Sprachgefuhl

Allow For vs. Allow

2012-01-11T00:26:00.004-05:00

We want to allow good things.
We want to allow for unwanted things.

The new gun will be idiotproof to allow safer use
The new gun will be idiotproof to allow for idiots.

Head home early to allow ample time.
Head home early to allow for traffic.

Parsing a Press Release: Adobe

2012-01-06T09:11:00.000-05:00

Take it away Matt Gemmell:

Adobe announced today that they won’t be making any more versions of Flash Player for mobile devices, but as usual for large companies, you have to work hard to decipher what they’ve said.

Confusing, marketing-voiced corporate communication is a terrible problem in this industry, and it’s damaging to the companies themselves. Adobe’s press release (that’s what it essentially is, even though it’s nominally a blog post) sounds sterile, aloof, disconnected and tentative—perhaps even with a note of desperation. I decided to rewrite it.

Attention New York Times Headline Writers: Don't Sacrifice Grammar for Cuteness

2012-01-03T19:08:00.000-05:00

A guest post from Paul Stregevsky.

As a stickler for clear antecedents, I fault this headline, from the New York Times: "Iowa, the Early Decider, Still Hasn't."

I would even fault, "Iowa, the Earliest State to Decide, Still Hasn't." Still hasn't decide? Um, no. There is but one legitimate antecedent: "decided." And since readers would find it awkward to read "Iowa, the Earliest State to Have Decided, Still Hasn't," the headline writer must abandon the conceit and try again.

Mind you, I oppose constructions like this one not because they're illogical (though they are), but because they force readers to mentally correct the grammatical error.

Addendum: Actually, this could work: "Iowa, the Early State to Decide, Still Can't."

Addendum (1/4/2012): I e-mailed this post to Philip Corbett, the Times's associate managing editor for standards who writes the After Deadline blog. He's given me permission to publish his reply:

I agree in general that headlines should be grammatical. But given the constraints of the form, I think it's reasonable on occasion to expect the reader to make a bit more of a syntactical leap than might be demanded in other contexts. (Here, I suspect the headline writer was also alluding to President Bush's famous description of himself as "the decider," another argument for allowing the construction.)

What do you think?

Parsing a Press Release: Best Buy

2012-01-03T19:01:00.000-05:00

Take it away Larry Downes:

The company issued a statement that read: “Due to overwhelming demand of hot product offerings on BestBuy.com during the November and December time period, we have encountered a situation that has affected redemption of some of our customers’ online orders.”

Let’s parse that sentence for a moment. The company “encountered a situation”—that is, it was a passive victim of an external problem it couldn’t control, in this case, customers daring to order products it acknowledges were “hot” buys. This happened, inconveniently for Best Buy, during “the November and December period,” that is, the only months that matter to a retailer. For obvious reasons, the statement ties itself in knots trying to avoid mentioning that the “situation” occurred during the holidays.

The situation that Best Buy “encountered” has “affected redemption” of some orders. Best Buy doesn’t fill online orders, it seems. Rather, customers “redeem” them. So it’s the customers, not Best Buy, who have the problem. And those customers haven’t been left hanging; they’ve only been “affected” in efforts to “redeem” their orders. It’s not as if the company did anything wrong, or, indeed, anything at all.

It’s all so passive. It’s also a transparent and truly feeble pack of lies. Here’s what the honest and appropriate release would have said: “Due to poor inventory management and sales forecasting of the most popular products during our key sales season, we can’t fill orders we promised to fill weeks ago in time for Christmas.”

There’s a little more to the Best Buy’s press release: “We are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, and we have notified the affected customers.”

Again, note the use of the passive voice—“this” refers to the “situation” that Best Buy “encountered.” The “situation,” not Best Buy’s poor operations, “has caused” inconvenience to customers. It’s not something Best Buy did wrong. It’s like they’re reporting the weather, something utterly out of their control about which the company is a mere observer. They’ve “notified the affected customers” despite, it seems, no sense of obligation to do so, let alone to find a solution to a problem entirely of the company’s own creation. How sorry are they, do you think?

Again, here’s my rewrite: “Three days before Christmas, too late for the customers to make alternative arrangements, we are just now letting our would-be customers know. We have no excuse for such amateur behavior.”

