Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Style wars ...

... Josh Landy’s lonely fight against “The Chicago Way” | The Book Haven.

4 comments:

  1. There was an essay of Jacques Barzun's on copy editing that included a line like "Did I join a sect, to agree to be ruled by a book?" The volume it is in seems to have disappeared in one of our moves.

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  2. In his essay "Dialogue in C-Sharp," which is a chapter in his book A Word or Two Before You Go . . .* (subtitled on the jacket as "Brief Essays on Language"), Prof. Barzun writes in response to a younger editor who cited the Chicago Manual and whenever he could would:

    ". . . run words together and make the reader puzzle out the result. See here: antiintellectual in one word. What is the point? What has been gained?"

    "The Chicago Manual--"

    "Never mind the Manual-- it isn't holy scripture; I haven't joined a religious sect and taken an oath to be ruled by a book. My creed is that I put my name only to what I write; I write as I like; and I like hyphens-- especially when they make reading easier."


    (Wesleyan University Press, 1986; page 116)


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    *http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Word_Or_Two_Before_You_Go.html?id=WGnRC53VpVcC

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  3. Thank you, Dave. You just gave me a postscript.

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