How Many Wives Does One Man Need?

The Grammopticon received this query via email:

Dear All-knowing One,
Was just reading a Times article and came across this sentence:
"Just three years earlier, his wife, Mary, said, a scan of his abdomen had been clear."
Am I right that the comma following the phrase “his wife” implies that he has more than one wife?

(Note the salutation: guaranteed to earn my affection and prompt reply. It's not pandering; it's showing respect.) My reply:

No, the commas around “Mary” are correct. If there weren’t commas, that would imply more than one wife. The commas set off the info that could be omitted without losing essential information--”his wife” is a particular person, whether or not you know what her name is. If the author said “his wife Mary,” that implies you need the name—he wants you to know he’s talking about the wife named Mary, not the wife named, say, Susan.

This is a common question and a common mistake, in cases like this one but also in situations involving job titles. Which of these is correct?

Jane Doe, the senator from Utah, led the panel.
The panel was led by Utah senator, Jane Doe.

Here, both sentences are giving us the same information--but, grammatically speaking, the first one is correct and the second one is not. "Huh?" you say? (Inarticulately, I might add.) Let me explain a little concept called apposition.

Apposition, or an appositive, means two nouns or noun phrases placed adjacent to each other, one modifying the other. The term comes from the Latin, I am told, ad positio, meaning "near position." Commas set off the modifying phrase if it is non-restrictive--if the sentence would be equally clear and equally meaningful without that phrase. If you can cross out everything between the commas and still know what you need to know, the commas belong; if the information between the commas is essential to narrow something down, it's the commas that go.

Let's try this test on our examples, first our wise correspondent's example from the Times.

Just three years earlier, his wife, Mary, said, a scan of his abdomen had been clear.

Get rid of everything in red and our sentence still makes perfect sense, and unless the unnamed gentleman is a polygamist, or perhaps has been married more than once--although in this sentence one would probably be explicit about the "former" status of the wife unless it had been clarified in preceding sentences--we don't need to know the wife's first name to be able to identify the precise person who said that the scan had been clear.

Now, let's put our two Senator Doe examples to the test:

Jane Doe, the senator from Utah, led the panel.
The panel was led by Utah senator, Jane Doe.

In the first, just as with the Times example, we don't necessarily have to know Ms. Doe's title or state she represents to identify her as the person who led the panel. The additional information is desirable (which is why it's there--pointless words are just a waste of perfectly good letters, and the Grammopticon abhors waste), but not necessary to narrow down the possible candidates for leader of the panel. The commas belong.

If your education in civics was adequate, you know that Utah, like every U.S. state, has two senators; over the course of history, many more than two people have represented Utah in the Senate. Therefore, eliminating everything in red in the second sentence would not leave enough information to walk up and point to the precise individual who led the panel. We need Jane Doe's name in order to rule out any other person who might be the Utah senator leading the panel. So get rid of the comma.

Of course if other context--preceding text--had already told us that Jane Doe was the only Utah senator present at the panel (e.g., "The group included Senator Jane Doe of Utah, Senator Jill Jones of Illinois, Representative John Smith of Arkansas, and Governor Jim Q. Public of New Hampshire."), we wouldn't need her name here. We would need "the" to make clear that it's the one who's a senator from Utah who's in charge: "The panel was led by the Utah senator." Note: still no comma.

In summary:

apposition = next to each other
commas = additional but not vital information

All of grammar should be so simple.

What Lies Below Is the Truth about "Lay" and "Lie"

I’m not going to take all the misuse lying down: herein I lay down the law about the difference between “lay” and “lie.” Your confusion is about to be laid to rest.

“Lay” is a transitive verb. It requires a direct object. One lays something else—lays an object down, lays blame (perhaps with his or her teachers, for not explaining this adequately), lays waste to things, gets laid (which we will talk about in detail below), and lays the groundwork for better use of language. “Lay” is a verb of action.

“Lie” is intransitive. (We’re discussing the verb of position/location here; “lie” meaning to tell an untruth is also intransitive, but its conjugation differs. That is another subject for another day.) One may lie down, lie with one’s lover (again, more on that later), lie at something’s mercy, lie in wait, or perhaps lie to the east of something else—but one can always lie alone. Although it may encompass an action, the meaning of “lie” is more often one of position—much more passive.

Quick cheat: What follows the verb? If it’s a noun, it’s likely to be the object, in which case “lay” is correct. If it’s an adverb, “lie” is probably correct. This method is far from infallible—sentences take many shapes—but it’s a good place to start (assuming, of course, your education in grammar was not so deficient that you can’t tell a noun from an adverb).

Seems easy, doesn’t it?

Don’t get cocky.

