One Step Forward to Better Writing

A Letter to Wired Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:51:00 +0000

Dear Editors:

You published in your February, 2012 issue a piece titled “Use Your Own Words”. In fact, you chose to make it the first article in the magazine. It is this article with which I would like to take issue.

The author, Anne Trubek, bemoans the constraints of proper spelling and the constrictions of English grammar. Yet if you re-read the article (as I assume you at least perused it once before it was published) you will see that her argument boils down to “why spell correctly or construct sensible sentences when it inconveniences me?”

To me, it reads as sheer arrogance. Ms. Trubek advocates throwing away the rules built over hundreds of years simply because using them would require an extra click or two on your “smart” phone or tablet. If such strenuous writing taxes her that terribly perhaps she should make a phone call and communicate orally.

Had she stuck to her contentions I would, perhaps, not have taken umbrage at her opinion. When I reached the end of the article, however, I found that she had undermined her entire argument that people spell and punctuate in any way they chose. Ms. Trubek wrote, “Standardized spelling enables readers to understand writing, to aid communication and ensure clarity.”

How, then, does throwing out that standardization help to improve communication? While podcasts, videos, and hangouts allow people to correspond orally in unprecedented ways, it is in these media that spelling and punctuation do not matter. (Grammar, naturally, always applies, though the rules relax dramatically in verbal communication.)

Writing, whether in a text message, on social media, or in an article—on-line or print—demands a higher standard if an author cares at all about being understood. If he or she does not, why write out a message at all?

Ms. Trubek’s assertion that written and oral communication now share a digital grey area couldn’t be less true: the two words have perfectly serviceable definitions that draw a black-and-white line between them. I notice that the article itself, excepting one exemplar, contained words spelled correctly and punctuation used properly to clarify her meaning.

Language continually evolves. It’s to be expected and even embraced. But disregarding the inconveniences of existing rules because you’re too rushed or lazy to follow them leads to degradation, not evolution.

I’d like to see a refutation of her article in a future issue but I presume your publishing of the article to be an intentional stirring of the pot to bring readers to your site. In that respect it was a successful piece, at least.

Thank you for your attention.

legbamel

Craptacular Grammar Tip: Quotation Marks Gone Wrong

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:16:00 +0000

NOTE: In case you thought I might be unaware, I know that “craptacular” isn’t a word. It seemed to fit the quality of the examples, however. Check back for more posts in this new series!

Out of curiosity, I clicked a reputable organization’s free “Grammar Tip of the Day” link, to see whether I’d like to subscribe. I found this example and immediately thought that the only reason I’d ask for such a tip each day would be to provide fodder for One Step Forward. Why? At best the tip oversimplifies punctuating with quotation marks. At worst it gets the rule wrong.

I would perhaps not have reacted so strongly had the first example not been incorrect. If you use quotation marks you should only include the punctuation if what is inside them would stand alone. You do put commas and question marks inside quotation marks for dialogue but not song, movie, and book titles unless the punctuation is part of that title.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the tip should be rewritten entirely. Were I to be so foolish as to reduce the proper use of quotation marks to a single sentence it would read thus: “Punctuation only belongs inside the closing quotation mark when it is part of the quotation itself.” Don’t bow to “popular opinion”; learn how to use quotation marks correctly!

Remember that this does not apply to dialogue. In writing the spoken word the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, though the period does not. Well, it does if it’s followed by another sentence in the same…I should write a post about this. Oh, wait, I did.

It offends me to see such sloppy advice sent out as “help”. If people unfamiliar with the grammar rules take this and its ilk as gospel it will further erode my ability to teach my children how to speak and write like educated persons. Oh, and you all, my dears.

Obligate: Two Words, One Spelling

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:25:00 +0000

I read a book in which the big baddy was an organization called Obligate. The author chose not to explain the reason for that name until halfway through the story, which meant that I did not know how to pronounce it for about two hundred pages. It surprised me how distracting that was.

If you are scratching your head, wondering what other pronunciation I’m writing about, this post is for you. Obligate does double duty, as both a verb and an adjective. You pronounce the two forms differently, however. When used as a verb, whether it’s compelling someone or committing funds, you say OB-li-gate (with a long A). That’s the form with which most people are familiar.

However, if you’re a biologist you likely use the word much differently. When referring to an organism that can live only in a particular environment or in a specific role in an ecosystem you call it OB-li-gƏt (with a short A represented by the schwa). The dictionary says you can use the long-A pronunciation of obligate as an alternate but it seems to me that doing so would only create confusion.

