I’m always happy to hear from readers who identify themselves as "grammar sticklers." It means there are people out there who care about the very things I spend my days contemplating.

Recently a self-described stickler complained about several sentences in the June issue of National Geographic, including ". . . classifications of life-forms and their relation to common ancestors" and "As glaciers thin, their surface sinks. . . ." The persnickety reader pointed out that both relation and surface should be plural.

I agree that using the plural would have been preferable, although I think the singular is not wrong. In fact one could argue that each glacier has only one surface and therefore singular is better. However, this subtle rule of usage—singular noun with plural pronoun—is usually reserved for nouns that express abstract qualities. Below is a section from the National Geographic Style Manual describing such usage.   

            Singular Noun With Plural Possessive: A singular noun can be used with
            a plural possessive for abstract qualities and figurative words: Four pilots
            crashed to their death, but four pilots ran to their cars; the men earned their
            living; the spectators held their breath; the depositors' curiosity was piqued;
            they kept their honor.

Are there any grammar sticklers reading this blog? What do you think?

Christine’s comment about her dog-eared, patched-up, much loved American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, made me stop and survey my shelves for those books that show the same long use and emotional attachment.

One is the 1977 Atheneum paperback edition of The Careful Writer, by Theodore Bernstein, which, at latest count, has separated into eight sections. Although I don’t consult it as much as I once did, I continue to be grateful for the reasonable and insightful advice it offers, from the snappy entries advising on proper prepositions (“Mediate—takes preposition on or upon”) to nearly five pages dealing with commas: “The tendency these days is to use a minimum of commas. And if a writer feels the need to use a multitude of commas in a sentence, it is likely that the sentence is confused and requires recasting.” No matter how esoteric the entry, the author’s wit and love of clear writing show through.

My 1980 hardback edition of Roy H. Copperud’s American Usage and Style, the Consensus, also fell apart some years ago from frequent use in my early days of copyediting. Fortunately a decade or so ago a generous colleague took pity on me and gave me her copy, which I’m happy to say is still intact. This is a book I wish were reedited and updated to take into account changing values since it first appeared. I find it immeasurably useful to see how far apart the opinion of experts can be and am always grateful to be validated in some, though not all, of my views. I wonder, if Copperud were writing today, would he still warn against the use of visionary to mean farsighted, prophetic, or imaginative?

The second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary is within reach of my desk, though it remains unopened for days on end. Still, its presence reassures, even though I now refer more frequently to the third edition.

I too love the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and recently replaced my tattered copy with the fourth edition, which at the moment is too clean and lies too squarely on my bookshelf. It hasn’t yet acquired those comfortable qualities of a longtime friend who’s been by your side through ups and downs. But give it time. Even though much of my work now is done on the computer, nothing can replace the tactile satisfaction of leisurely leafing through a dictionary. You never know what you will discover. Just last week I learned that the original spelling of persnickety was pernickety.   

I’ve just got a response from one of my pen pals—a reader of National Geographic who still corresponds via U.S. mail and thus is unlikely to see this blog—and I am saddened. He says: “I am sorry to hear that the editorial staff has lowered their standards. I had long held up National Geographic as a top example of correct grammar and punctuation but sadly can no longer do that.”

Have we really lowered our standards? And what egregious thing have we done?

For one, we do not use farther and further in the same way our reader does. He would use further only in the sense of “in addition to.” Our style has long been to use farther for true physical distance and further for all abstract and figurative contexts.

        He walked several miles farther.
        He divided each order further, into genera.
        The rollout of further marine preserves. . .
        Education, respect, and love go much further than. . .

But I suspect that difference of opinion is relatively minor compared with our disagreement on the use of due to as a preposition. The National Geographic Style Manual of the 1960s and 1970s had this to say about due to:

        Avoid, except when used to qualify a noun.
        Correct: His absence is due to illness.
        Incorrect: He is absent, due to illness.

In other words, we were sticking with those lexicologists who insist that due to cannot be used as a synonym for because of, that it can be used only as an adjective to modify a noun.

However, some time in the early 1980s, after consulting dictionaries and other usage guides, we changed our policy and determined there was nothing wrong with using due to as a preposition.

For instance, Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, says:      
Due to as a compound preposition meaning “because of, owing to” has been in idiomatic use since the 14th century. Some object to this use on the grounds that due to is historically an adjective, to be used predicatively: The explosion was due to a gas leak. Nevertheless prepositional use of due to is standard in all varieties of speech and writing.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says:
Due to has been widely used for many years as a compound preposition like owing to, but some critics have insisted that due should be used only as an adjective. . . . This seems a fine point, however, and since due to is widely used and understood, there seems little reason to avoid using it as a preposition.

So there we are. National Geographic style changed after thoughtful research and in keeping with current usage guides, but my pen pal thinks we have lowered our standards. I prefer to say we have different standards, and that ours is more sensitive to the times.

