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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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 Writing Right
Expert Advice / Jan Venolia ’50
By Mary Marvin
When Jan Venolia graduated from Pomona in 1950, she did what a lot of other
young women were doing. After a brief stint as a
secretary, she settled into life as a stay-at-home
mom. In the early 1960s, however, Venolia decided
she was ready for a change. As she remembers,
it was prompted by a discussion at a PTA meeting.
“One of the fundraising suggestions was that
we make and sell felt toilet-paper ‘hats.’ Somehow
everything came crashing down,” says Venolia with
a laugh. “I thought surely the universe had more
in mind for me than making felt toilet-paper hats.”
After trying her hand at teaching, she returned
to secretarial work and found that she couldn’t
resist doing more than simply typing. “I would
make improvements in the writing, and people
would tell me they appreciated what I had done.
I thought, ‘Aha, that’s what I should be doing.’”
 Venolia self-published her first book, Write
Right!, in 1978 and did all the marketing herself.
“I started with a printing of 5,000 copies and got
busy with mailing lists and phoning. I’d look for
listings of engineers and call them and tell them,
‘I can help improve your writing.’” She credits
Frederick Bracher, a former Pomona English professor,
with being one of her earliest supporters.
In 1981, she joined forces with Ten Speed
Press, which bought the rights to Write Right! and ReWrite Right!
and published three more books—
The Right Letter!, Kids Write Right! and The Right
Word! Venolia estimates it takes her less than a year
to go from an idea to manuscript. “I’m constantly
working on the books, gathering notes, collecting
material. I use a lot of quotations because I can
illustrate a rule much better with an interesting
quote from Mark Twain or W.C. Fields (‘On the
whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia’—comma use).
It’s hard for me to read anything without thinking,
oh, there’s a good illustration of a semicolon.”
Though she doesn’t rule out another book, Venolia—now in her 70s—says two surgeries for a
broken hip have been something of a distraction.
“Nothing is bubbling up right now,” she says,
“but a sixth book is not out of the question.”
Five Common Traps
Its vs. It’s
My nomination for the single most common error, bar none, is using it’s instead of the possessive
pronoun its. Many people think you have to have an apostrophe to make it possessive. It’s
means it is or it has, and its is a possessive pronoun. I illustrate it in my book with a picture of a
cat stalking a mouse and the caption: “The cat sees its dinner. The mouse sees it’s dinner.” That’s a
big difference, especially for the mouse.
The Wrong Word
Principle and principal, farther and further,
and affect and effect are examples of words that are
often confused with one another. My tip for using
affect and effect is that, generally, you use affect
when you need a verb and effect when you’re looking
for a noun. Sometimes, using the wrong word
has nothing to do with confusion. It’s just the
wrong word. One of my favorites is literally, as in
‘I literally exploded.’ Well … no, you didn’t.
The Misplaced Modifier
I saw a man on a horse with a wooden leg. If
you don’t want something to be ambiguous or
unintentionally funny, try to place the modifiers
close to the words they modify.
Who vs. Whom
I resist many modern uses for words, but I
think it’s all right to use who except after a preposition—For Whom the Bell Tolls. Other than that, we
can relax. Who are you talking to? Who are you
imitating? There is also something called hypercorrection,
which can result in mistakes, such as
“whom do you think you are.”
Word Fads and Non-words
There are certain words and phrases that get
overworked. Whatever, epiphany, charisma, proactive
are some of the more recent examples. I urge
people to avoid the fads and also to watch out for
non-words or phrases such as irregardless or ivy
tower or safety deposit box.
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