A little explanation here about the W.O.W. hiatus.

Yes, I have been very busy lately what with a trip out of state, The Papa's absence, end-of-year activities heating up, and trying to get everyone's teeth, eye, and medical appointments taken care of for the year.

But the real reason is that I am growing discouraged in the area of language.

I am definitely a language enthusiast though not a purist. I am not afraid of change in the language and I have loosened up on many things, especially where the traditional grammar begins to sound stilted in light of popular usage.

However, I see much of what's happening to the English language today as the result of exceedingly poor or non-existent grammar and spelling education, and the capitulation of dictionaries and language "authorities" for fear of being shut out of the popular market. The result is that for nearly every grammar or language travesty, you can find a dictionary or an expert that will pat your hand and tell you that it's okay, just do it however you feel best expresses what you want to say.

Consequently, for many of the W.O.W. columns I've written, I've gotten emails that tell me I'm wrong because the American Dictionary of You-Name-It at www.yourtheonlyexpertthatcounts.com says it's perfectly acceptable. I'm not kidding--there's hardly a thing I've written that can't be refuted if you really want to refute me. So I think that it's better for my own mental health to just concentrate on being the best writer and communicator I can be and let the rest of the world reduce itself to its lowest common denominator, metaphorically speaking.

You're perfectly justified if you want to call me a snob. That's not the same as being a purist. It just means that I will continue to value the language and its heritage. I am as likely as anyone else to get caught saying, "And I'm like, what?" but I will NEVER tell you it's correct, acceptable, or desirable to litter your speech or your writing with HUNDREDS of likes and y'know's. (There are people I know who are quite literally handicapped in communication because of their inability or unwillingness to work on this and they're passing it on to their children. I don't think they have any idea that people aren't even listening to what they say...they're counting the "you know"s.) And I will not tell you, no matter which dictionary has given in, that it's okay to say "irregardless" or "exetera" or "I'm nauseous." Though I have realized that it is time to let go of the complete ban on ending sentences with prepositions when the alternatives now sound contrived, I will continue to wince and will never approve "Where's he at?" I will not give even a slight nod to an abomination, no matter which former Beatle made it trendy, like "the world in which we live in." And I will not give you a passing grade on a paper on which you've chosen to eliminate all apostrophes because you can't remember where they go and don't even want to try.

Hmmm...does that sound like a rant? Probably so. Nevertheless, I am taking a break from offering unsolicited grammar advice because my blood pressure doesn't need the dressing-down from folks who are inclined to find some source to prove I'm wrong or out of date. I'll continue to sharpen my own skills and even to loosen up when I believe it's to the benefit of my readers, but I will (shall?) also continue exulting in the structure and the beauty of English.

Don't worry, folks. I'm in my mid-fifties already and I won't be around to hound you for long ;-)

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

It's National Grammar Day!

It's one of Granny's favorite "holidays," right behind Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving and Van Buren Day. I haven't exactly decided what traditions I want to establish for National Grammar Day, so until then I'll let those of you who are so inclined just browse:

National Grammar Day is March 4

Which Grammar Will You Be Celebrating on National Grammar Day?

National Grammar Day 2009: the Bloggers

National Grammar Day: Exploring Unbeknownst


I'll be out of pocket next Wednesday, so unless I end up with unexpected time on my hands, W.O.W. will be on vacation...but I'm planning some doozies :-)

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

My sweet sister-in-law Suzanne has a beef with a man of the cloth:

Our pastor keeps saying every week that we need to "reverence God". I understand from my dictionary that reverence can be a verb as well as a noun, but wouldn't "revere" sound better?

W.O.W. to the rescue!

Yes, Suzanne, your ear is a good one. I can't put this one in the black and white category of "its and it's," but I can register my complaint about the sloppiness of usage that allows the willy-nilly transfer of one part of speech to another simply because today's writers and speakers don't have vocabularies rich enough to make use of the great words we already possess.

What is it that makes someone feels that "reverencing" God is better than "revering" Him? Reverence is the noun that is produced by the act of revering. Using reverence as a verb ends up reducing the impact of a beautiful noun.

