There are times when my duties as style maven for National Geographic seem ludicrous. This occurred the other day as I found myself discussing diacritical marks with fellow editors at the same time that world news was focusing on tens of thousands of people dead and suffering in Myanmar, from a cyclone, and in China, from an earthquake.

Egads, I thought, does it really matter that the glottal stop in Farsi—or, as some would insist, Persian—words is a closing single quotation mark but in Arabic words should be an opening single quote? Is such a subtly of copyediting really important in the larger scheme of things?

I reflected: Maybe not as important as treating the injured, but still important in its own way. Not all of us can be relief workers, rendering aid and support in an emergency. We must find other ways to contribute. Helping people communicate clearly and unambiguously has value. And being consistent in the use of diacritical marks is a signal that much thought has gone into a publication, that it’s trustworthy and worth reading. Besides, correctly printing diacritical marks is something I have control over. Overthrowing the junta in Myanmar is not.

So back to glottal stops. Generally in editorial copy National Geographic magazine uses accents with those languages written in the Latin alphabet, such as French, German, and Spanish, but deletes accents on languages transliterated from another alphabet (for instance, Russian and Arabic) because they mean nothing to most readers.

Recently National Geographic has started using glottal stops (opening single quote mark) and macrons (long line over vowels) in Hawaiian words and names, because they are now commonly used by residents, and legislators, of our 50th state. Place-names such as Hawai‘i National Park are correctly spelled with a glottal stop. At present, though, I still resist using a glottal stop in the state name when it’s a passing reference in a text that’s not focused on Hawaii. I expect, however, that at some point soon the glottal stop spelling will become familiar and no longer cause me to pause.

National Geographic cartographers use more diacritical marks on maps and atlases than the magazine does in text, which is why we were discussing Persian and Arabic accent marks. When producing a map of Iran, a glottal stop in an Arabic name is shown as an opening single quote while in Persian names it’s the reverse—unless of course the Persian name is derived from an Arabic word, in which case it uses the Arabic diacritical mark.

See why these discussions can seem ludicrous! But they also indicate an attention to detail that’s always been a hallmark of National Geographic.

No matter what is going on elsewhere on our planet, some of us at National Geographic will debate minutiae of editorial style and hope that our decisions lead to clear, effective communication with our readers throughout the world.

A recent article about semicolons, published in the New York Times, caught my attention, so I wrote a column for our internal news site about the demise of the semicolon and about how we are using fewer in the pages of National Geographic today than we once did. Wow! Did I ever get a strong response from colleagues.

A writer who usually praises my writings on grammar and word usage said, “Fie on anyone who would propose the demise of the semicolon; heresy of the highest order. Writers ought to have all the tools of punctuation at their disposal.” 

An editor wrote: “Frankly, I like semicolons; they let you know there is more to come; they link the logical sequence of set-up, then resolution.”

Notice how cleverly these two correspondents punctuated their thoughts.

Another editor told me she recently asked an author to decrease the number of semicolons in a story because they were slowing down the pace and were too cumbersome. (Ah, at least one person on my side.)

A third editor opined that she is a devotee of the semicolon and finds it elegant, something that she’d have a hard time giving up.

A member of our Detroit advertising office offered this: “My favorite example of incorrect semicolon usage is found within this sentence, however; I have no doubt you'll identify it easily.”

And a marketer in our book division observes: “I was just reading your article on semicolons, and I realized that I use semicolons most often when I'm joining two independent clauses separated by a conjunctive adverb.  Would that qualify as archaic these days?  And if so, would you recommend using a period instead?”

(After reading this last comment, I wondered how many conjunctive adverbs most of us could list. In answer to his question, yes, a period would work, and in some cases a comma would too.)

I’m sorry to have caused angst in some of my colleagues. My advice to everyone is that if you like semicolons and are using them correctly, then, please, continue to use them. As an editor, I would be reluctant to actually remove a semicolon as long as it suits the style of the writing.

On the other hand, having been given permission to do this by William Strunk and E. B. White (page 12 of the illustrated Elements of Style), I may allow someone with a breezy, chatty style to substitute commas for semicolons: He came, he saw, he conquered.

And for those of you scratching your heads over conjunctive adverbs, here’s a list taken from the third edition of Words Into Type: so, therefore, hence, however, nevertheless, moreover, accordingly, besides, also, thus, then, still, otherwise.

As soon as I sit down at my home computer, our cat EC jumps onto the desk and tiptoes across the keyboard. Thinking about EC and our other cat, LC, I realized that I never use periods in their names even though the letters are initials standing for Elie’s cat and Lesley’s cat, designations our veterinarian friend gave them when she earmarked the orphaned kittens for us.

What are the rules for using periods with initials? Some publications use them for all abbreviations—N.A.S.A., S.A.T., A.I.D.S., I.O.U. Others use periods if the letters are individually pronounced as letters (V.I.P., for instance) but not if the letters are pronounced as a word, such as NASA and AIDS.

