by Akim “Scare Quotes Can Indicate Facetiousness” Reinhardt
Two spaces after a period, not one. If a topic sentence leading to a paragraph can get a whole new line and an indentation, then other new sentences can get an extra space. Don’t smush sentences together like puppies in a cardboard box at a WalMart parking lot. Let them breathe. Show them some affection. Teach them to shit outside.
Never wear sneakers with a suit. Whenever I see this combo on a man, I silently ask myself, “What exactly is the point of your existence?” Not ours or mine, but yours, personally. Why do you exist and what are you trying to accomplish other than signaling to the world that you’re the snazzy version of a dumb jock on a halftime highlight show? You look like Forrest Gump.
Amid and among instead of amidst and amongst. Amidst and amongst don’t make you sound smart or sophisticated; they make you sound like a boring side character in an unfunny Shakespearean comedy. You’re a modern English speaker, stop trying to sound like you have an Elizabethan speech impediment: Amidst the thorny thistle there, and amongst stones stealthily stored. There’s no shame in talking plainly whilst thou speaketh thy truth.
While sneakers are out, you may wear brown dress shoes with a gray suit. Once upon a time, my dear friend Prachi excoriated me for that combination, insisting a gray suit calls for black shoes. A couple of years later, I noticed her wearing brown dress shoes with a business suit, and eagerly called her on it. She, perhaps not incorrectly, insisted that she looked good in the combo and I don’t. Very well. I will suffer so that the rest of you can be free.
Likelier instead of more likely. More likely is sometimes the better choice, particularly amid a list of mores. However, more likely should not be the default choice as it can be cumbersome. Likelier is cleaner and often has a better cadence for the sentence. What’s more, the -er modifier is dying. Everyone wants more, more, more, which was a great Disco hit by Andrea True, a 1970s porn star whose other stage names included Inger Kissin, Singe Low, and Sandra Lips. But please, leave the more, more, more to Sandra Lips. Lean towards likelier, choosing one word instead of two. And don’t get me started on likeliest/most likely.
Wear clothes that fit. It’s not always easy, shopping off the rack as we do. Skinny for my height, I must do some hunting to track down a good-fitting button down shirt. Most are either too blousey in the chest, or too tight through the shoulders. But finding a good one is worth the effort. Clothes that fit well are more comfortable and look better. If you want to wear something baggy, such as a sweatshirt, do so on purpose. But don’t pretend that you look like anything other than a potato with hair.
Gray instead of grey. Unless you’re British, in which case you don’t know how to pronounce been or pasta, and I’m sure you have a punchy comeback, but you lost all credibility after Brexit. Though I am open to a conversation about aluminium.
Wear black to a funeral (or white if you’re in east Asia). It’s true that the deceased won’t care. Hell, they won’t even know you’re there. So why are you there? To pay your respects to the living people who were close to the deceased. The loved ones. Is your presence enough in and enough itself to signal that respect? Not if your wardrobe choices are shouting Goddamn I’m a happy motherfucker! Or if you’re dressed for athlete cosplay. You’re at a funeral; dress to mourn, not like you’re gardening, blowing out candles, or at a ball game.
It’s okay to begin a sentence with But. Middle school English teachers used to warn against it. But they were very wrong. Good style isn’t about rules for the sake of rules, and it most certainly is not about senseless rules. It’s about good intentions and happy accidents. Take a right on red . . . after you check for pedestrians in the walkway. Put some money on a horse . . . so long as you can afford to lose. And begin a sentence with But (or And), if the other sentences like it.
Men, there are two considerations as to what kind of underwear you wear. The first is your comfort. The second is your intimate partner’s preference. In other words, since only one or two (or a few) of you are meant to see it, your underwear is an issue of only private style, not public style, much like the pubic hair it hides or that gold tooth all the way in the back of your mouth. But let’s be honest about underwear style. Boxers are purely stylistic as they are nearly afunctional, accomplishing nearly nothing as underwear. So if you or yours prefer boxers, that’s fine, but don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s about anything other than style. Tighty whities, on the other hand, are fully functional, even if they don’t much come in white anymore, and haven’t been in style for a quite a while. Some men want to support their troops, and that’s what tighty whities are for. Meanwhile, the bastardized hybrid, boxer briefs exist in some bizarre, pretend netherworld. They look stylish . . . right up until the moment you pull up your pants, at which point the snug upper thigh coverings roll up to your crotch line, they transform into an inferior pair of tighty whities, and after removing your pants, you must manually unfurl them into original form. Though now they’ll be creased and less attractive. Or there’s the fourth option: dispense with all style and function entirely, and embrace your freedom. Swing low, sweet chariot. Either way, your pants will hide a multitude of sins.
Split infinitives are fine. You are free to boldly go wherever you like. The story of how split infinitives became a supposed no-no is so mind-numbing that it even includes its own creation mythology about the Victorian fetishization of Classical Latin. Forget all that. Split those infinitives as much as you want. Sometimes they even help with clarity, as you are free to do or to not do whatever you like on this matter.