And let's talk about "impact," shall we? Impact is a noun. The music has an emotional impact. Yes, I realize that it's now become acceptable to use it as a verb, as in, The music impacted me. But the only reason it's acceptable? Enough people misused it that some lame-brained dictionary finally included it as a "variant" and there you go...all other dictionaries that needed to sell a few copies had to fall in line so as not to appear backward. *Sigh* Because I write for businesses and organizations that can't seem to get enough of impacting their world, even I have succumbed.

But please, PLEASE don't ever expect me to use or even approve the further degradation of the word by letting it slide into adjectivity (hey, you like that??). The music was not, and must never be allowed to become impactful. Sorry, there are some lengths to which I will not go. Unless you're paying me a very large hourly fee and will accept full responsibility for the consequences.

Finally, I would be remiss if I addressed this topic and did not include one of my family's perennial favorite pet peeves, one of those words we love to hate: orientate. This is an example of a word that started out as a perfectly lovely verb (orient, meaning to familiarize a person with new surroundings or circumstances, or the like: lectures designed to orient the new students; OR to place in any definite position with reference to the points of the compass or other locations: to orient a building north and south). Then somewhere along the line it was expanded to the "tion" form to become a noun (orientation, meaning the act or process of orienting; OR the state of being oriented). So far, so good.

But it wasn't long before some folks who had no idea where the noun "orientation" came from tried to turn it back into a verb and completely, well, mangled the word. Friends...I don't care which dictionaries try to suck up to the masses by giving their grudging nod to "orientate," I will not be a part of this national travesty. No matter HOW much you pay me per hour. You'll have to find yourself another writer. Yes, even in a recession.

Suzanne, I would not recommend making an issue of reverencing God with your pastor. I'd just keep it out of your own speaking and writing :-)

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

I didn't even remember it was Wednesday (despite having an army here for Bible study tonight; you think I'd know, right?) until I read Annie's Facebook lament.

W.O.W. to the rescue!

I am too tired tonight and still have too much to do to get ready for leaving tomorrow to think about a complicated grammatical explanation for this one. But I'm with my brilliant daughter Annie, who says,

"Anne is terrified that "then" and "than" will be deemed interchangeable by the ever-acquiescent grammar gods...."

Ummm...I don't want to turn this into something pseudo-religious, but yes, this would be pretty near the top of my list, too, Annie. Here we go:

"I liked my first husband a lot better then this one."

"I'd rather face a hot poker in my eye then put up with people who want to write but don't care enough about writing to do it right."

AHA! Some of you missed it, didn't you? Be honest, get those hands up! See? It's become so ubiquitous (relax, we'll do that one another time...) that our eyes are beginning to glaze over and not even notice! Thankfully, we don't see the reverse error as often:

"Here, eat the last of your stale bread and than go scrub the kitchen floor!"

Easier to spot, huh? But it doesn't make it any easier to swallow that for people under 35, "then" is just an alternate spelling of "than." Yes, I know, I'm showing my true colors as a bona fide "age-ist" but other explanations won't do. I truly believe that 25 years ago the grammar teachers, long disrespected and eventually convicted of something horrible by liberal left educators, finally gave up and went home. And the poor kids who were sitting in their middle school classes looked up and found no teachers and so they just sorta made up their own rules.

I will tell you, in all honesty, why I think these errors appear to be so much more egregious in the under-35 set. I really believe it's because even though many in my generation didn't learn their grammar much better, they didn't write it out in public for all the world to see. We didn't do message boards and Facebook and blogs and Twitter and texting and IM'ing and comments on news sites. We just nodded a lot. Younger people write more, even though very little of it is serious writing, and so their, shall we say, gaps are out there in plain view while ours are our own dirty little secrets.

And that, my friends, is why I think that we're no smarter then they are ;-)

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

Apostrophes. They're boogers, aren't they? I happen to love them and love making sure they're in the proper places, but that's because I'm a visual learner and I see instantly when they're misplaced. But a lot of very smart people have trouble with them, just as I have trouble with things that are a cinch for them.

