December 31, 2012

Hurray for Cliches?

Do you like clichés?

No, of course you don’t. No normal person would answer that question with a yes. I hate them, too. Or so I would have said till I flipped past an entry on clichés in Garner’s Modern American Usage.

Here are the terms that were listed there:

at the end of the day

blissful ignorance

but that’s another story

comparing apples and oranges

conspicuous by its absence **

crystal clear

far be it from me

fast and loose

get with the program *

his own worst enemy

if you catch my drift *

innocent bystander

moment of truth

more in sorrow than in anger **

more sinned against than sinning **

my better half *

nip in the bud

on the same page

pulled no punches

sea change

six of one, half dozen of the other

throw the baby out with the bathwater

viable alternative

The ones with two asterisks next to them I don’t remember ever hearing before I looked at this page in Garner's, at least not in that exact phrasing. The ones with the single asterisks I dislike. Every single other one, I must confess, I like.

I know that some of these cliches shut people’s brains right off.

For example, people who’ve heard “at the end of the day” once too often grow to really hate it. And I get why overused and well-used expressions garner so much contempt. Their actual words lose mean and they become sort of a humming nod to a vague idea created by brains in off-mode and appealing to brains in off-mode.

Yet, somehow, “on the same page” fills a need that “in agreement,”  “collaborating” or any other term doesn’t quite fill.

“Throw the baby out with the bathwater” seems a great way to communicate the idea of discarding too much good along with the bad. And “moment of truth” -- come on. Are there any better words in the world to express the idea of the moment – the one life-changing moment – in which a flash of insight or clarity will change everything forever?

As someone who writes about language, I feel almost obligated to chant the “avoid clichés” team motto. But perhaps saying “avoid clichés” is itself a cliché that supplants a once substantive message with droning noise that has lost all meaning.

And by the way, if, like me, you’ve been told that cliché can only be used as an adjective, as in “a clichéd expression” and not as a noun “it’s such a cliché,” that’s not true. It’s a noun, too.

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December 24, 2012

She Literally Couldn't Hear Me

The newspaper column that I write always ends with an e-mail address, JuneTCN@aol.com, where readers can contact me.  And they do , often to cheer on my fight against bad grammar and to ask me to tell people to stop engaging in some linguistic habit that drives them nuts.

That would be lovely if 1. I had ever given the tiniest indication that I was in fact “fighting” against bad grammar and

2. I had any desire to tell people how to use the language.
I don’t do either in my column. Never have. I just talk about questions that come up and the answers I find.

Usually those answers are not what grammar-cop types want to hear -- research almost always proves them wrong in matters like whether you can use “hopefully” to mean “I hope that” or “healthy” to mean “healthful” (answer to both: of course you can).

Lucky for them, the things I actually say needn’t stand in the way of their hearing whatever they want to hear.

I’ve written about this bizarre dynamic before, but it happened again recently after I wrote a column about the word literally.

In the column, I explained that some dictionaries allow the word to be used as an intensive – that is, figuratively. According to those
sources, it’s fine to say, “I literally flew out of the room.” And I said so in the column.

What happened next shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Not one but two readers wrote to congratulate me on my column railing against people's excessive and wrong use of literally.

“Thank you SO much for addressing the overuse of “literally”! That’s been bugging me for some time now. At work, I’m surrounded
by young women who use that word constantly."

She wasn't done.

"Would you consider writing a column about the difference  between transitive and intransitive verbs? I keep reading about people filing bankruptcy and graduating college. UGH!”

Sigh.

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December 17, 2012

*'Enjoy Summer Better'?

Here’s an interesting email I got a while back:

<<I enjoy your column and am curious about your opinion of the Time Warner ads enticing us to “Enjoy summer better” and “Enjoy back to school better.” My initial reaction was a snicker and comeback: “I already enjoy it good,” but I can’t figure out why it irks me. Is it nasty grammar, stinky syntax, or just me?>>

Usually people who write me have a specific problem with a usage and ask me whether I agree that a usage is wrong. But in this case, she didn’t have a specific problem. It was kind of my job to figure out her problem -- then address it.

I did the best I could. Here was my response:

<<I'm not sure what exactly the issue is with "Enjoy summer better," either. Perhaps it's rooted in an idea that "better" is an adjective and therefore can't modify a verb like "enjoy"? It actually is both an adjective and an adverb: http://www.yourdictionary.com/better. In the latter form, it means "in a more excellent manner" or "in a more suitable way."

So "better" is grammatical as a modifier of "enjoy." But it's a little unidiomatic. It's more common to say you enjoy something "more" than to say you enjoy it "better." So, yeah, it's a kind of odd.

