October 17, 2022

'I got to go'?

TOPICS: GET, GOT VS. HAVE, GOT VS. HAVE GOT

“My wife and I cringe at the use of … ‘got’ in daily language: ‘I’m late. I got to go!’ Don’t I have to go?” Grant in Orange County, asked in an email. “Is there a separate usage for ‘have’ and ‘got’? I’m so confused.”

When a reader tells me something makes them cringe, I cringe. The reason: Their peeves usually put me in the awkward position of having to tell them they’re wrong. If a word or phrase is so common that you’ve developed a conditioned response to it, that means that it’s probably standard usage — and therefore acceptable.

Not so with “I got to go.” I scoured my reference books to find a justification for this phrasing and came up empty-handed. None of my usage guides say it’s OK. And according to dictionaries, “got” — the past tense of “get” — doesn’t mean “must” or “have to.” So “I got to go” isn’t a dictionary-sanctioned way of saying “I have to go” or “I must go.”

The best excuse I can find for this use of “got” comes from me personally: When people say, “I got to go,” I assume they’re saying “I’ve” instead of “I” and just glossing over the “ve.” That would be fine because “I’ve got to go,” a contracted form of “I have got to go,” uses “have got” as an idiom meaning “have,” according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, and it’s “used in present tense situations usually in informal writing and in ordinary speech.”

“Idiom” is the key word here. It means that a construction that’s not grammatical is still OK because it’s standard. But when you want your English to be better than just OK, you should eschew “I have got” and stick with the simpler and 100% grammatical “I have.”

But “I got” isn’t always wrong. When you mean the verb “get” in the past tense, “I got” is correct. I got promoted. I got a raise. I got a parking ticket. It’s only wrong(ish) in cases where you’re using “got” like an auxiliary verb — especially to introduce an infinitive verb like “to go.” Here's the full story in my recent column.

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October 10, 2022

'Averse' and 'adverse'

TOPICS: ADVERSE AND AVERSE, GRAMMAR

“I’m not adverse to a little risk,” I said recently in a conversation about personal finance. Then I quickly revised my wording. “Averse. I’m not averse to a little risk.”

For all my years of studying English grammar and usage, I’ve never been comfortable with the difference between “averse” and “adverse.” My solution: I usually try to avoid both words altogether. Once in a while I’ll use “adverse,” only to realize I probably used it wrong, causing me to swiftly backtrack, then double down on my policy of never using either word.

My bad relationship with these words began early in my editing career when a 1965 book called “The Careful Writer” by Theodore M. Bernstein messed with my head: “‘Adverse’ means opposed, antagonistic, hostile. It is incorrectly used in the following sentence: ‘He reads the morning papers and is not adverse to reading about himself.’ In this example of litotes there is no intention of conveying an idea of hostility; the intention is rather to suggest disinclination. ‘Averse,’ therefore, would be the word to use because it means disinclined, reluctant, loath.”

I find that example confusing. As Bernstein himself said, “adverse” can mean “opposed.” So it seems reasonable to say, “He’s not opposed to reading about himself.” After all, a person who strives to be humble or who finds self-centeredness unseemly might oppose reading about himself. Anyone who’s googled their own name knows there’s something a little creepy about reading about oneself. So it’s not unreasonable to point out that, while some folks might be opposed to this kind of navel-gazing, this guy is fine with it.

Bernstein isn’t the only author whose advice on “adverse” and “averse” has let me down. Here’s Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage: “When used of people, ‘adverse’ and ‘averse’ are essentially synonymous, but ‘adverse’ chiefly refers to opinion or intention, ‘averse’ to feeling or inclination. Or, as it was put in the Literary Digest of 10 Feb. 1934, ‘We are adverse to that which we disapprove, but averse to that which we dislike.’”

So when you’re talking about people, the two words are synonymous except that they’re a little different? See why I get confused?

Luckily, in the real world, it’s a little easier than that because “adverse” often describes things and “averse” almost always applies to people. After all, an inanimate object can’t be averse to anything because “averse” is a feeling and only living creatures have feelings. Plus, “averse” often pairs with the preposition “to,” as in “I’m averse to risk.” Less commonly, it can also take “from”: “I’m averse from risk.”