Still, I'm here to help. So let me take a minute today (because a minute is about all I've got) to point out one of the most annoying and egregious misuses of apostrophes: employing an apostrophe to indicate a plural.

I referred to this tendency tangentially the other day when harrumphing about the city in England that's decided to stop using the apostrophe. But, much as I abhor this dumbing down of the language, for some reason I much prefer the absence of apostrophes to their extravagant overuse in all kinds of random place's places.

WHY is this so hard? When adding an "s" to indicate a plural, it gets glued onto the word with no apostrophe. If you add an apostrophe and an "s" to a word, you're indicating either a contraction (My wife's not exactly a grammarian) or a possessive (My wife's greatest weakness is not using apostrophes correctly). But when creating a simple, non-possessive plural, please do not let the pesky thing sneak in there. You're not selling "apple's" and your daughter is not chasing the "boy's." At least I hope not.

Here's something odd I've noticed: two of the most common errors in this regard are with the words "mothers" and "doctors." The latter is rather easy for me to analyze, because we so often use the term "doctor's orders" (correct) that we automatically want to write "two of the doctor's said..." (incorrect). With "mothers" it's a bit harder for me to figure out, but it could have something to do with the annual emphasis on Mother's Day, sometimes written as Mothers' Day, either of which could be considered correct even though the first is standard. What is not correct is "All mother's want to be remembered on Mother's Day."

Please, friends...both mothers and doctors are strong enough not to need to be propped up with an apostrophe.

Unless they're very...possessive :-)

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

Grammar Geek Alert: this is not a there-their-they're post. This one will tick off 90% of you. But hey, I've taken lots of suggestions for W.O.W. in the past few posts. This time, I'm going to discuss one that's getting on my nerves. Most of you aren't bothered by this one, but I'm tellin' ya, my ear HATES this one and it's only gotten worse now that there's a commercial FOX News has been playing lately that prominently features the term, "Well-paying job."

What's wrong with that, you ask?

Well, part of the reason it's so annoying to me is that despite the fact that it sounds WRONG to me, I couldn't articulate why. Now that I've dissected it, I don't feel much better, but I'm going to get it out of my system once and for all. For today.

So a "well-paying job" is, obviously, one that pays well. But unfortunately, it doesn't work grammatically. Let's think about it. Job is a noun. We modify nouns with adjectives. We landed a "good job." Good is an adjective. So is the job a volunteer job, or a paying job? Now we're describing the possible job with two other adjectives. Fine so far.

Now to get a little deeper into the grammar text...we normally modify adjectives with other adjectives. We don't buy a lightly green dress or taste a juicily ripe apple. (Yes, there are numerous exceptions, but they fall into distinct categories. This doesn't seem to fall in one of those.) And we don't accept a lowly-paying job, or even a highly-paying job. It's either low-paying, or high-paying. (I'm aware that lowly can also be an adjective, but not in this sense.)

So then what's with well-paying?

Well is an adverb. Most of the time. It's an adjective when you're discussing whether you're sick or well, but that's not the operative function here. When you are paid well, you're compensated adequately, and well is the adverb that describes or modifies the verb paid. But in the term "well-paying," the paying part is NOT functioning as a verb. Remember, it's the adjective describing job. So modifying it with an adverb can sound awkward to the tuned ear. It needs to be modified by an adjective.

All right, to get even stickier, paying looks like a verb, right? And in many cases it is. I'll be paying you on Friday. (Yeah, I've heard that one before.) And since many people aren't aware that in the phrase well-paying the paying is not a verb, they feel perfectly justified in modifying it with a good adverb like well.

Well...if well-paying isn't correct, then what is? Good-paying? Uh, technically (and nauseatingly), yes. But as the snooty John Kerry discovered in 2004 when he repeatedly used the term good-paying jobs, being too correct these days can brand you either elitist or stupid. Or both. Don't get me started on John Kerry...but he was (unadvisedly) correct about the jobs. He just didn't get the chance to create those millions of good-paying jobs.

