CJR : Resources : Language Corner

Resources

All entries A — M.

Adverb Placement

It Should Usually Be Early

Two schools of thought seem to exist on the placement of adverbs with compound verbs. One is easy: just stick it in front of the verb and be done with it. "He always has been a little slow," say, or "She frequently will disagree" or "That train habitually has run late."

The other approach, subscribed to here, is that the adverb works more mellifluously after the first part of the compound verb. Usually. So it would be "He has always..." and "She will frequently..." and "That train has habitually..."

But it's a rough rule, and it was followed out the window here: "As he has labored to fill his outsized war chest, the governor has, like everyone else, had to endure his share of negative publicity." Splitting "has" and "had" that way is ugly. Make it natural: "...the governor, like everyone else, has had to ..."

Adverse/Averse

Adverse Effect

Big companies are adverse to publicity — and the bigger the company, the more adverse." Nope. "Adverse" means "negative" or "bad"; we wouldn't say the companies were "bad to publicity." The writer meant they were opposed to it, uneasy about it, and the word he wanted was "averse." A few paragraphs later, he wrote about "heavy adverse publicity," and that was just right.

Adviser/Advisor; Historic/Historical

Distinctions and Differences

Some distinctions between similar words need to be maintained because they’re useful; examples abound in the archives of this font of wisdom. Here’s another: the distinction between “historic” and “historical.” In the phrase “Chile, Bolivia’s historic enemy,” the choice was unfortunate. By hoary consensus, “historic” has been reserved for events of great moment, like the Battle of Yorktown or the Emancipation Proclamation. To describe a longtime pattern, like Chilean-Bolivian enmity, or for any variation on the broad notion “relating to history,” the job is best done by “historical.” Different words for different meanings. Useful. (CJR September/October 2004)

Not at all useful is the insistence among the finicky (including this traveler at one time) that “advisor” is a misspelling, an ignorant back-formation from “advisory,” and that only “adviser” is correct. “Advisor” is ubiquitous, and it was not surprising to find “became a valued advisor” in a historical (not historic) work of impeccable pedigree. So we should pick a spelling (CJR prefers “adviser”), stay with it, and relax.

Affect/Effect

Think 'A' ... or 'E'

Mark Stevens, director of public information for the Denver Public Schools, e-mailed to ask about a fairly widespread mental block: "I could use a neat way to remember the correct use for 'affect' and 'effect.' " Here's an attempt at a mnemonic formula to help keep them separate.

"Affect," except for the specialists mentioned below, is a verb, meaning to cause change in something. "His headache affected his ability to concentrate." Verbs are words of action. So think "A" — Affect, Action — something is Acting on something else.

"Effect" is usually a noun, a word for a thing, in this case a result of something.

"Aspirin had the desired effect, and he aced the exam." Think "E" for End Product.

So much for the most common situations.

A less common (but useful) form of "effect" is a verb meaning to bring about or cause to happen. "She effected a revolution with her challenge to the grading system."

A nuanced (and useful) form of "affect" is a verb meaning to move, emotionally, as in "The scene affected her greatly" or "It was a profoundly affecting moment."

And in the social sciences, alas, "affect" can be a noun, meaning a feeling or emotion as shown or described by a patient. But we can leave that one to the social scientists.

Addendum, 3/9/99

Rosalind Warfield-Brown, who teaches at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia and works as a freelance editor, has a word she uses to help people get around that mental block — VANE. That's Verb=Affect / Noun=Effect. Seems foolproof for the two basic meanings.

All the Differents

Getting Along

'Mr. Lott, along with Speaker Newt Gingrich, were among those who signed the letter to the F.C.C." The phrase between commas is one of those parenthetical distractions that life serves up. The subject of the sentence remains "Mr. Lott," so we have to say "was among those."

The same trap opens with "as well as" and other interruptions: "The Mayor will now have an opportunity to demonstrate...that it is his management techniques, not any one person, that is responsible for the drop in crime."

"Not any one person" distracted the writer (and editor) into thinking that the subject of the last clause of the sentence had become singular, but the subject is still "techniques," so the clause should read "that are responsible...." We can avoid the traps by discovering and ignoring whatever just goes along for the ride.

Along With

Getting Along

Alternate/Alternative

Alternating Current?

The article said a utility "plans to freeze its electric rates for five years, and by 2003 will allow all its customers to buy power from alternate sources." The writer almost certainly wanted "alternative," meaning providing a choice among options. "Alternate" means by turns, or every other, as in "alternate Sundays." (Custom has also allowed “alternate” referring to choice or substitution in such expressions as “alternate juror” or “Alternate Route 22.” Irritating, but there it is.)