In case you’re curious, the organization in the book used the second definition and thus, when reading to myself, I used the short-A pronunciation of obligate. The rest of the book was much more interesting when I didn’t stop to wonder about that every third page. Think about how your readers will interpret such ambiguous words when you’re naming things in your own writing.

There! You get both a language and a writing tip in one post, something as dual-purpose as the word obligate itself.

Word Tidbits: Discreet versus Discrete

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:29:00 +0000

I doubt most people realize that discrete and discreet are discretely separate words. Today I thought I’d explain the slight difference between the two adjectives and clear up any confusion.

Discreet refers to cautious or tactful action. The word generally applies to something secret, such as a discreet rendezvous, or that you wish kept quiet, like dropping a discreet word in someone’s ear to let them know they have toilet paper stuck to their shoe after a trip to the facilities. Off the top of my head I can think of only one way I’ve seen discrete used regularly: to follow someone at a discrete distance.

While at first blush the two words look interchangeable in fact the latter implies not secrecy but separation. Discrete means something that is isolated or distinct from something else. Much of the confusion between the two words arises from the fact that people who follow someone at a discrete distance are usually trying to be discreet. Were they not they would simply travel with the person they’re trailing in the first place, thus eliminating the need for discretion entirely.

In that last sentence we find the rest of the reason that people conflate discreet and discrete. The noun form of both words is identical. It’s no wonder people don’t realize they are two discrete terms. Next time I'll post a difference on two more discrete words: confuse and conflate. Be discreet and don't spread it around, okay?

Grammar.net 2011 Contest and a Thank You

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:26:00 +0000

The darling folks at Grammar.net have nominated One Step Forward for the Grammar.net "Best Grammar Blog of 2011"! If you would be so kind, and if you agree, do click over to their contest page and vote for this humble attempt to explore the English language. (Note: They've listed it as "Legbamel's blog on writing" rather than its official name. Further note: They've fixed the listing and now it's under One Step Forward and open for voting now!)

Such kindnesses keep me interested in writing about writing and English grammar, as do the comments and questions from you interested readers. Thus I'm taking this as an opportunity both to toot my own horn and to thank you all for helping me to prove that grammar is alive and well in the twenty-first century, text messaging and L337-speak be darned. I may not post as often as I used to do but writing and English fascinate me as much as ever. There's definitely more to come!

Hyphens and the Compound Adjective

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:26:00 +0000

We’ve never tackled compound adjectives, here on One Step Forward, partly because it’s such a complex subject. Often you can make your sentence clearer by using an adjectival phrase or clause rather than worrying about whether to hyphenate. But today we’re going to ease your fears and explain just when to put that pesky hyphen between words in a compound adjective.

Here’s the short version: hyphenate when you place the compound adjective in the sentence before the noun.

This too-simple rule, however, does not address some specific kinds of adjectives. For instance, you would hyphenate a “one-week extension” but you would not add a hyphen to the possessive form, “one week’s extension”. And then there are compound adjectives that you write as a single word, a surefire way to confuse people.

Add to this the fact that, in a passive construction where the adjective end up as the predicate you still hyphenate. Thus you would write about a hard-core song, “This song is hard-core.” User-friendly programs are user-friendly.

Note that a compound adjective can consist of other parts of speech. You may have a noun and a participle, as with an attention-getting headline, or even a pair of nouns used to describe a third. The latter depends more on the nature of the words used than the placement. You would write about an African-American teacher but a Supreme Court decision, the space-time continuum but a real estate exam.

When the nouns refer to a well-known concept or an institution they need not be hyphenated. Thus a life insurance salesman does not require a hyphen while a roller-derby skater might. You may fill out your tax return form but only after performing a cost-benefit analysis.

“Wait!” you may cry. “Everyone knows what a cost-benefit analysis is.” But therein lies another wrinkle in the hyphenation question. Two nouns of essentially equal importance should be hyphenated when used as a compound adjective. Whether the social or the security means more, you still get a social security check if you qualify.

All of this ignores the fact that some pairs of words become a single, compound word and others do not. Skin diving stays just that when used as an adjective but skydiving is a single word. Housewarming parties get no hyphen but your house-sitter does. Adding more modifiers to a noun doesn’t change the hyphenation rules, either. The ever-popular, oft-misunderstood space-time continuum keeps all of those little dashes.