Hmmm....what to do, what to do. Several years ago, one of my favorite grammar gurus, the late James Kilpatrick, addressed this in his column, opting not to use the technically correct but ill-sounding (did ya catch that?) good-paying, and instead coming closer to the Granny disposition of things:

Elena Brenna of Port Ludlow, Wash., winces at news that college graduates will be hard put in June to find "well-paying" jobs. Should it be "good-paying" jobs or "well-paid" jobs? The court dismisses "good-paying" and inclines toward "well-paid," but recommends "jobs that pay well."

Granny's verdict: You can make a case (and believe me, I haven't begun to scratch the surface) for either well-paying or good-paying. Current convention favors the former; fastidious grammarians prefer the latter and eschew the former. I don't like the option of "well-paid jobs" either, because jobs aren't paid -- people are. The safest advice, then is just to recast it. Don't get caught trying to sound correct and then "outed" by people who know better. Just say it another way. You don't want the John Kerrys of the world looking down on you, now do you?

Oh, wait....

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

We're back this week with a couple of expressions that are often mis-spoken because they're "mis-heard." A few months ago we discussed the silliness of "all of the sudden" instead of the correct "all of A sudden." Here is another of those, followed by a non-word used as a word:

Raise your hand if you've ever heard someone (if it was you, you don't need to raise your hand) say, "For all intensive purposes, ..."? Now I'm not going to be nosy...perhaps your purposes are indeed very intensive. But being your Grammar Granny, I must inform you that the proper phrase is, "For all intents and purposes, ...". It's a pretty hackneyed expression and so I wouldn't recommend using it too often, but if you're going to write or say it, try to be very intensive about your accuracy in usage :-)

And then, regarding "irregardless." Please don't. RegardLESS already means "without regard to," or informally, "Nevertheless." When you include the prefix "ir" you are making a negative into a double negative, which actually (re)creates the positive. So "irregardless" ends up meaning the exact opposite of what you think you're saying. In the comments, someone is bound to tell me that they've found "irregardless" in the dictionary. Don't bother. While Granny is somewhat tolerant of language changes as a result of increased usage, such as nouns "morphing" into verbs, she is very INtolerant regarding dictionaries seeking to become popular bestsellers by accepting flat-out errors once they've become commonplace.

We must have standards, regardless.

hat tip: Lyric

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

More than one person has written to beg me to clarify the spellings and pronunciations of a broad category of words that begin with "e". Yeah, I know that doesn't tell you much, but this is a category that does drive some of us wild...

W.O.W. to the rescue!

Escape: Friends, there is no X in "escape". Pronounce it ess-cape, not ex-cape. Tell your kids.

Especially: Same here. NO X in "especially". Not in spelling it, not in saying it.

Et cetera: Okay, this one is a bit more cumbersome to explain. It's a Latin phrase whose literal meaning is "and other things." We seldom see it written out...usually it's abbreviated. Many times badly. The correct spelling of the abbreviation is "etc." but it's often misspelled as "ect." Ugh.

Just as disconcerting is that it's mispronounced just about as often as it's pronounced correctly. Saying it right is easier if you're aware of the complete spelling: ET cetera. Unfortunately many of us grew up hearing or saying "excetera" or "eck-setera" and it's a hard habit to break. But if you run in educated circles, you'll brand yourself in a hurry if you mispronounce this one...better not to use the term at all if it's too hard to retrain your tongue. (And some of us have tongues that don't seem to be trainable, let alone REtrainable. How many times do you think Pres. Bush's handlers have begged him not to say, "Nuculer energy"?)

And on a side note, don't ever say or write "and et cetera" or "and etc." The "et" in "et cetera" means "and" in Latin, so preceding the abbreviation with "and" creates an annoying redundancy.

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

Not much time today, but I'm getting back to a few questions that readers have asked. Joanna asked me a while back about "who's" and "whose" and I answered her in an email but thought I'd do that one here too.