Antecedents

Remembering Those Gone Before

Everybody knows that a pronoun needs to agree with its antecedent, the earlier noun that the pronoun stands in for. We can't, for instance, say "Democrats" and follow up with "it." But the problem is trickier in sentences like this one, which are common: "The testimony provided the strongest corroboration to date of White House claims that its office of personnel security..." The antecedent for "its" seems to be "White House," but it can't be. A pronoun's antecedent has to be a noun, and in that sentence, the executive mansion is used as an adjective, modifying "claims." To make it right, change it to "...the White House's..." Using the possessive turns "White House" back into a noun, and we're home free. (See also “Possessive Nouns With Pronouns.”)

'As Such' (Transition)

In Transition

Transitional words and phrases are often necessary, but not as often as we use them. The exhausted "meanwhile," the slightly haughty "indeed," the currently fashionable, pince-nez professorial "to be sure" sometimes arise from unexamined reflex, not sense.

And sometimes when knee jerks, foot lands in mouth. It did in the unthinking reach for transition here: "After all, an independent Chronicle, with no Examiner to carry, would be much more profitable. As such, there have been rumors for more than a decade about the Examiner's pending demise."

As such what? Nothing in the first sentence leads logically to "As such" in the second. The phrase needs preparation, a person or thing or characteristic to which it refers, as in "The cook was Dutch and behaved as such." If a transition was needed in our example (whether it was is at least arguable), then "For that reason" or "Consequently" or other things we can all imagine would have built one. "As such" was a misguided reflex; we need to stop and think. (CJR, July/August 1998)

As, Then As

What's Better Than 'Than'?

Words to live by: When we start a comparison with "as," we have to stay with it. We shouldn't, for instance, write "Americans can pay twice as much for drugs in the United States than people pay in Canada."

Maybe "for drugs in the United States" was a fatal distraction. No one -- ? - would say "twice as much than people pay." Nature and sense (not to mention the rules of syntax) require "as much ... as people pay."

With no serious distraction, things nonetheless went similarly awry in a report about the apparent effect of gas exploration on a species of wild birds in the rural West; the passage said of the birds' courtship areas near the gas wells, "four times as many are inactive than active." Nature and sense again: "as many are inactive as active." And to be balanced and smooth, we can add a syllable: "as are active." (CJR, November/December 2004)

As Well, Too (Start of Sentence)

Starting Well

A question from Robyn Packard, based in Toronto as marketing editor for the international business law firm Torys LLP:

“How do you feel about using ‘As well’ at the beginning of a sentence?”

Not well. That phrase, in that place, doesn’t violate any rule of grammar or usage. But it’s unnatural and seems terribly affected — pinky-in-the-air stuff, or some writing teacher’s half-baked idea of originality. Much the same could be said of “too” at the start of a sentence, where it crops up occasionally.

With perfectly idiomatic words and phrases like “in addition,” “besides,” “furthermore,” “moreover,” “also,” and good old reliable “and” available to us, we don’t need to hold up a sign to let everybody know we’re cute. (CJR, May/June 2006)

AttorneyS general

They're Not Generals

The story said a judge "at a minimum will request briefs from the Justice Department, state attorney generals and Microsoft." But when we start with one attorney general and add more, it isn't generals who increase, it's attorneys. That makes the correct plural "attorneys general." It comes out wrong pretty often, especially in speech (including that of attorneys general), and some dictionaries have knuckled under, telling us it's okay either way. It's not, any more than it is, say, with sergeants major or brothers-in-law. With all such, logic limits the choice of plurals to one.

The Authorities

Experts or Cops?

The sentence spoke of "actions which authorities charge ultimately led to Officer Guidice's death." For clarity's sake, and to preserve a nicety of the language, we ought to save "authorities" for people with great knowledge in their fields — experts. The law-enforcement types are usually better described as "the authorities."

Bacterium/Bacteria -- See ‘Media, Plural’

Feel Bad/Badly

Two Ways, With Feeling

A visitor to the Web site said she and her boyfriend had differed over the phrase "I feel badly." He insisted it was the right way to describe sadness. She held that "badly," an adverb, describing how something is done, can't be used where an adjective, describing a thing or condition, is called for; it had to be "I feel bad." In fact, a hoary joke among people who hate "feel badly" is that it can only mean to suffer from an underdeveloped sense of touch. But we can have it both ways.

