February 19, 2024

The enormous issue with 'enormity'

“While on the glacier, it was impossible not to feel humbled and awe-struck by its enormity.”

“I stood outside the arena amazed by its enormity.”

“When I look up at the night sky I am just overwhelmed by its enormity.”

If you were a student of William Strunk in the early 20th century carefully following the instructions laid out in his classroom guide “The Elements of Style,” you would have had no problem using the word “enormity” to refer to size — as the writers of the passages above did.

But if you read a copy of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” in the late-1950s or later, you would think that it’s a mistake to use “enormity” to mean bigness.

Yet if you open a dictionary today, you’ll see it’s not a mistake at all. What gives?

Well, like a lot of words, “enormity” has gone through significant changes over the years, some stickler-approved, some not.

Team Stickler is best represented by E.B. White, a onetime student of William J. Strunk, who in the late 1950s added about 50 pages to his former professor’s short classroom guide, transforming it into the bestseller that still rakes in the bucks today.

Among the many bits of information White inserted to make Strunk’s classroom instructions sound like universal rules for every English speaker was this: “Enormity. Use only in the sense of ‘monstrous wickedness.’ Misleading, if not wrong, when used to express bigness.”

If you’re looking for the safest, most buttoned-down way to use “enormity,” you can stop reading here. Just stick to the meaning about badness, not bigness, and no one can say you’re wrong. If you want a more thorough understanding of the issue, you can read about it in my recent column.

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February 12, 2024

When a lack of punctuation landed a woman in jail

Michael: The incident has already been reported.

When you see that sentence, do you think that I’m talking to Michael, or do you think that Michael said that and I’m quoting him? What if we added one more line for context?

Michael: The incident has already been reported.
Timothy: Then, sir, all is lost!

It’s starting to look like dialogue, right? Like the words after the name Michael are not me talking but in fact are Michael’s own words. Naturally, if I added quotation marks, all doubt would be erased.

Michael: “The incident has already been reported.”

But the quote marks would be wrong. For dialogue, according to both the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style, from which I lifted this Michael-Timothy dialogue verbatim, you should use only a colon and no quotation marks.

Yet a colon could mean the opposite. Sometimes colons are used to indicate you’re addressing someone directly. You see this most often in correspondence — emails, letters and the like.

Michael: I hope you’re well.

If this were the first line in an email, the reader would know immediately who’s talking. Plus, if you throw in a word before Michael like “dear” or “hey,” you erase all doubt. Dear Michael: I hope you’re well.

It’s a small miracle that this system doesn’t cause more problems. We can usually infer who’s talking from the context. For example, when we see a news headline that says, “Biden: You can’t have the strongest economy in the world with a second-rate infrastructure,” we know that it’s probably not someone at the newspaper speaking directly to Joe Biden but instead a shorthand way of attributing the quote to the president himself. Even if that’s not immediately clear, it usually takes no more than a sentence or two for the reader to understand who’s talking.

It’s a pretty good system, usually. But it didn’t work out so well for Monica Ciardi, a New Jersey mom who went on Facebook to vent about the way two judges handled her child-custody dispute with her ex-husband. Among Ciardi’s many angry posts was this one: “Judge Bogaard and Judge DeMarzo: If you don’t do what I want then you don’t get to see your kids. Hmm.”

Soon after, local police swarmed Ciardi’s house, handcuffed her and put her in jail, where she would spend the next 35 days for “terroristic threats, harassment and retaliation against a public official,” according to the New Jersey Monitor.

Ciardi says she wasn’t speaking to the judges — wasn’t harassing them or threatening them on her 50-follower Facebook account. She was instead paraphrasing the judges’ words and actions as she interpreted them — summing up the jurists’ implicit message. “She got arrested because she forgot quotation marks,” Ciardi’s public defender, Mackenzie Shearer, told the paper.

Yes, quotation marks could have prevented the whole unfortunate incident. But technically you can’t forget a punctuation mark if it was never required in the first place. Here's my recent column explaining the situation.

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February 5, 2024

'Log in' vs. 'login' and other one-word-or-two conundrums

A while back someone ask me about “login.” Should it be one word or two, she wanted to know. Or, more precisely, she wanted to know where I “stand” on the matter.