The other issue could be that "better" always suggests a "than."

"I like Joe better" only works in a context in which the listener already knows who I'm comparing Joe to.

Your example sentence leaves the "than" concept implied. "Enjoy summer better than you would have without our service" is, I suppose, the general idea. But without an explicit "than" or any context to suggest one, a lone "better" seems a little out of place.

As for "Enjoy back to school better," it's a bit of a stretch -- though not wrong, per se -- to treat "back to school" as a noun. Still, I'm sure most linguists would argue that it's sufficiently established as a noun to render this sentence grammatical.

Hope that helps!>>

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December 10, 2012

*When Not to Capitalize People's Titles

Most of us have bosses. And even long after the days when people were inclined to call a boss "Mr." anything, most of us nonetheless feel obligated to show them a little deference.

I suppose that’s why so many copywriters and even features writers think that the titles of company bigwigs must be capitalized in every circumstance.

Joseph Jeeves is the President and Chief Operating Officer.

Mary Jessup is the Executive Vice President in Charge of International Mergers and E-Commerce Manager.

I long ago lost my ability to be objective about all the things that may be wrong with that approach. Instead, my measured opinion on all this caps is a straightforward “yuck.”

Professional publishing doesn’t like using this many caps. So, if you want your writing to look like something in a professionally written publication, neither should you. The easiest thing to do is just to never capitalize them at all. But if you want to emulate the news media, consider the Associated Press Stylebook's recommendation:

"In general, confine capitalization to formal titles used directly before an individual’s name. The basic guidelines:

"LOWERCASE:
"Lowercase and spell out titles when they are not used with an individual’s name: The president issued a statement. The pope gave his blessing."

Plus, AP warns, while you might use caps in Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, commas could change that.

“Lowercase and spell out titles in constructions that set them off from a name by commas: The vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, declined to run again.”

In other words, when there are commas separating it from the name, it’s not part of the name. You’re not saying Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. You’re saying: The vice president, who is named Nelson Rockefeller.

The bottom line: To make your writing look professional, avoid capitals whenever possible, and resist the urge to pay homage to anyone with capitalization like: Nelson Rockefeller, Former Vice President of These United States, Distinguished Gentleman, and Exceedingly Wealthy Individual.

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December 3, 2012

Commas After Inc., States, and Years

Proofreading is very different from reading. At least, for me it is. When I’m proofreading, I’m looking for commas and skipped words and extra words and sentences without subjects and faulty parallels and a million little things like that.

In that mode, I can read a whole article twice and learn nothing from it. A piece on a restaurant, for example, could contain lots of information on the food it serves, the chef’s background, its history, and on and on. But if you quizzed me on any of it I’d flunk. Reading for information and reading for errors are two very different mental processes.

Interestingly, the other mode doesn’t quite work the same. When I’m reading for content – articles, books, etc. -- certain typos and editing matters jump out at me. I suppose it’s just because I’ve invested so much energy into whatever mental faculty scans for typos that it’s hard to turn off.

And that’s unfortunate because the minute a misplaced comma or other typo catches my eye, it automatically flips a switch in my mind, turning off the brain engine that reads for substance and powering up the part that scrutinizes form.

Then it’s hard to get back into whatever I was reading.

The most common errors that do this to me have to do with commas. They’re illustrated in this sentence:

It was March 14, 2009 when Widgets, Inc. moved its headquarters from Flint, Mich. to Detroit.

I guess if we’re being technical, the comma choices in that sentence aren’t really errors. But from an editing standpoint they are. And when I see them in published material, I think: This piece was not edited by professionals well versed in style.

It’s an instant prejudice that will color my perception of the source forever.

Here’s where the commas in that sample sentence fell short. In professional editing, years, “Inc.,” and states after cities are considered parenthetical information. They’re set-asides, if you will.

Compare:

My wife, Mary, works in entertainment

with

My wife, Mary works in entertainment.

The name Mary is just an aside – a “by the way, the person I just referred to as my wife happens to be named Mary.”

A similar principle applies to years, Inc.s, and states. They’re often included parenthetically. But that’s not as intuitively clear. They’re actually a little different. Mary, in the example above, is something called an appositive, whereas years, Inc.s, etc. are not. So, unlike with the Mary business, the comma rules for Inc. and states you actually have to know. Lately it seems that fewer and fewer of the people producing written content do.

Here are the rules of most professional editing:

* Years after a specific date are set off with commas: “March 14, 2008, was a good day.” But a month and year without the date does not take commas: “March 2008 was a good month.” The same is true of seasons. No comma: Spring 2008 was a good time for me.

