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LET'S COMMUNICATE CONTENTS
WRITE THE RIGHT WORD "No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published." J. Russell Lynes *** The Trained Professional Watch just spotted another example of failure to keep items in a series parallel, which can be at best awkward and at worst confusing. From an item in a metropolitan daily paper about an ethnic shopping mall: "Older men with beards and canes and younger ones in trendy gear gather around a fountain and tables at Karmel Coffee shop to talk, drink coffee, eat spaghetti and gyros." Let's analyze the end of the sentence. I can talk, though sometimes inclined not to. I can surely drink coffee. And I love to eat spaghetti. But how does one "gyros"? If you know a gyro is a sandwich, maybe the meaning is clear enough. But logically the item after the "and" should be an action of some kind. "...and eat spaghetti AND gyros" would be clearer. The repetitive "and" bothers me less than the hanging "gyros." Or you could conjure up something like, "...drink coffee, eat spaghetti and devour gyros."*** Overcapitalization may be a good thing if you're starting up a business. When you're writing not so much. For some reason, people have a tendency to capitalize many words that don't merit the treatment. This may not have a lot of bearing on the clarity of your message, but it can be a distraction. The style guides on my bookshelf appear to be unanimous: Avoid excessive capitalization in text. What's excessive? You can't go far wrong by capitalizing only proper nouns and proper names. However, just what constitutes a proper name sometimes takes interpretation. For example, Associated Press style says subunits of a college or university are not capitalized. For most use I advocate a compromise. Capitalize the full and formal name, as in "Department of Soil science." Lowercase references like "soil science department," "soils," or "the department." NDSU Extension Service is a proper name. Things like "extension," "extension agent" or "the extension service" are not. There will be differences of opinion and different circumstances. The bottom line: Capitalize sparingly; when in doubt, lowercase.CITATION DOESN'T PROTECT COPYRIGHT VIOLATORS There is a common belief that crediting a source protects a user of copyrighted material against being prosecuted for copyright violation. Although crediting sources is a good thing to do, copyright law makes no such provision. Use of the cited material may well be legal under fair use provisions, but giving the original source credit doesn't make unfair use legal. What crediting the source protects you against is being accused of plagiarism, which is a different thing than copyright violation. The point of copyright law is to protect the owner's right to profit from or control the use of original works. Reproducing and distributing a chapter from a book, a CD-ROM, or an audio or video cassette might deprive the copyright owner of sales income. The fact that you gave the owner credit doesn't change that. LET'S COMMUNICATE If you have questions or comments, or would like to submit information or make a suggestion, contact:
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