Nearly two weeks ago, I treated myself to some new lavender-scented body lotion. It was rich and creamy, made by “artisans” using “pure goat milk.”

It gave me the worst rash I’ve ever had in my life, with the possible exception of that time when I was a kid, and my friend Amy Wyant and I took a bubble bath using dish soap. (Terrific bubbles; definitely not worth it.)

So today, I visited a new dermatologist in my new town. And afterward, I was asked to leave a review of my experience.

When I did so, I caught myself making an error that’s easy to make, so I thought I’d turn this whole itchy fiasco into something educational. Take a look:

When you read that first sentence above, you can understand it, but it’s not quite right. Take a closer look, and you see why. Here’s what it actually means:

Dr. Caufield was attentive, Dr. Caufield was kind, and Dr. Caufield was answered all my questions.

Whoopsie. So I rewrote it:

I’m only using two adjectives to describe Dr. Caufield: attentive and kind. So I don’t have enough for a series. 

I turned the sentence into two independent clauses joined by the coordinating conjunction and. Now everything is clear.

Except … one thing is not yet clear, alas. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go pick up a prescription.

As I began to write this blog, Weebly gave me the following placeholder text at the top of the page.

Those little dots are all over the place!

Let’s get to know them better, shall we?

What is an ellipsis?

An ellipsis (plural: ellipses) is a punctuation mark comprising three periods in a row. (Whether or not there are spaces between these periods is a matter of style. More on that later.)

​I learned from Keith Houston in his wonderful book Shady Characters that the word “ellipsis” comes from the Greek élleipsis, meaning “to fall short” or “to leave out.”

How is the ellipsis used?

I’m so glad you asked. It can perform a few different tasks, outlined below.

An ellipsis can communicate a “trailing off.”

In this case, the ellipsis can act with the sentence-terminating power of a period. No additional period is necessary, and the subsequent sentence begins with a capitalized letter.

Where the heck is my wallet? I had it when I was leaving the bar. I put it on the roof of the car, and … Oh, no.

If you need that trailed-off sentence to be question-esque, then pop a question mark on the end.

Could this ice pick be the one that was used … ?

Similarly, if you need to get exclamatory, add an exclamation point.

What do you mean, you’re my boyfriend’s wife? You can’t possibly … !

An ellipsis can be used mid-sentence to convey faltering.

I didn’t lie under oath, exactly … I mean … I was being … poetic.

Let me point out here: Practically every writing authority says you should seriously try to avoid these “pausing ellipses.” Evidently, they’re annoying to read. You (and I) have been warned.

An ellipsis can say, “Text has been removed from this spot.”

This is really the primary job of the ellipsis.

If you pull out words from the middle of a sentence, you can indicate it like this:

A witness stated, “I saw the … spaceship land right on the polo field.”

Or let’s say you had a three-sentence quote and removed the middle sentence (“Its fleece was white as snow,” here):

“Mary had a little lamb. … Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”

Notice how right after the word lamb, there’s:

1. a sentence-ending period
2. a standard après-period (single) space
3. the ellipsis, announcing a missing chunk of text
4. another space (more on that below)
5. another complete quoted sentence (which begins with a capital letter, as all sentences should)

You don’t typically need an ellipsis at the beginning or end of a quotation.

In Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print—and How to Avoid Them Bill Walsh makes this curmudgeonly point: “It’s silly to indicate omission at the beginning or end of a quote, since virtually all quotes are from people who have spoken before in their lives and will do so again.”

Obviously—and importantly—you never want to misrepresent anyone’s sentiments, but if you eliminate the beginning of their sentence without changing the intended meaning of the quote, you can then portray the truncated sentence with a capitalized “first” word.

For example, if in real life I rhapsodize, “I love cauliflower so much that I believe it is a perfectly good choice for breakfast,” then the journalist following me around might quote me this way: “Cauliflower … is a perfectly good choice for breakfast.”

The interior life of an ellipsis: Should there be spaces in there?

