September 23, 2024

'Whomever' is harder for people who good at grammar

 “I’ll hire whomever does best in the interview.” 

“I’ll hire whoever does best in the interview.”

People who aren’t trying to use good grammar, often choose “whoever” in a sentence like this. People who are being careful often choose “whomever.” Ironically, the folks who weren’t trying get this right more often than people who are trying. The correct choice here is “whoever.”

Grammar buffs get this wrong because they have only half the picture. They know that “whom” and “whomever” are object pronouns, but they don’t understand that whole clauses can be objects, too.

Object pronouns are words we use every day and include “me,” “him,” “us” and “them.” They’re often objects of verbs, as in “show me,” “invite him,” “tell us” and “ignore them.” Or they’re objects of prepositions like “at,” “to” and “with”: “yell at me,” “send to him,” “relate to us,” “go with them.”

They’re the mirror image of subject pronouns “I,” “he,” “we,” “they,” etc., which we use as subjects: “I yell,” “he sends” and so on.

“Whom” is an object pronoun, “You sent it to whom?” and “who” is a subject pronoun, “Who sent this?” Similarly, “whomever” is an object pronoun and “whoever” is a subject pronoun. But because these two often sit between clauses, there’s a twist that some people don’t realize.

Compare: “Police will arrest whoever breaks the law” and “Police will arrest whomever they catch breaking the law.”

In both cases, the pronoun comes right after the verb “arrest.” So if you apply a simple understanding of pronouns, you would guess you need “whomever” there because it’s an object. But in that second sentence, the word after “arrest” is not the object. The whole clause that follows “arrest” is the object, and that clause needs its own subject: whoever.

For a super-simple example, look at the sentence: I saw who did it. The object of the verb “saw” is the whole clause “who did it.” If the pronoun were the object, you’d have to say, “I saw whom did it.”

Even professional writers, editors and broadcasters get this wrong. A lot.

Look at this sentence from the Aug. 22 New York Times sports section: “He talks to whomever wants to hear about the story of the hat.”

Either the editor didn’t understand object pronouns or the writer made a mistake and the editor didn’t catch it. He or she clearly thought that the preposition “to” needed to be followed by an object pronoun. But in fact, the object of the preposition “to” is the whole clause “whoever wants to hear about the story of the hat.” That’s because “wants” needs a subject and only “whoever” can fill that role.

Anytime you see a “whomever” sandwiched between two clauses, ask yourself if the second verb has a subject. In “Police will arrest whomever they catch breaking the law,” the subject of the verb “catch” is “they.” Clearly, we don’t need to swap “whomever” to “whoever” to do the catching in the verb. But in “Police will arrest whoever breaks the law,” there’s no other word that could be the subject of “breaks,” so “whoever” must be it. Here's the full story in my recent column.

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September 16, 2024

When a comma and a possessive s collide

A while back, an AP Stylebook online subscriber wrote: “Please, no recasts. I cannot find a definitive answer anywhere on the planet. Keep in mind these represent directly quoted utterances. Do we keep or toss the comma after France’s, New York’s and 2001’s? ‘Alice said, “Paris, France’s, sights are breathtaking!”’ ‘Gov. Cuomo said, “Albany, New York’s, crime rate has risen exponentially.”’ ‘Joe said, “September 11, 2001’s, tragic events will be indelibly etched in the minds of everyone.”’”

These are interesting questions because they create a conflict between comma rules and good taste. Comma rules say that when you refer to a city followed by its state, then continue the sentence, the state is followed by a comma. For instance: Albany, New York, is lovely this time of year.

The same rule applies to countries after cities: Paris, France, is home to the Eiffel Tower.

And the same rule applies to years after dates: September 11, 2001, was a tragic day.

But sometimes, especially in casual speech, people can make New York, France or 2001 possessive. New York’s weather is nice this time of year. France’s president will visit. 2001’s events affected us all.