For as long as I’ve been associated with National Geographic, our standard dictionary reference has been Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. The reason for this choice is lost in history, but I suspect it’s because it has always been readily available and because 50 years ago there were fewer choices than today. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, which I consider a fine, scholarly publication, did not appear until 1969; Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary even more recently. Another possible reason is that until the arrival of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in 1961 and its rejection by linguistic purists as way too permissive, Webster’s dictionaries were highly regarded in professional circles.

A member of my style committee here at NGS has been reading Robert Hartwell Fiske’s Dictionary of Disagreeable English, in which he ranks six dictionaries on how each handles 25 words or phrases. Fiske, who edits Vocabula Review, an online magazine that “strives to combat the degradation of our language,” concludes that Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate is the most descriptive—in other words the most permissive—and therefore the worst of the six.

My fellow editor wonders why the Geographic continues to use Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate as our standard reference. Good question. One I plan to ask my entire committee as well as other editors and writers. Should we stay with a dictionary that merely describes how the English language is used by the masses today, or should we switch to a dictionary that attempts to prevent the degradation of our language by prescribing correct usage?

In the meantime, though, I am relieved to point out that for at least half the examples used by Fiske in his rankings, I would make an exception to Merriam-Webster’s and stick with the more formal, prescribed usage over the popular nonstandard form. I would insist on accidentally and not accidently, all right and not alright, home in and not hone in, and would distinguish between the meanings of flaunt and flout, enormity and enormousness, reticent and reluctant.

What do you readers think?

When I married and changed my name to Rogers, I predicted life would be easier with such a simple name. No longer would I have to spell my last name. Boy, was I wrong. More times than not, people want to add an extra letter: Rodgers.

And what about those times when I refer to the whole family as the Rogerses? How awkward is that! Even my computer spell-checker questions this spelling. However, according to the National Geographic Style Manual, and many other grammar guides, it’s correct. The plural of one Rogers is two or more Rogerses, just as the plural of Jones is Joneses and Charles is Charleses.

Which now brings me to the title of this blog: Rogers’ Rules of Order. I agonized over how to present my name. Could I get away with Rogers, or should I be proper (formal?) and make it possessive. The style guide used by National Geographic magazine, and which I’m charged with maintaining, says the possessive of a proper name ending in s is formed by adding an apostrophe and another s: Rogers’s. Not great in the name of a blog. So I opted for Rogers, using my name attributively as an adjective, and forgot all about it until queried by QA.

I’ve compromised and added an apostrophe but not another s. My defense is that headlines (especially on the Web) have certain aesthetic needs that formally written text does not. Within a body of text I would certainly write Rogers's.

And on those occasions when I sign a card or a note from my whole family, I usually write “from the Rogers family” and avoid the awkward plural.

Why do publications such as National Geographic have an editorial style, strive for consistency, and even produce manuals to explain that style?

On occasion, writers have challenged my endorsement of editorial consistency by quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Actually, according to Stevenson’s Home Book of Quotations, the quotation says "foolish consistency." What does that mean? Is it foolish today to expect a publication to maintain a certain consistency in spelling, in punctuation, in capitalization?

Rules and regulations are necessary in any civilized undertaking, and making a publication conform to certain uniform standards produces clear writing, which, in turn, leads to easy comprehension by the reader. Even if the reader has no intricate knowledge of the rules and reasons for writing something a certain way, he’s helped by someone else’s knowledge and care with words.

So, we copyeditors do our job primarily to help the reader. I suspect, though, that deep down it’s also because we, more than many people, like order and precision, and find great satisfaction in the subtlest of corrections. Our love of poring over manuscripts—putting in commas, taking out commas, debating hyphens, frowning on the misuse of “decimate” and “compromise”—might even stem in part from our wanting to show how knowledgeable we are about grammar, spelling, punctuation. (This could well be akin to the gotcha tone I detect in some of the letters readers write when they spot what they believe is a grammatical error.)

The National Geographic Style Manual has existed since the early 1960s, when it was a typewritten guide (with several carbon copies) for a handful of editors. Within a few years it became a typeset edition—loose-leaf pages in a yellow binder. Soon there was a style committee of magazine staff who met regularly to update the manual and revisions were published every few years. The style committee now comprises editors from all areas of the Society—television, books, other magazines, new media, marketing, school publishing—and the manual is no longer printed but is found online where it can be constantly updated.

Several years ago we made the manual available, on our website, to the public. You can find it at the bottom right corner of National Geographic magazine’s home page or by using this URL in your browser: stylemanual.ngs.org. In the manual you’ll find the editorial style rules used in most National Geographic publications.

Speaking about rules, we should have a few for this blog, not that I can imagine grammarians ever becoming rude or obnoxious. It’s all right to be passionate, but always be polite; keep your language clean; focus (this is a column about grammar and word usage); don’t plagiarize; don’t get personal or nasty. I will respond to some, but certainly not all, comments. Thanks for the comments so far. Keep them coming!