Most of the resources I use, including my go-to Chicago Manual of Style, say that you should put a single space between each of the three dots, like so:

But if you do that for self-published online writing, you’re liable to end up with an occasional bad line break, with one or two dots at the end of one line and the remainder on the next—a bad look. Here’s one solution: Insert a non-breaking space before every dot to ensure the whole bunch stays together. To create a non-breaking space:

• On a PC, type ctrl + shift + space.
• On a Mac, type option + space.​​

You might be better off using the AP’s ellipsis style (like I’m doing in this blog), which dictates three dots in a row—no spaces between them. Now, when I type three consecutive periods on my Mac, a nifty thing happens: My three dots magically transmogrify into a solid ellipsis. It has a smidge of non-breaking space (but not quite a full space) in between its three dots, and they stay together, never to be separated. You can see a difference, if barely:

In places where this doesn’t happen automatically, I can type option + semicolon on my Mac to achieve it. The internet tells me that on a PC, you can hold down the alt key while typing 0133, or if you’re in Word, you can type ctrl + alt + period.

Oh, yay: a bizarre exception.

Just when I thought I had the two ellipsis styles (gapped and non-gapped) straight, I read this line from Bill Walsh in Lapsing into a Comma: “In headlines, … I prefer, like many publications, to omit the spaces between ellipses entirely.” Everywhere else, though, he puts spaces between the dots.

Neat, huh? The authorities swing from one ellipsis style to another if it suits them.

Relevant aside: I removed words from the middle and the end of Walsh’s complete quote above, but I didn't change his meaning.

Swaddle your ellipses in space.

Interior space is one thing; exterior space is another. The ellipsis is kind of standoffish most of the time. It likes to have a single space to its left and and a single space to its right in almost every scenario. Check out all the characters an ellipsis buffers itself against with a space.

The comma:

“I turned on the light, … and then I realized the kitchen was filled with raccoons.”

The semicolon:

“Randy knew he had to redeem himself … ; he spent the weekend cleaning the gutters, the windows, the chimney, and his text history."

The colon:

“Here is what I want … : a martini, a cigar, and several more martinis.”

The exclamation point:

Her eyes took on the shape and size of hubcaps as she uttered, “You can’t seriously … !”

The question mark:

“But Sally,” lisped her little brother, “how could the Tooth Fairy know … ?”

Words:

​As you can see in all my examples in this blog, there’s always a space between an ellipsis and the nearest word.

The only creature an ellipsis seems willing to allow to get close to it is a quotation mark.

Lady Gaga shot back, “If I had a dollar for every time someone …” Then she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and strode away.

In UX/UI, spaceless seems to be the style.

On websites these days, we’re often coaxed to “continue reading” or to proceed further down some marketing funnel. This generally happens with a brief piece of text followed immediately by an ellipsis—with no spaces whatsoever.

In fact, on the AP Stylebook website, just beneath its guidance to put a space on either side of an ellipsis, there’s this flagrant contradiction:

In conclusion …

In “real” writing (no need to fret about your texts and DMs, and UX/UI seems to be a renegade universe):

• Consistency is queen. Decide how you want to approach ellipses and then stick with your approach.
• Don’t let your ellipses get torn asunder. Keep those three dots together. Don’t let a line break separate them.
• If looks matter, take extra care. If you’re doing actual typesetting in Canva or similar, don’t let a line break push an ellipsis to the beginning of a line.
• Ellipses are standoffish. You almost always want a space on either side of your ellipses.

This is just the tip of the ellipsis iceberg, dear reader. The Chicago Manual of Style can take you into topics like French, Italian, and Russian ellipses, to brackets and beyond. If that sounds like your cup of hot chocolate, well then …

Affiliate link alert: The two books mentioned above include affiliate links. And I’ll give you a few more, with these resources I consulted while writing this piece:

• Common Errors in English Usage by Paul Brians
• Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
• Garner’s Modern American Usage by Bryan A. Garner, though you might be better off with his newer Modern English Usage
• The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin, also now available in a later edition​

​

A lot of people collect things. Bobbleheads. Beer bottles. Barbie dolls. 

