'If your not using HP toner, you're not getting HP printing.'

Communication World, Dec, 1998 by Alden Wood

The e-mail from Bob Hill, a marketing writer in rustic Littleton, Mass., got right down to business:

"Alden, did you happen to catch the editorial in yesterday's Boston Globe entitled 'The New Nantucket'? The first sentence reads as follows:

"'Years ago a famous remark about Nantucket's day-tripper tourists was attributed to the billionaire property owner and preservationist Walter Beinecke. "They come with a dirty shirt and a five-dollar bill," the complaint went, "and they don't change, either."'

"As any fool kin plainly see (remember 'Li'l Abner'?), putting a comma between change and either makes nonsense of the quote and thus of the whole point as well. Doesn't this paper have ANY literate copy editors?"

The BG, more recently aka The NYT North, has shown it can err with the best of 'em, solecism-wise; this particular gem sparkles as an instance of how one small comma - Bucknerized - can spoil one's day. ["Li'l Abner," for those who are not of a certain age, was Al Capp's flagship cartoon strip that flourished hereabouts half a century ago. It enriched the national vocabulary with the likes of Dogpatch, Daisy Mae, Sadie Hawkins Day, and the genetically challenged clan Yokum. "As any fool kin plainly see" was a frequent flier in the 'toon's balloons. aw.] My thanks to colleague Hill.

* Hewlett[R] Packard bought a far-forward spread in Time (9/21/98) to billboard its "new HP LaserJet UltraPrecise toner cartridges." At retail, which I'm certain HP didn't pay, the facing two- and four-color pages (national, no frequency discount) would drain HP's inkwell of some $300,060. I don't know what kind of buy HP made, but I think the company should buy a lettered copywriter. Please consider the last paragraph in the three-graph copy block of fewer than 100 words:

"If your not using HP toner, you're not getting HP printing."

Now, I can screw up as good as most, but how does a copywriter get to present conflicting your/you're in one 11-word sentence? And whatever happened to plain old low-tech proofreading?

By the time the spread was inserted in Newsweek, albeit the cover dates matched, the correction had been made...whew! But both appearances remained marred by an undetected flaw - an absolute phrase - in the opening graph:

"Sharp text, sharp visuals and a sharp presentation can all be affected by using the wrong toner."

Nowhere in the sentence is there a hook on which to hang "by using the wrong toner." It pines for a you or one or the artist. The term absolute is used in the sense of "untied" or "loose."

For those who care and may not have heard, the label intercap or camel cap is used to describe that J in LaserJet and the P in UltraPrecise.

* "A few items for you" was the welcome word topping my e-mail from Wilma Mathews, ABC, who is director of public relations at Arizona State U: "In a recent meeting, a man tried to explain a problem by saying 'This is a sticky widget!' I've tried to conjure up images, with little success." Wilma continued, "What ever happened to the pronoun who? (More and more) I am hearing...people say 'He's the person that jogs...or 'She is the one that volunteers....'"

In her delightful book "Woe Is I" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1996) grammarphile Patricia S. O'Connor opines, "Choose one: The girl that married dear old dad or The girl who married dear old dad. If both sound right, it's because both are right. A person can be either a that or a who. A thing, on the other hand, is always a that." The late Ted Bernstein, in Dos, Don'ts & Maybes of English Usage, concurs. Looks like all we need now, Wilma, is a rock group called The That.

* IABC's Kathleen Much, editor at Stanford U., tweaks Publishers Weekly in her Oct. 6 e-mail. "In the Mystery category, the reviewer gives away the plot of the novel by saying that the murderer is 'finally administering death by lethally pure heroine injection.' I thought for a minute the review belonged in the Romance category."

Kindly refer to previous paragraph on low-tech proofreading. Thanks, KM.

* Life magazine (9/98) printed an engaging photo feature called "Inner Beauty," a series of fashion-forward illustrations intended "to support young girls living in public housing complexes." Started two years ago, the "Ms. Housing Authority Pageant" was held this year in Newark.

The caption beneath a dramatic picture of last year's winner says, "QUEEN EMERITUS Jaquita Evans looks back proudly...."

Most dictionaries nowadays - Random House Webster's College (1997), American Heritage III, and Merriam Webster's 10th Collegiate among them - point out that the preferred designation for a woman of distinction is emerita, reserving emeritus for the male. The customary plural: emeriti, as in professors emeriti.

* American Speech (Spring, 1998, U. of Alabama Press) notes in its "Among the New Words" section Porcelain Press, a noun meaning "Employee newsletter posted in restroom stalls."

Alden Wood, APR, lecturer on editorial procedures at Simmons College, Boston, Mass., writes and lectures on language usage. He is a retired insurance industry vice president of advertising and public relations. His email address is awood@simmons.edu.