* Inc., LLC, and items like that don't need commas. Widgets Inc. had a great quarter. That’s purely a style matter – and one that doesn’t come up much in journalism because Inc. is usually omitted altogether: Widgets had a great quarter. But if a comma comes before Inc., one should always come after.

* States after cities get the same treatment. Any time there’s a comma before “Mich.” one should come after, too. (By the way, news style prefers these abbreviations to two-letter postal codes like MI and book style just spells them out. But all these forms are acceptable.)

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November 26, 2012

More Romps Through the Dictionary

As I've written here before, sometimes I have some pretty enlightening adventures just digging around in the dictionary -- usually because I need to know something for an article I'm editing. Here are a few of the words I’m glad to have had occasion to look up.

terrine

This one came up in the context “a terrine of soup.” I hesitated, trying to remember whether I’d seen it spelled “tureen.” Indeed I had. Webster’s New World has entries for both.

“terrine: noun. An earthenware dish or casserole in which a pâté or any of various similar meat or vegetable mixtures is cooked and served.”

“tureen: noun. A broad, deep, usually covered dish used for serving foods such as soups or stews.”

So, if we take this exact wording to heart, you can cook food in your terrine, but you can only serve it in a tureen.

chitter

Just a fun-to-know word meaning “to twitter.” Of course, that was written before the advent of the Twitter. So it’s probably lost some of its currency.

meatloaf

I came across an example of the word meatloaf” but written in the plural, meatloafs. The plural of loaf is loaves. So I wondered whether the same formula applied to meatier masses.

But that raised another question. Can meatloaf be a countable noun, like car? Or is it what we call a “mass noun,” like spaghetti, which in English is considered a mass and not a singular thing that can be multiplied into plural things (explaining why no one says, “I’m so hungry I could eat three spaghettis.”)?

Neither Webster's New World College Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Online, American Heritage via Dictionary.com nor Dictionary.com's own entry offers a plural form or any discussion of whether meatloaf can be a count noun.

Usually, any word that has an irregular plural form gets special mention in the dictionary. For example, under child you’ll see children. Similarly, under loaf Webster's tells us the plural is loaves. But it does not offer any similar notation under meatloaf. So we're left to assume one of two things: Either dictionaries aren't down with meatloaf as a count noun or it follows the same rule as every other regular noun in the dictionary, forming the plural by just adding S.

I'm still not sure what to do about this one.

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November 19, 2012

*Waver, Waiver, Smartphone, Smart Phone

Here’s a word I never fail to stumble over: waver. As in the recent Yahoo News Headline “Apple wavers as court Reverses Ban on Samsung Smartphone.”

Every time I see “waver” in print, I experience one brief moment of thinking it should be “waiver.” And vice-versa: anytime I see “waiver” I think it should be “waver.” It only takes me a split second to realize I’m wrong. But it’s still a little unnerving to have my mental defaults exactly backward.

For the record, here, per Merriam Webster, is the difference.

waver: verb. to vacillate irresolutely between choices; fluctuate in opinion, allegiance, or direction

waiver: noun. the act of intentionally relinquishing or abandoning a known right, claim, or privilege; also : the legal instrument evidencing such an act.

More simply, to waver is to change your mind. A waiver is a legal relinquishment or exemption.

* *

And here’s another word that always give me pause: smartphone. There’s still no consensus on whether it should be one word or two. But indicators I’m seeing definitely indicate that the trend is toward one word.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary -- the one AP users are supposed to follow -- doesn’t have an entry for the one-word “smartphone” yet.
That means, by implication, that you can only use the words that are in the dictionary: smart and phone. However, some publications I edit that follow a basic form of AP style have decided in-house style should be one word, smartphone.

Merriam Webster, by the way -- the Chicago Manual’s default dictionary -- does have a one-word entry. So in book and magazine style, if you will, smartphone is the clear choice.

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November 12, 2012

Complected vs. Complexioned

Reference books are great when you want to – you know – refer to something. But, as anyone who’s curled up on a rainy day with a dusty dictionary can tell you, sometimes they’re fun just to flip through.

This is especially true of usage guides.  I stumble across language issues I never even knew existed, like about how the Shakespeare reference “hoist with his own petard” is better written, according to Garner’s Modern American Usage, “hoist with his own petar.”

The problem with flipping through usage guides is that you can end up with just one opinion on a usage matter and confuse it for something more universal. But I find that Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage poses the least danger of that. This usage guide seems the most reluctant to prohibit usages its authors don’t like. So it’s a safe bet you’re not learning a prohibition that's not really a prohibition.

