AVERIL ROBERTSON

I used to work in editing (and in many ways, as a technical and fiction writer, I still do), so there were endless opportunities to go down those rabbit holes that only editors are happy to go down. At one point, the Australian business I worked for was taken over by a British company and we had to revise our policy around swear words to align with their editorial standards. The resulting email to distribute the new guidelines was a thing of linguistic beauty. In telling us just how few swears we could now use, the editorial manager used EVERY POSSIBLE SWEAR you could imagine. Not just the root swears, but the derivatives. I imagined that he wrote it with joy. He later confirmed this.

Arguing through editorial details, especially when there really is no one true rule, is equal parts joy and pain for editors (and people who secretly want to be editors), because in many cases, even when there is no rule, editors still have a preference. It’s like trying to convert someone to a religion. ‘Hello, would you like to join us at the Cathedral of the Comma at Oxford? Or perhaps the Pagan Place of the Possessive Plural?’

What about if you’re naming something new and need to decide which approach to take? Is it a writer’s festival (usually not, unless it’s a party of one), a writers festival, or a writers’ festival? WHO KNOWS? What you can be assured of is that, if it’s about naming something related to books, reading or writing, the name – its exact language and how it is punctuated – was likely the subject of intense discussion, much hand-wringing, and many cups of tea.

Some of my favourite moments in life have been when I have inadvertently encountered a linguistically lithe peer. Instead of biting my tongue to avoid correcting my new friend every time they say less when they mean fewer (OMG) or amount when they mean number, I can revel in the ambiguous facets of English, the nuances of grammar that only true language nerds delight in. I mean, in how many friendships can you say ‘Is this a dangling modifier which I see before me?’ in response to a poorly formed sentence and not receive looks of confusion? Or worse, derision? 

So, if you, like me, relish editorial debate, get out there and find your people. We exist, and we will die on the hill of the Oxford comma. (For or against, you ask? A lady never tells.)