I, on the other hand, refuse to collect anything. Or I should say: I refuse to collect anything that takes up space, collects dust, or requires special insurance coverage.

What I collect are words. I currently have nineteen different lists with titles like “naughty words I'll probably never use,” “malapropisms,” “eggcorns,” and “good names.” I collect words that sound mellifluous, that paint a vivid picture, or that simply perform a specific job beautifully. You can see a number of words I treasure here.

One of my lists is entitled “terrible words.” These are words that are difficult to pronounce or unpleasant to hear or that sound like the wrong part of speech. Some just rub me the wrong way.

My “terrible words” list was on my mind this week when I was shopping for postage stamps online. I noticed that the USPS has collection of Forever stamps dedicated to—of all things—backyard games. The collection’s eight different stamps cover everything from badminton to bocce, including cornhole. “Cornhole” has been #5 on my “terrible words” list for years. And coincidentally, it appears directly above “philately,” which means “stamp collecting,” but sounds like an adverb and has a sadistic number of l-sounds in it. Two thumbs down.

Anyway, I thought I’d share my “terrible words” list with you. And no, “moist” does not appear on it. I’m a copywriter who needs to write evocatively about cake from time to time, and I’m not about to take “moist” out of commission. Also, I remain in the minority that just doesn’t mind “moist.” I’ll write it again, looking you directly in the metaphorical eye. Moist.

If that made you uncomfortable, you may want to quit reading. Things are about to get a whole lot worse.

​Here we go—my list of terrible words:

​conurbation
ombudsman
contumely (A NOUN!)
smegma
cornhole
philately
sack/sac
diphthong
crampons
taintworm
epiglottis
crepuscular
suppurate
flaccid
fistula
crotch
contrariety
sillily
monthslong
palimpsest
shunt
stalk (the noun)
wilily
brobdingnagian
Behance
bespoke
carbuncle
sackbut
crumhorn 
ornerier
spendthrift
vuln
fleshpot 
I don't think it's *terrible*, but prolix has no business being an adjective.
severalty
spurtle

A number of my friends contributed to this list. (Thanks, Heather and David and everyone else.) One person wrote this gem: “‘Crepuscular’ is like a beautiful woman named Hagatha.’” (Apologies to all the Hagathas out there.)

How about you? Are there words that make you cringe? Please share!

I recently discovered that if you’re an Audible member (as I have been for more than 20 years), you can get a whole bunch of Lorrie Moore audiobooks for free.

Whee! I love Lorrie Moore.

I’m listening to her story collection called Self-Help right now, and I’m thoroughly enjoying and admiring it.

Most of the stories put the reader in the center of the action. (That’s de rigueur for copywriting, but an unconventional approach for fiction.) The author will tell you “How to Be an Other Woman” or give you “The Kid's Guide to Divorce,” colorfully spelling out what actions you might go through, what observations you might make, what emotions you might feel. It’s so intriguing, so effective, and so creative.

Also creative is the way the story “How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)” moves backward, one year at a time. That sounds like it might feel annoying or confusing, but it works beautifully and really tugged my heart every which way.

Here’s a tidbit from it:

The hum, rush, clack of things in the kitchen. These are some of the sounds that organize your life. The clink of the silverware inside the drawer, piled like bones in a mass grave. Your similes grow grim, grow tired.

I could hear, see, and feel that kitchen drawer. And I appreciated how Moore poked fun of her own description.

There’s humor sprinkled throughout these tales. Here’s a cat cleaning herself in “Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love”:

She sees you watching, freezes, blinks at you, then busies herself again, her face in her belly, one leg up at a time, an intent ballerina in a hairy body stocking.

Amidst all this entertaining, evocative writing, the thing that really stopped me in my tracks, that made me want to blog about this author and this book, is a device called a zeugma. (Great to know for Words with Friends or Scrabble. That Z alone is worth 10 points!)

A zeugma, as Merriam-Webster explains, is

the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one (as in “opened the door and her heart to the homeless boy”).

So. In the story entitled “How,” Moore writes:
​
But I love you, he will say in his soft, bewildered way, stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you, staring into the pan as if waiting for something, a magic fish, to rise from it…

Stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you. I love it.

