Tag: grammar

Reign, Rain, Go Away: Spotting Common Homophones

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A monarch reigns over their country. A budgeter reins in their spending. A gloomy cloud rains down on a city. These verbs sound the same, but they each look and mean something different.

A forest of tall, thin trees towers above moss-covered logs in the foreground at the bend in a dirt hiking path
Moss reigns where it rains more, as seen on a rainy Washington hike in 2023. Photo by Natalie Roth

This past week while editing I spotted this classic typo-not-typo known as a homophone. Homophones are words that sound the same (homo = same; phonos = sound) but have different meanings or spellings.

Common instances of homophones are:

  • their/they’re/there
  • to/too/two
  • your/you’re

It’s easy to type the wrong one by mistake, but usually a pretty simple fix when proofreading a piece of writing with fresh eyes. Then there are some homophones that are a bit trickier, such as:

  • affect/effect
  • capital/capitol
  • complement/compliment
  • rain/reign/rein

These homophones appear less frequently. You may have to pause and think a bit longer about the part of speech and how the word is being used. My role as an editor is full of pauses for things like homophones. Is that word spelled right? Is it used correctly? Let me check. Is that date right? Is it formatted correctly? Let me check. It takes some time, but the end result is a piece that both sounds and looks how the writer intended. And that sounds good to me!

Want to learn more about homophones? Check out Scholastic’s list of Top 20 Commonly Confused Homophones (on scholastic.com).

Do homophones pop up in your writing? Proofreading is often that last stop to read for proper use of homophones and similar issues. Learn more about proofreading on my Services page.

Because Seven Ate Nine

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This week it has been a joy to walk around and notice the leaves changing colors. Today I stopped to admire the trees lining my street, how orange and yellow leaves on some trees blend with the remaining green to create a mosaic of color in the bright blue sky. The crisp autumn air feels just right paired with those leaves.

Trees a mix of green, orange, and yellow leaves meet in a canopy above a residential street.
Admiring the autumn colors. Photo by Natalie Roth

It may be the lead-up to spooky season, of ghouls and monsters ready to pounce on trick-or-treaters, but it is also a season of apple pie and cozy sweaters, of trading in the sprinting pace of summer for the cozy comforts of fall.

One of my comforts this week is also the punchline to a corny joke (Why are all the numbers scared of 7?). That’s because section 7.89 is my go-to resource from the Chicago style manual when I’m checking whether to hyphenate a compound term. For instance, if a color is described in two words, do those words need to be hyphenated? It may depend on where the term is used in the sentence. I can wear an emerald-green sweater, but I’d say that the sweater is emerald green. “Emerald green” is hyphenated when it comes right before a noun, but it is left as two separate words when it is after a verb. This applies to a lot of compound terms. George Washington is on the one-dollar bill (hyphen), and this bill is worth one dollar (no hyphen).

Something else to consider with hyphen use is what the part of speech is. A compound noun may be two words, but then it needs a connecting hyphen when it is used as an adjective. If a class lasts a half hour, I can describe it as a half-hour class. If I like mountain climbing, I’d be considered a mountain-climbing enthusiast. That hyphen makes it clearer that the noun is being used as an adjective—that the reader should keep reading for the noun.

Those are my two favorite hyphen uses to remember. For everything else, I turn to 7.89 and look up the compound term and whether hyphens are recommended. It’s reassuring to see clearly written on the page that it is correct to say a ten-year-old (hyphenated noun) as well as a ten-year-old child (hyphenated adjective), but to omit the hyphens if I wanted to say a child is ten years old…and yet, all three individuals are likely to be eagerly awaiting their candy haul at the end of the month!

Whether your writing leans into the spooky or cozy sides of the season, consider how the thoughtful attention of an editor can improve the consistency and clarity of your project. Learn more about the stages of editing on my Services page.

Steel and Music

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Since my last post on editing out the fluff, I happened upon the book Stylized by Mark Garvey, which dives into the history behind Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style. Garvey follows the publication journey of the book as E. B. White worked to update Strunk’s original rules, with side journeys into the style guide’s meaning and impact. This iconic style guide aligns with the idea of removing fluff, with one rule simply stating “omit needless words.” Yet, as Garvey explains, this isn’t an all-encompassing or straightforward right-and-wrong guide to writing. Strunk had simply noticed what good writers were doing and used his style guide to point out the rules beneath their words.

E. B. White was one of the students influenced by this approach to writing, and his appreciation for Strunk’s teaching led to his involvement in getting the style guide more widely published as we know it today. White spent many years writing at The New Yorker, and playwright Marc Connelly reportedly described his contribution as bringing “the steel and the music to the magazine.” Consistently applying rules of language gave him a strong base on top of which his writing could sing.

A picture of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. It is known for its acoustic design within and its multiple panels of stainless steel on the outside, shaped like sails.
Steel and music come to life in the curved stainless steel of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, an iconic building designed by architect Frank Gehry to bring music to the city of Los Angeles. Photo by Natalie Roth

An analogy Garvey uses to explain this idea of steel and music, or rules and play, is to think of the way a bird relies on rules in nature. It needs gravity, friction, wind, and air pressure to get where it’s going. In the same way, a good writer learns the rules of language so that they can then navigate and play with them to get where they want to go.

As an editor, I work with an author to help them get where they want to go with their writing. Often that means applying grammar and style rules in a way that improves clarity and flow. When I took a class in grammar for editing, the somewhat dry material certainly didn’t feel like play—because it was the steel. I can now use this steel to reinforce and empower the creativity of the author, and it is then that we get the music.

Do you have a piece of writing you want to sing? Tell me about it using my Contact page.