Scott Bush

Fal­staff, Shakespeare’s famous char­ac­ter from Henry the Fourth, knew “the bet­ter part of valor is dis­cre­tion,” but did he know the dif­fer­ence between “dis­crete” and “dis­creet”? It’s a tricky dis­tinc­tion for many writ­ers and you’ll see plenty of exam­ples of these homo­phones being mis­used once you know the dif­fer­ence. Before we look at one, here’s the dis­tinc­tion between the two:

• When you want to keep some­thing to your­self, keep it on the down-low, not draw atten­tion to it, you want to be dis­creet about it. You know, like how Tiger Woods wishes his mul­ti­ple affairs had been kept dis­creet rather than becom­ing such major “news.”
• When you keep your per­sonal bank account and spend­ing sep­a­rate from your busi­ness finances, you are keep­ing the two dis­crete. This is a les­son that Dane Cook’s finan­cial man­ager should have learned.

How to keep them straight — Two mnemon­ics can help you remem­ber what mean­ing goes with which spelling:

• Dis­creet: if some­one found out about what you try­ing to keep secret, you’d squeal: “eek!” Those two es in eek mir­ror the two es found in dis­creet, which is the proper spelling for this meaning.
• Dis­crete: the t in dis­crete keeps the two es sep­a­rate, and sep­a­rate is the mean­ing of this spelling.

Improper use of “dis­crete” high­lighted. Improper use of “adver­tise­ment” above it not highlighted.

Mis­use of dis­crete and discreet—and their adver­bial cousins, dis­cretely and discreetly—is com­mon, and a quick Google search for “dis­cretely” revealed this site’s mis­take. The author of the page (on how to sur­rep­ti­siously use MySpace for busi­ness pro­mo­tion) writes “dis­cretely” when he should have writ­ten “dis­creetly.” (This exam­ple prob­a­bly appeared high in my search because the word “dis­cretely” appears in the URL, page title, H1 tag and within the body of the arti­cle.) No dis­re­spect to the author for the error, as these two words are eas­ily confused.

It even tripped up the folks at the pop­u­lar site eHow.com.

The proper use of apos­tro­phes when denot­ing plural or pos­ses­sive nouns is the sub­ject of many tuto­ri­als, espe­cially the rule-breaker “its/it’s.” But there should be no debate about whether acronyms or other all-capitalized or numeric con­struc­tions should include an apos­tro­phe when made plural: they shouldn’t!

Pub­lic Enemy #1 — “FAQ’s”

An apos­tro­phe in FAQs? I don’t think so.

The acronym “FAQ” stands for “frequently-asked ques­tions,” and you’ll find it every­where on the web. Though it’s often cor­rectly writ­ten as “FAQ” (or used in con­struc­tions like “Read our FAQ,” etc.), you’re just as likely to see the incor­rect “FAQ’s” (or “FAQ’S,” which both incor­rect and weird). You’ll even see it on U.S. gov­ern­ment pages.

“FAQ’s” is wrong because the author intended to describe a list of many ques­tions and their answers. That would be: FAQs, where the absence of an apos­tro­phe makes the s in FAQs plural. (The ques­tion of whether an s is nec­es­sary at all is a dif­fer­ent issue; per­son­ally I have no prob­lem with it.) When writ­ten with the apos­tro­phe, it becomes pos­ses­sive. Cre­at­ing a plural or pos­ses­sive form of an acronym is done just like any other noun. Yet writ­ers who would never slip up and write “Click here to read about our car’s!” often do write “Click here to read our FAQ’s!”

Pub­lic Enemy #2 — “The 80’s”

No, not specif­i­cally the 80s (which were awe­some), but the plural form of any decade, such as “in the 1960s” or “the roar­ing ‘20s.” When used in this form, the decade becomes a plural noun and should be treated as such. Some exam­ples (includ­ing a sin­gu­lar year for comparison):

• “New wave was the second-best thing about the ‘80s; the first was the Smurfs!”
• “I’m wear­ing this stone-washed denim jacket and these para­chute pants to the ‘80s party tonight.”
• “Ronald Rea­gan was nom­i­nated for pres­i­dent in 1980.”

One of these two AdSense adver­tis­ers has it right. Hint: it’s not the one on the right.

If there were a case of a pos­ses­sive decade—which is cer­tainly more rare—it would be writ­ten as: “Those are the ’80’s Pop-Rocks!” (Mean­ing, the Pop-Rocks belong to the entity 80s.) Luck­ily, there’s not much call for this con­struc­tion, which makes it much eas­ier to spot the incor­rect plu­rals con­tain­ing an apos­tro­phe before the s.

