March 13, 2023

Feel positively or feel positive? Why the New York Times made the wrong call

“Many older adults said they feel positively about their lives,” the New York Times reported recently.

That sentence probably sounds as acceptable to you as it did to the Times editors. But what if they wrote instead: “Many older adults feel happily about their lives”? The structure is identical, but suddenly the grammar seems wrong. The adjective “happy” would seem like a better choice — many adults feel happy — than the adverb. So “happily” makes a good test of whether the New York Times’ sentence required an adverb or an adjective.

Well-informed people can disagree about whether the Times should have used “positive” instead of “positively.” But in my view, they made a mistake. They should have used the adjective “positive.” To understand why requires a quick look at which verbs are modified by adverbs.

We were all taught in elementary school that adverbs modify verbs and adjectives modify nouns: Happy adults sing happily. That’s true, but there’s more to the story.

There’s a whole category of verbs that take adjectives, not adverbs, as their complements. They’re called copular or linking verbs, and they either refer back to the subject or deal with the senses.

The most common copular verb is “be,” along with its conjugated forms including “is,” “am” and “are.” Native English speakers understand intuitively that “be” works differently from other verbs. Think about these sentences: He is nicely. We are hungrily. I am sadly. In every case, an adverb comes after the verb and in every case that’s obviously the wrong choice. All those sentences need an adjective: He is nice. We are hungry. I am sad. That’s because the verb “be” is a copular verb. It refers back to the subject. And because subjects are nouns or pronouns, they’re modified not by adverbs but by adjectives.

And there's more. Here's my recent column on which verbs take adjectives instead of adverbs.

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February 27, 2023

Is the older of two also the oldest of two?

If you have two children, ages 10 and 12, is the 12-year-old the oldest? Or is she the older? Can you say she’s your eldest child? Or must you say she’s the elder child?

The answer, believe it or not, is very controversial. Some people say that when you’re comparing only two things, you can’t use the superlative — the “est” form — and that only the comparative — the “er” form — will do.

Even the language bosses are bitterly divided.

“When two items are being compared, a comparative adjective is needed, ‘the greater of the two’; when more than two are being compared, the superlative is needed, ‘the greatest of the three,’” says the 2003 edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage, which calls it a “blunder” to use the superlative in comparisons of two.

Other experts make a strong case that superlatives are fine for comparisons of two.

“No one will misunderstand you if you say, ‘She is the oldest of the two,’” writes Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. “The rule serves no useful purpose at all. It is therefore a perfect shibboleth, serving no practical function except to separate those who observe the rule from those who don’t.”

Here's more in my recent column about how to navigate this language issue.

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February 20, 2023

Can you say 'more clear' instead of 'clearer'?

“When is it grammatically correct to use ‘more clear’ in place of ‘clearer’?” an internet user asked on Quora last year.

There are some problems with this question. The first is that the writer was under the impression that “more clear” is the grammatically correct wording in some contexts, while “clearer” is correct in others.
Second: The writer posted this question in a public forum, where people who don’t know the answer can pretend that they do and where, as a result, people contradict each other with absolute certainty.
“‘More clear’ is not English,” one user replied. “The expression is ‘clearer.’”

“The use of either one is grammatically correct,” said another.

No one teaches us in school where to turn with questions like this. Even I found this matter tough to research. So you can’t blame the questioner for seeking out help on the internet, where you can get good answers and bad answers, with no way to know which are right, served with a generous helping of spam ads for stock market tips and software products.

So what’s a well-meaning English speaker to do? First, toss out the idea that there’s only one correct way to write or say something. English is pretty flexible, so more than one wording can be grammatical. Think about “aren’t I” and “amn’t I” and you’ll see what I mean.

Second, understand where correctness comes from in English. There’s no Grammar Penal Code — no official list of what’s right and wrong. Instead, there are three elements that determine correctness: syntax, dictionary definitions and common usage.

Syntax means the grammatical mechanics of sentences, for example how subjects should agree with verbs. You don’t say, “We knows how,” you say, “We know how.” “Know” is the correct conjugation for the first person plural, so “knows” is ungrammatical when paired with “we.”
Dictionary definitions are more straightforward. If you say “dog” when you mean “cat,” you’re using the word “dog” wrong.

The third arbiter of correctness in English, common usage, tells you whether a structure is so well established that it’s considered idiomatic — correct despite being ungrammatical. “Aren’t I” is the best example. The pronoun “I” usually pairs up with “am,” not “are.” But at some point, “aren’t I” became standard idiom, so it’s correct even though it’s ungrammatical.