Used to describe an emotional state, "feel badly" is accepted by most good writers and sounds perfectly natural to these ears — an exception that proves the rule governing linking (copulative) verbs, which generally require adjectives. To describe an upset stomach, “feel badly” sounds less natural, though it has some scholarly support. But wherever the pain, “feel bad” is technically unassailable and always safe.

'Because' and 'Since'

Since You Asked...

André E. Maillho, managing editor of Gambit, an alternative weekly in New Orleans, noticed that "you, like millions of other Americans, tend to use the word 'since' to convey a causative relationship," and added, "An old editor once scolded me to differentiate between 'since' and 'because' and it's been a reflex ever since...What's your take?"

That old editor once had a fairly numerous following, but the words are usually interchangeable. A problem can arise — maybe the reason for the old editor's edict—if "since" can be read mistakenly in its time sense: "Since she called him a fool, he has stopped campaigning" is ambiguous, for example. When there's no trap of that kind, "since" means "because" and vice versa.

Beg the Question

Sneaky Beggar

A tricky topic long evaded here came up most recently in a note from Amy Carlile, deputy managing editor of Roll Call, a Washington newspaper that covers Congress: What does “beg the question” really mean?

The term comes from formal debating and denotes the classic fallacy in logic of proving a point by using a premise that has not, itself, been proven. (In law, a commonly heard objection to such maneuvers is “Assumes a fact not in evidence.”)

One form of begging the question is circular reasoning — basing two conclusions on each other, A proving A: The editor must be right because editors don’t make mistakes.

But the begging needn’t be circular; A, unproven, can be used to prove B. Way back when, H.W. Fowler cited the proposition “That fox hunting is not cruel, since the fox enjoys the fun.” There is no proof, of course, of the fox’s state of mind.

In our time the phrase has become popularly understood — it apparently sounds good to a lot of people — to mean to duck a question, or to raise or imply a question that cries out for an answer. For example (among thousands), a pundit on the American presence in Iraq: “It then begs the question, if we’re going to stay the course, what’s the course?”

We don’t need “beg the question” for such meanings, and it’s sometimes useful in its original sense. Whether that sense will ever again prevail seems, at best, debatable.

— CJR, Nov./Dec. 2005

Between/Among

Among You, Me, and the Lamppost?

A reader was kind enough to write to applaud our sermon on "unique" ("The One and Only," CJR, March/April 1997), but he also had a complaint. On the same page of the magazine, he noted, an article said, "And their success will depend largely on cooperation — between the media and the court and, especially, BETWEEN members of the press" (reader's emphasis added). "Since 'members' is plural," the note asked, "should it not read 'among members of the press' "? Probably not. The rule that calls for "among" when more than two things are being discussed is a rule of thumb, and a rough one at that. In any group, the members may relate to each other in a block or, as seems more likely in the reader's example, individually — A to B, A to C, B to A, and so on. So "between members of the press" makes more sense.

"Between" was also wanted in this passage from a newspaper report: "The F.B.I.'s refusal of the White House's request was a vivid example of the tensions among the White House, the Justice Department and the F.B.I." As the article made clear, the tensions arose between the White House and the Justice Department, between the Justice Department and the F.B.I., and between the White House and the F.B.I.

And for this one, you didn't need the context to know that the writer (or, at least as likely, the editor) was following a rule of thumb out the window: "...an airline charter service that operates among Havana, the Bahamas and Mexico." Those planes obviously fly between Havana and the Bahamas, to mention only one leg of their travels. (CJR, Sept./Oct. 1997)

Addendum, May 13 1998:
This time, the rule of thumb applied. The announcer said of the officials at a basketball game that they had "49 years' experience between the three." The experience was the group's, and the word had to be "among."

'Between...and' not 'Between...to'

John Luke, a freelance writer and editor in Sierra Madre, Calif., sent this complaint:

"For years, I've been grinding my teeth when radio journalists say things like 'between seventy to eighty people were seen sliding down the rope.' I want to respond by telling them they're putting me between a rock to a hard place. You don't see this in print much, but it's all over radio news, even on the high-quality stations."

Mr. Luke is right, of course; "between" takes "and," not "to," and the people who make him grind his teeth belong where they've been putting him.

Addendum, 5/25/99

It happens in print, too; from a newspaper front page: "...stole design information about America's most advanced warhead, the W-88, between 1984 to 1988."

Between the Cracks

Cracks to Fill

Alex McKale (see "Hitting Milestones"), e-mailed to say: "Another phrase I've heard misused too frequently is 'between the cracks.' The speaker generally means 'through the cracks' or 'in the cracks.' "

Quite so. It's another phrase that turns intended meaning on its head (see also "Could/Couldn't Care Less"). The writer who suggested using a creeper "to plant in between the cracks of paving stones on a terrace" obviously wasn't thinking of some aggressive plant that might punch its way through paving stones, yet it was the stones that were "in between the cracks." Something was wanted to fill the space between the stones, and therefore in the cracks.