 While I’m always flattered when someone thinks my opinion is worth a diddle, the truth is that it’s not. So “where I stand” is wherever a good style guide or reference book tells me to stand.

According to the Associated Press Stylebook, “login” is a noun and “log in” is a verb. So, if you're following AP style, you use your login to log in. Piece of cake.

The Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t have an entry for "login." And neither Webster’s New World College Dictionary nor Merriam-Webster’s includes a listing for the word. So documents edited in Chicago style should use the two-word "log in" for both the noun and the verb.

 The “login” situation is a good guide for other one-word-vs.-two-word conundrums. Often, the noun form is one word and the verb is two words. Take “lineup”/ “line up”: You tell all the players in the lineup to line up on the field. Most style guides and dictionaries agree on this matter.

Here are some stumpers that are easily solved simply by applying the noun-is-one-word formula:

 makeup / make up – One word as a noun meaning composition or construction: the patient’s psychological makeup. Also one word as a noun meaning cosmetics (though American Heritage also allows “make up.”) Two words when a verb. 

 backup / back up – One word as a noun or adjective referring to an accumulation (The sink overflowed because of all the backup) or a form of support (Chief, call for backup). Two words as a verb.

 workout / work out – One word as a noun, two as a verb.

 pickup / pick up – Whether you're talking about a truck, a UPS man fetching a package you want delivered, or succeeding with a romantic prospect, the noun is one word and the verb two.

 giveaway / give away – One word as a noun, two words as a verb.

signoff / sign off – Ditto above. One word as a noun, two as a verb.

leftover / left over - Ditto that ditto. One word as a noun, two as a verb.

And, by the way, nouns can function as adjectives. So if you have a makeup case, a pickup time, a backup plan, a workout routine, or lineup changes, those are all one word.

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January 29, 2024

People who don't care about grammar often get it right anyway

“I’ll dress warm,” I wrote to friends recently in a group email about a get-together on the patio of a local café.

What happened next will sound familiar to every careful user of the English language: I second-guessed my own grammar. “Is ‘warm’ OK instead of ‘warmly?’” I wondered. “How do those rules work again? And, even if I got it right, do I have to worry my friends will think I was wrong? Can I defend my choice? Will I have to?”

If you know people who don’t care a whit about their grammar, don’t look down on them. Envy them. These folks not only sidestep a lot of this anguish, but, ironically, their nonchalance often ensures good grammar. After all, natural language is where grammar rules come from.

Winging it prevents hypercorrection, which is what happens when you work too hard to speak grammatically and, as a result, make a mistake. “Between you and I” is a good example. The more grammatically correct form is “between you and me,” since “between” is a preposition and prepositions take object pronouns. But people trying to be proper use “I,” ironically making their choice less proper than the people who didn’t try so hard.

That goes double for adverbs. Consider the sentence: Slice the onions thinly. To someone who’s fretting over grammar, the adverb “thinly” might seem necessary, since you’re talking about an action: slicing. But you’re not describing an action. You’re describing a noun: the onions.

“One must analyze the sentence,” advises Bryan Garner in Garner’s Modern American Usage. Here's the full story in my recent column.

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January 22, 2024

Another sentence structure to hate

Here’s an example of a sentence structure I just learned to hate: “There are lye-based products that clear debris out of pipes.”

You may not see anything odious about that perfectly common sentence structure. But when you compare it to a version that’s been revised by a professional editor, the problem becomes clear. Here’s the edited version: “Lye-based products clear debris out of pipes.”

Looking at the two versions, you immediately see that “there are” is unnecessary. Just extra words. Worse, these words force you to add one more word: “that.” Instead of saying the products clear out debris, you must say these are products “that” clear out debris. So the structure creates a wordier-than-necessary sentence.

True, shorter sentences aren’t always better. But they usually are. They make the best use of readers’ time and attention, wasting none of it on unnecessary words.

But needless words aren’t the only problem with the longer sentence. A closer look at the syntax reveals deeper problems.

In our revised version, the main clause has a tangible subject: lye-based products. Tangible subjects have a sensory effect on readers, evoking images, sounds or smells. Lye evokes burning and stinging and danger and a certain power. Even pairing it up with a bland, vague noun like “products” doesn’t diminish its effect on readers.

In the original sentence, the subject was the pronoun “there.” Technically, this is called the “existential there,” which is just a structure we use to say something exists. As a subject, “there” is a real yawner — as devoid of specificity as a word can be.

