Category Archives: All Things Wordish

grammar, punctuation, usage, spelling, speech

December 30, 2011 · 9:11 am

Civics meets syntax

Even before the 2012 election process begins in earnest in a few days, I already have indigestion.

It used to be that this Beltway baby salivated at the onset of an election year, and all the intellectual and ideological meat it served up. I don’t know anyone who’s hungry any more, except maybe television stations with ad time to sell.

I count myself among those who have lost their appetite from the shallow rhetoric and competitive sparring—and I suspect that’s just about everyone.

However, my particular beef has to do with (surprise!) language. Perhaps my ear is too acutely attuned to misuses, but I’m aurally assaulted day after day, not just by the candidates but those who cover them. Considering the fact that we’re in this for the long haul, I’d like to see us clear a few things up:

“Congress and the Senate” is incorrect. “Congress” and “the House” are not one and the same. Congress is composed of both parts of our bicameral system–the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Congress did not “adjourn” in December. A Congress adjourns just once, at the end of a two-year Congress. Members “recessed” until 2012, when the second year of the 112th Congress begins.

“Re-doubling” is re-dundant. According to some news outlets, the primary season has this or that candidate “re-doubling his efforts” in this or that state. Unless the pol is quadrupling his efforts, this is incorrect.

“We” is not the candidate. Candidates of both parties are equally guilty of the relatively recent practice of pluralizing themselves in speech. If the United States were governed by a monarchy, this might be a “royal we,” but we are not.

Have you noticed this? The candidate refers to himself, or occasionally, herself, as “we.” I can assume “we” refers to his campaign team, his administration, his volunteers. He’s being nice. He’s being inclusive. “We” is fine when he refers specifically to the campaign team.

But to say “We are the candidate who will [reduce the deficit, reform Social Security, insert the promise of your choice]” is not just incorrect, but absurd. It makes me wonder if pluralizing the pronoun is a scheme intended to spread the blame when the electoral matter later hits the fan.

Come to think if it, I might just vote for whoever refers to himself as “I.” (Just as long as he doesn’t use it as an objective pronoun.)

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December 12, 2011 · 8:02 am

Seemingly stilted

Few would argue, in this technological age, that we often interact with one another more via electronic media than face to face, even voice to voice. We’ve talked about this here before.

Isn’t it interesting, when we communicate with someone over a prolonged period via only technology—without ever meeting or even speaking—how our impressions are shaped, based solely on e-mail or social media interaction? What happens, then, when we later come face to face with these same people? How do they match up to our expectations, and we to theirs?

I’m currently working on a writing project for a client (actually, a client’s client), with whom all interaction has been via e-mail. Until Friday, when I visited her work site.

Her name is Bea. I’d gotten to know Bea over the last month or so, passing ideas, comments and drafts back and forth. And, presumably, she has gotten to know me.

My mind had sketched a picture of Bea, based on the only Bea I’d ever known—Aunt Bea, from The Andy Griffith Show. I imagined Bea to be roly-poly, with a bouffant do, speaking in a shrill, quivering voice. (I suppose she could have been more of a Bea Arthur, but that Bea never sprung to mind until this moment.)

I arrived onsite Friday afternoon as a woman greeted me. She was about my age, with my length hair, maybe a little shorter, a little darker, same basic style. Dressed casually. Normal voice.

We shook hands, smiled, said things like, “It’s nice to finally to meet you in person.”

I could see that was puzzled by my appearance.

She commented, “For some reason I pictured you as being English, about 65, writing by candlelight,” as she made a writing gesture in the air. Pen-writing, not keyboard-writing. The gesture was as though her air pen had a quill on the end of it.

Wow. She had formed an impression of me, based on my writing, in my e-mail messages and in the copy I produced, and basically come up with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Perhaps it’s the nature of the content that elicited my stilted style. Or is it simply the way I write, admittedly more formally and politely when addressing a client’s client?

Now I ask you – those of you who don’t know me personally – based on what you read on this blog, how do you picture its writer? And no fair peeking at my Gravatar.

Go ahead, I can take it.

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December 1, 2011 · 9:06 am

Aviation restraint

A faithful and alert reader contacted me this week, suggesting we review the difference between “refrain” and “restrain.”

She had heard an awkward misuse over an airline intercom, a common medium for extemporaneous grammatical gaffes. Flight attendants’ scripts are pretty well vetted, but when attendants are left to their own wits, snickers can ensue. I know from experience, after hearing more than once that passengers should refrain from “conjugating in the aisles.”