The same logic applies in figurative use: if certain insurance policies "have often fallen between the regulatory cracks," they haven't escaped bureaucratic attention, which is what the writer had in mind. They've landed in plain view on solid ground. They would enter the void only by falling through the cracks, or into them.

Between/In Between -- See In, Up and On

Bid, Bid, Bade

Do Not Hasten to Bid

The picture showed a uniformed man hugging a woman, and the caption said he

"bid farewell to his wife." One way or another, "bid" wasn't a great choice. If the caption style required the present tense, "bids" was the word. If style wanted past tense, the choice was "bade."

"Bid" is an unusual verb in that its past tense varies with context. For financial matters, literal or figurative, the past tense is "bid" - at the auction, she bid on the painting; he bid for a role in the production. "Bid" is also the past tense for what bridge players do.

And some prefer "bid" for all occasions. But for greetings and partings and commands, "bade" is preferable - the prime minister bade the president welcome, they bade us adieu, she bade him go and never darken her door again.

Maintaining profoundly artificial differences like those between “more than” and “over” is silly (CJR, Jan./Feb. 1997; see also More Than/Over). Preserving the age-old difference between “bid” and “bade” is rather nice, somehow. Modestly, forgivably erudite.

(CJR January/February 2004).

'Big of a'

Of Idiom

Warren Corbett, a writer and editor in Bethesda, Md., e-mailed about an annoying trend:

"At some point the phrase 'not that big a deal' became 'not that big of a deal.' I see it frequently. It grates on me, but I cannot articulate the distinction between 'not that big of a deal,' wrong in my eyes, and 'not that much of a problem,' obviously correct. If I'm not making too big a deal of it, please help."

The answer seems to lie largely with idiom — the way things are expressed simply because they're expressed that way. But maybe there's logic involved, too. In "not that much of a problem" "much" is working as a noun. Using "of" with it seems natural, as it is, say, with "sort of a" and "kind of a" (when followed by singular nouns).

But with an adjective, in this case "big," the "of" seems unnatural and unidiomatic — certainly redundant, and for some of us illiterate.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, in a lengthy essay under "of a," says that in phrases like "that big of a deal," the usage is relatively recent, oral American idiom, rare in print except in reported speech.

May it remain rare in print. And if people stop speaking that way, that will be fine, too. But Mr. Corbett remains concerned. "Idiom is defined by usage," he notes, "so 'not that big of a deal' is likely to become accepted."

If so, maybe not that big a deal. But annoying.

Borne Out, with an 'E'

Born to be Borne, or Vice Versa

It may have been just a typo, but it pops up from time to time: “Such reports seem born out by help-wanted advertising...” The correct spelling is “borne,” with an “e.” It’s one of two past participles of “to bear,” meaning (a) to give birth or (b) to carry. The one without the “e” is used for actual or figurative birth: a star is born, to a born loser; things are born of necessity or desperation; children are born out of wedlock. For everything else, including the cited form of “bear out,” meaning to prove or confirm, add the “e.” The star was borne by her unfortunate mother.

Addendum, July 15, 1998:
Dr. Denny Wilkins, assistant professor in St. Bonaventure University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communcation, e-mailed to say he found that last sentence confusing, and that’s not surprising. “Does the sentence mean,” he asked, “The star was ‘proven’ or ‘confirmed’ by her unfortunate mother?” No, it means the star was carried (to birth, as it happens) by her mother, but the effort to be cute obviously led to unfortunate misunderstanding.

Addendum, April 7, 1999:
This was just exactly wrong: “But the brunt of the evening’s jokes were born by the President and the other major impeachment figures...” Our word has nothing to do with birth; it has to do with carrying (a burden). The choice had to be “borne.” (And, incidentally, the little verb should have been “was.” All the jokes weren’t borne by the president, only the brunt of them, so “jokes” can’t take command of the sentence.)

Addendum, Dec. 19, 2000:
And finally — Some people, the article said, “harbor anti-Semitic attitudes borne of years of conflict.” The writer and editor didn’t want that “e”; those attitudes were born of — they arose from, were given birth to by — those years of conflict. (The immortal H.W. Fowler’s analogous citation was “The melancholy born of solitude.”)

