A column on writing from Editor & Publisher May 24, 1981.

Fine Distinctions

The Writer's Edge

In today's market, an easy familiarity with correct and appropriate usage, once taken for granted, sets a writer apart. Suppose you are looking for a writing job. Why might Hiring-and-Firing Editor choose you rather than one of the other 57 applying? Here's a possible edge:

Assume that your clips show you write crisp, plain English. They reveal you to be curious, perceptive, and informed. You must be asking plenty of good questions because you go wide and deep. And there, at the top of one story--what a find! You have put commas around a which clause.

And in the next paragraph--can it be? "There are fewer dollars in circulation and less money has been saved, so that the economists have inferred...."You will be hired. After testing you to make certain your own good habits--not some superior copy editor's--formed these pearls, you'll get the job.

I do not exaggerate much. From Kauai to Kennebunk, editors are weeping over the low quality of the writing they see.

Consider the subtle difference between imply and infer. They are not synonyms ^{Footnote 1}. Imply means to hint. Infer means to draw a conclusion. "Speakers and writers imply by the words they use. Listeners and readers infer from the words others use. (from the Joint AP-UPI Stylebook UPI Stylebook in Google Books, AP Stylebook Online)

Writers not aware of the subtle difference do not make this distinction. As with every usage question, they can open up countless dictionaries to defend themselves. But for journalists, dictionaries are the wrong authorities. The right ones are newsroom style books. My stuff wasn't printed unless I used less only with uncountable nouns (less money) and fewer only with countable nouns (fewer dollars). A truly tiny distinction, that one, but in the style book, holy writ.

The blurring of such small differences is not likely to cause the collapse of Western civilization. Modern writers manage without much of Chaucer's robust vocabulary and will manage if ever infer = imply, or less = fewer, or affect = effect, or figurative = literal, or that = which, or comprise = compose.

The distinctions now held to be important in large-paper newsrooms should be made by green journalists first on the ground of simple survival. Those who master the fine points of language (admiration come soon after mastery) will do better in the working writers' world because paying attention to these niceties suggests attention to everything else.

If you are a greenhorn, go to the usage book reigning in your newsroom or school. Perhaps begin with that and which as relative pronouns. The AP-UPI Stylebook says flat out. "Use which in introducing a parenthetical clause." This clause can be dropped without changing the sense of the sentence: I eat Monte Crispos, which contain vitamins.

When the same clause cannot be dropped, it is restrictive and that is the preferred start:I eat only cereals that contain vitamins.

Another word for parenthetical is non-restrictive. The N.Y. Times Manual of Style and Usage orders: "In non-restrictive clauses, which is mandatory." If ever you intend to have your clips perused by AP, UPI, or the NYT, enough said.

^{Footnote 1} 2009 update: Modern dictionaries may list them as synonyms--ignore that. You want to impress a hard-nosed editor. It still impresses them, and I suspect it always will.

Example: Recently, I've been helping a friend who has for a long time written, unpaid, for a famous blog. No rewriting required, only nitpicking tweaks. This good writer has had to wait 3 weeks for word that the piece had been approved and will appear. He has just been given a secret password to bypass everything and is accepted on submission.

Why? My guess is that the editors there now see that he has developed a professional editorial style, and they can trust his work, that it will not embarrass them.

You'll want to own or subscribe to AP Stylebook. For further resources, start with Fordham University Libraries style guide bibliography and Internet links to research, writing, and style pages.

Ethel Grodzins Romm is a writer and editor currently living in New York City. She is the author of The Open Conspiracy: What America's Angry Generation is Saying (review) (auction with cover), several of the Strategies in Reading workbook series and others. She appeared in the film Paranormal: Science or Pseudoscience? She has written columns on language for Editor & Publisher, The American Bar Association Journal and many others. She is currently working on a book on management.