Existential “there” always uses a form of the verb “be,” in this case “are.” Forms of “be” are among the least-dynamic verbs you’ll find. Being is always less action-packed than doing. I explain how to handle this in my recent column.

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January 15, 2024

How to pronounce 'forte'

I don’t usually focus on pronunciation matters. They don’t much interest me — probably because they don’t frighten me. I know that pronunciation is dictated by usage — we speakers are the ones who vote for our preferred pronunciations every time we speak. So if everyone else pronounces a certain word a certain way for long enough, I can, too.

But there are a few pronunciation matters I find interesting, mainly because they came on my radar before I realized how the rules get laid down.

The one that’s one my mind today is “forte,” as in “Working with computers is definitely your forte.” Everyone pronounces that “for-tay.” I thought nothing of doing so myself until I came across an old Mallard Fillmore comic strip shredding to bits anyone who pronounced it that way. It should be pronounced, the author insisted, just like “fort.”

Sound like hogwash? Of course it is. But don’t take it from me. Here’s the word on dictionary.com, which will pronounce it for you if you press the little audio button saying you can pronounce it either “fort” or “for-tay.”

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January 8, 2024

Nonplussed about "nonplussed"

When it comes to grammar and usage, I’m generally non-nonplussable. I’ve been studying this stuff a long time. So when a friend or acquaintance asks me about a word, I usually have something intelligent to say.

But all that went out the window recently when, at a small gathering of friends, I was asked about “nonplussed.” Everyone else at the table had an opinion on the subject. The consensus was that people tend to use “nonplussed” to mean the opposite of what it really means. “Right, June? What say you, June?”

To which I said me — nothing. I had a fuzzy recollection of once being aware of how this word worked. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what the controversy was — or even the definition.
Clearly, it was time for a refresher on “nonplussed.”

The verb “nonplus,” means to perplex or baffle. But you don’t hear it much as a verb. People don’t often say, “Yo, don’t nonplus me, dude.” They could, but they don’t.

Mostly, you hear it in sentences like “He was nonplussed,” in which it’s a verb participle being used as an adjective. Using past-tense verbs as adjectives is standard, by the way. Think: “broken heart,” “painted fence,” “canceled flight,” “known quantity” and “waxed floor.”

“Nonplussed” can be spelled with one S or two, but the double-S form seems to be preferred by dictionaries.

As a noun, “nonplus” means a state of perplexity or a quandary. But this, too, is rare. You don’t often hear “The math questions on the test really threw me into a nonplus.”

In fact, this is how “nonplus” first entered the English language in the 16th century: as a noun meaning “quandary,” which was picked up from the Latin “non plus,” which means “no more.” Here’s an example from 1593 cited by Merriam-Webster. “I am brought to a nonplus, O Lorde what shall I saie?”

It took another century or so before “nonplus” evolved into a verb meaning “to cause to be at a loss as to what to say, think, or do,” which is basically what it means today.

But recently, "nonplussed" has become controversial, which I explore in my recent column.

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January 2, 2024

How to write addresses

One of the most common things I have to change in the articles I edit is the way addresses are written. Here's an example typical of the stuff that comes us:

The museum is at 281 Maple Ln., Topeka, KN, 50022.

There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, there’s almost no wrong way to write an address. And, of course, getting it right is much more important than making it pretty. But the way that the AP and Chicago style manuals tell editors to write them can be beneficial to any writer who wants to go easy on their readers’ eyes and doesn’t have an editor to help them.

The most important thing is consistency. An article or blog entry that changes its address style from one sentence to the next isn’t doing the reader any favors. It's jarring and can detract from the information: “The museum, located at 9120 Third Street, moved from its former location at 9128 43rd Terr. in order to be closer to its corporate offices at Three 82nd St.”

So here are two simple approaches, based on the two major editing styles, that can make your addresses more flowing and integrated into a larger message.

Many newspaper styles say to use numerals for everything in an address, including numbers less than 10. They abbreviate only “Street,” “Avenue,” and “Boulevard," making them “St.,” “Ave.,” and “Blvd.” But they only abbreviate these terms when they appear with an exact street address. If the street name stands alone, the street name shouldn’t be abbreviated. So, according to this style, you’d write:

The museum is at 281 3rd St., at the corner of 3rd Street and Wilshire Boulevard.