Remember when we discussed "its" and "it's"? The trick is thinking of the apostrophe as a tiny "i" and reading it that way out loud. If it doesn't make sense to read "it's" as "it is" then leave the apostrophe out. There are, of course, more technical explanations, but that will suffice for the quick memory trick.

The same goes with "who's" and "whose". "Whose" is the possessive form of "who", and I'm sure you remember that we don't use apostrophes with possessive pronouns. You do remember that, right? Good. "Who's" is simply a contraction of the words "Who is", as in "Who's eating all my Peppermint Bark?" (If you answer "Me," you're in trouble.)

When you write "who's," please stop and think of that apostrophe as a tiny little "i" and read "Who (i)s eating my candy."

"Whose shoes are these in the middle of the floor?" If you try to read "whose" as "who is", this sentence will not make sense, so it cannot therefore require an apostrophe.

And by the way, some of you are still ignoring or flagrantly disregarding Granny's instructions about "its" and she is heartbroken that her long explanation seems to have been ineffectual. She fully expects peer pressure to begin to shape you up in the New Year. Yes, 2009 :-)

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

Its. Admit it. Are you one of the millions of puzzled writers trying to remember whether it's the possessive pronoun or the contraction that needs an apostrophe in its spelling? (Notice how I managed to include both in that sentence!)

W.O.W. to the rescue!

Okay, I'll admit it. This is one that drives me absolutely batty. Just ask my business partner or my kids. Misspell anything you want, but just please don't put an apostrophe where it doesn't belong or leave one out where it does belong in it's/its. (Actually that's a lie, and my kids know that, too. It's extremely hard for me to leave ANY misspelling unchallenged, although I'm trying to loosen up. But I digress.)

First, why all the confusion? It seems natural to place an apostrophe in the contraction "it's" because that's what we do with all contractions. But the problem is in the OTHER "its," the kind that denotes possession. The problem is that with MOST possessives in the English language, NOUNS, we do use an apostrophe. This is my mother's book. The dog wants the cat's toy. Carrie is waiting for true love's kiss.

The exceptions, dear readers, are personal PROnouns. Hers, ours, theirs, yours...and its. No apostrophes. Please do not ask me to defend the indefensible. I'm not here as legal counsel for the nitwits who devised this system. I'm here to help keep you from looking like a nitwit for not following their screwball rules.

When you're discussing an "it" and you'd like to denote something that belongs to the "it," such as "The dog is chasing its tail," you do NOT use an apostrophe. Ever. Period.

When you're using "it's" as a contraction (that is, a shortening) of "it is," you DO. Always. Period.

So...how do you remember this quickly and avoid having to stop and think possessive pronouns and contractions? Simple. Think of the apostrophe as a tiny "i" in the word. Then read it. The "i" makes you read "It is." If it doesn't make sense that way, don't use the apostrophe.

"The dog is chasing it is tail." Uh-uh. Doesn't work.

"I'm going to look outside to see if it is raining." Yep, sounds fine. Just takes longer. Use the apostrophe.

If you can't substitute "It is" for the "its," then you must leave the apostrophe out. Out in the cold, freezing to death if necessary. Don't under any circumstances let it back in your word.

Now, let me tell you one other thing, which a purist would rather die than admit. If (and there's little excuse for this since I've just explained it all so brilliantly), IF you are in a hurry and can't remember whether to put it in or not, don't. Why? Because the grammar stickler reading your writing and judging your personal worth by your level of adherence to The Nitwit Rules is more likely to see the omission of an apostrophe as a typo and give you the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, putting an apostrophe where it doesn't belong is like a lethal assault on the eye of a closet proofreader, and is proof positive that the writer is either purposely flouting societal mores or is hopelessly ignorant of them.

Yes, I'm giving you the Slacker's Rule. I do not, however, admit to having biological children who take the lazy way out. Nope.

(If you ever say I told you this, I will of course claim that a hacker obtained the password to my blogger account and inserted these insidious paragraphs in my post in order to water down the appearance of my commitment to The Nitwit Rules. It will be your word against mine. I'm just warning you.)

There are other issues with apostrophes, but we'll deal with those another time.