So how do you figure out whether to hyphenate commonly-used phrases? Sadly, the best answer remains the same thing your mother told you when you asked her how to spell something: look it up in the dictionary. Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to tackle compound adverbs.

Word Tidbits: Reveille vs. Revelry vs. Reverie

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 15:43:00 +0000

A recent incident sparked this post: I heard someone singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B) and, yet again, use the word revelry instead of reveille. I thought perhaps I should point out to folks that the two words have absolutely nothing to do with one another. If you substitute one for the other you'll be blowing nonsense. Then I thought of reverie, a third word that sounds similar but, again, has a very different meaning.

Reveille, as you may guess from the spelling, comes to us from the French imperative réveillez with its understood vous. If you shout, “Réveillez!” you mean, “Wake up!” The term in English refers to both the bugle call at sunrise that signals time for troops to form up and the actual formation that results. Thus when the Bugle Boy of Company B plays reveille in boogie woogie fashion it makes the company jump to its positions (and perhaps dance about once there).

Now, should Bugle Boy, whom I'll just call BB to save repetition, get those soldiers jumping they may turn to revelry instead of standing at attention as they should. Revelry pretty well opposes military order and discipline. It's the word for partying, merrrymaking, and general festive good times. I suppose BB could play a song called Revelry but that's not what The Andrews Sisters meant.

Reverie stands utterly opposed to both revelry and the focus of soldiers organizing themselves into ranks. Rather than stiff attention or cheery dancing, someone in a reverie daydreams, is lost in thought and as likely to bump into his or her fellows as anything else. As it's early in the morning I suppose some of the troops might be lost in reverie, their minds still in their beds and on their dreams. But if BB blows something so mellow and emotive as to encourage that condition the company will never get into reveille.

Thus you can see that our vigilant BB leaps from his bunk to play reveille at the base of the flag, not to incite revelry or plunge his fellows into reverie. If he gets a little boogie into the steps of the others perhaps that enthusiasm would be no bad thing. But partying and woolgathering have no place in forming up ranks at the crack of dawn, whatever soldiers do on their off time. Click the song name above to find a series of different versions of the song. En Vogue manages to have poor BB playing reverie. You may be rolling your eyes as much as I did when I heard it.

Too Quick with the Acronym

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:49:00 +0000

What is it with me and acronyms? I seem to have become obsessed. But when I read my post about using pronouns clearly I found that I had used one without explaining it. Shame on me!

I referred in that post to Dave from “HR”. While many people likely knew for what words the acronym stood the proper thing to do would have been to write out the phrase and then give the acronym in parentheses if I intended to use it in the rest of the piece. Thus it should have read, “What if I had written about Don, Ted, and Dave from Human Resources?”

If I had continued to talk about the human resources department I would have included (HR) before the question mark and then I would be free to use HR as an acronym (or an abbreviation, if you will) rather than tediously spelling it out each time. Of course, I could have avoided the whole issue by using the word personnel.

All of that merely means that you and I should watch our use of colloquialisms and common abbreviations in our writing. A shortened term that you commonly use may slip right past your internal editor, as it did mine in this case.

By the by, I have a new favorite acronym that I just couldn’t resist sharing with you all. Apparently there exists out there somewhere an organization called Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human or PHLUSH. I will resist the urge to make puns and just leave my announcement at that.

For Whom the Pronoun Stands

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:44:00 +0000

In my post about may versus might I included the sentences, “Don may be forced to fire Ted if he cannot resist the temptations of YouTube while at work. I’ve heard that he might seek counseling to curb his addiction.” In rereading that example, I wondered if my pronoun use was perhaps unclear. Naturally, that made me wish to post about how I could tell.

In short, the general rule runs thus: unless the sentence otherwise specifies to which person it refers, a pronoun used refers to the last person/group/object named. That means that you have to pay attention to the gender and number of the pronoun. In my example you’ve only the two to choose from which makes identifying “he” much simpler. What if I had written about Don, Ted, and Dave from HR?

“Dave told Don that he may be forced to fire Ted if he cannot resist those great kitten videos while on the clock. He said he’d heard that he might seek counseling for his problem.”

In the first sentence we’ve referred to both Don and Ted as “he” but only after using their respective names to identify them. In the second I am theoretically still writing about Ted except that the sentence doesn’t make sense if he is the only subject.

As the entire raison d’être of pronouns is their ability to stand in for nouns so that you need not use a name over and over in your writing, I’d never advocate avoiding them. You’d end up with something like this:

“Dave told Don that Don may be forced to fire Ted if Ted cannot resist Daft Punk mash-up videos at Ted’s desk. Don said Don had heard that Ted was going to Daft Rehab.”