Newspapers don’t use postal codes for states. So it’s “California” instead of “CA.” If you want to mirror newspaper style, avoid those two-letter postal abbreviations. On the other hand, if you like the handy two-letter versions better, you can make that a style rule for your own website or blog.

Also, many newspapers don’t include the state for any address in the state the newspaper covers. So, for example, in the Los Angeles Times, cities mentioned are always considered to be within California unless expressly stated otherwise. "They visited Fresno; Eureka; Eugene, Oregon; and Spokane, Washington."

Book and magazine styles don’t like abbreviating street names. They usually spell out Boulevard regardless of whether it appears in “100 Wilshire Boulevard” or just plain old “Wilshire Boulevard.”

And no styles I know of ever abbreviate Drive, Circle, Terrace, Way, or Place.

So if you want an easy-to-remember and easy-to-read style, just either spell out every street name or spell out all but Ave., St., and Blvd. appearing with street numbers, use numerals for all numbers, and only include states when they're not obvious.

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December 26, 2023

What's the plural of 'media'?

Whenever I need to use a word that has more than one correct form, say for example past-tense forms like dreamed vs. dreamt or plural forms like fungi vs. funguses, I check the dictionary. For every word with multiple correct options, dictionaries always have a preference. And they indicate it by listing their preferred form first.

For example, in Webster’s New World College Dictionary under fungus, the first thing you see is “fungi or funguses,” meaning the dictionary prefers fungi.

 So you can imagine my shock when I looked up the noun medium and saw that the dictionary’s first choice for a plural was not media but mediums. Had I stopped there, I would have forever believed that this Webster’s — the dictionary I have to follow in most of my work — would have me say, “Print is one news medium, digital is another, and together they’re two different types of mediums.”

 That’s completely counter to conventional wisdom. Most people who pay attention to this stuff will tell you without hesitation that one news medium and another news medium together form two news media. (Which is different from a fortune-teller type “spiritual medium,” which in the plural is “mediums.”) Yet, in the very place that this dictionary indicates its preferred forms, it seemed to be saying that I should opt for mediums over media.

 Good thing I kept reading. Under its third definition for the noun medium, Webster’s says: "3. pl. usually media: any means, agency, or instrumentality, specif., a means of communication that reaches the general public and carries advertising.”

 In other words, the preferred plural indicated at the beginning of the listing wasn't the same as the preferred plural for one specific definition of the word. So, yes, if you consult two fortune tellers you talked to two spiritual mediums. But if you read a newspaper and a magazine, you consulted two types of media.

 As for whether media is necessarily plural, that depends on its use. Media is sometimes treated as a plural, News media are covering this thoroughly, and sometimes treated as a singular, The media is going to have a field day.

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December 18, 2023

Pence, interrupted: How a comma undercut the then-VP's message to Trump

“You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome.” That single line from former Vice President Mike Pence’s book “So Help Me God” contains what Pence reportedly told investigators is a serious punctuation error: the comma.

Pence was talking with Donald Trump on Christmas Day 2020 when he told the then-president either “You know, I don’t think I have the authority” or “You know I don’t think I have the authority.” According to ABC News, Pence told investigators looking into the Jan. 6 insurrection that what he really said was the no-comma version: that Trump knew that Pence didn’t believe he had the authority to change the outcome of the presidential election. But either Pence or one of his editors stuck a comma in there, changing the meaning of the sentence and offering a perfect example of just how important commas can be.

Commas have a number of jobs. They can separate coordinate nouns, like “We have a cat, a dog and a hamster.” They can separate coordinate adjectives, like “Our cat is cute, cuddly and playful.” They can separate whole clauses that are connected with a conjunction, like “Our cat is cute, but our dog is cuter.” They can set off a direct address, meaning when you call someone by a name, which is why “Let’s eat, Grandma” means something quite different from “Let’s eat Grandma.” They can separate nonrestrictive information, which means clauses that don’t influence the meaning of the noun: “The man, who was driving, was drunk” means there was just one man, but “The man who was driving was drunk” means you’re singling out the guy behind the wheel from some other guys.

In Pence’s book, the comma is doing yet another job: setting off an introductory clause. Here’s my recent column examining how that works.

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