Pub­lic Enemy #3 — “From the low $300’s”

Hav­ing once worked for a homebuilder’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment, I often had to explain that homes’ start­ing prices should not include apos­tro­phes. You’ve prob­a­bly exam­ples of this mistakenly-placed apos­tro­phe your­self on many of the real-estate devel­op­ment signs clus­tered around busy inter­sec­tions like a patch of over-zealous mush­rooms. “Prices from the low $300’s” or “Homes start­ing in the high $200’s” these signs exclaim. Wrong. Not the prices them­selves (though they sure seemed that way some­times), but the apostrophe.

Style, Value, Loca­tion and Improper Apostrophes.

Gen­er­al­ized price points like these should not include an apos­tro­phe. As with decades, includ­ing one turns the num­ber from the writer’s intended plural mean­ing into an incor­rect pos­ses­sive mean­ing. In this exam­ple, the mean­ing con­veyed is that home prices start some­where around, say, $305,000 to $320,000 (and go up from there, of course, with lot pre­mi­ums, con­fig­u­ra­tion options, etc.). Prop­erly gen­er­al­iz­ing this range means writ­ing it as: “from the low $300s” with­out an apos­tro­phe; $300s being the plural form of the home prices around the low end of $300,000.

Why?

The cor­rect plural-vs.-possessive use of apos­tro­phes can be tricky for some, a fact I blame largely on its-vs.-it’s, whose proper usage seems back­wards to the rule for most other words. (“it’s” is a con­trac­tion of “it is” or “it has” instead of the pos­ses­sive form if “it.”) But when it comes to plural acronyms and numeric con­struc­tions like “the ‘60s” or “start­ing in the high $100s,” I think the cause of the incor­rect apos­tro­phe use is sim­ple: peo­ple just don’t like see­ing an s fol­low­ing a cap­i­tal let­ter or num­ber. To them, it just “looks wrong” so they drop an apos­tro­phe in to sep­a­rate them. (It’s for the same rea­son some peo­ple write “Monday’s” or “Saturday’s”: they don’t like the look of the plural-creating s right after a cap­i­tal­ized word. Of course, this is wrong—unless they’re talk­ing about the restau­rant TGI Friday’s.)

Lan­guage is a beau­ti­ful and var­ied con­cept, with room enough for all man­ner of style, voice, and of course, word choice. As one who often edits the writ­ing of oth­ers (or wishes he’d had the oppor­tu­nity to do so), I’ve encoun­tered some word choices that seem to per­sist despite sim­pler, more direct options. One of these is the word “uti­lize,” which in the vast major­ity of cases should have sim­ply been “use.”

What’s the big deal? There isn’t one, unless you also care about abom­i­na­tions like “drownd,” “irre­gard­less,” or “new and improved.” Oh, or if you’re look­ing to min­i­mize char­ac­ter counts in your tweets or texts: “use” rep­re­sents a 50% reduc­tion in let­ters! To be fair, though, peo­ple would prob­a­bly just write “UZ” instead.

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Once when I was a teenager, a friend offered to let me read a man­u­script writ­ten by his dad’s friend. “Oooh, cool—a real man­u­script!” I thought. The word man­u­script was ripe with pos­si­bil­ity of pub­lish­ing and fame and to read one con­ferred upon the reader a priv­i­lege, a ticket to the insider’s club.  So I was excited when my friend handed me a three-ring binder stuffed with pages filled with double-spaced Courier text. “This is the real deal!” I thought, and dove in that night. Just one prob­lem: it sucked. Turned out there was a rea­son why the author was let­ting anyone—including the teenaged friends of his friend’s son—read the thing: it was doubt­ful any­one else ever would.

Jacket design for “Redemption”

About a year ago, a friend asked if I’d read and edit his brother’s man­u­script. I was hon­ored and intrigued, but mem­o­ries of my first man­u­script expe­ri­ence almost stopped me from agree­ing. I’m sure glad I did, because Darin Rice’s The Redemp­tion of Kurt Cobain restored the cool fac­tor in read­ing man­u­scripts. This is one story that should see the light of day (and not just due to its excel­lent first-round editing).

The story is an intrigu­ing one that defies cat­e­go­riza­tion. One way to frame it is by what it’s not: a biog­ra­phy of Kurt Cobain. The for­mer NIr­vana lead singer plays a cen­tral role in the story, yet is never actu­ally named, other than the title. Sounds weird, but it makes per­fect sense in the story’s con­text because it takes place after Cobain com­mits sui­cide. Now you’re intrigued, aren’t you? You should be. The plot weaves strands of pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, sus­tain­abil­ity, par­ent­ing, a bit of humor, and of course rock and roll into a sur­pris­ingly read­able fab­ric. It’s clear that Rice knows a thing or six about music, which is evi­denced by thought­ful selec­tions of pop­u­lar song lyrics that begin each chap­ter. I found it enter­tain­ing to return to the open­ing lyri­cal pas­sage after read­ing the chap­ter to see how his choice fore­shad­owed what would occur in those pages.