Who wants to read that sort of garbage, let alone write it?

You must remember that your audience doesn’t have the inside knowledge you do of the situation, fictional or factual. When you write you already know who acts, who feels what, and who speaks to whom. If you’re on fire with creativity you may not notice how often you substitute pronouns for names. Cast an eye over what you’ve written and consider whether your readers can tell the difference between Ted and Don in any given sentence. You’ll be doing all of you a favor.

If I May, If I Might

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:22:00 +0000

If I may, I’d like to explore the infinitesimal difference between may and might. In this case, I don’t see a “wrong” way to use one word in place of the other so much as I harbor a curiosity about why there are two such words. I retrieved my enormous dictionary and found the following definitions. I’ve abbreviated them to the salient points.

May: be allowed to or capable of, be likely to (to some degree), or to be obliged to (in matters of contract or statute). For purposes of brevity, I am ignoring “may he reign in health for a century” uses and the completely irrelevant definitions.

Might: the past version of may, in bygone days, and something less likely to happen than what you may do. Again, I’m ignoring uses and parts of speech that range away from my point.

Consider this sentence: Don may be forced to fire Ted if he cannot resist the temptations of YouTube while at work. I’ve heard that he might seek counseling to curb his addiction.

The difference between may and might lies in the degree of likelihood. It seems Don has seriously considered firing Ted but the video-watching fool doesn’t sound ready to admit he’s got a problem. I may paint my house green and I might add purple trim. I’m much more likely to find a pleasing shade of vermilion than I am to combine it with aubergine. I certainly am capable of doing both (though I may not like living with the results).

I may stop writing before I beat you over the head with another example for fear you might choose not to return. Yikes!

Making Sense of Oxymorons: A Writing Prompt

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:03:00 +0000

I received one of those obnoxious chain mails filled with clip art and Comic Sans font in seven colors and eight sizes. I’d been forwarded this one in particular several times because it purports to contain oxymorons. Of course is contains nothing of the kind but I (mostly) appreciate that people think of me when they see jokes about the English language.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, an oxymoron is a phrase that contradicts itself. I’ve most often heard “military intelligence” cited as an example but I find that to be unkind to the gents who actually do sneaky things for the armed forces and who often show some scary smarts.

I’ve been sitting here attempting to create an oxymoron of my own and for some reason I now want to open a coffee shop called The Speedy Turtle. I seem to recall reading an article about the fastest sloth as well. But I was having trouble thinking of a really good example.

Then I thought about the example given in my dictionary of “legal murder”, which took me in two directions: right back to military intelligence and to the Wild West and the idea of a deputized outlaw. Could you have a gentle bully or a terrifying bunny (Monty Python notwithstanding)?

And so I thought that might make an interesting writing exercise: pair two contradictory terms and write a story to explain how both apply to a character. I don’t expect you to post results here, of course, but if you do write something based on the idea I’d love a link. If you’ve got a good example of an oxymoron please do share.

Misusing Malfeasance

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 17:53:00 +0000

I recently read what purported to be an indictment (informally, rather than in the legal sense) of a public-sector employee who the writer was calling to task for what he viewed as a refusal to enforce a law. The specifics of the issue don’t matter to us because we’re here to talk about the English language and abuses to which it is subject. The sentence in question began thus:

This appears to be a blatant malfeasance of justice…

Ah, the overblown sentence! When your opponent resorts to this sort of rhetoric you know that you have him or her on the run. Disregarding the excesses of ire, I was struck by the phrase “malfeasance of justice”.

Now malfeasance exists, both as a word and as a political problem. It simply means unjustifiable conduct or an illegal action perpetrated by a public official. I could argue that the person against whom the charge was leveled was not an “official” but that would be descending into petty semantics. I have much a higher semantic point to make.

“Of justice” in this instance acts as an adjective describing the instance of malfeasance. Yet “of” in this case means that justice was being…malfeased? No such word exists because the word being modified is a noun, not a verb. It’s tantamount to saying the actions were an apple of justice.

You can commit malfeasance, certainly (though I wouldn’t recommend it). You can witness it, call it out, and publicize it. You can even say that it runs rampant. But the fact that I can replace the word with a pronoun in that last two sentences means that it is still a noun.