Don't Use a Noun When There's a Verb

2012-01-01T14:10:00.000-05:00

Example #1: Putin’s last assignment for the spy agency was conducting surveillance on students at Leningrad State University. [NYT]

Revision #1: Putin’s last assignment for the spy agency was surveiling students at Leningrad State University.

Example #2: House G.O.P. Leaders Agree to Extension of Payroll Tax Cut [NYT]

Revision #2: House G.O.P. Leaders Agree to Extend Payroll Tax Cut

Addendum (1/20/2012):

Example #3: Our growth over the past five years is a testament to the continued commitment of our clients.

Revision #3: Our growth over the past five years testifies to continued commitment of our clients.

Addendum (1/28/2012):

Example #4: Our success is dependent on our people.

Revision #4: Our success depends on our people.

When Not to Use an Exclamation Point

2011-12-29T08:18:00.000-05:00

A member of a language ListServ to which I subscribe recently asked for guidance on exclamation marks. Two replies were particularly noteworthy:

1. In letters and most other longish communications, the message should speak for itself, with no need for embellishment. However, where space is limited, so that the wording alone cannot convey the message, such as in tweets, I suppose an exclamation point would be ok. But think of it this way: do you want to come across like a teenage girl? If so, use lots of "!!!"s Otherwise, make your message powerful wnough to do the job. IMHO!!!

2. From the Associated Press Stylebook:

Use the mark to express a high degree of surprise, incredulity or other strong emotion.
Use a comma after mild interjections. End mildly exclamatory sentences with a period. lace the mark inside quotation marks when it is part of the quoted material: “How wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Never!” she shouted.
Place the mark outside quotation marks when it is not part of the quoted material: I hated reading Spenser’s “Faerie Queene”!
Do not use a comma or a period after the exclamation mark:
Wrong: “Halt!”, the corporal cried.
Right: “Halt!” the corporal cried.

disambiguate

2011-12-26T09:41:00.003-05:00

disambiguate (v): to establish a single semantic or grammatical interpretation for

Here at Sprachgefuhl, we do a lot of disambiguating.

Hanukkah. Chanukah. Hannukah

2011-12-25T19:15:00.001-05:00

According to Tim Newcomb of Time.com, the proper spelling of the Jewish Christmas is "a matter of preference and mass appeal."

Hanukkah is the most widely used of the choices, while Chanukah is the second most-often-used spelling and the favorite of traditionalists.

flyspeck

2011-11-27T13:22:00.001-05:00

flyspeck (v): to scrutinize details

Evans said that Gingrich’s attorneys and accountants flyspecked every transaction to make sure that it was accounted for properly."

Newt Gingrich Inc. [Washington Post]

"most important," or "most importantly"?

2011-09-05T18:52:00.000-04:00

Q. Which is correct? “Most important, you enable your students to pursue their passions” or “Most importantly, you enable your students to pursue their passions.”

A. Although the second version is considered incorrect by many sticklers, and the first one sounds wrong to people who don’t know better, they are both correct.

New Questions and Answers [Chicago Manual of Style Online]

TIME Magazine? Time Magazine? Time magazine?

2011-09-05T18:51:00.001-04:00

Q. Can you please confirm the correct spelling of “TIME magazine”? CMOS 8.169 has Time magazine. However, TIME customer service tells me that TIME Magazine is correct. I think “magazine” should be lowercased, since it does not appear anywhere on the cover, and I do not think it is part of the official name of the magazine, even though they capitalize it on their website. What do you think?

A. We’re sticking with Time magazine. One of the best things about having a style guide is not having to phone every organization in a document and talk to customer service; instead, we use the style manual to present titles consistently. Even if you were to check the periodical itself, you might find that the magazine cover has one spelling (TIME) but the copyright information has another (Time) and yet another is used in running text (Time). And you know for sure that if you phoned again, a different rep would give you a different answer.

New Questions and Answers [Chicago Manual of Style Online]

condomplate

2011-08-29T21:54:00.002-04:00

condomplate (v): to contemplate whether to use a condom in the heat of sex

A hard time opening a rubber's wrapper induces condomplating.

Condomplate [Urban Dictionary]

Linguists vs. Lexicographers: Why Stylebooks Should Not Be Dictionaries

2011-08-24T15:34:00.001-04:00

Should the way people do speak dictate the way people should speak?