Also, while some definitions of “adverse” are similar to those of “averse,” the former also has a unique definition: harmful, unfavorable or opposed to one’s interests.

In this sense, “adverse” often comes right before the word it modifies: Your policies can have an adverse impact, your medication can cause an adverse reaction, and when you go to the beach you want to avoid adverse weather conditions.

Yes, when it means “opposed,” “adverse” can pair up with “to” and describe people, but that’s less common than cases in which it means “harmful” and comes right before a noun.

If you’re looking for an easy guideline, consider this advice from Garner’s Modern American Usage: “To be adverse to something is to be turned in opposition against it — Thailand was adverse to Japan during most of World War II. The phrase usually refers to things, not people. To be ‘averse’ to something is to have feelings against it — averse to risk. The phrase usually describes a person’s attitude. Both words may take the preposition ‘to,’ but ‘averse’ also takes ‘from.’”

Good advice for the brave. But I’ll probably keep sidestepping both words altogether.

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October 3, 2022

Homonym, homograph or homophone?

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, HOMONYMS, HOMOPHONES AND HOMOGRAPHS

On an old episode of 30 Rock, disgruntled television executive Jack Donaghy tries to sabotage his network by greenlighting a slate of awful shows. Along with programming like Mandela starring Joe Rogan and a full hour of Gary Sinise’s band, one of the worst is called Homonym! It’s a game show that works like this: The host reads aloud a word to a contestant, just a word, and the contestant has to guess which meaning of the word is intended without any context.

Host: “Okay, your next word is meat.”

Contestant: “Um, when two people run into each other.”

Host: “Sorry. It’s the other one. Your next word is stare.”

Contestant: “Uh, okay, the things you climb —“

Host: “No. It’s the other one.”

Contestant: “It’s always the other one! Let me see the card!”

Host: “No! Never! Next word: sent.”

Contestant: “I don’t care. Cent like a penny.”

Host: “No. Sorry. No.”

Lights begin to flash.

Host: “It’s a Homonym! double-down. That means you get to guess again: sent.”

Contestant (brightening): “Okay, um, scent like a smell or an odor.”

Host: “No, it’s the third one.”

Contestant: “Go **** yourself.”

It was brilliant writing, with just one problem. Those aren’t homonyms. They’re homophones.

The Oxford English Grammar says that homonyms are "distinct words that happen to have the same form." Examples include the bank where you put money as opposed to the bank of a river. The bird called a duck is a homonym of the act of moving your head out of harm's way really fast: to duck. So homonym means, basically, "same name."

Words that are spelled differently but pronounced the same are "homophones." Ate as in he ate some cake and eight as in the number before nine are homophones. So are peak and pique, hair and hare, and cue and queue. In other words, homophones, as the “phone” part suggests, are all about sound. So meat/meet, stare/stair, and cent/scent/sent are homophones, not homonyms.

So what about words like dove in “A dove flew by” and dove in “He dove into the pool”? Words that are visually (graphically, if you will) the same but pronounced differently? Those are homographs, according to Oxford. Some more examples: the verb lead and the metal lead; does the present singular of do, versus does, the plural of the female deer doe; sow, as in putting seeds in the ground, versus, sow, a female pig.

So homonyms are named the same. Homophones sound the same. Homographs look the same.

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September 26, 2022

'This is she' or 'this is her'?

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, LINKING VERBS, PREDICATE NOMINATIVE, THIS IS HER

The phone rings. You answer. “May I speak with Ms. XYZ?” the caller asks. You’re Ms. XYZ. How do you reply? A reader in Orange County isn’t sure.

“Many will respond with ‘This is she.’ I usually reply, ‘That is me.’ Are either of these correct? Should I instead just say, ‘I am Ms. XYZ’?”