Nowhere on-line or on paper could I find any indication that malfeasance can act as a verb. So what do you suppose our erstwhile agitator intended to convey? One presumes that the writer wanted to point out that the act was perceived to be malfeasance (and blatant misconduct at that) and that justice was being perverted thereby.

As to whether the author’s somewhat hysterical style swayed those with whom he was communicating, I can’t really say. I didn’t read the rest of the communiqué as I was too busy running for the dictionary.

Word Tidbits: Recap

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 01:56:00 +0000

I was driving home the other day, listening to NPR’s fabulous All Things Considered as I do every night. The woman presenting her story said something like, “For those of you unfamiliar with his record, let’s recapitulate.” Naturally, I immediately wondered how many people know that “recap” is actually an abbreviation of the word recapitulate.

Of course, I immediately looked it up both on-line and in my adored 2,700-page Webster. There, recap is defined as putting a new cap or tread on something. Recapitulate, in many forms, stands fully defined and clearly its own word. In many other places, however, I saw no acknowledgment of the fact that recap stands for a longer word (and one with a more easily-understandable etymology). Indeed my word processor defined recapitulation with “same as recap” with a link to that definition. You can imagine my horror at this sort of linguistic laziness.

And so for those of you who were unaware, I point out that giving a recap is fine for sports scores and television shows. I don’t even believe you should include a period at the end of the word to indicate this apparently-obscure English tidbit. But do remember that in serious writing recapitulate needs to do its own job. Regardless of the widely-accepted nature of recap as a word it will never be more than a small part of recapitulate.

For those among you who are curious, it came from the Latin recapitulare which was a compound of the re- prefix meaning "again" added to the word capitulum for "chapter or main part" or even older, "small head". That makes perfect sense considering that recapitulate means a concise review of the main points or headings of a larger whole.

My Own Fit of Pique

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 23:37:00 +0000

I received a newsletter from a printer in town that contained an article purporting to give advice on naming your business. One of the items on the checklist was, “Peaks customer interest”. As you may imagine, this piqued my ire more than my interest. I’ve written before about the two words, but my mind this time took a different turn. I thought of the ways you can and generally do not use the word pique.

You might write, “Alfred stormed out in a fit of pique.” You could certainly say, “Your post piqued my interest,” and I would thank you kindly. But I would not write, “Julia piqued me,” or “The source of my pique was the neighbor’s howling dog.” Those two uses agree with the definitions of the word but seem to have fallen out of use, though GotBrainy shows it used by several writers in the past century or two. The Thomas Hardy and Edith Wharton examples in particular show that such uses were not unknown.

While my massive print dictionary promises me that you use pique as a reflexive verb in a sentence about someone takes pride in his appearance or some ability, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it used that way. I can find no real agreement from on-line sources, particularly the venerable Merriam-Webster, except at The Free Dictionary which cites The American Heritage® Dictionary from 2000.

None of this really has much of a point, I suppose, except to celebrate the fact that there are often more and deeper meanings to words than we often realize. In the "related words" sections of various sites I came across some of my favorite words for being offended or anger, including miff and dudgeon. I must admit that I don't believe I've ever seen the latter used with out being prefaced by "high" and most places now define it as archaic except in sentences like, "Celeste slammed out of the house in high dudgeon." Clearly, that's a bit more serious than a fit of pique. I love English. It's like a box of LEGO® pieces, adaptable, evolving, and pointy at parts.

Word Tidbits: Do You Want Your Cake to be Moist?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:23:00 +0000

I thought I’d do a little exploration of synonyms and how words convey different meanings. This all started with a rant about the word “moist” and my feeling that it ought not to be applied to food. I was brought up short by the question of what word could possibly be placed on cake mix boxes and food commercials that would give the same sense as “moist” without the dirt-and-worms connotations it carries for me.

Though I did not have a ready answer, I turned to my trusty thesaurus, hoping for a little enlightenment. Words like “damp”, “dank”, and “wet” certainly would not work as appetizing food descriptions. Who wants to be told that the muffins you spent so long baking were “soggy” or, worse yet, “tacky”?

Similarly, “muggy”, “humid”, and “sodden” don’t really convey the texture desirable in such baked goods. While “rich”, “creamy”, and “buttery” give favorable impressions they don’t precisely address the moisture content of a dessert. The visual often used in commercials of sticking the crumbs together with a fork implies just what we want—delicious, soft, tasty, somewhat gooey without being sloppy or undercooked and crumbly without being dry—but what word can carry quite that much freight?

