The “seamy underbelly” referred to by Mr. Wallace is the rift between “prescriptivists” and “descriptivists”. I won’t delve into the details of the “Usage Wars” in this post; in brief, prescriptivists aim to define rules that govern best usage in Standard Written English, whereas descriptivists eschew normative judgments and aim to document the language as it’s actually used.

As an editor, I am favorably inclined toward the prescriptavists because standard usage is my primary concern. Although I agree with descriptivists that y’all is a valid word and not inherently “bad”, I’m not going to use it in a scholarly paper. However, other cases require more careful consideration: different from vs. different than, due to as an adjectival phrase vs. due to as an adverbial phrase, clearly/hopefully/etc. as sentence adverbs, U.S. vs. US vs. United States, very/somewhat/fairly (necessary?), split infinitives, and so on.

Having edited many papers in the last year, I have formed various opinions on style and usage.

To occasionally split infinitives / To split infinitives occasionally

An absolute rule against splitting infinitives is completely unfounded, even though this notion is widely held. Instead a careful writer ought to minimize the extent to which an infinitive is split – for example: <Good style requires the author to not, as I have done here, split an infinitive too widely.>.

Sometimes clarity requires an infinitive to be split — for example: <We plan to carefully inspect frozen food imported from Europe.>. Here, there is no other place to put carefully without changing the meaning of the sentence.

1) We carefully plan to inspect frozen imported from Europe.>

2) We plan to inspect carefully frozen food imported from Europe.>

3) We plan to inspect frozen food carefully imported from Europe.>

4) We plan to inspect frozen food imported from Europe carefully.>

In the above sentences, carefully modifies 1) plan, 2) inspect/frozen (unclear), 3) imported, and 4) imported. Here, splitting the infinitive is not only defensible, but optimal.

Due to

When I first started my editing job, I was unaware that due to has been traditionally used only as an adjectival phrase and not as an adverbial phrase — for example: <The program’s cancellation was due to poor ratings. (adjectival phrase)> vs. <The program was canceled due to poor ratings. (adverbial phrase)>. I thought this distinction in usage was old-fashioned and pedantic when I first noticed it in the American Chemical Society Style Guide. But after reading several papers revised by other editors who adhered to the traditional usage of due to, I came to like the phrases that these editors typically used as substitutes: because of and owing to.

The compound degraded due to its high reactivity. –> The compound degraded, owing to its high reactivity.

The compound degraded due to its high reactivity. –> The compound degraded because of its high reactivity.

Hopefully

Although hopefully does not often appear in scientific writing, I fully embrace its new role as a sentence adverb. Traditionally, hopefully has been used to mean “in a hopeful manner” — for example: <He looked on hopefully as the horses ran down the homestretch.>. Nowadays, the phrase is widely used to mean “I hope that” — for example: <Hopefully, the surgery will succeed.> — usage that drives grammatical sticklers batty. Because this new usage is so widespread and firmly established, traditionalists are fighting not only a losing battle, but a battle that has already been lost. Since this point is unlikely to come up at work, I hopefully (in the traditional sense!) cast my lot with the victors.

To start, I must first note that all work-related posts come with the following disclaimer: my company’s clients and the client’s research are confidential, so identifying details are changed accordingly.

In today’s post, I will write a little bit about my job and what it entails, as well as discuss a few grammar points — because my days are consumed by grammar points and I feel compelled to share!

Native Speaker vs. Professional Editor

For many jobs in Japan, a pulse and native English ability are the key prerequisites. For my job as a scientific editor, naturally, a science background is also required.

When I applied for my job, I satisfied the above-mentioned criteria, but had no experience as an editor. So, my first six months on the job included rather rigorous training: my boss looked over every one of my jobs and provided me with extremely thorough feedback. Any native speaker checking a document is able to check for grammatical errors such as subject-verb agreement and spelling, but a critical element that separates native speakers from professional editors is consistency.

A prototypical example is the serial comma, which is generally used in American English but often omitted in British English and technical writing: both “A, B, and C” and “A, B and C” are grammatically correct. One of the most difficult — and for lack of a better word, unnatural — parts of my job is having to recognize that “A, B, and C” is used on page 3, while “A, B and C” is used on page 17.  A similar example is checking the citation of references, for example, having to notice that on page 5, [1] the reference is given after the comma, but on page 14 [2], the reference is given before the comma. One last example is ensuring the consistent use of terminology. If an author primarily uses the phrase “electronic device” and only once uses “electrical device”, the terms must be revised for consistency.