Before I answer, let’s be clear about something: This is an academic exercise. You can reply “This is she,” “This is her,” “That is me,” “I gave at the office” or “’Sup, homie?” It’s up to you. Formal, proper grammar is optional — especially when you’re dealing with someone who just interrupted your dinner to try to sell you a home warranty. But that’s what my Orange County reader wanted to know: From a standpoint of proper, formal grammar, which reply is best?

If you apply the grammar lessons you got at school, you’d likely get the wrong answer. We’re taught that subject pronouns like “she” do the action in the verb: She gave at the office. And we’re taught that object pronouns like “her” receive the action of the verb: The donation was given to her. That could lead you to think that “This is me” would be the correct way to answer your caller, since the sentence already has a subject, “this,” leaving the second pronoun in what looks like an object position.

So you’d conclude that the answer is “This is me.” And you’d be left wondering why that’s so out of sync with everyday use. After all, almost no one says, “This is me.” The more formal-sounding “This is she” is more common.

This seems odd. Usually, people speaking casually go for the less formal option instead of wording that sounds proper. For example, you never hear “Whom are you talking to?” It’s always “Who are you talking to?”

So if everyone uses the more formal-sounding “This is she” in place of the seemingly more logical “This is me,” there must be a reason, right? Yes. And we would know their reason if, in school, we were taught about either copular verbs or the predicate nominative. Here’s the full story on both in my recent column.

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September 19, 2022

To go boldly? Good news about the so-called 'split infinitive'

TOPICS: ADVERBS, GRAMMAR, split infinitive, TO BOLDLY GO

Reader Don in Los Angeles County wrote recently with a question about a well-known grammar issue called a “split infinitive.”

“I learned about them 50 years ago and I am somewhat sensitive about them still,” Don writes. “I always see them in everyday writing in The Times and other media. Are they now considered OK to use?”

The short answer is yes, split infinitives are OK to use. The long answer requires us to dig into a little history that shows that, contrary to popular belief, split infinitives have always been OK. But first, a quick primer.

If you’ve ever heard the term “split infinitive,” there’s a good chance you also heard the world’s most famous example, “to boldly go” from the opening sequence of the original “Star Trek” TV series. Here’s the idea: “To go” is an infinitive form of a verb. Think of that as a verb’s most general form. So unlike “goes” which is a conjugated form of “go” that you use with certain subjects like “he goes” and “she goes,” the infinitive “to go” is the basic form — the verb in its most general sense.
If you put something between “to” and “go,” the argument goes, you’re splitting it up. You’re not supposed to do that, they say, therefore split infinitives like “to boldly go” are errors.

That’s not so. For starters, as Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says, the term “split infinitive” is a misnomer, since “to” isn’t really part of the infinitive.

When used to introduce an infinitive like “go,” the “to” part is best categorized as a particle. The infinitive is the word after “to,” also called the base word. And nobody splits those because you’d have to chop a verb in half: g-boldly-o.

But those facts wouldn’t sway a lot of opponents of this structure, who argue that “to boldly go” and other phrasings that put an adverb after a “to” are bad form no matter what you call them. “Bad” is a matter of taste, so that’s a little more difficult to address. But it helps to look at these examples in my recent column.

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September 4, 2022

When to capitalize after a colon

TOPICS: CAPITAL LETTER AFTER A COLON, COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, LOWERCASE AFTER A COLON, PUNCTUATION

Sometimes a colon is followed by a capital letter, sometimes lowercase. Here's a quick guide to help you choose.

1.  If the stuff introduced by the colon is not a complete sentence, don’t capitalize the first letter (that is, of course, unless it’s a proper name). This is true in both AP and Chicago styles. Here’s an example: “I know what you did last summer: nothing.”

2. If the words that follow the colon form at least one sentence, AP style says to capitalize the first letter. “I know what you did last summer: You did nothing.”

3. In Chicago style, you capitalize the first letter after the colon only when the colon introduces two or more sentences. “I know what you did last summer: You did nothing. You were a couch potato.”