So how does all this apply to the choice between “more clear” and “clearer”? Here's my recent column explaining why both are acceptable.

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February 13, 2023

Dissatisfied or unsatisfied?

Are you dissatisfied with a recent purchase? Or are you unsatisfied with it? The two words seem interchangeable because, in most cases, they are. But a closer look shines a light on the fascinating nuances of the English language and how we use words when we’re not paying attention.

“Dissatisfied” and “unsatisfied” both mean “not satisfied.” But they aren’t exactly the same.

“Though ‘dissatisfied’ and ‘unsatisfied’ appear to be synonyms, there are distinctions evident in the usage examples in the Merriam-Webster files,” says Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.

Despite the word “Dictionary” in its name, this book is a usage guide, which has a different job from that of Merriam-Webster’s actual dictionaries. Usage guides don’t just list words with their definitions. They analyze how words are used, based on databases full of examples from print and speech.

So while Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines both “unsatisfied” and “dissatisfied” as “not satisfied,” the usage guide homes in on an important difference in the examples in its research database: “These examples show that ‘unsatisfied’ is more frequently used to modify nonhuman terms (such as ambition, debts, curiosity, demands, claims) than human ones and that in all instances the meaning is generally of something or someone being ‘unfulfilled’ or ‘unappeased.’”

Clearly, the idea of an unsatisfied debt relies on a specific definition of “satisfy”: to carry out the terms of something, like a contract, or to meet a financial obligation. The idea of a dissatisfied customer builds on a different definition: to make happy, please or appease.

But that doesn’t explain why the two terms use different prefixes. Both “un-” and “dis-” have multiple definitions, but none that can make sense of the differences between “dissatisfied” and “unsatisfied.” Apparently, “dis-” just hitched itself to the “happy” meaning of “satisfied” while “un-” teamed up with the contractual or financial meaning.

These words aren’t mutually exclusive. There’s nothing wrong with saying you’re unsatisfied with your purchase. But, fascinatingly, you would never say a debt is dissatisfied, which would seem to suggest that the debt is a living creature with feelings.

All this brings to mind a more famous controversy around a similar word pair: disinterested and uninterested. The kerfuffle started in the early 1950s when language experts started complaining that “disinterested” was being widely misused and that misuse was eroding a helpful and “elegant” distinction.

“Disinterested,” these folks said, didn’t mean not interested. It meant impartial. As one expert put it in 1970, “The umpire, ideally, would be disinterested; the one who did not care about the game would be uninterested.”

So in this view, if you said you were disinterested in pop music or history or your uncle’s war stories, you would be saying something different from what you meant.

But like so much of the language fussiness that came into fashion in the 1950s, this idea is a little misguided. It was never true that “disinterested” originally meant impartial and that this original definition was eroding due to sloppy usage. Merriam’s usage guide examines Oxford English Dictionary entries going back to the early 1600s to show that this belief is “erroneous.”

“The OED shows that the earlier sense of ‘disinterested’ is the simple negative of ‘interested,’” Merriam’s reports. There’s no evidence it meant “impartial” until a half century later. Meanwhile, “uninterested” has done an about-face: When it first appeared in the 1700s, “uninterested” meant impartial or fair in the way that “disinterested” does today.

So anyone who thinks the distinction between “disinterested” and “uninterested” has been going downhill can rest assured that the words today are closer to their original meanings than they were 50 or 60 years ago.

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February 6, 2023

Subject-verb agreement in the real world

“Bank owned properties, commonly called REO or real estate owned, is one of the most common foreclosure investment practices today.” This sentence, which I saw on a real estate website, shows how easy it is to create a subject-verb agreement error.

Verbs should agree in number and person with the subject. Usually, this is simple: It’s “I am,” not “I are.” It’s “he walks,” not “he walk.” But it’s not always that easy. 

The longer your sentence, the easier it is to lose track of which word is supposed to be the subject, making it that much easier to use the wrong verb conjugation. 

In “Bank owned properties commonly called REO or real estate owned is one of the most common foreclosure investment practices today,” the main verb is “is.” The subject it’s supposed to agree with is a little hard to pin down because it’s surrounded by so much other stuff. But when you zero in on it, you see that the real subject is “properties.” So at its core, this sentence says “properties is.” Of course, it should be “properties are” in which a plural verb matches a plural subject. But the writer stumbled and there was no editor on the job to catch him. 

Whenever your subject gets complicated, pay careful attention to the verb to make sure the two agree.