To wit: Should a stylebook (such as the MLA Handbook and the Chicago Manual of Style) take its cues from a dictionary, which records words as they’re used, or should a dictionary take its cues from a stylebook, which takes positions on how words ought to be used?

The former method constitutes the status quo: both MLA and Chicago follow Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. The problem is, Merriam-Webster doesn’t make recommendations; it records the most common spellings, not which spellings are necessarily correct.

Chicago contends that spelling issues such as capitalization, hyphenation, and compound words are for each writer to decide. Yet it offers no criteria by which writers can make these decisions. Should we use the word’s prestige? How it was first written? Its present-day connotation? Its frequency of usage?

Without a rule, or at least a rule of thumb, a writer is left to weigh each word on its own, capitalizing “Ivy League” but not “website”; unhyphenating “email” but not “e-book”; merging “smart” and “phone” but not “health care.”

But surely one of the purposes of stylebooks is to standardize such inconsistencies—to bring order to the chaos of “style.” Indeed, what makes stylebooks like Fowler’s and Strunk and White’s so important is that dictionaries are not the final word on semantics. That’s what stylebooks are for: to prescribe.

There’s a phrase for those charged with prescribing who instead parrot those charged with describing: dereliction of duty.

Good Writing Is Good Writing

2011-08-24T10:28:00.003-04:00

Regardless of your audience or publication, good writing is good writing. Whether you’re writing a children’s book or an op-ed, your words should bristle with energy and elegance. Whether you’re writing a letter of recommendation or an insurance policy, your words should be clear and crisp. Good writing is good writing.

Are Americans of Latin American descent "Latinos" or "Hispanics"?

2011-08-12T06:51:00.008-04:00

According to an internal memo from the Los Angeles Times, they're "Latinos," which is the umbrella term for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and others from the Spanish-speaking lands or cultures of Latin America. The memo concludes, "Latino should be used in nearly all contexts; the exceptions ... must truly be exceptional."

Here's the memo, which is addressed to Times copy editors:

We have updated our rule on the use of Latino to reflect more accurately what the editors of the 1995 Times stylebook intended: that the term in virtually all cases is the appropriate choice over Hispanic, in keeping with the practices and sensibilities of residents of our region.

We offer this combined new listing in place of two separate and occasionally confusing former entries:

Latino, Hispanic: Latino is the umbrella term for people in the United States of Latin American descent. It refers to Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and others from the Spanish-speaking lands or cultures of Latin America. A Latino woman is a Latina. It is preferable to say that an individual is Mexican American, of Salvadoran descent and so forth, instead of using the umbrella term.

Keep in mind that Latino is an ethnic group, not a race category. Latinos may be of any race: white, black, Native American, Asian, mestizo, etc. Some speak Spanish; some don't. Some are U.S. born; others are immigrants.

Note: Hispanic is acceptable in quotes or in proper names. The U.S. Census Bureau uses terms such as "Hispanic or Latino" and "non-Hispanic or Latino" in its survey questions on ethnicity and race. Stories and graphics based on census information are allowed to use that language when it is essential to explain methodology, but we should otherwise use Latino to describe the people in question.

In describing the old entries as "occasionally confusing," we mean especially every 10 years upon the release of fresh census data. It was easy to see why many of us interpreted the old rules as not only an invitation to use Hispanic but, in census stories, a requirement to do so. The old entry on Hispanic said, in part, "Use Hispanic only in quotes, in proper names or reports based on census data."

So, to be clear: Latino should be used in nearly all contexts; the exceptions, as described in the revised entry, must truly be exceptional. The online stylebook has been updated accordingly.

"Couple" vs. "Couple Of"

2011-08-07T12:30:00.004-04:00

I recently e-mailed Merriam-Webster's Language Research Service the following question. Associate Editor, Neil S. Serven, replied as follows.

Q: Is it grammatically incorrect to say "a couple hours" instead of "a couple of hours"?

