Today is National Grammar Day, in case you hadn’t heard, and to celebrate I want to take a look at some of those who hold themselves up to be defenders of the English language: copy editors. A few weeks ago, the webcomic XKCD published this comic mocking the participants in a Wikipedia edit war over the title of Star Trek into Darkness. The question was whether “into” in the title should be capitalized. Normally, prepositions in titles are lowercase, but if there’s an implied colon after “Star Trek”, then “Into Darkness” is technically a subtitle, and the first word of a subtitle gets capitalized. As the comic noted, forty thousand words of argument back and forth had been written, but no consensus was in sight. (The discussion seems to be gone now.)

The Wikipedia discussion is an apt illustration of one of the perils of editing: long, drawn-out and seemingly irresolvable discussions about absolutely trivial things. Without prior knowledge about whether “into darkness” is a subtitle or part of the title, there’s no clear answer. It’s a good example of Parkinson’s law of triviality at work. Everyone wants to put in their two cents’ worth, but the debate will never end unless someone with authority simply makes an arbitrary but final decision one way or the other.

I wouldn’t have thought much else of that discussion if not for the fact that it was picked up by Nathan Heller in a column called “Copy-Editing the Culture” over at Slate. Someone cited one of my posts—“It’s just a joke. But no, seriously”—in the discussion in the comments, so I followed the link back and read the column. And what I found dismayed me.

The article begins (after a couple of paragraphs of self-indulgence) by claiming that “it is . . . entirely unclear what the title is trying to communicate.” This complaint is puzzling, since it seems fairly obvious what the title is supposed to mean, but the problems with the column become clearer as the reasoning becomes murkier: “Are there missing words—an implied verb, for example? The grammatical convention is to mark such elisions with a comma: Star Trek Going Into Darkness could become, conceivably, Star Trek, Into Darkness”. An implied verb? Marking such elisions with a comma? What on earth is he on about? I don’t see any reason why the title needs a verb, and I’ve never heard of marking elided verbs with a comma. Marking an elided “and” in headlines, perhaps, but that’s it.

[Update: It occurred to me what he probably meant, and I feel stupid for not seeing it. It’s covered under 6.49 in the 16th edition ofChicago. A comma may be used to signal the elision of a word or words easily understood from context, though what they don’t say is that it’s a repeated word or words, and that’s crucial. One example they give is In Illinois there are seventeen such schools; in Ohio, twenty; in Indiana, thirteen. The comma here indicates the elision of there are. The Star Trek, Into Darkness example doesn’t work because it’s a title with no other context. There aren’t any repeated words that are understood from context and are thus candidates for elision. I could say, “Star Wars is going into light; Star Trek, into darkness”, but Star Trek, into Darkness” simply doesn’t make sense under any circumstances, which is probably why I didn’t get what Heller meant.]

The article continues to trek into darkness with ever more convoluted reasoning: “Or perhaps the film’s creators intend Star Trek to be understood as a verb—to Star Trek—turning the title into an imperative: ‘Star Trek into darkness!'” Yes, clearly that’s how it’s to be understood—as an imperative! I suppose Journey to the Center of the Earth is intended to be read the same way. But Heller keeps on digging: “Perhaps those two words [Star Trek] are meant to function individually [whatever that means]. . . . If trek is a verb—“We trek into darkness”—what, precisely, is going on with the apparent subject of the sentence, star? Why is it not plural, to match the verb form: Stars Trek Into Darkness? Or if trek is a noun—“His trek into darkness”—where is the article or pronoun that would give the title sense: A Star Trek Into Darkness? And what, for that matter, is a star trek?”

This is perhaps the stupidest passage about grammar that I’ve ever read. Star Trek is a noun-noun compound, not a noun and a verb, as is clear from their lack of grammatical agreement. A star trek is a trek among the stars. Titles don’t need articles—remember Journey to the Center of the Earth? (Yes, I know that it is sometimes translated as A Journey to the Center of the Earth, but the article is optional and doesn’t exist in the original French.)

I know that some of you are thinking, “It’s a joke! Lighten up!” Obviously this argument has already occurred in the comments, which is why my post was linked to. I’ll grant that it’s probably intended to be a joke, but if so it’s the lamest, most inept language-related joke I’ve ever read. It’s like a bookkeeper feigning confusion about the equation 2 + 2 = 4, asking, “Shouldn’t it be 2 + 2 = 22?” Not only does Heller’s piece revel in grammatical ineptitude, but it reinforces the stereotype of editors as small-minded and officious pedants.

I’ve worked as a copy editor and layout artist for over ten years, and I’ve worked with a lot of different people in that time. I’ve known some really great editors and some really bad ones, and I think that even the best of us tend to get hung up on trivialities like whether to capitalize into far more than we should. When I first saw the Slate column, I hoped that it would address some of those foibles, but instead it took a turn for the insipid and never looked back. I looked at a few more entries in the column, and they all seem to work about the same way, seizing on meaningless trivialities and trying to make them seem significant.

So I have a plea for you this Grammar Day: stop using grammar as the butt of lame jokes or as a tool for picking apart people or things that you don’t like. And if that is how you’re going to use it, at least try to make sure you know what you’re talking about first. You’re making the rest of us look bad.