So on a recent gray day I picked it up for a casual flip-through and learned that, apparently, there’s a controversy over the words complexioned and complected. Sticklers say the first one is the only correct choice. MWDEW begs to differ.

“complected: Not an error, nor a dialectal term, nor an illiteracy, nor nonstandard – all of which it has been labeled – complected is simply an Americanism. …. Until the early 20^th century it excited no  notice except from compilers of Americanisms and regional terms. Beginning with [“A Desk-Book of Errors in English” by Frank Vizetelly published in 1906], however, it began to raise hackles. … There seems to be no very substantial objection to the term, other than the considerable diffidence American usage writers feel about Americanisms. It is irregularly formed, to be sure, but so are many other words. It has been used by some of our better-known authors.”

So that fast I find out that some people say you should call someone “light-complexioned” and not “light-complected” and that those people are just talking smack.

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November 5, 2012

*Spellings That Don't Matter Much

Spelling is important. Right? Anyone will tell you that.

Except the thing is, sometimes it isn’t. And, when it’s not, sometimes it’s my job to act like it is anyway, which makes me feel like a bit of a schmuck.

Case in point: Not long ago, one of the section editors I work for mentioned “accoutrements” in an article headline. Spell check didn’t have any problem with it. So it was printed and laid out on the page before it landed under my nose.

I whipped out my red pen and swapped out the R with the first E, changing A-C-C-O-U-T-R-E … to  A-C-C-O-U-T-E-R … accouterments.

The original spelling wasn’t wrong. It just didn’t happen to be the preferred spelling in the dictionary we use, Webster’s New World College Dictionary.

I’ve been an even bigger schmuck about “ambience.” For years, every time I saw that in an article I changed it to “ambiance” because that’s what a quick check of Webster’s New World’s online edition led me to believe was the preferred form. When another editor finally questioned me about it, I explained that the A spelling was the preferred form, at which point she opened the hard copy of Webster’s New World and showed me that, now “ambiance” is the alternate spelling. The preferred form is “ambience.”

Then there’s the world-famous “doughnuts” vs. “donuts” issue. Both are right. But at the newspaper I always change “donuts” to the longer form because that’s the official, preferred spelling.

So sometimes spelling doesn’t matter … unless, of course, you’re paid to be pettier than the pettiest person alive …

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October 29, 2012

*Past Tense of Underlie

Today, democratic principles underlie our system of  government. In the past, different principles did the same for older systems of government.

So here’s a question: If you were not, as I did above, looking for a way around writing the past tense of “underlie,” how would you have put that in the past tense?

In the past, principles underlied older systems of government?

Underlay?

Underlain?

Underlaid?

When the question popped into my head recently, I had to confess I had no idea. I know that the past tense of lie is lay. But underlie is its own word. And the standard way past tenses are formed is by adding ed or, sometimes after changing a y to an i. So if the verb underlie is regular, its past tense would be underlied. As in, “Different principles underlied older systems of government.”

But that just doesn’t sound right. And when we tinker with different forms, most would agree that underlay sounds best of all. “In the past, different principles underlay those systems of government.”

Mark this as exhibit ZZZZ in the case to prove that the ear usually guesses right.

Here’s what Webster’s New World College Dictionary says.

underlie. transitive verb underlay, underlain, underlying

to lie under or beneath: trusses underlie the roof

1. to
   be the basis for; form the foundation of
2. Finance
   to have priority over (another) in order of claim, as a bond

As I’ve mentioned before, dictionaries have a system for telling you the past forms of verbs. After the main entry, they list the past tense and past participle in bold, in that order.

So open the dictionary to blow and you’ll see right next to it blew then blown. That’s how you know how it’s “Today the winds blow. Yesterday they blew. In the past they have blown.”

However, if you look up walk in most dictionaries, you’ll see no such forms after the main entry. And if you didn’t know how to use your dictionary, you might think that the publishers had left you hanging. But actually, the absence of past forms is just as informative as their inclusion. Most dictionaries include past forms only for irregular verbs. Regular verbs get their past forms the same way: by adding ed for both the simple past tense and the past participle. And they explain this stuff right up front in the section on how to use the dictionary. So because no past forms are listed in the entry for walk, you know it’s: Today they walk. Yesterday they walked. In the past they have walked.

So, based on the dictionary entry for underlie, we know it’s “Today these principles underlie government. Not long ago, other principles underlay government. In the past, many different principles have underlain government.”

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