Notice I said refrain, not restrain.

On her recent flight, the Word Nymph stringer and her fellow passengers were  told to “refrain yourself from leaving your seats.” My friend wanted this aired, reflexive pronoun-object mismatch aside.

Without looking it up, I knew that one refrains from doing something and that one restrains oneself or others, often from doing something. I knew that restrain requires an object. We restrain prisoners, dogs and ourselves, even airline passengers. Refrain requires no object. I’m not sure I could have explained why this is so.

Grammarians explain that restrain is a transitive verb, meaning it needs an object. We restrain something or someone. Refrain is intransitive; it requires no object.

Keeping within the airline setting, here’s how I’d remember it:

The flight attendant should refrain from speaking off script. She should restrain herself when tempted to ad lib.

If I had to choose, I’d rather a flight attendant be proficient in skills that I am not—emergency evacuation, in-flight firefighting, defibrillation, emergency landing, decompression emergencies and anti-terrorism—than in matters of grammar.

Besides, this frees me up to do what I do best–conjugating in the aisles (amo, amās, amat, amámus, mátis, amant)

(Shirley you can’t be serious…)

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November 29, 2011 · 8:10 am

Penalty for possession

Long before the Word Nymph aired her first grievance, a friend had whispered a complaint into my sympathetic ear. She wondered what prompted those close to her, God-love-’em, to make the names of all restaurants and retailers possessive.

She observed that her mother, along with so many of our mothers’ generation, always adds an apostrophe + s to the name of just about every business in town.

Perhaps it’s because so many businesses used to be owned by individuals: Mario’s Pizza. Harry’s Bar. Bertha’s Mussels. (All right, not Bertha’s; that’s another story.)

Years ago, department store names, such as Woodward & Lothrop, The Hecht Company and R.H. Macy & Co. were shortened to such neighborly nicknames as Woodies, Hecht’s and Macy’s. The nicknames took hold, to no one’s objection. Eventually, these stores branded their possessives.

Now, however, businesses whose names were neither possessive to begin with nor shortened to nicknames are being made so by those who link every business to a person.

In this shopping season, let us be reminded to call our retailers by their correct names. It is Nordstrom, not Nordstrom’s. Lord & Taylor, not Lord & Taylor’s.

Far more egregious examples exist with regard to restaurants. It’s gone rampant. Let us not assume that every restaurant is named after a person. Restaurants take great care to give their establishments fitting and clever names, many of which don’t bear the moniker of the owner, founder or chef. Yet we can’t seem to help adding an apostrophe + s. Examples of these violations are too numerous to mention, many coming from within my own circle.

Maybe these complaints are nit-picky. Can we at least agree that, when the name of a business has a possessive built in, we should fight any urge to add an apostrophe + s?

Here’s an example. A Mexican restaurant near me is called Mi Rancho, Spanish for “My Ranch.” Is it not redundant to call it Mi Rancho’s? The same goes for any establishment beginning in Mon, Mes, Notre, Nuestro or any other possessive pronoun, as well as any beginning with Chez.

This also stands when the name of the restaurant is a noun; Panera, for example, meaning “Bakery.” In English, we would not say we are going to the bakery’s. Why, then, do we say we’re having lunch at Panera’s? Let’s not.

Sorry for the grumpies. I’ve suddenly become very hungry.

(But while we’re at it, it’s Williams-Sonoma, not Williams and Sonoma. Jones New York, not Jones of New York.)

When in doubt, take your cue from the sign:

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November 15, 2011 · 7:51 am

Stream of unconsciousness

It’s interesting where roads lead. Sometimes a little free association can take us down an amusing path to sparkling treasure.

For me, the starting point was ballroom dancing. As a freelancer, my flavor of the week can be just about anything; this time, it’s dancing. Often when I start a new writing project, I go to sleep with ideas swirling about, in hopes a few will collide and stir creative copy. Other times, it’s just dust.

While listening to the radio on Sunday, I sang along with Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” as I had a thousand times before. It’s a beautiful song. This time, though, I wondered what in the world it meant that “We skipped the light fandango.” I thought about it. Could the phrase be a variation on “trip the light fantastic?”

I always considered trip the light fantastic to be ritzy and glitzy, from another era. I’ve never found occasion to use it in conversation, and certainly never understood where it came from or what it even meant exactly. (For you younger readers, it means to dance nimbly or lightly in a pattern.)