Both

Putting Two Together

The word “both” takes two elements and makes them one. With that in mind, this: “Both of the candidates tried to link their opponent to the perceived weaknesses of their parties.” Their opponent? The two of them, together, have an opponent? Not what the writer meant; he meant, “Each of the candidates tried to link his opponent to the perceived weakness of his party.” (Or, for absolute clarity, “...the opponent’s party.”)

Addendum, July 15, 1998:
One news article had it both ways. Near the beginning, “Both sides remain far apart in those discussions” was wrong; the two, together, weren’t far apart from something else. Near the end, “But the lawyers said the two sides were still far apart on several fronts” got it right.

Brackets

The Bracket Blues

Except when excerpting text or in such devices as blurbs and pull-quotes, bracketing material inside quotations is, not to put too fine a point on it, an abomination.

1. Genuinely good quotes are mangled by bracketing: “Our prisons are full of [those who were] abused children,” he said. Clunk. The story had already set up the quote adequately, but if it hadn’t, a phrase before the quote, not that awful hiccup inside it, was the solution. (Explanations can also come after quotes, of course; the point here is that hitting the reader over the head with a hammer is unkind.)

2. Bracketing can puzzle readers and even make them suspicious (what did that guy really say?): “I read about teams getting competitive [by signing] other players,” he said. Anyone’s guess.

3. Bracketing assaults the ear, making for agonizing reading: “No one among the big three [networks] would run this long at the top [the beginning of the show] with these kinds of stories” now, Rather said. In a word, aargh. If a quote needs that much help (this one didn’t) why bother to quote at all?

4. Some bracketing results in ridiculous things inside quotation marks: “They started calling me Duke because I wear No. 4 [Duke Snider’s old number],” said Piercy. Just end the quoted matter at “4” and tell the rest.

Most importantly, bracketing is lazy — a kind of stenography. In that regard it’s a soulmate of that other hallmark of bad journalistic writing, the stringing-together of words before a name (CJR, January/ February 2000; “False Titles, etc.” on the Web). Both are abdications of our duty to write English sentences. On deadline? No time to write? Try. It could become a habit. (CJR July/August 2002)

Addendum, 8/26/02:

Absolutely not the way to handle the problem:

"If I’d had a walkie-talkie, I’d have told jockey Victor Espinoza to pull him up."

Real people do not say in conversation, and trainers do not respond to shouted questions after a big-time horse race, “I’d have told jockey Victor Espinoza” — using the first name along with the job description. It just doesn’t happen, and it didn’t. A Nexis search showed slight variations in different accounts of the post-race analysis. Some of the many versions had just “Victor,” others just “him.” Others put brackets around “jockey” or “Espinoza” or, heaven help us, both. But “jockey Victor Espinoza” seems to have been a singular contortion.

Presumably an editor was loath to use brackets to provide the name or names missing from the real quotation. It’s good to be loath that way. But it was possible to work around the problem, as it almost always is. Mentioning the jockey before using the quote, then quoting accurately — as some reports did — is a wonderfully natural solution. And even brackets are better than phrasing so tortured its falsity jumps off the page.

Call Up - See In, Up and On

Cardinal/Ordinal Numbers

Cardinal Rules

A Little League team's players, the article said, "picked up their third World Series victory in as many days."

There’s a common affectation there, and it doesn’t track. As many as what? As many as third? No, obviously. “Third” is an ordinal number, denoting the position of something in a sequence. “As many as” needs to refer to a quantity, not a position, and that requires a cardinal number — here, “three.” If the sentence had said “picked up three World Series victories in as many days,” that would have been fine. (But for all that, “as many as” smacks a little of elegant variation. What’s wrong with “their third World Series victory in three days”?)

'Collective'

Don't Call Collect

'As we ponder this, as we shake our collective heads,...” the commentator intoned. Well, if it’s collective, it’s a single thing, “our collective head.” Sounds dumb either way, though, as phrases using “collective” often do. What’s wrong with “As we shake our heads”?

Collective Nouns
Sensible Notion

This was awkward, to put it kindly:

"Both former educators, the ... couple plans to see the ballet and symphony while in Florida."

Rigidity was at work; a "couple" just has to be singular, right?

No. "Couple," like "family" and some other collective nouns, can go either way, and "couple" itself is usually best as a plural. Just as some superficially plural phrases sometimes have to be treated as singular,* so collective nouns should be treated as plural when that makes the most sense.

The principle grammarians invoke is “notional agreement” - if the idea is plural, make the verb plural. Deciding about that can require thought, though, not just a knee jerk. Worse yet, the difference in meaning is sometimes so minute that either singular or plural works.