And so, my dear readers, I turn to you. Can you think of a word that does what “moist” intends when applied to describing food? I’m open to suggestions but if you must resort to inventing a word, try to avoid overly-cute or obviously made-up terms like “pudding-y”. Think of this as a freelance PR assignment: Betty Crocker commissioned you to find a new word for the millions of boxed cake mixes the company ships every year. Give me your best shot!

To Infinitives and Beyond: the Infinitive Mood

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Infinitives are interesting creatures, grammatically. Though they look like verbs they act like nouns. I’d like to take you through a little look at them and the infinitive mood in general.

Infinitives live as symbiotic verbs, unable to exist on their own in sentences. They rely on other verbs to give them context and sense. You can use them in place of subjects, as in the famous, "To err is human," or employ them as objects, as I replaced the direct object of "like" in the third sentence of my first paragraph.

The term infinitive indicates merely the "infinite" form of a verb, on that has no real sense of time, number, or person. Most forms add "to" to the first-person present form of the verb. As such you can write that Julie wanted to dance on the table and everyone will know what you meant. (No, not that she’s a lush, you cruel thing.)

But though "wanted" gives you a sense of when Julie had that desire, "to dance" is timeless. It indicates nothing about whether that dancing was imminent or whether it was some long-held wish that she intended to fulfill some day, or if she wanted to be joined by a partner or fifteen friends.

Not every infinitive moves a sentence to the infinitive mood. So what does this mean for mood, you may well ask. In most cases the author has relocated the action of the sentence in the infinitive mood to the infinitive itself and replaced it with a more-ephemeral verb like want, wish, or like. You can go all-out and write, "To hope for progress is to express faith in humanity." You can’t get less specific about the subject than that. And, as a rule, your readers couldn’t care less about it, either.

While the occasional sentence in the infinitive mood brings contrast to a piece (note that the "to" here is a preposition and not the harbinger of an infinitive), too many of them create stilted prose that distances your reader from both the action and the characters about whom you are writing. Save the infinitives for clauses, instead, and keep your writing active and engaging. "Though all she’d wanted was to dance on the table, Julie plunged into the fray and swung her pointy boots to an altogether different effect." Go get ‘em, Julie!

More Bad Headlines for Fall

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:53:00 +0000

The weather is cooling here in the Heartland, as it’s called, and I thought you’d all enjoy a new batch of finger shaking to warm your hearts. I receive a lot of newsletters from national organizations and magazines so I get some terrific fodder…information, that is, in my e-mail every week. These four stood out of the recent batch as the best examples.

"A World of HVAC&R Information at Your Fingertips"

Pardon my language, please, but who the hell puts an ampersand in an acronym? Either use the “a” for and or skip it altogether they way it was before you added the R in the first place. (Folks have used HVAC—heating, ventilation, and air conditioning—for decades. Apparently refrigeration ranks highly enough to be included, now.)

"2010 Year in Review"

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this headline except that it was emblazoned on a newsletter distributed at the end of August, 2010. The article in question addressed not 2010 in particular but the out-going president’s term with the organization which spanned two years. Thus the headline doesn’t fit the article, which makes it misleading or at least confusing.

"Don't Let Winter Wreck Havoc"

When I’m wreaking havoc I’d rather not have some season wreck it, thank you very much. Your spell check cannot save you from using completely the wrong word. Nor can it save you from forgetting to finish your headline with a hint as to what havoc you intend to help me avoid.

"Low pants have no chance in Louisiana's capital"

I included this example for contrast. I actually think this one is pretty good, except for the lack of capitalization. It certainly gave me an idea of the topic but left me wanting to read the article. (In case you’re curious, it’s a public awareness campaign that wearing your pants sagging off of your behind makes you look like a slacker that no one will want to hire. That’s a rant for a different blog, however.)

Is Sue Interested in Dative Bob?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:05:00 +0000

I think it’s high time we talked about the dative case, which requires a little exploration of direct and indirect objects. To further this purpose I’ve constructed a little example for you. We’ll try this sentence two ways:

Sue gave Bob her phone number.
Sue gave her phone number to Bob.

As you can see, whether you’re assuming “to” Bob in the first example or congratulating him after the second, the man indirectly receives the action of the verb no matter how direct Sue may have been with him. The phone number gets the giving here and Bob is the indirect object thereof. You can’t use such a verb without an indirect object, but the direct object will always be what is being given or shown.

