number of contributors) increased the quantity of minor annoyances has grown dramatically. I’m glad Jeff is onboard to tidy things up.
Love the graphic.
Need any help?
I love cars and I think it would be fun to be more involved with the site – I’m just not a great writer and don’t really have the time or the access to review cars.
I am also bothered by errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation I see on sites I follow, so it would be cathartic for me.
In addition, all comments to the editor(s) address to “Jeff” would still apply.
TTAC’s OCD B&B rejoice!
Kewl.
You capitalized “Hell”, which is telling.
It’s a place name. Place names are capitalized, even fictional ones like Atlantis.
Though it could be argued that Jeff wasn’t using it as a place name. “What new hell will greet me this morning?” probably shouldn’t be capitalized.
The entire notion of correct spelling and grammar for a polyglot language (is that redundant?) like English is problematic. Besides the Germanic, Scandinavian and Latin roots, English is positively cosmopolitan in its embrace of borrow words.
Considering how much English comes from other languages (macabre comes from the Hebrew word for undertaker) Orwell’s rule about not using foreign words when writing is hard to implement.
pfft, your paffetek.
Ah, the challenges – and the great rewards – of keeping TTAC #1 in quality!
@ Robert Schwartz:
The Celebrity replaced a Ford LTD Country Squire. To an 8-year old, the difference was awesome especially when Dad floored it to “clean the valves.” And yours must have also had that distinctive GM exhaust burble. Good times.
Okay, so who’s responsible for putting “Editorial: GM Deathwatch 229: Opel For Opel’s Sake” under both Latest Car Reviews and Latest Editorials?
On a whim, after our return to California in 1987, my dad bought a `61 Beetle.
I think you mean ’61 Beetle. I learned my typesetter’s craft back in the early ’80s from my then-boss, someone who started setting type in 1930s Chicago. Back in those days, there were no “neutral” or “straight” quotes, either single or double; there were opening quotes (‘ or “) and closing quotes (’or ”).
Later on, when desktop computers started setting type (with the help of people, of course), there was that pesky ‘” key on the keyboard, which was great if you were a programmer, but not a typesetter. Software evolved to automatically change “this” into “this,” but “smart quotes” software still has trouble with one thing: leading apostrophes on dates, viz.: ’61, etc. I can’t tell you how often I see “Come see the new `09 Venzas today!” and I want to scream. Maybe at the Venza, maybe at the wrong apostrophe, but anyway…
Someday, when computers can parse sentences and understand the meaning therein, we can get the smart quotes to work in all instances. In all other cases, it requires proofreading! ;-)
[Having just looked over the comments of this thread again before I post this comment, I realize that perhaps this is some sort of automatic smart-quote formatting by whatever CMS TTAC uses. In which case, let’s all blame the software, not the humans!]
I’ve always regarding the capitalization of “Hell” as being a bit of a TTAC affectation, or at least unique to TTAC’s stylebook—I have rarely ever seen either heaven or hell capitalized in general prose. (And having worked for churches— which now and again mention one place or the other depending on the subject at hand—the style was never to capitalize. FWIW.)
Kent, I long for a custom keyboard that has all the punctuation marks that I would ever need available at a single keystroke. I suppose using ` with abbreviated years is laziness since using the correct punctuation ( ’) requires five keystrokes (Alt + 0146). Those keystrokes add up!
Thanks for the heads up, and I like your em dashes.
A TTAC style guide is on my list of eventual projects. “Hell” shall be the first entry.
Since the graphic is so insistent on proper grammar being used, I feel compelled to point out that “you’re” is a contraction, not an abbreviation. It’s still funny though.
Your presence is sincerely welcome here.
Enjoy the ride!
This is awesome.
Now my dear mother might read TTAC to see the grammatical debates rage.
Great to have you doing this, Jeff!
Now if only we could get you to help out the guys over at Bringatrailer…