We’ve all had the occasional struggle with words. Be we writers by choice, ambition or otherwise, everyone does write (or type) and, while some may argue that today, pretty much anything goes in terms of the written word (I allude here of course to ‘txt spk’ and other such social jargon – yes, I’m calling it jargon, as to the uninitiated, it can be slightly confusing!), in certain situations there are standards to be upheld – namely in newspapers, books and any officially published piece of work.
Those who know me from my old weekly newspaper job will agree that I am a stickler for good spelling, punctuation and grammar (so, of course, any errors here are simply as a result of my over-enthusiastic typing…). With that in mind, I thought I’d reflect on ‘The Elements of Style’ – a handy little grey book I picked up a few years ago, which contains the bread-and-butter basics of good grammatical writing.
As a journalist and now also a full-time sub-editor, I have to write accurately and I have to admit – you start to second-guess even the most basic ‘elements of style’ when you’re subbing a story, zoomed up close to you, on a screen. Is it basically correct? Is it the ‘house style’ of this newspaper (or the paper I used to work for?!)…. Doubt creeps in and I will argue that simply because you haven’t written the piece yourself, it makes the job more difficult. Things you wouldn’t think twice about typing, you now ponder in terms of spelling and so on.