This is almost never a problem, but when the rules call for a comma in the same spot, things get unsightly and a little weird. Notice how, in “Paris, France’s, sights are breathtaking,” it sounds more like you’re talking about France’s sights than Paris’. A similar effect is true for the other two sentences.

Rulebooks like the Associate Press Stylebook don’t tell you what to do in these situations. So subscribers sometimes just pose the question to AP’s editors on the stylebook’s website. Usually, this works out great. But not this time.

“Really, truly, recasting is the thing to do,” replied an editor.

I don't love this answer. I explain why in my recent column.

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September 9, 2024

Can 'include' introduce all the parts?

I suspect that every writer I edit held a meeting to decide they would all misuse “include” at the same time. It’s the only possible explanation for the sudden rash of sentences like “The sandwich ingredients include bread, peanut butter and jelly.”

The problem is as much about logic as it is about grammar. In my culinarily simplistic world, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have exactly three ingredients. Nobody’s getting creative with pesto aioli or salted caramel. Yet “include” seems to suggest that an incomplete list will follow — merely a few examples of the bounty of flavors and textures you’ll find in a PB&J.

According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, “include” means “to take in or comprise as a part of a whole or group.” Personally, I find that a little confusing. But “part of” is clearly central to the meaning. Bread, peanut butter and jelly aren’t “part of” the ingredient list for a sandwich. They’re the whole list. So “include” doesn’t make sense according to this definition.

When “include” isn’t introducing a list, there’s little confusion: “Maria arrived just in time for us to include her in the meeting.” Obviously, people other than Maria were involved. She couldn’t be included in a meeting in which she was the only attendee.

A lot of language commentators feel strongly that “include” refers to just a subset of a whole, not every part of it. “‘Include,’ which has traditionally introduced a nonexhaustive list, is now coming to be widely misused for ‘consists of,’” says Garner’s Modern American Usage.

But, like all things in language, “include” gets controversial. “There are quite a few commentators,” says Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, “who maintain that ‘include’ should not be used when a complete list of items follows the verb.” This reference book, which is not the same as Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, disagrees. Those commentators, it says, “have somehow reasoned themselves into the notion that with ‘include,’ all the components must not be mentioned, which has never been the case.” Where do I stand on all this? I sum it up in my recent column.

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September 2, 2024

Wretched retching

A while back, a character in a book I was reading got sick. As told in the story, “He wretched” long after his stomach was empty.

Oops. What the writer should have written — or, more  precisely, what the copy editor should have caught — was that wretched should have been retched.

The disheartening thing about this error is that it appeared almost 300 pages into an otherwise very well copy edited book.

Whoever was copy editing this book knew what they were doing. Yet even a team of professional editors with great skills aren’t immune to letting typos slip by. That’s troubling because it means that, no matter how hard you try to make a written work perfect, there are no guarantees.

Plus, some typos are particularly easy to make.  Wretch and retch are among them.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, a wretch is a person. Specifically:

1 : a miserable person : one who is profoundly unhappy or in great misfortune

2 : a base, despicable, or vile person

It’s one of those words you hear a lot in old-timey dialogue, especially British. For example, in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, a character refers to juries as “vulgar grovelling wretches.” And of course, the term “poor wretch” comes up in pretty much every piece of fiction with a Dickensian tone.

From wretch, comes the adjective wretched. But it’s not pronounced like the verb retched. Wretched has two syllables, RETCH-id. And it means:

1. deeply afflicted, dejected, or distressed in body or mind

2. extremely or deplorably bad or distressing <was in wretched health> <a wretched accident>

3.  being or appearing mean, miserable, or contemptible <dressed in wretched old clothes>

The verb retch is simpler.  It means only 1. to vomit, 2. to make an effort to vomit.

There’s no trick to keeping them straight, other than just being on your guard. Which, somewhere around page 300 in a 900-page novel, is no small feat.

