'Pretense' and 'pretext'

If I want to say that someone sold me a bad car, would I say they were operating under the pretext that it wasn’t junk? Or under the pretense?

According to the Associated Press Stylebook, “pretext” is the way to go in this situation: “A pretext is something that is put forward to conceal a truth: He was discharged for tardiness, but the reason given was only a pretext for general incompetence. A pretense is a false show, a more overt act intended to conceal personal feelings: My profuse compliments were all pretense.”

That’s a teensy difference. A pretext conceals a truth. A pretense conceals feelings. They’re both deceptions used as an excuse to say or do something disingenuous.
But AP style is really just for editors and people looking for a rulebook to conform to. If you want rules that apply to the language in every context, you need a dictionary. And here, in this world of rules for everyone, the pretense-pretext distinction is all but wiped out.

Under the entry for “pretense” in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, the fourth definition is “pretext” — meaning the two words can be synonymous. Under its entry for “pretext,” there’s no definition summed up as “pretense,” but if you click on “synonyms,” you land at a thesaurus page that lists “pretense” as one of the top words you can use instead.

Here's the full story in my recent column.

'Like' for 'such as'?

Sometimes readers of my column write to point out mistakes I made. Every once in a while they're right. But perhaps 95 percent of the errors they catch aren't really errors. They’re based on misconceptions that, ironically, I have addressed over and over again in the column.

Here’s an example:

“In your June 10 column you refer to "editors like me." Unless you're speaking of editors who bear similarities to you, I think the phrase should be "editors such as me.”

The author of this e-mail has been writing to me for at least seven or eight years. I’m sure I’ve mentioned the “like” vs. “such as” issue before in the column, just as I have here. Yet this reader often seems to think he’s educating me about issues I had no idea existed until he e-mailed me.

The issue of whether  “like” can be a synonym for “such as” is an old one, and  it’s well-known among people who pay attention to language. The popular misconception is that it cannot: “like” means "similar to” and “such as” means “for example” and that anything else equals bad grammar.

Not so. “Like” isn’t just a verb meaning “bearing a resemblance to.” It’s also a preposition that can mean “such as,” according to Merriam Webster’s.

Every other source I checked agrees. Yet I doubt I've convinced my e-mail friend and I'm even more doubtful that I've convinced him that I.

7 things you didn't know about the word 'and'

You use the word “and” every day, hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. But have you really mastered this most ubiquitous of conjunctions? Turns out, there’s more to using “and” than you may realize. Here are seven things you probably didn’t know about the ultimate English joiner word.

“And” can begin a sentence. I don’t know the origin of the myth that you can’t start a sentence with “and.” Perhaps some long-ago teacher got fed up with students incorrectly breaking sentences into fragments at the point of an “and.” Or perhaps some overconfident observer decided that “and” joins things within sentences and not sentences themselves. In fact, “and” can be grammatical and logical at the start of a sentence. But in that spot, it’s usually unnecessary, which is why it’s unpopular with editors who favor tight prose.

“And” doesn’t ask the ampersand to pitch in when it’s tired. “The cafeteria serves three kinds of sandwiches: ham, tuna and peanut butter & jelly.” Over and over, I see this in my editing work: Writers — too many to count over the years — will whip out an ampersand anytime they want to show a closer relationship than some previous “and” in the sentence shows. Every one of these writers just comes up with this idea on their own. There’s no rule that says ampersands work in concert with “and.” There’s no credible editing style that allows ampersands in running text at all. Yet these writers pop them in anyway.
In my recent column, I explain more about these five facts about "and."

— “As well as” can’t do the job of “and.” 
— “And” can’t be replaced by a dash to team up with “between.”
— In lists of three or more things, “and” can follow a serial comma — or not.
— “And” is usually preceded by a comma when it connects independent clauses. 
— “And” can team up with “also,” but it probably shouldn’t. 

The ghosts of teachers past

I never used to believe in ghosts. The idea of hauntings sounded ridiculous to me. Then I started writing about grammar. Now I know better.

For more than a decade now, I’ve been hearing bone-chilling tales of dead teachers haunting former students from the great beyond with bad information: You can’t end a sentence with a preposition. You can't use healthy to mean healthful. You can't start a sentence with but.

The stubborn persistence of these bad teachings never ceases to amaze me. But from time to time these chilling tales go beyond the pale, wowing me with just how bad bad information can be.

Case in point, an e-mail I got a while back:

Dear June. Today, in your column from the Pasadena Sun section of the L.A. Times, you used "the writer got bogged down." I will never forget several teachers, including one particularly memorable Mrs. Hamilton, telling me that using "got" in any sentence anytime was simply being lazy, that it was bad English, uncouth, uneducated, etc. You get the point.

Yup, there was once a teacher who took it upon herself to single-handedly condemn a well established and highly useful word. I particularly like that “uneducated” part -- and the irony of how it came from someone who needed only to open a dictionary to see that she was misinforming her own students. Of course, I didn’t say so to the poor guy in so many words. Instead, here’s what I wrote: 

The most common objection to got is that have and got are redundant in phrases like "I have got quite a few friends." Yes, it's inefficient, but it's accepted as an idiom. Every major language authority I know of agrees it's a valid option. 

We editors usually trim the gots out. Especially in news writing, which prizes efficiency, "He has got $20'" is a poor alternative to "He has $20." But that's an aesthetic. Not a grammar rule.

From what my correspondent was saying, the teacher was condemning the word "got" in all its uses. That's extreme to the point of being illogical. "Got" is the past tense of get, which can be both a regular verb and an auxiliary verb: "They got married."

It sounds as though Mrs. Hamilton would have everyone say, "They were married." But if so, that's just a personal preference she was trying to pass off as a rule. There isn't a dictionary under the sun that would back her up.

I hear a lot of stories about long-ago teachers who used to lay down laws that weren't laws. (It's wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. It's wrong to split an infinitive. It's wrong to begin a sentence with and.) These kinds of unfounded prohibitions were very fashionable in educational circles for a while. But they never were rules. It's unfortunate kids of yesterday continue to be haunted by bad information.