If you look up “zeugma” on Wikipedia, you will find yourself in a complex hamster Habitrail® of rhetorical devices. But for regular people like me, zeugmas are typically just unexpected, playful, and fun. Wordplay, as they say.

(Side note: The etymology of zeugma has to do with connecting, linking, or yoking. The ancient city of Zeugma is so called because of a local bridge of connected boats that crossed the Euphrates.)
​
Here are some literary zeugma examples that I found on this Your Dictionary page:

Yet time and her aunt moved slowly—and her patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tête-à-tête was over. – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

He was alternately cudgeling his brains and his donkey. – Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

They tugged and tore at each other's hair and clothes, punched and scratched each other’s nose, and covered themselves with dust and glory. – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
​
I’ll tell you this much: Zeugmas are tricky to write. I don’t even want to admit how much time I spent on the title of this blog.

Give it a try. Write a zeugma. See how it goes—and why these things aren’t more common.

​
PS: The book link above is an affiliate link. So I can keep rolling in the pennies.

I find the idea of AI-assisted copywriting pretty terrifying. Every time I use Google Docs to write something, a voice in my head says, “They’re recording all of this. Every keystroke. Every hesitation. Every correction. Soon, they (whoever that is) will be able to replicate your voice exactly. You will be rendered obsolete. You will become impoverished. Worthless. Ruined. And you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. You will have handed them the keys to your copy kingdom, all for the sake of convenience.”

I admitted as much to a small networking group last week. But one of the participants assured me that Jarvis.ai, the self-proclaimed “future of writing” was a wonderful tool. Hmmm, I thought. Hmmm.

A few days later, when I shared my AI anxiety with a group of copywriters, my friend Bill assuaged it a bit, reminding me that new tools are frequently scary at first, but then they come to be ordinary.

And so, dear reader, I am dictating this text into Jarvis right now. I had surgery on my hand yesterday, and the aforementioned Jarvis enthusiast has given me a free five–day trial at the highest subscription tier, so I’m using my post-op recovery time to play around with what could well be my replacement. (Jarvis will never require hand surgery. Or hands.)

I’m going to conduct a little experiment. I’ve written everything above this point myself. But now I’m going to give Jarvis the command, “Use the text above to finish this blog.” Let’s see what happens.

Oops. Take two.

OK. That was an unfair test, evidently. Jarvis just repeated what I’d written, word for word.

Now I’ll instead ask it to write three paragraphs answering the question, “Should copywriters feel threatened by Jarvis and other AI?” (Edit—I directed it to go beyond three paragraphs.)

Here’s what Jarvis wrote.

As a copywriter, I'm very curious about how AI can be used to create content. And as a writer, who knows how intimidating the blank page can be, I've been exploring this myself for some months now. But what seems scary to many writers is that AI will take over the profession—or at least large parts of it.

In short: No need to fear! Certainly, copywriters should use every tool at their disposal--whether it's motivational apps or mindmapping techniques or just dousing oneself with coffee and getting started on that white paper--but they shouldn't worry too much about artificial intelligence taking over their livelihoods anytime soon (if ever). 

Copywriting has developed into an artistic discipline like anything else; there are still rules that can be followed, but the best writing is often creative and innovative. And AI isn't intelligent enough to do that yet.

However, all this doesn't mean copywriters shouldn't explore the possibilities of new tools like Jarvis—the future of writing--in their own work. For example, it can help marketers create more targeted content using natural language generation (NLG) to increase their lead generation.

So relax, copywriters. You may be able to stop obsessively checking your email for that message from Google telling you that it's "improved" your writing style and now it won't need you anymore. Relax and enjoy the ride!

Well, well, well. That was a pleasant surprise! Jarvis worked out some complete thoughts, and apparently wasn't intimidated by the idea of writing a blog post on AI's impact on copywriting.

I don't know if it's any good, but I have to admit that it sounds pretty professional—much more so than anything I've been able to produce.