And now, it's time for me to put my pillow through its paces....

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

Do you know the difference between an expression and an idiom?

W.O.W. to the rescue!

Well, rescue may be too strong a word here, as there is some overlap between these two terms and you may be left scratching your head. But the most important distinction, in my book, is that an idiom is an expression whose meaning is more than the sum of its parts...in other words, the meaning of an idiom cannot be deduced simply by understanding the definitions of its components. Usage does strange things to words, and sometimes a word or group of words develops a meaning that makes no sense; it just is.

As an illustration of the difference:

"Lo and behold" is an expression that dates to the middle ages. "Lo" is a shortened form of "look," and so the expression literally means "Look and behold" and expresses surprise as it calls attention to something. (And please...don't write "Low and behold"!!) But both words means exactly what they say, even if not everyone is clear on what "lo" means.

"All of a sudden" is an English idiom. It means something different from what might be suggested by just a definition of the words themselves. It is an alternate way of saying "suddenly," but what in the world is a "sudden"? Its introduction by the indefinite article "a" brands it as a noun, one we don't ordinarily use in writing or speaking. And what of the "all"? (And don't even start with me about the abomination, "all of the sudden." I might have spasms. Instead I'll send you to this all of a sudden.)

When trying to understand the concept of an idiom, it's helpful to think of yourself as a non-English speaker learning the language for the first time. You run across the phrase, "Time's up," and you look it up in your English/Bornistanian dictionary and you read the definitions of "time" and "up." Do you now have an accurate sense of what the phrase means? I didn't think so. It's an idiom, and idioms are the bane of the student of almost any language. They simply have to be memorized and/or absorbed, not defined.

One of my favorite idiom anecdotes: We have a family friend from Lebanon who was hard at work on his English. He was aware of many idioms but didn't always use them appropriately. One day, after a particularly filling meal, he pushed away from the table and declared, "Oh, I'm fed up!"

Have an idiom that is especially amusing or baffling to you? Share it in the comments!

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

"Your apple fritters are delicious and go quite well with the roast pork!"

Did I just pay you a compliment or a complement?

W.O.W. to the rescue!

This is another pair of words that can be very confusing. The way I remember is that *I* like to receive compliments, and so I use the word that contains the *I* for that kind of compliment.

The other kind of complement is used for the way the apple fritters go with the pork--they complete the main dish, so they are a complement (think: "complete-ment").

"Sarah Palin is a good complement to John McCain. He paid her a great compliment by choosing her as a running mate."

:-)

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

Right up there with "definitely" is a completely SEPARATE issue.

And that is, why is it so hard to spell "separate"?

W. O. W. to the rescue!

Two clues, depending on how your brain tends to work, might help you.

1) If you can't spell "separate" correctly it means your spelling is sub-par.

2) Separate has four vowels: two e's SEPARATED by two a's. This should eliminate the tendency to spell it as "seperate." Ewww...that makes me shudder just to type it :-)


hat tip: annie w.

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday

defenitly.
definitly.
defenatly.
definently.
definitley.

DEFINITELY.

If you've spent any time with message boards, blogs, or email, you've seen this sacrilege. And you fall in one of three groups:

You can't stand it when you see it misspelled.

You never realize that 90% of the time, it's misspelled.

You usually think it looks funny and you have a hunch it's not right, but you're not quite sure how to fix it.

WOW (Words on Wednesday) to the rescue.

Your odds of spelling this word correctly (and therefore raising your perceived IQ by 30 points) skyrocket if you'll remember this: in the exact center of the word you'll find the word "finite." Most people don't have quite the trouble with "finite" that they do with "definitely," so this can be a helpful hint. If you start with "finite" and then put two, and ONLY two, letters on either side, you'll most likely get it right. The "de" isn't hard, and if you know that only two letters come after "finite," then you'll avoid the dreaded "definiteley."

Here ends the first installment of Words on Wednesday.

Definitely.

(If this was helpful to you, PLEASE tell me in the comments. It'll help me know I'm headed in the right direction!)

Labels: Language, Words On Wednesday