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January 30, 2023

Comma question from a friend

A friend asked me about the commas in this sentence, which appeared in a textbook she was editing: "Greta had learned about different cultures, and perhaps more importantly about her own.”

My friend, Tracy, thought it would be better if she moved the commas around and wanted to know if I agreed. Here’s how she wanted to write it: "Greta had learned about different cultures, and, perhaps more importantly, about her own."

There’s no single answer here, but, as I told her, I like her commas better because they're more logical. Technically, you’re not supposed to put a comma before an “and” that doesn't precede a whole clause. Though you can if you really want to indicate a strong division or pause.

So here commas do a more logical job of setting off a parenthetical — “perhaps more importantly” — from a sentence that otherwise wouldn't need a comma: “Greta learned about different cultures and about her own."

And if you bristled about the use of “importantly” instead of “important,” you’re not alone. Tracy didn’t like it, either, just like the many people who prefer “important” to “importantly” in contexts like these.

These folks think the adverb form, “importantly,” is wrong here because adverbs describe the manner in which an action takes place. From this perspective, “Greta learned about different cultures, most importantly, her own,” suggests that the adverb “importantly” is modifying the verb “learned,” saying that she somehow went about learning in an important way.

That would be true if adverbs only modified verbs. But in fact adverbs can modify whole sentences or thoughts, as in “Unfortunately, my flight was canceled.” So “importantly” is always an acceptable way to modify a whole thought.

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January 23, 2023

How to get past participles right every time

I’m a little fussy about past participles. Unjustifiably fussy. It may have to do with the fact that I married someone from small-town Massachusetts, where everything is “I have ate this” and “I should’ve went to that” and “You could’ve brung your sister.” And every time I visit, I have to mute the little voice in my head that says, “It’s I have eaten this” and “I should have gone to that” and “You could’ve brought your sister.”

I should let it go. It’s a waste of energy to expect people to use my preferred past participles, especially because most of the past forms that make me flinch aren’t wrong, exactly. “Dreamt” is as correct as “dreamed,” whether I like it or not.

Even when I’m right, it’s silly to care. People don’t say, “I have lain on the beach for an hour.” They say “laid.” According to leading dictionaries, “laid” is wrong in this context. But it’s a moot point. People aren’t going to start using “lain” in casual conversation.

If you don’t want to accommodate my absurdly stringent standards, you don’t have to. But if you’d like to know how to choose stickler-approved past participles, here’s a primer.

The past participle is the form of the verb that goes with “have.” Take the verb “begin,” for example. In the present it’s “I begin.” In the simple past tense it’s “I began.” But in past tenses that use a form of “have,” you say, “I have begun.” So “begun” is the past participle of “began.”

When “have” is in the present and working as an auxiliary, the verb tense is called the present perfect: I have begun. But when the auxiliary is “had,” which is the past tense of “have,” it’s the past perfect: I had begun. But those labels aren’t important. Either way, the word you’re pairing with “have,” “has” or “had” is a past participle.

For regular verbs, past participles are identical to simple past tense forms. For example: Today I walk. Yesterday I walked. In the past I have walked. Just add “ed” at the end of the verb.

Irregular verbs don’t follow a formula for their past tenses. Sometimes, the past participle is identical to the simple past tense: Today I think. Yesterday I thought. In the past I have thought. Other times, the past participle is different: Today I know. Yesterday I knew. In the past I have known.

In many cases, there’s more than one correct past participle. You can say, “I have swum in that lake many times” or “I have swam in that lake many times.” They’re both right.

The hardest thing about past participles isn’t choosing the right one. It’s knowing how to look them up. They’re all in the dictionary, but you have to understand how dictionaries communicate this information to you. Here's my recent column explaining how you can look them up.

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January 16, 2023

Some editor peeves for 2023

I think I speak for a lot of editors when I say: Bad grammar doesn't bother us as much as you'd think. Everyone makes grammar mistakes. Instead, we have our own unique peeves, many of them based on the errors professional writers make over and over and over. Here are a few of mine.

Quotations that haven’t been set up properly. “‘They are the finest educators in the country,’ said John Doe, president of the education association, speaking of Barb Taylor’s team.” If you have to add “speaking of,” “referring to” or something like that in a speech tag, you’re doing it wrong. In this example, which I adapted from a real article, the reader has to slog through almost 20 words to learn the meaning of the first word, “they.” Fix this by talking about Barb Taylor’s team before you quote John Doe.

Ampersands on auto pilot. “We’ll serve beer and wine, gin & tonic and rum & Coke.” Some people think ampersands show closer connections than the word “and” can show. So “beer and wine” can be connected with “and,” but for the inseparable pair “gin & tonic,” only an ampersand will do. This makes good sense except for one tiny detail: There’s no such rule. In running text, just use “and.”