The confusion arises when you conjugate the verbs. Specifically, the past tense of “lie” is “lay.”

Translating into American

Americanizing is editing a manuscript or book that originated somewhere in the English-speaking world other than the United States (most commonly, but not exclusively, the United Kingdom) to localize it for the US reader. The first step is spelling—changing “colour” to “color” and the like. If you think that’s all, or even the bulk, of the task, as many people seem to: well, no. Here's what I wish people (freelancers, I'm looking at you) knew about Americanization.

The precise tasks of Americanization vary with the book and its needs. (I should just get a great big blinking neon sign that says “the needs of the book and the reader” and “quality is what makes it worth paying for,” and that would pretty much cover everything I go on and on about. Not sure, however, it would make a difference.) In some cases, it might be appropriate to retain the British (or whatever) flavor of the text—for example, a novel by an English author and set in England, or a first-person narrative in which the author’s voice makes it personal and appealing. For those books, minimal Americanization—just enough to avoid distraction and clear up potential confusion—is all that’s required. At the opposite extreme might be a how-to book or other nonfiction title in which the object is to convey the information with transparency—that book must be completely clear to the US reader/user to be useful, so a complete overhaul for the US reader may be the order of the day. And there are a lot of books—fiction and nonfiction—in between.

How China's Censorship Affects What You Read

There was some discussion at and around the Frankfurt book fair not long ago about China's censorship policies. If you think this is only about freedom of thought and expression for the people of China, think again. The Chinese policies may well have a direct impact on what we read in the United States.

Although most American black-and-white books (including most novels and narrative nonfiction, as well as some illustrated titles) are manufactured domestically, most full-color books from large publishers are printed in China (as are some one-color titles). Color printing is vastly cheaper in China than it is in the U.S. (The alternative is printing domestically but raising the cover price significantly in order to make the book profitable.) But Chinese printers (even those owned by U.S. companies) cannot print anything that the Chinese government finds objectionable. The list of what is forbidden is long and convoluted; some major items on it include anything to do with Taiwan or Tibet (including maps that depict those places as something other than "China"); mention of the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square protests, or anything alluding to Chinese censorship; nudity and other sexual content; and more.

American publishers don't want to be censored, but when the Chinese manufacturer balks at content for a book, a decision must be made. Keeping the content that China won't print means finding somewhere else to print the book. Depending on the nature of the content at issue, another manufacturer in that part of the world, e.g., Singapore, might take it on at comparable cost (although not always; China has volume). Or perhaps not. Then the question is whether the content is so important to the book that the publisher is willing to pay the cost of printing it in the United States--and will that additional cost shift the balance on this book from profitable to unprofitable?

Style and Substance

Every publisher has its own house style. Most trade book publishers base their style on the Chicago Manual of Style. (I would like to believe that the fact I graduated from CMS's birthplace and home, the University of Chicago, makes me more expert in its content than other people. I would be fooling myself.)

"Style" goes beyond the rules of (American) English grammar. (And as an aside, what I mean here by style is a little different from what you as a reader might refer to as an author's style, which is his or her tone and voice as a writer.) It takes in anything one might have to make consistent decisions about, e.g., what to capitalize, what to abbreviate, when to use numerals and when to spell numbers out, or how to cite references to source material. The rules CMS sets out aren't arbitrary; they serve a purpose in producing clear, readable books. Similarly, the rules a publisher sets out in its house style serve the needs of that publisher's books. For example, although CMS calls for spelling out numbers up to a hundred as well as larger round numbers, publishers of craft books or cookbooks are likely to make it their style to use numerals throughout because of the quantities and measurements that are integral to their books.

A Change of Direction

When I set up this blog, I thought I would write about issues of grammar, usage, and punctuation, and started to draft posts on those subjects. But as I did, I realized that there are plenty of places online for you to get that, and I lost interest. What I've never lost interest in is all the things (and language issues are among them) that go into making books. So the focus of this blog is hereby broadened to include all things of interest to me as a managing editor at a nonfiction book publisher. Some will be big-picture, future-of-publishing things. Some will be nitty-gritty, how-books-get-made things. Some will be about how to use a comma. That's why God gave us tags. You can find the ones that interest you and ignore the ones that don't.

You should be forewarned that many of my posts will be long. I am by nature an essayist, so if you're looking for the internet equivalent of sound bites, you're in the wrong place. If you want thoughtful discussion of what and why, stick around--and join the conversation. Please do so thoughtfully--if you can't back up your opinions with thoughtful argument and in a civil tone, you'll get the boot. You don't have to agree with me (not much of a discussion if everyone agrees), but you must behave yourself. My house, my rules.

The Grammopticon welcomes you.