Because  individually these examples are not strictly incorrect, they would most likely escape the notice of a non-professional native speaker; in contrast, a professional editor with a well-developed sense of anal retentiveness can be expected to make the necessary revisions.

Redundant Redundancy Repeating Unnecessary Words That Are Not Needed

One of the more amusing parts of my job is spotting grammatically correct yet redundant phrasing that can be written more concisely.

…in the next fifty years of this century… (in the next fifty years)

…the laser beam perpendicular to the normal of the surface… (the laser beam parallel to the surface)

…temperature increases linearly with a constant slope… (temperature increases linearly)

One of my New Favorite Words

Thereby – adv., by that means

Before becoming an editor, I never once used the word thereby, but it really is useful for cutting out superfluous words and writing in a clear, direct style.

We dissected the frog, and by do so, were able to examine its internal organs.

That sentence isn’t bad, but toss in a little thereby and bam!

We dissected the frog and thereby were able to examine its internal organs.

How was that?　 いかがでしたか？

Fig. 1 I stopped reading before Darwin got to this part...

I doubt many people reading this post will need me to point out Darwin’s brilliance (although some people might!). Instead, I want to write about what struck me while reading the book.

It’s one long argument.

I was surprised that in many respects, On the Origin of Species reads more like a math paper than a biology paper; although variables and equations are scarce, Darwin carefully lays out a series of observations, assumptions, hypotheses and deductions in support of his theory of natural selection, much like a mathematician would present lemmas, corollaries and proofs.

Let us now take a more complex case. Certain plants excrete a sweet juice, apparently for the sake of eliminating something injurious from their sap: this is effected by glands at the base of the stipules in some Leguminosae, and at the back of the leaf of the common laurel. This juice, though small in quantity, is greedily sought by insects. Let us now suppose a little sweet juice or nectar to be excreted by the inner bases of the petals of a flower. In this case insects in seeking the nectar would get dusted with pollen, and would certainly often transport the pollen from one flower to the stigma of another flower. The flowers of two distinct individuals of the same species would thus get crossed; and the act of crossing, we have good reason to believe (as will hereafter be more fully alluded to), would produce very vigorous seedlings, which consequently would have the best chance of flourishing and surviving.

In the above passage, a couple phrases that I see almost exclusively in regard to mathematics are shown in bold. In most biology and physical sciences papers today, the primary aim is to report results rather than to engage in speculation, or to construct and test (and heaven forbid, disprove) a hypothesis. Indeed, I think a large portion of science today forgoes well-formed hypotheses in favor of mere questions.

To borrow from the passage quoted above, a typical researcher today would design an experiment to answer the question, “Do cross-pollinated plants produce more vigorous offspring?” and then simply report the results, “We found that cross-pollinated plants produce more vigorous offspring,” while offering a brief, hedged explanation, “This result might be attributable to the increased genetic diversity of the offspring. The genetic basis of this finding will be explored in future work.” The follow-up work would then be designed to answer the question, “Is there a genetic difference between pure and crossbred plants?”

Basically, in my fictitious research example, the Scientific Method is being followed, but in an extremely uninspiring way. In contrast, the best works extend beyond merely reporting results to form explicit testable hypotheses that logically follow from the experimental findings, rather than leaving the hypothesis implicit in the design of subsequent studies. For me,what makes On the Origin of Species so enthralling is its presentation of the science known at the time to construct an extremely far-reaching theory.

Seeing the foundations of modern biology

Reading On the Origin of Species, I was struck by the extent to which it resembled a road map of modern biology. For example, Darwin notes that crossing two individuals that differ to a certain extent will lead to beneficial variations, while crossing two individuals that differ too greatly will produce sterile offspring or none at all. On this point, he writes, “Both series of facts seem to be connected together by some common but unknown bond, which is essentially related to the principle of life.” Of course, modern readers recognize this “unknown bond” as DNA. Darwin presents his theory comprehensively, but often notes its shortcomings. Notably, these gaps have since been filled by work in fields such as molecular biology, population genetics, anthropology and paleontology.

British spelling, archaic spelling, and outdated notions

• mongelise
• ruta-baga
• male alligators have been described as fighting, bellowing, and whirling round, like Indians in a war-dance
  

  Fig. 2 Darwin, that's not PC dude!