And in case you’re not clear on when to use a colon instead of, say, a dash or a semicolon or to start a new sentence. That's not as serious a problem as you may think. There is some overlap in these choices, which we’ll save for another day. But for now, here, in Chicago’s words, is a simple explanation of when to use a colon: “A colon introduces an element or a series of elements illustrating or amplifying what has preceded the colon.” I think of it kind of like a spotlight or a pregnant pause -- something that says, “Here it comes ...”

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August 29, 2022

Too big of a deal, or too big a deal?

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, TOO BIG A DEAL, TOO BIG OF A DEAL

Reader S.A. in Orange County, California, wrote recently with an interesting question: “I often hear or read comments where an unneeded ‘of’ is inserted, such as ‘It’s not that big of a deal.’ Shouldn’t it be ‘It’s not that big a deal’? It seems odd for people to add an extra word.”

S.A. isn’t alone. We’ve all seen and heard this use of “of,” including by highly literate people. For example, the famously brainy Freakonomics Twitter account posted a while back, “How big of a negative impact can noise have?”

“Big” isn’t the only word that inspires people to add an unnecessary “of.” Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage offers examples using “good” and “difficult”: I don’t care how good of a shape economists say we’re in. It wouldn’t be that difficult of a shot.

I agree with S.A.: It is odd. Why do we put that “of” there? I’m sure I’ve done so myself countless times, even though the sentence usually works just fine or better without the “of.” Consider all these sentences that are correct without “of”: How big a negative impact can noise have? It’s not that big a deal. I don’t care how good a shape economists say we’re in. It wouldn’t be that difficult a shot.

Here’s another thing that’s odd about this construction: Normally, when we English speakers create idiomatic uses like this, you can trace their origins back for centuries. Not so with “intrusive of.” Merriam’s found examples going back to the 1940s, but no earlier. And it’s mostly Americans using it.
“What we have here is a fairly recent American idiom that has nearly a fixed form: ‘that’ or ‘how’ or ‘too,’ or sometimes ‘as,’ followed by an adjective, then ‘of’ and a noun,” writes Merriam’s.

I’ve long suspected that we insert an unneeded “of” because subconsciously we’re thinking of the words “much of,” as in “too much of a good thing.” But Merriam’s points out that “sort of” and “kind of” also helped lay the groundwork for unnecessary “of.”

“The current idiom is just one of a group of idioms that are characterized by the presence of ‘of’ as a link between a noun and some sort of preceding qualifier,” Merriam’s explains. “Perhaps the oldest of these is the ‘kind of a’ or ‘sort of a’ construction, which is used by Shakespeare and is even older than that.” Here's more in my recent column.

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August 22, 2022

Back-to-school grammar tips

TOPICS: AFFECT VS EFFECT, APOSTROPHES IN PLURALS, GRAMMAR, IT'S VS ITS, WHOSE VS WHO'S

Heading back to school? Here are some grammar basics to make the school year easier.

Don’t write “it’s” in place of “its.” When you want to show possession, as in “The dog wagged its tail,” don’t use an apostrophe. Instead, use “it’s” only when you mean “it is” or “it has”: It’s raining. It’s been nice talking to you.

Don’t write “your” in place of “you’re.” If you want to tell someone “you are right,” the shorter form is “you’re right.” The one without an apostrophe, “your,” shows possession: Is that your phone?

Don’t write “who’s” when you mean “whose.” With an apostrophe, “who’s” means “who is” or “who has”: Who’s there? Who’s been eating my porridge? “Whose” deals with possession: Whose car is that?

Know the difference between “they’re,” “their” and “there.” Seeing a pattern here? Apostrophes cause a lot of confusion. “They’re” with an apostrophe means “they are”: They’re nice. “Their” shows possession: Their grades got better. “There” is a location, “Put it there,” or a way to say something exists, “There are a lot of people outside.”

Be careful with “let’s” and “lets.” “Let’s” is a contraction meaning “let us”: Let’s eat! Without an apostrophe, it’s a verb conjugated for a third-person subject: Troy lets his dog off the leash.

Don’t use an apostrophe to make a plural. Words ending in vowels — like tuba, tsunami, boo, hello and bayou — look weird when you put an S at the end. But that’s how you make them plural: tubas, tsunamis, boos, hellos, bayous. That applies to proper names, too. Jane and Sam Newberry are the Newberrys. No apostrophe, unless you want to put one after the S to show joint possession, like “the Newberrys’ house.”