But in our example, even if the sentence began in the middle, without “both” and “educators” to make the error so conspicuous, “the couple plan” would be preferable. We’re talking about two people, not some unit. Jane plans and Dick plans and the couple plan.

But if some disaster struck and they were really angry about it, we might say - after some thought - “the couple has filed a suit against the theater.”

(CJR March/April 2004).

*See Also “They each; $57 million Was” and “Tons Was”

Comprise

The Whole and the Parts

The story spoke of “the 30 companies whose stocks comprise the Dow Jones industrial average.” It’s the other way around. The average comprises the stocks, because the whole comprises the parts. So the stocks make up (or constitute or compose) the average. “Comprise” comes through French from the Latin “comprehendere,” which also gave us the English word “comprehend,” which is synonymous in one of its meanings — embrace, encompass — with “comprise.” And “comprise” is a near-synonym for “include,” except that it means to include everything. If “include” wouldn’t make sense — those stocks don’t include the Dow — we can’t use “comprise.” And while we’re at it, that’s also why we can’t use “is comprised of.” Would we say “is included of”? Doesn’t make sense. (CJR, July/August 1997)

Could/Couldn't Care Less

It's About Caring

The article said the lawyer representing a murder victim’s family made it clear that the family wasn’t interested in cooperating with the media horde, “that the family could care less about exclusives.” But if those people could care less, they do care some, and that’s not what the writer meant. The phrase has to be negative: “could not care less.” That means the family cares so little — presumably not at all — that it can’t reduce the caring any further. A quick Nexis search suggests that we bat about .500 on this one, which would be great if baseball were our game.

Criterion/Criteria; Phenomenon/Phenomena

Give Us An A! Give Us An... On!

But don’t mix them up, as in “The main criteria is youth, which leaves him out.” The singular of the Greek/English word is “criterion,” which was needed here because only one thing — youth — was being considered. If experience, say, were added to the mix, “criteria” would be in order. It’s plural, and may it always be. And while in Greece, consider this: “The Asian market is a new phenomena....” There’s only one market in that passage, so it’s singular, so it’s “phenomenon.”

Curriculum(s) — See Graffito/Graffiti

Danglers

Memoirs Don't Write

This construction, called a dangler, is as common as the flowers that bloom in the spring: “A first-time author at age 66, McCourt’s memoir has topped best-seller lists and won critical acclaim.” What that says, literally, is that the memoir is a first-time author. That’s because the first clause describes the subject of the second, and the subject is “memoir.” (The possessive “McCourt’s” functions as an adjective here, not a noun.) The sentence needs to be reworked. Maybe “McCourt, a first-time author at age 66, finds his memoir atop...” Or “McCourt, etc., has written a memoir that...” However we work it out, we can’t make the opus its own writer.

'Decimate'

It Takes Ten, Roughly

The word “decimate” literally means to reduce by a tenth, from the legendary Roman practice of killing every tenth man in a mutinous or otherwise dicey military outfit on the ground that at all costs, discipline must be maintained. The word has come to mean to destroy, put out of action or seriously damage a large part of a body of people or things — “the U.S. fleet had been decimated at Pearl Harbor” works, as does “the tree-chomping beetles that decimated Greenpoint, Brooklyn, two years ago.” But it seemed a real stretch when the eloquent elder statesman said the scandal of our times had “decimated” the president’s family, which numbered three. How, then, account for the review that said a performance let a play’s audience walk “right into the mind of its decimated hero”? Applying “decimate” to an individual person or thing is more than a stretch. It makes meaningless a word with a clear and honorable pedigree.

— CJR, May/June 1999

Declined to Comment

But Who Offered?

Committee Democrats,” the article reported, “declined comment until they could discuss Mr. Hyde’s plan.” A frequent goof, “declined comment” in this case says somebody asked, “Hey, Democrats, want some comment?” and the Democrats replied, “No thanks.” Make it, as generations of news folk have been taught, “declined to comment.”

'Democratic', as Adjective

No Taking Sides

Some of the Democrat ferment is positioning for the 2000 election,” the analytical story said, and that was partisan (no doubt inadvertently so). “Democrat” as an adjective is relatively recent Republican coinage, designed to head off any subconscious inference that the opposition is truly “democratic.” But that word is part of the party’s official name, and using the shorter form — which even some Democratic politicians do in error on occasion — endorses a political position, however inadvertently.