Speaking of tighty whities, give a warm Hello to its aquatic cousin, men’s swim briefs. As is the case with xeroxes, kleenexes, and viagra, this swimsuit is better known by a brand name: Speedo. Bikini style swimwear was very popular for men in the 1970s. I remember my father’s Speedo was green. Mine was dark brown. However, men’s swim briefs went out of style in the 1980s. The primary reason, I believe, was rising homophobia during the neoconservative Reagan years. Reasonably short gym shorts for men also faded away during this era, as did long hair. I offer two brief (pun intended) stories about why men should feel good about wearing Speedos. One is how a European friend of mine, unaware of the shift in American style, and which had not yet taken root in Europe, was accosted for being a “fag” while walking in a Speedo along a Florida beach in 1997. Fuck those homophobes. The second anecdote is from the year 1990. I’d run out of underwear and was wearing my old brown Speedo instead. When late that night, a friend mooned a pizzeria worker who wouldn’t let us in for a midnight snack, I soon found myself in the midst (the midst is fine, amidst is the offender, because style is mostly arbitrary) of a sprawling fistfight on W. 231st St. and Broadway in the Bronx. When one of the pizza jockeys tried to grab my balls through my pants and crush them like little roma tomatoes, his hand merely squibbed off my pant crotch as the slick, tight nylon made my jewels impervious to his reach. And, for the record, I did not, despite his violent fondling of my genitalia, call him a faggot.
Speaking of LGBTQ issues, we find ourselves in an era of language modification relating to matters of gender fluidity. My pronouns? No matter, call me whatever you want. Such is the luxury of being a straight, white, cis man in America. I’m free to not care. Though I certainly support other people for what they wish to be called. Beyond gender, and regarding nomenclature generally, I respect self-appellation. If Cassius Clay wants to be called Muhammad Ali, then so be it; continuing to call him Clay (unless you’re family) just makes you an asshole, and in that particular case, possibly a racist one. But with regards to style, I would like to make a specific and ungendered argument in favor of the word themself. At first, it seems a paradox: them is a plural, and self is a singular. Themselves is a word. Themself is not in dictionaries, but I support on grounds of style. Sometimes we don’t know the gender of (or any other information about) the person being referenced, and oneself is cumbersome in ways that recall the prior discussion of amongst and amidst. I am a 21st century American, and while I might occasionally pine for the 20th century, specifically the era of Speedos, I am most certainly not a 19th century headmaster in the Cotswolds. One must be true to oneself sounds like an Edwardian admonition. Let the steam punks have it. A person should be true to themself feels modern and reasonable. And possibly good advice.
M-dashes are fucking lazy. And they often tangle up sentences. Stop using them, or do so only sparingly. A hyphen (single dash) conjoins words, as in free-for-all. An n-dash (two dashes or the width of an uppercase N) indicates a range, as in 1970–79. An m-dash (three dashes or the width of an uppercase M) indicates that you’re simply transcribing thoughts as they come into your head instead of actually writing. Like a pitcher who only rears back and throws as hard as he can instead of pitching, or a boxer who reels off one haymaker after another instead of boxing, a writer in the thrall of m-dashes is just spilling words onto a page instead of constructing thoughtful sentences. I need to say this one thing — oh shit here’s a sudden jump to another thing — wait, now back to the first thing is rarely a stylish way to organize words. And that’s not to say long sentences are bad. They’re not. I once counted 163-words in a sentence from Two Treatises on Government by John Locke, and I quite liked it. But whether long or short, individual sentences should have a sound style, and all the sentences should go well together. That requires some thought. Stream of consciousness prose went out with the Beats for a reason. Furthermore, when constructing long sentences, there is already a full arsenal of grammatical tools at your disposal. No need to call in the m-dashes when commas, parentheses, semicolons, and colons are standing at the ready. And if none of those seem to get the job done, then maybe discretion is the better course of action, in the form of a period and two shorter sentences. Break it up. That works too.
When it comes to suits, double-breasted coats look better on hefty men, and pleats look better on svelte men. A lean man tends to look like he’s swimming in a double-breasted coat (think David Letterman when he was hosting late night TV), while pleats often look stressed and uncomfortable on a fulsome man. Of course, as mentioned above, finding good-fitting clothes are the key, but when suiting up against body type, the margin of error becomes smaller. Either way though, the important thing is that you don’t wear any goddamned sneakers. Of course, whom am I kidding? Suits are going the way of the -er modifier.
Even further along the path to extinction is whom. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that most American English-speakers no longer know what whom is for. Amid the confusion, who has become the catch-all. Grammatically, who and whom function like he and him respectively. He gives it to him, and who gives it to whom. But as a society, it seems we are past the point of caring. And that’s fine. I personally get a kick out of whom and especially a good whomever, but language is dynamic. It changes. Whom will probably be administered last rites in a generation or two, and we’ll all move on without it. I will, however, greatly miss among, amid, and likelier. Good thing I won’t be around more than another generation or two.
Tube socks are the superior sock. For the record, a tube sock is a sock without a formed heel, ergo its name. It is to ankles and feet what raglan sleeves are to shoulders and arms: a comfortable fit wherein your joint finds its perfect resting spot within the fabric instead of the fabric demanding that your joint be in such-and-such exact spot. And when buying off the rack, as we do, this can make a great difference to good fit. Tube socks were quite popular during, you guessed it, the 1970s. However, even though the tube sock is by definition a form of tailoring that no one will see, hidden within the shoe, tube socks became popularly misunderstood to mean knee-high athletic wear as opposed to dress socks or calf-high (a.k.a. a crew) socks. But a sock’s formality and/or length have nothing to do with its heel construction. I have spent most of my adult life wishing for a pair of dress tube socks, but so far as I know, no such thing exists. I occasionally wear black crew tube socks with black dress shoes. When I do, I feel superior, subversive, and yes, quite stylish. I only wish I could find a pair of brown crew tube socks to wear with brown dress shoes and a gray suit. Then I’d show Prachi what’s what.
This is what a single space after a sentence looks like. Not very good, right? A visual word jumble, everythingrunningtogether. I told you you’re better off with two.
Shy away from contractions in formal writing. What you do and don’t do in casual writing is whatevs. But in formal writing, contractions imply impatience and informality.
This shit right here ain’t formal.
Akim Reinhardt’s website is ThePublicProfessor.com.