Use “could have” or “could’ve,” never “could of.” It may sound like your friend is saying “I could of eaten that whole pizza,” but he’s not. He’s saying, “I could’ve.”

Use “affect” as a verb and “effect” as a noun: Caffeine doesn’t affect me. That drug has bad side effects. (In rare cases, “effect” can be a verb meaning to bring something about: “to effect positive change.” Even rarer, “affect” can be a noun meaning mental state. But you’ll probably never need those.)

Here are six more tips in my recent column.

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August 15, 2022

Compare to vs. compare with

TOPICS: COMPARE TO VS COMPARE WITH, GRAMMAR

When I was a beginning editor, old-timers coached me on the difference between “compare to” and “compare with.” They were different, these experienced editors explained, and couldn’t be used interchangeably. “Compare to,” they said, shows how things are alike, as in “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and “compare with” means to examine the differences and likenesses of two or more things, “How do last year’s earnings compare with this year’s?”

It wasn’t till much later I learned that editors can be wrong. How does that happen? How do people who get paid to fix word usage 40 hours a week misunderstand word usage? They assume that the rules of their job apply to the whole world. Imagine a teacher who every day tells kids, “No chewing gum! Spit it out!” walking up to a fellow shopper at her local grocery store and saying, “No chewing gum! Spit it out!” So when these veteran wordsmiths told me “compare to” and “compare with” were a matter of right and wrong, not a matter of style, they were wrong.

If you’re an editor who works for a publication that uses Associated Press style, you’d be correct to enforce a difference between “compare to” and “compare with” in articles you edit because that’s AP’s rule: “Use ‘compared to’ when the intent is to assert, without the need for elaboration, that two or more items are similar: ‘She compared her work for women’s rights to Susan B. Anthony’s campaign for women’s suffrage.’ Use ‘compared with’ when juxtaposing two or more items to illustrate similarities and/or differences: ‘His time was 2:11:10, compared with 2:14 for his closest competitor.’”

The Chicago Manual of Style, which book editors follow, has the same rule. So if you’re writing for publication, by all means follow their advice. But in the real world, worrying about whether you should put “to” or a “with” after “compare” is a waste of time.

In fact, you probably comply with the editing guides without realizing it. Here's my recent column explaining how.

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August 8, 2022

'Can' vs. 'may'

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR

In the 1800s, using the word “can” to ask for permission was considered standard English. But in the century that followed, something happened. Grammar fussbudgets got it in their heads that “can” should refer to ability and “may” should refer to permission. So if you ask whether you can go to the bathroom, you’re not asking to be excused but instead asking about the state of your own digestive health.
Where did they get this idea? No one knows. But it could have to do with the fact that “may” was being used for permission centuries before “can” existed in our language. And if you go back far enough, you unearth a rather delicious irony: In the eighth century, “may” referred to ability — just as “can” does today. Theoretically, you could have said, “I’m so powerful that I may lift this boulder over my head.” Around the same time, “may” adopted a second meaning, possibility, which is still in use today: It may rain tomorrow. This is also when “may” started to refer to permission: May I please be excused?

About 200 years later, “can” showed up in the language. At that time, “can” didn’t refer to ability, exactly. It meant to know something or to know how to do something. So you could have said “I can do math,” but you couldn’t say “I can lift this boulder,” since boulder-hoisting doesn’t require know-how.
It took a few more centuries before “can” came to mean “to be able to do something” — at a time when “may” was already doing that job. And by the year 1500, “can” and “may” had overlapping meanings.
So for hundreds of years, “can” and “may” both meant to be able to do something or that something was possible. During that time, “may” also meant to have permission, while “can” did not. That changed around 1800 when “can” started being used to refer to permission, making “Can I go to the bathroom?” proper speech. Then came the pushback.

Here's my recent column on "can" vs. "may" and why the rules aren't as strict as your mother taught you.

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