A: Both expressions are standard, though “a couple hours” is considered to be more informal. As such, couple is entered in the dictionary as both a noun and an adjective. The excerpt below from Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage discusses the use of couple as an adjective.

couple, adjective.
While the commentators were worrying whether the noun couple could be used to mean simply "two" and whether it could mean "a few" (see COUPLE, noun), the word itself was following the path of development that dozen had taken centuries earlier—dropping its following of and being used like an adjective. We are not sure when this process began in speech, but we begin to find written evidence in the 1920s. Sinclair Lewis heard it in the dictation of George W. Babbitt:

... all my experience indicates he is all right, means to do business, looked into his financial record which is fine--that sentence seems to be a little balled up, Miss McGoun; make a couple sentences out of it if you have to—Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, 1922

Lewis was not the only one to use it:

... where the land rises to a couple or three or four feet—W. H. Hudson, Far Away and Long Ago, 1924
... in the phrases a couple peaches, a couple of peaches, only two should be meant—Krapp 1927

G. P. Krapp is the first commentator to mention the construction, but he evidently saw nothing wrong with it. A decade later, however, it was thought to be wrong:

couple. Not an adj.; must be followed by "of" and preceded by article—Muriel B. Carr &} John W. Clark, An A B C of Idiom and Diction, 1937

Of all the subsequent commentators who have disapproved the omission of of, Evans 1957 has the most interesting observation. While insisting that standard English requires of between couple and a following noun, he points out that the of is omitted before a degree word such as more or less. And indeed this construction is found in standard English:

We can end this chapter by looking at a couple more examples of Middle English writing—Charles Barber, The Flux of Language, 1965
... middle-aged men expecting a couple more promotions—Peter Preston, Punch, 28 Nov. 1973

These examples are all British; the construction is explicitly recognized by a recent British dictionary, Longman 1984. The construction occurs in American English too:

... till they had taken a couple more first-class lickings—Elmer Davis, But We Were Born Free, 1954

But American English usage seems to have been influenced by the number of commentators stressing the necessity of of. The result is the occasional " a couple of more":

... a couple of more wins from Jim Palmer—Jim Kaplan, Sports Illustrated, 10 Apr. 1978

Nickles 1974 refers to this construction as a "garble" and opines that it results from confusion of a couple of with some such construction as a few more; he fails to recognize the standard a couple more. Theodore Bernstein seems to have encountered the construction, too; in a June 1967 Winners & Sinners he quotes Evans with a measure of approval, but questions whether all degree words fit the pattern. He comes a cropper by confusing Evans's "degree words" with ordinary adjectives. Bernstein was unable to find any specific comment in usage books on "a couple of more" and concludes therefore that it is not wrong, though "ungraceful." If you find it ungraceful also and do not care to omit the of before more, you can put the more after the noun instead; the example above would become "a couple of wins more from Jim Palmer." Bernstein also notes that when more is promoted to pronoun by omission of the following noun, of is not used, as in "... I think I'll have a couple more."

But we have strayed from the red-blooded, 100-percent-American adjective before a plural noun that Sinclair Lewis heard in the speech of the middle-class Middle West. The usage is apparently not found in British English. Here are a few American ones:

The first couple chapters are pretty good—E. B. White, letter, 26 Oct. 1959
So let's start with a couple samples—Quinn 1980

Afterward, I met Mark Mullaney upstairs for a couple beers—Ahmad Rashad, Sports Illustrated, 25 Oct. 1982

... though Mr. Shaw himself still operated a couple wagons for hire—Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, 1985

This construction seems well established in American English. Everyone who comments knows it to be common in speech. It is now quite common in general prose, but we have seldom found it in prose that aspires to formality and elegance. Its two most frequent uses are with periods of time and with number words like dozen, hundred, and thousand:

... have surfaced dramatically in the last couple weeks—James P. Gannon, Wall Street Jour., 16 Oct. 1970

A couple thousand cases of liquor—Wall Street Jour., 14 July 1969

To recapitulate: a couple without of seems to have begun being used like a few and a dozen in the 1920s. It is firmly established in American speech and in general writing (though not the more elevated varieties) when it is used directly before a plural noun or a number word. Before more, a couple is used without of in both British and American English and in this context is often preferred even by American commentators.

Do You Love Grammar?

2011-08-01T14:17:00.002-04:00

Then Christopher Johnson, author of the new book, Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little, has your number:

“If you meet someone who claims to ‘love grammar,’ chances are they mean they love ‘correct’ grammar and enjoy pointing out other people’s mistakes.”