Conclusion (and a question).
​
It’s me again. Sara. The one with the hands and the heartbeat.

So Jarvis is telling me to relax and enjoy the ride; and also, that it can write much more professionally than I can. It says that it probably won’t be taking over my livelihood soon. I'm left feeling both uneasy and insulted. This little Jarvis guest post is part gaslighting, part death threat.

What do you think? Should I spend between $29 and $119 a month to keep my enemy close?​

Gravel. Goose down. Sawdust. Hay. These are just a few of the generic commodities you could stuff into a pillowcase, if you were so inclined. Any of it would become the pillowcase’s content.

When someone asks for “content” for a website or social media post, they’re essentially saying, “I don’t care what you put in there, just fill it up.” The gist is, “I need this empty space to stop being empty.”

Whoever came up with the term content sure didn’t appreciate the power of language. They didn’t recognize its ability to grab attention, stoke emotions, change minds, and incite action. The coiner of content wasn’t a writer—and probably not much of a reader. They surely won’t read this particular, erm…“content,” so I could probably take this opportunity to call them a troglodyte or doo-doo head.

But I’d never.
​
Now, as a copywriter, I should point out that originally, the term “copy” wasn’t all that great, either. The word hearkens back to the poor hunched, eye-strained scribes who spent their days and candlelit nights meticulously copying documents and books by hand. They had to write a copious amount of text. The root of both copy and copious is the Latin word copia, meaning abundance. It’s the same copia we see in our Thanksgiving-centric cornucopia—“horn of plenty.” (See below.)

But copywriters don’t copy. (The ethical ones don’t, anyway.) We write the words that get reproduced by printing presses or computer monitors. We create original text that’s worthy of wide distribution.

What we don’t write—or certainly shouldn’t—is mere fluff and filler. That would be no better than the common placeholder text “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet….” (That wording is called “Greek,” but it isn’t Greek. It’s some slightly mangled Latin from a treatise published by Cicero in 45 BC.)

Whether copywriters are writing ads or emails, posters or packaging, blogs or scripts or tweets, our words are meant to have impact. The sentences we so carefully craft are not inert stuffing; they accomplish goals. They tell stories. Gain interest. Build trust. Make sales.

Good writing does not, as the name content implies, merely fill a void.

Almost any name would have been better than content. Fuel, maybe. Magic, or gold. Honestly, I’d settle for the simple term that evokes all of that power and value to me: just words.

But we could have come up with something else. Splendor? Sparkle? Voltage? Vim? How about lexi, which sounds like sexy but is rooted in the Greek lexikos, “pertaining to words”?

No matter what, whoever came up with content should have hired a writer.
​
What would you have called “content,” given the chance?

Someone from Mumbai just sent me a message on LinkedIn. He wanted to show me a writing error he’d spotted. The allegedly misused word was oversight.

Uh-oh, I thought: Janus word.

I read the problematic sentence, and sure enough—there was no error. Just English being wacky again.

I explained that oversight has two different meanings that are essentially opposites. You can make an oversight if you’re sloppy (overlooking something); conversely, if you’re extremely reliable, you might be granted the oversight (supervision) of an entire department or company. So you might say there’s a bad kind of oversight and a good one.

Thanks, English.

Similarly, in the springtime, you might seed a garden (place seeds in the soil). But after you grow a cucumber, you might want to seed it (remove the seeds) before you cut it up for your salad.

You might dust your tiramisu with cocoa powder (that is, add a dusting of it); you might also need to dust your furniture (remove the dust).

If you permit some sort of behavior, you sanction it. But if you don’t permit it, you might threaten sanctions as punishment.

It’s no wonder these types of words are called Janus words. The Roman god Janus had two faces, as in the statue above. (Side note—January is named after Janus, too.)

These words are also called contronyms and auto-antonyms and a few other terms you can learn about on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

If you peruse an article about Janus words, that means you examine it very attentively. But it also means that you just skim it in a cursory manner.

Do you have any favorite Janus words?

Apostrophes tolerate a lot of abuse. They get stuck into words where they don’t belong and left out of words where they do belong. They frequently get recruited for pluralizing words they have absolutely no business pluralizing.