'Democratic', as Adjective

No Taking Sides

Different From/Different Than

All the Differents

All else being equal, "different from" is preferable to "different than." An element of logic, having to do with the positive and comparative degrees of adjectives, supports the preference. But the main reason for using "different from" is that in straightforward statements--"Dick is different from Jane"--almost everyone is more comfortable with it and most modern authorities insist on it. The headline "A Monday Night Game Different than All the Others" followed the basic form, and the use of "than" was not happy. Some commentators insist that we shouldn't use "than" under any circumstances, but it has fairly broad support for many situations. "Than" has been used as long as "from," after all (the British still seem fond of "different to" as well), and struggling to avoid it can lead to tortured phrasing and blown deadlines. One pretty widely endorsed exception to the "from" rule arises when "different" is followed by a clause, a passage with its own subject and verb--something like, "Architects draw for different reasons than artists do." That could be reworked to "...different reasons from the ones that inspire artists," or some such, but it would be like going around the block to reach the house next door. "A different sort of mandate than in Iraq," by contrast, could economically and naturally have morphed into "...from the one in Iraq."

Difference/Differential

Vive la Differential?

Steve Parrott, director of university relations at the University of Iowa (see Important/Importantly) had a legitimate gripe.
"While I appreciate that you recognize the difference between the printed and spoken word," he e-mailed, "I hope and pray that you will admonish sportscasters who use 'differential' when the word 'difference' would seem to suffice for describing the score of a sporting event."

Suffice it does. And "differential" indeed has a drumbeat quality in sports broadcasts — one of those awful things some of us do when we want to sound fancy. But the abuse of "differential" is not new, or limited to one medium.

The second edition (1965) of H. W. Fowler's "Dictionary of Modern English Usage" discussed the legitimate use of the word, as noun and adjective, not to mean "difference" but to denote something based on a difference — differential rates of pay, for instance, varying by the skills required for a job. (Some of us remember the night differential — extra pay to compensate for the pain of working when most of our colleagues were resting from their labors.)

"But then the rot sets in," wrote the editor, Sir Ernest Gowers. "Differentials ...is increasingly used, under the influence of love of the long word, as an imposing synonym for differences of all sorts...Perhaps the rot might be stopped if everyone were to bear in mind that Ophelia did not say You must bear your rue with a differential, nor did Wordsworth write But she is in her grave, and O the differential to me."

Heavenly. And when the Knicks lead the Spurs 101-99, that's not a two-point differential. It's just a difference.

Double Possessive

Possessed, but only Once

His best glove work,” the sports story said, “is equal to that of Ozzie Smith’s.” Nah. We don’t need two possessives. “That of” is a possessive, and so is “Smith’s.” Make it “equal to that of Ozzie Smith” or “equal to Ozzie Smith’s.” See also Oddities (“A friend of mine”).

Double Possessive II

Magnificent Possession

What to do about situations like

“China and South Korea's rise to challenge Japan's position…”?

That’s how it was printed, and that’s one solution: with a string of possessive nouns, attach the apostrophe and the “s” only to the last one and assume the reader will understand the earlier ones as possessive, too.

But with anything more complicated than “Dick and Jane’s house,” that approach is hardly a bullseye. It’s marginally acceptable at best, and can be quite tough to follow, as in

“Dr. Hwang and his team’s production of stem cells …was considered…”

This is another approach to the general problem:

“… Mr. Abramoff's and Mr. Scanlon's Indian clients”

But that’s a bit cluttered, and with a longer series would be more than a bit.

The optimum solution is to get the possessive notion out of the way first: “The rise of China and South Korea …”; “The production of stem cells by Dr. Hwang and his team ... was considered”; “The Indian clients of Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon.”

Much closer to a bullseye.

Due To

Making Due

One synonym for “due” is “attributable,” and that was the rough idea the writer had in mind in this sentence: “The last such blip occurred in 1990 due to fears that the Gulf War would cut oil supplies.” But we wouldn’t say the “blip occurred attributable to fears,” would we? The writer wanted “because of” or “as a result of.” With “due to,” some form of the verb “to be,” or verbs that function like it, is usually needed. “The power failure was due to a lightning strike” would be okay. So would, “Their exhaustion seemed due to the humidity rather than the heat.” Or, for fans of the polysyllabic, attributable to it.

Each Other/One Another

To Each His Other

Ronnie Matthew, a sub-editor at The Times of India living in Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat, e-mailed this: “What’s the difference, in usage, between ‘each other’ and ‘one another’? Is ‘each other’ used in the case of two people and ‘one another’ in the case of more than two?”