On Monday I woke up mulling my latest writing challenge. Might there be a place for tripping the light fantastic? I looked it up to ensure I understood the meaning and origin of the expression. Good thing too because I learned that, not only did it come from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but “tripping the light fantastic” was sixties drug lingo.

I continued searching. And I found a most delightful poem by John Milton, L’Allegro, published in 1645. It’s 150 lines long; I’ll share just the first excerpt that popped up:

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles
Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free …

Don’t you just love it?

Later in the poem, I found bonus words I’ll tuck away, should I ever be hired to write about beer:

To many a youth and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequer’d shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a Sunshine Holyday
Till the live-long daylight fail,
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.

So here’s to A Whiter Shade of Pale.

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November 12, 2011 · 11:43 am

Write me a letter

All right, wordies, who’s up for a Word Nymph challenge?

Here’s the background:  This week I wrote my first letter to the editor of The Washington Post. That’s significant considering I’ve been reading the Post since I could read. In fact, I still have the Sunday edition my father bought the day I was born. It’s also surprising that I only now penned my first gripe, considering the nitpickiness of my nature.

Like many newspapers, the Post has suffered sizeable cutbacks in recent years, many of which have hit the editing team. Up to now, when I’ve noticed an occasional typo or less occasional grammatical, spelling or punctuation error in my hometown paper, my reaction has been more sympathetic than critical.

However, last Sunday, an erroneous subhead provoked my inner schoolmarm. I fired off a pithy primer on subject-verb agreement that I thought might have a chance of being printed, if not in the daily Letters, then surely in Saturday’s “Free For All” space, typically set aside for granular grievances.

I awoke today—Saturday—with the excitement of a child on Christmas morning, and ran out to get the paper. I flipped directly to the editorial pages. Nada. I wondered: Was my letter too nitpicky? Too esoteric? Not well written enough?

Here’s the challenge:  1. Read the following headline, along with its subhead (sorry, I can’t find a link to the original editorial). 2. See if you notice the grammatical error. 3. Submit, in the Comments section below, your pretend letter to the editor, using fewer than 200 words (mine was 106). The best submissions will win a prize and the opportunity to help me the next time I’m stirred to speak up. Extra credit goes to anyone who can furnish the link to the editorial.

Picking on Catholic University
A complaint of bias against Muslims seem frivolous.

Go.

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November 2, 2011 · 8:20 am

Gavotte words?

Do you ever think about—really think about—where we get our vocabulary words?

They come from an endless variety of places. There are the ones we were forced to learn in school, the ones we read in books and looked up, the ones we heard smart people use and adopted as our own. There are the ones our parents wrote on cards and made us study in the small room of the house.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still collecting vocabulary words. From time to time I spotlight my favorite ones in this space. Right next to the song lyrics.

Only recently have I thought about the words I learned in my adolescent years as a radio junkie. One day last week, while in the car, I remembered the first time I ever heard the word invincible. I wonder if you learned it from the same source.

If you’re about my age, and you grew up listening to Top 40 hits of the 60s and 70s, you too might have learned invincible from Helen Reddy. “I am strong, I am invincible, I am wom-a-a-a-n.”

I’m making an effort now to listen more closely and nostalgically to the oldies so I can build the list.

I had never heard of a funeral pyre until 1967, when The Doors sang, “and our love become a funeral pyre,” which I confess I thought was funeral parlor; it makes about as much sense, not to mention the lack of subject-verb agreement. Leon Russell came along in 1972 with “I’m up on a tight wire, flanked by life and the funeral pyre.”  I still didn’t know what a pyre was but I liked the song and, looking back, it’s pretty darn poetic.

Let’s skip over pompatus, because it’s been overdone and everyone knows pompatus isn’t really a word. Next?

Again in 1972, I learned a word that I couldn’t imagine ever using, but it caught my attention when Carly Simon sang, “You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte.” I think I did try to look up gavotte as a curious 12-year-old, and have been looking for the right opportunity to use it ever since. It was also in  “You’re So Vain” that I first heard of Saratoga.

In 1973, I first heard the word espionage. Anyone remember where? It’s obscure, I know. “He’s a mastermind in the ways of espionage.” All these years later, I still know all the words  to “Uneasy Rider” by Charlie Daniels (from which I also first heard of John Birch and Mario Andretti).

I know there are more. Can we keep this going?

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September 26, 2011 · 11:07 am

Mixed mementos

I tacked a day onto this week’s business travel to visit my mother in Phoenix. We had a nice time, and now off to work I go.