Now I hear you asking, “What if I wrote ‘Sue gave at the office’?” In this case, your reader assumes the direct object to exist. While our giving friend Sue could have donated anything from half a bologna sandwich to a thousand dollars the crux of the matter remains that she gave something. One also guesses that she handed it to someone or sent it to some place, but that indirect object also declines to appear in this idiom (the general intent of which is to remain non-specific). “At the office” is just a prepositional phrase, not an object of any sort.

Shockingly, I haven’t yet made my point, which was that indirect objects (and any adjectives describing them) take the dative case. And what, pray tell, does that mean to your day-to-day writing life? In most cases it affects your writing very little as the case does not require specialized word forms. You should care simply because, someday, someone might as you to explain the dative case. Alternatively you could take up translating Latin (or a less-dead language) and need to know what to do with those dative forms when you find them.

Cute Overload Hurts Everyone

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:44:00 +0000

Thanks to my unseemly interest in the residential sprinkler debate, I find myself with yet another example of bad grammar in journalism. The Greenville, South Carolina Examiner published an article recently that contained the following:

After an emblazoned battle between industry professionals and 100's of firefighters that were in support of fire sprinklers and the Home Builders Association and numerous builders who were against, the SC House and Senate sided with the latter.

I can find at least three problems with this sentence, and I don't mean the implication that the HBA and builders are not industry professionals. I started looking at the grammar because of the use of the word "emblazoned", which was too cute by half. While you could, indeed, make a case for interpreting the word to mean "having been made famous" no reader should have to work that hard to interpret a newspaper article.

The battle may have been bitter, contentious, well-publicized, or otherwise notorious. To emblazon something is to make it more noticeable, certainly, but the usual use involves adding decoration to the thing rather than arguing about it in public fora. Do we suspect the author used the word solely because of the "blaz" in the middle? I don't know about you but I certainly do.

Once I got past that, the "100's" pulled me up short yet again. First, why the heck wouldn't you just use the word hundreds in this context? Second, that apostrophe made me post this. I was willing to let emblazoned pass but this? No. The little jot of punctuation seems to have strayed from the word Builders, where it by rights ought to be at the end. To be fair very, very few associations make use of the plural possessive correctly but the writer should have known better. As the longest sentence of nine in the article, one would have thought the editor would have made him.

Which Is Less Wet? Drier vs. Dryer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:22:00 +0000

As a quickie, let me clarify this little question. If you wish to write about something that is comparatively more dry, you write drier. If you mean a machine or other device that makes something drier, you want the word dryer. A dryer makes things drier. Personally, I avoid the whole things by using "more dry" but technically the comparative form exists. Now excuse me while I makes the driest martini ever while drying my clothes.

I Said That I’d Return

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Actually, I didn't say that. But I have returned and I will again, the dearth of posts this year notwithstanding. I chose that name for this post because I want to write about the word that today. It's been a bone of contention between a co-worker and me when used in documents for an official record so I thought I'd explore its role in sentences such as the title above. Consider the following:

He explained that he had seen four different versions.

I contend that (nudge nudge) you should include the word "that" in this example for the sentence to be grammatically correct in its formal setting. My "opponent" in this believes it to be superfluous in this and all similar cases (said that, believes that, opined that, hoped that, etc.) and requested that I remove all "thats" from the record I'd created. Which of us will stand victorious?

When used at the start of a predicate noun clause as shown, "that" acts as a conjunction linking the thing being expressed, believed, or what have you with the subject. It ties a comment to the person making it. (What, you did think I'd turn out to be wrong, did you?) While the conjunction can be assumed, in informal communication, strict English grammar requires that (hint hint) it exist.

Without that you can be left with unclear or awkward sentences, both of which cause your reader to work to understand your meaning. You wouldn't want that, would you? Well, in this case you would.

Yet Another Failure, This Time of Logic

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:49:00 +0000

I have no stake in the fight over requiring sprinklers in new houses. I wanted to make that clear from the beginning. I was, however, frustrated by the complete perversion of logic that this author perpetrates after chiding her opponents for the very same failure. Notice that her responses to the “red herrings” often consist, themselves, of red herrings.

Notice, also, her exaggeration of the number of deaths in home fires by over 9% (from 2,740 to 3,000) in an attempt to shore up her argument that the number of deaths, despite consisting of .55% of the total number of fires, is acceptable. This appears to be a response to an argument that was never made, as what sort of fool would contend that any deaths constitute an “acceptable” number? (I'm ignoring the red herring of automobile deaths for space considerations.)