For every organization, a force-fed abbreviation. Lots of writers believe that readers need to be taught the initials of every organization immediately after its full name: The National Assn. for Abbreviation Obsessives and Similarly Afflicted Individuals (NAAOSAI). Sometimes they’re training readers in how to read the rest of the article: “Memorize this abbreviation now if you want to understand what I’m saying from here on!” Rude. Other times, the abbreviation never appears again. The writer is just saying: “Stop what you’re doing and note that this organization has initials.” Rude and pointless. The Associated Press Stylebook agrees with me: “Avoid alphabet soup,” the guide says. “Do not use abbreviations or acronyms that the reader would not quickly recognize.” Instead use words the reader knows: the association, the group, the club or, if all else fails, its full name.

Needless words. I recently edited an article that started a sentence with “But what’s possibly most important to acknowledge is that …” This type of wordiness is a big problem if you want your readers to remain conscious. This phrase should be chopped out entirely, or at least pared down to “perhaps most important.” Always look for opportunities to streamline your sentences. Instead of saying the company “is committed to providing” quality care, say the company provides it. Instead of saying the organization’s leaders “make a point to” invest in their local community, just say they invest in their community. Instead of saying an adviser “serves to” guide students, just say she guides them. Instead of saying that patients experience “symptoms such as” headache and fever, just say they experience headache and fever. Instead of saying, along with “a host of partners like” the Humane Society, the ASPCA and others, just say along with the Humane Society, the ASPCA and others. Instead of saying the school superintendent “was pondering the idea of finding” a way to shelter homeless students, just say she was looking for a way. Instead of saying that the common cold and flu viruses “gain entry into” the body, just say they enter the body. Instead of saying “start by separating three eggs,” just say “separate three eggs.” These real-world examples all show how, by cutting out needless words, you can hold your readers attention while saving them a lot of time.

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January 9, 2023

When to cut 'both'

Here’s a word that makes me all chop-happy when I edit: “both.”

I comes up a lot in sentences like this one: “The hospital provides a supportive work environment for both doctors and nurses to provide superior patient care.”

 That “both” is, technically, just fine. It’s used correctly, of course. But it has one drawback. And when you weigh that drawback against the benefits of this “both,” I see no reason to leave it. 

The drawback is that “both,” when immediately followed by a plural noun, might momentarily be construed to be modifying that noun only. In other words, a someone looking at the phrase “both doctors and nurses” might first read it as “both doctors” and wonder which two doctors you’re talking about.

Granted, they wouldn’t be confused for long. It only takes a split second to realize that “both” is modifying the whole noun phrase “doctors and nurses.” But if your goal is optimum clarity, precision, and economy of words — which mine usually is when I’m editing — you have to question that “both.”

 Does it really add anything that offsets its drawbacks? Not in this sentence. “The hospital provides a supportive work environment for doctors and nurses” says it all just as well with fewer words. So I would chop “both” out of the sentence without hesitation.  

Writers use “both” more often than needed because, in spoken English, it can add some emphasis. It can say: Wow. Not just doctors but even nurses have a good gig here. But in print it doesn’t always have the same effect. Readers can’t always “hear” the way the word sounds in the writer’s mind. So “both” can do more harm than good.  

Sometimes “both” can achieve the desired effect in print. Used well it can drive home that “wow” point quite well — even before a plural noun it doesn’t modify alone. That’s why I weigh the merits of “both” on a case-by-case basis.  

But my simple rule of thumb is: If “both” isn’t adding anything to the sentence and it comes before a plural noun that isn’t its sole partner, “both” is an extra word we can do without. 

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January 3, 2023

Editor grievances

In an old “Seinfeld” episode, perennially hotheaded Frank Costanza resurrects a holiday he invented years before, Festivus. Instead of a Christmas tree, there’s a Festivus pole. Instead of carols, there are “Feats of Strength.” But perhaps the most important Festivus tradition is “The Airing of Grievances,” in which the family members sit around the dinner table while Frank tells them all the ways they’ve annoyed him over the past year.

Me, I’d never trade the eggnog and mistletoe to get screamed at. But now that the gifts are unwrapped and the cookies are long gone, I have some bones to pick with certain writers. So here, in my recent column, is a deep dive into my 2023 editor grievances: Quotations that haven’t been set up properly. Ampersands on auto pilot. Organizations' initials in parentheses after the name. Needless words.

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