What's Wrong With This Sentence?

2011-08-01T14:14:00.001-04:00

In his Sunday column, Tom Friedman made an elementary grammar mistake: He wrote "is" instead of "are."

Where have all the adults in this party gone? Where is Dick Lugar, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Colin Powell, Hank Paulson and Big Business?

Had he used periods instead of commas, then "is" would have been right.

Koufax

2011-08-01T08:57:00.006-04:00

Koufax [Sandy Koufax, the Jewish Hall of Fame pitcher, sat out the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur] (v): to forgo an important sporting event because it coincides with a religious holiday

In the first episode of season eight of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry accuses Marty, a newly observant Jew, of "Koufaxing us" because Marty refuses to play in the golf tournament because it falls on the Sabbath.

When You Use "Exceed" in a Positive Way, Say "Surpass"

2011-07-19T11:02:00.004-04:00

This morning, a colleague referred me to the following sentence:

"We’ve earned accolades from our clients as well as industry recognition for creative solutions and marketing strategies that exceed our clients’ expectations."

He argues that exceed isn't the best word here. "Whenever someone uses exceed to mean 'go beyond in a good way,' I urge him to change it to surpass. Exceed often has a pejorative connotation: 'He was cited for exceeding the speed limit,' or 'You've exceeded your month's bandwidth.' But surpass is always positive."

This sounds right, connotatively if not necessarily denotatively.

skinback

2011-07-15T15:15:00.004-04:00

skinback [journalistic slang for peeling back your skin and feeling the pain]: retraction of the premise of an article

In his Reuters column yesterday, "How I Misread News Corp.'s Taxes," David Cay Johnston wrote, "For the first time in my 45-year-old career I am writing a skinback ... I will do all I can to make sure everyone who has read or heard secondary reports based on my column also learns the facts and would appreciate the help of readers in that cause."

See also: In 2008, Jack Shakfer explained another journalistic term, "reverse ferret."

skunkworks

2011-07-14T09:35:00.002-04:00

What does it take to scare Google? In 2009, Microsoft's launch of Bing lit a fuse under the search giant. In his recent book, In the Plex, Steven Levy explains:

The search team set up a war room, hurriedly launching an effort dubbed the skunkworks. (That appellation, first used at Lockheed aircraft during World War II, is a generic term for an off-the-books engineering effort that operates outside a company's stifling bureaucracy.)

Refining the definition, I'd say "skunkworks" is a secret effort that seeks to maximize innovation by operating outside a company's stifling bureaucracy.

Yet when trying to use the word in a sentence, I wasn't sure whether it was a noun or adjective. Is it a "skunkworks project," or just a "skunkworks"? Merriam-Webster's dictionary, which lists "Skunk Works" as a "service mark," didn't provide guidance, so I e-mailed its language research service. Trademark Editor, Daniel Brandon, replied as follows:

The full entry for “Skunk Works” on our Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is:

Skunk Works service mark — used for research and development services

The important thing to note here is the function label, “service mark.” This means that this term is not strictly speaking a noun, adjective, or any other part of speech. It is instead a registered service mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. These are much like trademarks (which we treat in the dictionary in the same way), only it has slightly different uses and conditions.

As such, we are obliged to enter it only as the mark specifies. This is why we do not show “skunkworks,” as a lower-case closed compound.

So, I'd say that "skunkworks" may be used as an adjective or noun:

I do my best work in a skunkworks environment; skunkworks are my favorite projects.

pre-friending

2011-07-11T11:19:00.003-04:00

pre-friending: friending someone online who you want to meet offline

Have you ever pre-friended someone?

logomachy

2011-07-04T13:52:00.001-04:00

logomachy: a dispute about words

Perhaps "logomachy" would be a better title for this blog than "sprachgefuhl." What do you think?

Videos: 4 Essential Tips for Writing in Plain Language

2011-06-26T17:43:00.013-04:00

Recently, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (ICE) produced a video series on plain language. Starring ICE Web Content Editor, Kathryn Catania, who also co-chairs the Plain Language Action and Information Network, the digital shorts are just what they should be: brief, catchy, and handy.

Since I couldn't find them on YouTube, I uploaded them there myself.

Proofreading

Active Voice

Tables

Acronyms and Abbreviations