The argument that sprinklers “only” cost $1.61 per square foot fails, as well. Regardless of the costs associated with whirlpools, nicer carpet, or any other voluntary upgrade, they remain voluntary. If this “refutation” intends to convince people that sprinklers should be required then you cannot compare those apples to this orange, logically. And she fails to respond to the allegation that sprinklers have not been proven to perform their intended function.

Indeed, the author attempts to say that the opponents of in-home sprinkler requirements had been wrong in the past about a different requirement and thus clearly could not be trusted to be correct about this one. Is anyone else rolling his or her eyes, by now?

I’ll not analyze the entire post here, but I wanted to share my outrage over what I see as propaganda and what is a clearly flawed set of reasons to require anything by law. Such poorly-written "refutations" make the organization for which they were written look shady rather than safety-conscious and lend weight to the very arguments purported to be disproven.

Sudden and Complete Acronym Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:37:00 +0000

Imagine, if you will, that you read a press release that begins with the following sentence, more or less.

The City of Fargo has installed a HAWK Beacon (High Intensity Activated Crosswalk Beacon)...to aid pedestrians in crossing 40th Avenue S by Centennial Elementary School.

A laudable effort, no doubt, and one that may save the lives of incautious children. I, however, reacted not to the concept of the light but to the apparent inability of the people who created this thing to understand acronyms.

For those of you who don't see the problem here, let me explain. An acronym is a “word” made up of the first letters of a much longer name for something. They're exceedingly useful in talking about government, for example, because the names of agencies can be quite a mouthful. They also take up a lot of room on a page. Once you've explained the origin of the acronym you can write or talk about it and your audience will still know what you mean.

You cannot, however, take random letters from the name of a thing and create an “word” that you like. Doing so means that there is no way someone who sees the acronym would ever guess what those words may be. They might as well have named it a GENERA Beacon, because those letters appear in that order as well. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could just as well have been the NIN. The rules for making acronyms exist for a reason, you know.

What struck me even more strange was that HIAC sounds pretty high-tech and impressive, especially followed by the word beacon. HAWK gives me an impression of swooping and predation. Do I want small children crossing at the street where this HAWK stands, poised and ready? I'd rather a HIAC were watching out for their safety, sending out a beacon to drivers reminding them to be cautious. Wouldn't you?

Pray Tell Me What This Means

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:17:00 +0000

It's come to my attention that people commonly believe that Shakespeare coined the phrase "pray tell" and launched its popularity. It may be that he expanded the knowledge of the term, but in reality people used it long before ol' Will brought it to their attention. In this case, the word pray escapes religious connotations and grew from the Latin precari into preier in Old French, and then became preien, to beg or beseech.

Lest you think that precari the end of that particular language trail, the verb came from a Latin noun, prex, meaning a prayer or earnest request. A ha! Now you see how the same word can be used in both Christmas and "pagan" celebrations without any sort of religious qualms. Certainly Shakespeare had little to do with that. Happy holidays to you all, whether you're praying for world peace or simply asking your sister why she thought you'd like those socks.

Give Immemorial the High Sign

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:39:00 +0000

I have a habit of using archaic idioms and, as you can see from the existence of One Step Forward, becoming curious about their origins. The other day I told a co-worker that I would give her “the high sign” when I was ready for her and immediately wondered about that phrase’s history. Naturally, my friends, I thought that you might wonder the same thing.

While I discovered the term in many a dictionary and contentions that it dated back to first few years of the 20th century, I had some difficulty in uncovering the source of it. At first I thought that the high sign may have come from police or military terminology, because I could envision numerous situations in which non-verbal signals would be necessary in either field. Much to my disappointment, I’ve been unable to verify (or disprove) that theory. I’ve not yet given up the search, but I’ve no results to share just yet.

In the meantime, I read an odd phrase in an Arthur C Clarke novel that struck me as something an editor should have required him to change decades before this particular edition had been published. In the story, a robot was recalling its “immemorial memories”. I thought to look up the word immemorial before chiding Mr. Clarke here.

To my surprise, immemorial means something ancient, a thing so old that, in essence, people cannot remember a time when it did not exist. Since time immemorial, to me at least, I’ve assumed that immemorial meant that it came from a time before memory and thus could not be recalled, which meant that I took Mr. Clarke’s phrase to mean “memories so old they could not be remembered”. The subtle distinction makes a memorable difference, here. I thought I’d share these thoughts with you, in case you had a similar reaction to the phrase “immemorial memories”.