There’s one thing I’d like to tell you about the visit, only because it speaks volumes about how I got to be the way I am.

Before I arrived, my mother had been going through some boxes of family mementos. She had taken a few relics out to share with me. There were some old family photos, obituaries, news clippings (one about my grandfather, who was hit by a truck in 1939). In with the collection was a list of mixed metaphors.

My mother and her brother had collected these over the years. She and her siblings were blessed—or cursed—with a reverence for the English language and genetically endowed—or cursed—with a perverse sense of humor.

My cousins might be surprised to learn that these treasures, which until now were only traded aloud at family parties, dwell on typed pages (I’m bringing you copies). I trust it’s okay to share these here, as I presume the utterers have either passed on or aren’t reading this blog. While my uncle collected many during an illustrious career, my mother gathered others from friends and talk show hosts.

I did share a few from memory in earlier posts on malapropisms, mixed metaphors and other mix-ups, but here’s from the official family archive:

“That will take the steam out of their sails.”

“I’ll get that done by tomorrow, come hook or crook.”

“I’ve been beating my head against the bushes all day.”

“Oh, well, it’s all water over the bridge.”

“You could have knocked me over with a 10-foot pole.”

“Now the fat’s in the frying pan.”

“He’s really treading on thin water.”

“It was as hard as pulling hen’s teeth.”

“You can’t beat blood out of a dead horse.”

“How the Sam Hell!”

“I’m afraid there is no outlook in sight.”

“All right gentlemen, let us circumcise our watches.”

“That guy’s got a rough hoe.”

“He’s still green behind the ears.”

“That guy just beats to a different drummer.”

Commentary on something bad: “Well, that’s the luck of the Irish!”

After a harrowing visit to the dentist: “When that drill hit a nerve, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

On excellence: “He was head above shoulders.”

And my personal favorite: “When in Rome, you have to dance to the music.”

Have a good week and keep your metaphors separated.

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September 15, 2011 · 7:18 am

Poof!

“The man turned his friend into police.”

I won’t name names, but this item caught my attention this morning.

Why did the man make news, because he betrayed a friend or because he worked an act of magic?

Tip of the day: Know the difference between “into” and “in to,” between “onto” and “on to.”

No one wants to be turned in to police, but it might be fun to be turned into police.

That’s all for today. Would anyone care to offer more examples illustrating the importance of a space?

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September 7, 2011 · 9:37 am

Mining for competence

From time to time I ask you to indulge my curiosity about a matter of language, especially when I’m stumped.

Recently, you helped me with “one of the more” versus “one of the most,” though no one cited an authoritative source as I had hoped. It seems many of us know how an idea should be expressed in words, but we don’t always know why. I like to know why.

Here’s another one that has had me stumped for years, decades actually; I just never bothered to drill into it.

It was nearly 20 years ago that I began to wonder what the difference was between nouns ending in “ence” and those ending in “ency.”

A leadership phrase swept the corporate world decades ago: “core competency.” All through the ’80s and ’90s, the company for which I worked kept tens of thousands of employees busy perfecting and touting our core competencies. I wondered then what the difference was between competency and competence.

Lately, I’ve wondered about the other “ence” nouns: resilience, dependence, independence, even interdependence. They all have “ency” alternatives.

The question of the day is: Are there specific instances in which “ence” is correct but “ency” is not and vice versa?

Generally speaking, the answer isn’t easy to find, not for me, anyway. When you consult a dictionary, the answer is no.

My first sweep through a dictionary revealed that, in most cases, one is an alternate use, or more or less common use, of the other. In other words, they mean the same thing.

I wasn’t going to take that at face value. There had to be nuances beneath.

Not surprisingly, there are esoteric distinctions. For example, dependence is a term specific to the fields of mathematics and science.

As I often do when I go a-hunting for the truth and don’t find it in the dictionaries or stylebooks, I poke my head into an online chat. After a long night of peeking and poking, I came closer to gleaning the differences.

The “ence” noun pertains to a state of being: of being competent, dependent, independent, resilient. The “ency” form suggests a degree of that state, based on specific attributes.

For example, competence is the ability to perform a task, while competency is the knowledge, skills and abilities that distinguish superior performer from an average one.

Resilience is the ability of something to return to its original condition after being stretched or compressed, while resiliency is the physical (or mental) property that enables something or someone to return to its original condition.

Am I drawing an accurate conclusion or just searching for absolute truth where none exists?

Once again, your opinion is welcome, and your sources even more so.

Perhaps I just need a crash course in mining.

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