At National Geographic we have eliminated periods from many abbreviations and acronyms (MIT, UCLA, NGS, UN, NASA, FBI, CD-ROM, TV, VCR, GI, ABCs,). For personal initials, we omit periods from three-letter designations such as LBJ and FDR, but when using initials with a spelled-out last name, we keep the periods ( E. B. White). We also keep them in the two-letter designation for the other President Roosevelt: T. R. And we retain them in abbreviations of geographic place-names (U.S., P.R.C., U.A.E.) and for a few other abbreviations, such as Ph.D. and M.D.

We use a period on Harry S. Truman’s middle initial because of a 1975 explanation from the Harry S. Truman Library. (Truman, himself, used a period in some instances, though not in others.) On the other hand we eliminate periods from the name of W J McGee, an early National Geographic President, because that’s what he did.

The trend today is toward cleaner, more straightforward copy. In other words fewer fussy marks of punctuation. The new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style omits periods with capital-letter abbreviations such as AD and BC, USA, and CEO, although it still prefers periods with abbreviations that appear in lowercase—a.m., a.k.a. (At the Geographic, we write CEO and aka without periods, but A.D., B.C., U.S.A. with periods.)

Perhaps the reason I don’t use periods with my cats’ names is that I’ve been influenced by this trend toward less punctuation. Or could it also be because in my mind I don’t see them as initials at all. I don’t see EC and LC, but rather “Ici” and “Elsie.” Poor boys—they're stuck with ambiguous initials because the family simply could not agree on real names!

By now many of you interested in grammar and word usage have read about the new sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which has managed to eliminate some 16,000 hyphens out of 600,000 entries. That small, horizontal mark of punctuation has become dispensable in the modern world of text messaging.

Decades ago, when I first started paying attention to hyphens, the National Geographic freely distributed them in text. Almost every compound modifier except for a few well-established terms, such as real estate, required a hyphen. Even a phrase such as “the black-and-white kitten” demanded hyphens despite the fact that with a singular kitten there could be absolutely no confusion about the cat’s color. With more than one cat, it is not so clear: “Black-and-white kittens” means each cat is a mix of black and white; “black and white kittens” means some are white, others are black.

In the 1970s we had passionate debates about hyphenating high-school student; we certainly would not want our readers to think the pages of National Geographic referred to students high on drugs, and so for years we used a hyphen. We used a hyphen in resting-place, because that’s what Webster’s unabridged did. Of course, if you looked up the term in the collegiate edition, you wouldn’t find it, leading you to think it should be two words. I finally decreed we would eliminate the hyphen in both terms, using them both as two words.

More recently we took the plunge on goodbye, and then on online, email, and website, closing them up as one word. And we’ve consistently cut back on hyphens in compound modifiers, using them only when we feel there might be confusion—and, wow, can that be subjective. One general rule is that if a compound modifier is listed in Webster’s as a noun, it is familiar enough to readers to be used as a modifier without a hyphen. We especially do not hyphenate compound animal names: polar bear habitat, killer whale prey, bald eagle nests.

That brings me to an article in the New York Times, which points out the distinction between a “slippery-eel salesman” and a “slippery eel salesman.” The first sells slippery eels; the second is a slightly dishonest seller of eels. See the power of that one small speck of type—at least for those who understand hyphens.

Dan wrote to me recently about two commas in my first posting. I’ve probably spent more time in my copyediting career discussing commas than anything else, except perhaps hyphens. And in my time editing at the Geographic our style on both has changed. (More about hyphens in a later posting.)

There are instances where a comma would be dead wrong—between subject and verb, for instance. There are other instances, such as in lists and with appositions, where commas are necessary. And then there are all the in-between situations, in which the use of commas depends on a writer’s style or on the need for a pause or on rhythm and consistency. (I never could understand the accusations of one of my all-time favorite editors that my fellow copyeditor and I kept reversing each other. “You put a comma in; she takes it out!” he’d say, suggesting that we might even have a quota on commas.) 

For decades the magazine’s philosophy on commas was to keep them to a minimum. We consistently eliminated them after short introductory phrases, around the year when giving just the month and year, between two predicates having the same subject. We were united in our attack on commas, stripping only the most necessary out of copy, although we always kept the final serial comma. Then over the years, writers started inserting more commas where they felt the need for a pause or to break up a long sentence. At the same time, our minimalist united front weakened through retirements and death. Later an editor came on board who absolutely adored commas.

So, in recent years commas have proliferated in the pages of National Geographic. They can be found after the shortest of introductory phrases, between two long and involved predicates, even taking the place of semicolons between two short, closely related independent clauses. Now, however, the magazine is restructuring its copyediting staff and has a new copydesk director. He will, no doubt, establish his own comma style.

So back to Dan and his comment. He is right that I did not need a comma in one place and could have inserted one in another. I agree wholeheartedly that a comma after “moment” would have helped prevent misreading in the sentence “At the moment, I’m about to give in. . . .” I do not agree, though, that the comma in the other sentence is wrong: “. . . and now here I am blogging, about grammar and punctuation and word usage.” I wanted to emphasize the act of blogging not the subject of my blogs, and using a comma did that for my ear. It’s not wrong, is it?

All of you out there, what do you 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.