Emmy J. Favilla - A world without whom: the essential guide to language in the Buzzfeed age

Bloomsbury USA

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First published 2017

BuzzFeed, 2017

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ISBN: HB: 978-1-63286-757-5

ePub: 978-1-63286-759-9

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To everyone at BuzzFeed who helped make this book come to life and all of the brilliant and hilarious humans Ive been fortunate to work with since 2012.

To my parents, Emily and Joe, who encouraged me to start reading books mere moments after popping out of the womb and didnt care that I was reading things like Stephen Kings Misery at age ten. As long as I was reading. That was cool.

To my friend Belma, whos been asking me to write a book since I was in college. Ta-da!

Contents

Getting Things Right:
The Stuff That Matters

How to Not Be a Jerk:
Writing About Sensitive Topics

Getting Things As Right As You Can:
The Stuff That Kinda-Sorta Matters

From Sea to Shining Sea:
Regional Stylistic Differences

World peace is a noble ideal, but Id like to step that goal up a notch: A world with peace and without whom is the place Id like to spend my golden years, basking in the sun, nary a subjunctive mood in sight, figurative literallys and comma splices frolicking about.

This is a book about feelings, mostlynot about rules, because how can anyone in good conscience create blanket rules for something as fluid, as personal, and as alive as language? Something that is used to communicate literally (literally) every thought, every emotion humans are capable of experiencing, via every medium in existence, from speech to print to Twitter to Snapchat? We cant. Nearly everything about the way words are strung together is open to interpretation, and so boldly declaring a sentence structure right or wrong is a move thats often subjective, and wed be remiss not to acknowledge that most of the guidelines that govern our language are too. Communication is an art, not a science or a machine, and artistic license is especially constructive when the internet is the medium.

And lets clear the air here, just so youre aware of the level at which you should realistically set the bar for what you are about to read: I am not an academic. I am not a lexicographer. I am not a grammar historian (a job description I just made up but am pretty confident is a title that actually exists). I did not study linguistics in my collegiate years. I wasnt even an English major. I am constantly looking up words for fear of using them incorrectly and everyone in my office and my life discovering that I am a fraud. I was a journalism student (and a FASHION journalism graduate student, lolcut me some slack, I wanted to live in London) with minors in creative writing and Italian studies. I spent my undergraduate years writing reviews of tourist-trap Little Italy bakeries and local Queens venues frequented by high school goths, and my graduate experience consisted almost exclusively of trying to convince snotty PR people to agree to give me a ticket to the standing row of bottom-tier fashion shows. I landed my job at BuzzFeed after admitting during my first-round interview that the only television shows I watched regularly were Teen Mom and all prison reality shows currently on air. This has not changed.

What I am is a person with what I think/hope is a decent grasp of English syntax, an interest in how words are used and how language changes, a fascination with how usage and punctuation (or lack thereof) affects tone, and an unwavering appreciation for an artfully placed em dash. I am a person who happened to stumble into a career in copyediting by way of my journalism degree. It is my accidental livelihood, and I do my best to not fall apart at the seams whenever someone asks me whether to spell the abbreviated version of until as til or til or till (spoiler: I dont care) or apologizes for a typo or punctuation error in an email to me (what kind of a monster do you think I am???). I have a casual relationship with language, and I know my way pretty well around grammar basicsbut Id never considered myself much of a language expert until Kathie Lee and Hoda Kotb invited me on their show in 2014 to do a trivia segment about the origins of everyday phrases and described me as such in that little banner at the bottom of the screen that they put in front of guests. So, I guess it must be true. Lets drink a giant Wednesday morning glass of wine to that, amirite?

No, Im not right. I google (thats right, lowercased as a verbback me up here, Merriam-Webster) the names of tense categories on a regular basis to trick writers into thinking I know my shit when I present my edits, but I couldnt identify a future passive progressive verb tense in the wild (i.e., without help from the internet) if my life depended on it. I have to consult the dictionary to figure out whether its lain or laid. Every. Damn. Time. I skipped the session on diagramming sentences at the last copy editors conference I attended because I had neither the fortitude nor the brain capacity to last a full hour engaging in said activity.