Per­haps another way to intro­duce the story is to cite a bit from Rice’s own summary:

The Redemp­tion of Kurt Cobain is decid­edly polit­i­cal, unde­ni­ably rock and roll, and at its heart about the bond between fathers and daugh­ters. Set in Wash­ing­ton State and Wash­ing­ton DC in the months pre­ced­ing a mod­ern pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Redemp­tion sets the stage to both ask and answer: “If Cobain had another chance at life, would he take it? Could this rock icon, armed with wis­dom from the after­world, find a way back to Earth to trans­form not only him­self but our nation?

Inspired by the epic plot and con­ver­gent char­ac­ters of The Stand and the oth­er­worldly con­tem­pla­tion of The Lovely Bones, Redemp­tion is unique and unex­pected.  A con­tem­po­rary mar­riage of physics, phi­los­o­phy, music and mat­ter, it embraces the notion of spir­its in search of another Earthly chance.  As human frail­ties are exposed and con­fronted within the back­drop of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Redemp­tion builds sus­pense and com­bines lit­er­ary and com­mer­cial ele­ments as it taps the pow­er­ful and often hid­den cit­i­zen activist and rock star in all of us.

Even the author’s own descrip­tion doesn’t fully cap­ture the essence of the story; that’s a tes­ta­ment to the unique­ness of the sub­ject mat­ter. The best way I can rec­om­mend it is this: read­ing it on the bus to and from work, I never fell asleep. That may not sound like high praise, but I fall asleep on the bus read­ing every­thing, so it means a lot that I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to hap­pen next.

Rice is decid­ing how best to pro­ceed with the work: shop­ping for an agent, dis­cussing the intri­ca­cies of get­ting approval for the use of each chapter’s lyri­cal pas­sage, oh and the small mat­ter of titling a novel after a famous rock star in our liti­gious soci­ety. I can safely say that the book stands on its own with­out those pas­sages or Cobain’s name in its title although both do bring an ele­ment of real­ism to the work. But the asso­ci­a­tion with Cobain is a double-edged sword. On one hand, his instantly-recognizable name could help bring atten­tion to the work. On the other hand, if you aren’t a fan of grunge music in gen­eral or Cobain specif­i­cally, you might not bother pick­ing it up off the shelf at all. And it bears repeat­ing here that while the story uses Cobain’s (after)life as a frame­work, it has so much more to offer than the name alone implies. And therein lies part of the prob­lem find­ing a pub­lisher for the book: it’s a genre-bender. Is it a ghost story? Sorta. A polit­i­cal thriller? Oh yes (one of the main char­ac­ters is a sen­a­tor run­ning for the Pres­i­dency), but not in the typ­i­cal way. Music biog­ra­phy? Mmmm yeah, if you read between the lines a bit. A self-help book on good par­ent­ing? Uh… not really but it’s got a lit­tle of that, too. You see the prob­lem, if an excel­lent story that defies label­ing is truly a “problem.”

If this intro­duc­tion has piqued your inter­est, you can check out a bit more at Rice’s Face­book page for the work. And I will post here again when it’s published.

Edit­ing this man­u­script has taught me one thing for sure, though. If Darin Rice wants me to read another of his man­u­scripts, the answer is “yes.” Well, unless it comes in a three-ring binder.

I’ve encoun­tered another denizen of the dic­tio­nary of imag­i­nary words. It’s much less com­mon than cousins such as “acrost” and “drownd,” but it does rear its non-existent head. That non-word, friends, is “complext.”

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Why, yes… I *did* mean “drown”

Mis­ery, they say, loves com­pany. Well, so do lex­i­con­i­cal abom­i­na­tions like “acrost,” so I must do my part to expunge the non-word “drownd” from our col­lec­tive vocab­u­lary. Unlike “acrost,” which never sounds cor­rect, “drownd” sounds like “drowned,” the past tense of drown. Maybe that’s why so many peo­ple say and spell this one wrong?

Here are four exam­ple sen­tences. One of these four is cor­rect; the oth­ers are not:

1. “Babies can drownd in just a few inches of water.”
2. “My friend almost drowned in the pool yesterday.”
3. “Drownd­ing would be such an awful way to die!”
4. “With­out that life­guard, I could have drownded!”

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