Prevents exercise and avoiding smoking, too?

This sentence today from an AP dispatch:

Lean meat as part of a balanced diet can prevent chronic disease, along with exercise and avoiding smoking, said Shalene McNeill, dietitian for the beef group.

Would be a lot clearer if "along with" was replaced with "as can."

This is about some disagreement

Showing again how reasonable people can disagree when it comes to language shibboleths, I offer up recent work by two esteemed colleagues, Craig Lancaster and John McIntyre.

From Lancaster:

Here are two passages from one Associated Press story, each with the offending term highlighted.

The first:

The city of some 6 million people has been carved up along sectarian lines, a patchwork of neighborhoods surrounded by 10-foot-high concrete walls and dotted with checkpoints.

The second:

But street battles continued Wednesday in Sadr City, a sprawling district of some 2.5 million people.

Now, lean in closely for this next part. Are you listening?

STOP IT!

“Some,” as an estimator, is a nasty affectation that has taken root where “about” used to reside happily.

From McIntyre:

Things not worth bothering about:

About/some. Some editors heartily dislike some in the sense of approximately. Not worth staying up nights fretting over.

I come down with McIntyre on this one. Life's too short. But, of course, I have my own -- we all do.

Only - it matters

"If I knew only" is the title of a popular ACES convention session on usage and grammar run by Merrill Perlman, director of copy desks at the New York Times. And, as you can judge from the title, she takes on the bugbear of where to put that four-letter word.

It's a matter of some debate -- 200 years' worth actually. Arguments continue to be made that the word often works more naturally earlier in a sentence than directly before the word it is supposed to modify. And as we become a more spoken-English society rather than written English, American Heritage probably is right that he only had three of those is going to be found just as often as he had only three of those. Eventually, like the over/more than and another/an additional usages (to name just a couple), it will become something copy desks are told not to fret about (some probably already are being told that as the workload just increases after layoffs and buyouts).

But here's an example from an explanation of some high school football rule changes in my local paper that shows how confusion can ensue. The setup -- the high school association is passing a rule that would allow spring football practice with pads and helmets:

Players may only wear helmets for the first three days. Once those three days are completed, players may wear full pads for a maximum of seven practices.

One reading of that first sentence is that they are allowed to wear helmets for only three days -- the first three. (Try saying it with an upturn in your voice on "three days" -- you get a different impression than if you say it with a downturn on those words.)

One way to solve it is to move "For the first three days" to the front: For the first three days, players may only wear helmets. That forces your tenor and cadence into the downturn that makes the meaning clearer. But, of course, that can be difficult to transmit in writing.

So the clearer adjustment -- in both structures -- is to move "only" between "wear" and "helmets." Players may wear only helmets for the first three days. Once those three days are completed, players may wear full pads for a maximum of seven practices.

(Yeah, yeah, I know: "No other clothing?" But this is lesser of two ambiguities for me, and it's less likely to be misread.)

It's a good example to keep in mind when you are struggling with such things.

Of clauses -- and a few other editing nits

My morning paper brings several instructive points in the art of copy editing. None is of the oh-so-obvious variety, but all deal with taking the art to its higher level:

Confusing clause
Clauses beginning with "which" and "that" should have proper structure to clearly modify what they are intended to modify. Exhibit A of our problems:

The money would go toward maintenance for the building, which the county is set to give a $12 million renovation in the coming year.

Huh? The simplest way to fix: to which the county is set to give ...
Yet that is still a bit ungainly. Try: which will get a $12 million, county-financed renovation in the coming year. Or you can come up with your own combination. It's bound to be better than the original.

Pronoun hell
Don't make the reader fill in the blanks when it comes to pronouns. An extra word or two won't kill ya. Exhibit B:

A Columbia man shook his 13-month-old cousin after he would not sit in the bathtub, a sheriff's investigator said during a bail hearing Wednesday.

Sure, given an extra couple of milliseconds, the reader will parse it out. But our job is to make those milliseconds and any confusion go away. The pronoun he wants to be attracted back to the only male noun previously flagged in our brain -- man. Don't make the reader guess that the 13-month-old child is a boy. Just say it:

A Columbia man shook his 13-month-old cousin after the boy would not sit in the bathtub, a sheriff's investigator said during a bail hearing Wednesday.

Help this verb (part 1)
Some verbs in our culture idiomatically take particles, and not using them can change the meaning (think "lined" vs. "lined up"). At other times, the verb could stand alone, but the idiomatic usage is so widely known with the particle that to drop it is odd. Such is the case with divvy and mull. You mull cider, for instance, but you more commonly mull over decisions. Headline writers like to drop the particle for space, and I suppose they can be excused, if not forgiven {grin}, but as to divvy, consider Exhibit C from today:

Individual council members said they want to find ways to divvy the $6 million so each of those kinds of roads benefits.

Well, yes, divvy is a verb, and it theoretically can stand on its own. But it is jarring without "up" (check most dictionaries and you will see (up) generally displayed in the sense intended here -- divvy up:to divide). Why use the slangish term if it's going to have that little problem?

Individual council members said they want to find ways to divide the $6 million so each of those kinds of roads benefits.

Problem solved clearly and neatly. (For the strict grammarians among us, "so" also should more properly be "so that" each of those kinds ..., known as a "clause of purpose." But that's for another day.)

Help this verb (part 2)
The word that is much-maligned, and in 90 percent of the cases I'm not a fan and think it's overused. But in some special cases it provides a strong arm to help an unsteady verb get across Meaning Street (that's our quota of one tortured metaphor for the day). The most widely cited, of course, is to clarify time element: The governor said Sunday that he would do so and so (he said it Sunday) or The governor said that Sunday he would do so and so (he'll do it on Sunday).
But another, less-obvious case also crops up with verbs that are transitive (they take objects for their action) or switch between transitive and intransitive and need the "that" marker to help you navigate. Warn may be the most widely confused of the switchers. (Prosecutors warned the fugitive was dangerous -- did they warn the fugitive? No, they warned the rest of us, so the verb is intransitive and Prosecutors warned that the fugitive was dangerous.)
But in our zeal to compress, sometimes we also smash verbs that clearly are transitive up against nouns not designed to be their objects. Our final exhibit from today:

There's no mistaking a science teacher occupies room A-106 at Chapin Middle School.

Again, just a momentary thing (there's no mistaking a science teacher), but that's why we're here, to smooth out those momentary things. Mistaking is a transitive verb. Smashing "a science teacher" up against it makes that the object (there's no mistaking a science teacher; he's got the pocket protector). The real object here is the entire clause "a science teacher occupies ..." Use the conjunctive that to clarify:

There's no mistaking that a science teacher occupies room A-106 at Chapin Middle School.

And yes, if you are playing along at home with your AP stylebooks, "Room" should be capitalized.