Watch out: Apostrophes get their revenge for this mistreatment with an act of subversion I’ll call the smart quote flip.

​Let me explain.

So-called smart quotes are provided as an act of automatic typographic beautification by our electronic devices. The smart quotes feature…

But this automation tends to backfire when you type an apostrophe (which can also serve as a single quote) at the beginning of a word to signal that you’ve removed  letters or digits.

This will make some of your readers clench their teeth, which I’m sure you’d like to avoid. So I’m going to tell you how to discipline your errant apostrophes and ensure that they maintain their correct orientation.

Step 2: Once you’ve achieved a proper left-curving apostrophe, you can go back and insert the missing space.

But wait! What if you don’t have a preceding word to wrap your apostrophe around? This is where the following suggestion from reader Adrienne Charlton works well.

Solution #3: Type two apostrophes, then tidy up.

Just tap-tap that apostrophe key and then erase the first character.

Whichever approach you use, I do hope you’ll make the effort to keep every apostrophe in its correct orientation, showing the world its best side.

And now, go forth and apostrophize (real word) with confidence.

PS: Beyond preventing AFS (Apostrophe Flipping Syndrome), I encourage you to pay close attention to all your apostrophes, placing them only where they’re needed. If you’d like help with such endeavors, consider signing up for my weekly email. You’ll learn, among other things, when to use its and when to use it’s; when you want lets and when you want let’s.

​

I've said before that I am not a grammar Nazi. I have no interest in shaming anyone or trying to prove any kind of superiority. I promise.

I do believe, however, that many people—particularly businesspeople—want to write clearly and correctly, and I'm happy to help them achieve that goal.

So a while back, when a customer service rep typed "your welcome" to me, I shared the above screenshot on LinkedIn. I pointed out that it's an extremely common error and explained ​that when you say "you're welcome," you're creating a contraction of "you are welcome." I thought it might help some people better understand and remember the correct spelling.

(I did not​ write, or even imply, "Look how stupid this person is." I simply explained the correct spelling.)

I was surprised when I got this response from a "senior business development manager":

Huh.

I had to think about that just a bit.

While I was thinking, I did a bit of "research" (read: Googling) about this conviction that so long as we can understand each other, we shouldn't be fussing about apostrophes and spelling.

And I discovered that this senior business development manager's opinion was not unique. I found a meme that echoed his sentiment with just a touch more vulgarity:

I won't even comment on that missing apostrophe. I'll just address the question.

First—in my defense, I never correct people directly unless I know they want me to, and then I only do so privately.

But as for the "correctness" thing, I'll explain "why the fuck" it matters.

It matters because we live in a society. With conventions and expectations. And—occasionally—manners. We abide by certain rules to get along harmoniously. To establish credibility. To gain trust and respect. This is why you don't typically show up for a job interview barefoot or pick your nose when you're meeting your new neighbors. It's why you stand in line and wear pants in Starbucks. It's why your doctor doesn't buff his fingernails while he's listing your treatment options.

Also, writing is about connecting and communicating with our readers. We owe them the kindness of making our message as clear as possible. It's like holding a door open for them. It's polite. We're helping them along. We're putting in a good effort to save them trouble. We're showing them respect.

I admit that writing is a series of judgment calls, and I might write more casually on Twitter than I would on behalf of a higher education client. But fundamentally, I always try to think about the people reading my writing, and I try to treat them well.

So that's "the issue," and that's my position, for anyone who's wondering.

You're welcome.

Pandemic: bad.

Having to put down your beloved dog during a pandemic: extra bad.

Actually, I didn't have to do it myself—thank goodness. The wonderful, compassionate folks at Pets & Pals Veterinary Hospital in Lafayette, Colorado, have stayed open during this outbreak, and they handled the euthanasia. (Thank you, thank you, thank you.)

Below is a piece I wrote for my husband's dog photography website many years ago. I'll leave it here as a tribute to Little Guy, my funny, handsome, and tremendously comforting friend. ❤️