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August 26, 2024

When commas and quote marks collide

A while back, the ask-the-editor section of the Associated Press online stylebook got this question: “Please, no recasts. I cannot find a definitive answer anywhere on the planet. Keep in mind these represent directly quoted utterances. Do we keep or toss the comma after France’s, New York’s and 2001’s? ‘Alice said, “Paris, France’s, sights are breathtaking!”’ ‘Gov. Cuomo said, “Albany, New York’s, crime rate has risen exponentially.”’ ‘Joe said, “September 11, 2001’s, tragic events will be indelibly etched in the minds of everyone.”'” 

These are interesting questions because they create a conflict between comma rules and good taste. Comma rules say that when you refer to a city followed by its state, then continue the sentence, the state is followed by a comma. For instance: Albany, New York, is lovely this time of year. 

The same rule applies to countries after cities: Paris, France, is home to the Eiffel Tower. 

And the same rule applies to years after dates: September 11, 2001, was a tragic day.

But sometimes, especially in casual speech, people can make New York, France or 2001 possessive. New York’s weather is nice this time of year. France’s president will visit. 2001’s events affected us all. 

This is almost never a problem, but when the rules call for a comma in the same spot, things get unsightly and a little weird. Notice how, in “Paris, France’s, sights are breathtaking,” it sounds more like you’re talking about France’s sights than Paris’s. A similar effect is true for the other two sentences.

Rulebooks like the Associated Press Stylebook don’t tell you what to do in these situations. So subscribers sometimes just pose the question to AP’s editors on the stylebook’s website. Usually, this works out great. But not this time.

“Really, truly, recasting is the thing to do,” replied an editor. “Just because someone utters a quote doesn't mean, in most cases, that you have to use the quote in full or in part. There's not a definitive style for this and many other questions because Style Rule No. 1 would be: Recast, rephrase, rewrite! So, we don't have a definitive answer either. I could make something up, but that's not wise or helpful. Sorry!” 

So what would I do if I had to edit one of those sentences? I talk about that in my recent column.

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August 19, 2024

'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.

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August 5, 2024

'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.

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July 29, 2024

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. 

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July 22, 2024

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.

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July 14, 2024

Hark back, harken back, hearken back

Most people use “hark back,” “hearken back” and “harken back” to mean “recall” or “refer back to” some previous event. But the original meaning of “hark,” “harken” and “hearken” was not to recall but to hear or to listen carefully. Think: “Hark! The herald angels sing.” In fact, you can still use them that way today: Hark my words. Hearken my words. Harken my words.

“Hark” is the youngest of the three, dating back to the 14th century, with “hearken” and “harken” going back another two centuries or so.

Sometime in the 1800s, people started adding “back” to “hark” for the purpose of giving it what was then a figurative meaning: to recall or refer back to. Soon, “hark back,” “hearken back” and “harken back” would become full-fledged phrasal verbs — word combinations that have a different meaning than the root verb they’re based on. For more examples of phrasal verbs, think about the difference between “give” and “give up”; “break” and “break in”; “cut” and “cut off.” In every case, the word combo means something different from the verb when it stands alone. That’s what makes them phrasal verbs.

So unlike “hark,” “hearken” and “harken,” which mean to listen or listen carefully, “hark back,” “hearken back” and “harken back” are phrasal verbs meaning “to go back to or recall to mind something in the past,” according to Merriam’s dictionary.

Merriam’s usage guide claims that, though “hark” is now rare in the meaning of to listen, “harken” and “hearken” are still used that way. Personally, outside of one old Christmas song, I’ve never heard any form of hark or hearken used to mean “listen.” But when I search a books database to compare “hearken” with “hearken back,” “harken with harken back,” and “hark” with “hark back,” I see that all three words often stand alone and “back”-less. They’re all correct, with or without “back.”

So which is the most widely accepted in edited published writing? It’s “hark back” — my friend’s preference. My preference, “hearken back,” which the dictionary prefers, comes in last place in terms of popularity, and it has for most of the last century. Here's more in my recent column.

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