Yes and no. The rule is clearly arbitrary — examine the words and it’s impossible to see why any distinction is made between the phrases. Designating “each other” for two and “one another” for more than two was the brainstorm of an obscure grammarian in the late 18th century; the phrases had been used interchangeably for centuries before, and have been since, by writers from Samuel Johnson to Noah Webster to E.L. Doctorow. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, the source for that history, says the rule was “cut out of the whole cloth” and “there is no sin in its violation.” The venerable H.W. Fowler declared that “the differentiation is neither of present utility nor based on historical usage,” and the 1990’s reworking of his Modern English Usage concludes that belief in the rule “is untenable.”

HoweverAlthough a needless complication, the supposed rule is prescribed as style — the sometimes arbitrary dicta that publications issue in the service of consistency — by such broadly influential outfits as The Associated Press and The New York Times. So while logic may not sanctify it, safety may.

Elegant Variation

Elegant, Shmelegant

An article mentioned “a letter that Tripp wrote Newsweek back in August after the Willey story first appeared,” and continued, “In her missive, Tripp . . .” Another, after mentioning a “letter to the editor” in one paragraph, continued, “His missive inspired a second letter to the editor . . .” Still another reported on “ . . . a pointed, important May 8 letter to Dombeck. The missive also was signed . . .”

“Missive,” meaning a communication, is often a stilted word. It has its uses (usually humorous) but none of our examples qualifies; each simply substitutes the word for the innocuous word “letter.”

And that is the writing crime of (shudder!) elegant variation — straining conspicuously to avoid totally inoffensive repetition. A classic clich� example is “wet, white stuff” to avoid “snow.” Less shopworn, but no less offensive, was the caption that mentioned “beef sandwiches” and followed up with “savory treats.”

In his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, the great H.W. Fowler declared of elegant variation, “There are few literary faults so widely prevalent, and this book will not have been written in vain if the present article should heal any sufferer of his infirmity.” Here’s to our good health.

Enormity

The Big and the Bad

There’s an undercurrent of awkwardness in the room,” the reporter wrote, “for the imminent enormity of the alternative-medicine industry will not just be demographic but also financial.” Using “enormity” that way — to denote only great size — is like using “fortuitous” to mean “lucky” (“Fortuitous,” CJR, May/June 1997). In both cases, we’re in danger of losing a nice precision. “Enormity” should be reserved for things that are both huge and evil or outrageous, as in “their attempt to convey the enormity of the Holocaust.” To denote sheer size, “enormousness,” though enormous enough itself, is available. So are immensity, vastness and, uh, sheer size, among other words and phrases.

Enumerate — See ReMUNerate

Evoke/Invoke; Precipitate/Precipitous

Tripping Over Latin Roots

Anews story said “Eminent domain . . . is usually evoked for highways . . . ,” but the “oke” word was wrong. Make it “invoked,” meaning called into play and by extension put into effect. We may invoke, for example, our Fifth Amendment rights.

“Evoke” is from the same Latin root, vocare (meaning to call) so it, too, has to do with calling; “vocal” comes from the same place. But “evoke” means to call forth or call to mind. Often, evoking something involves emotion — Ah, how wonderfully cotton candy evokes childhood! — and remembering the two “e” words may help separate the two “oke” words.

Another article mentioned the brief removal of a foreign leader from power, and said the United States “precipitously endorsed the short-lived ouster.”

“Precipitous” means steep, so the adverb means steeply or drastically, as with nasty declines in the stock market. The writer or editor wanted “precipitately,” which has to do with undue speed. Both words come from the Latin root for “precipice,” which both evoke, don’t they? To remember the correct last syllable, it might help to think a, as in “precipitate” and “haste” (in which the United States acted, the article intended to say).

Facility

Too Facile By Half

“Facility” is a graceful, useful word denoting ease, dexterity, fluency, and other attractive qualities, as when music is “played with impressive technical facility and panache.” It can also be used to characterize concrete objects designed to make life easier: “Facilities may be limited at these smaller outposts.”

But the way in which it’s used most often — more and more every day
— is as a substitute for other, much more precise words that describe structures, places, equipment, and more. That’s flabby and irritating.

And ubiquitous; the files teem with everything from “horse facilities” (stables) to “breeding facilities” (puppy mills) to a “laundry facility” to a “hemophilia treatment facility” and a “sewer treatment facility”; to “gambling facilities” and “physical fitness facilities” and — honest — “state-of-the-art fermentation facilities.” Nor do prisons or jails remain in much of the English-speaking world. You know what they are.

The word is maddeningly convenient when we’re in a rush. But really, we should try harder. A hospital is a hospital, a factory is a factory, an outhouse is an outhouse.

— CJR, Jan./Feb. 2006

False Titles

Stringing It Out

"...Marlins Latin American scouting director Al Avila ..."
"...Democratic delegates to the convention Jim and Ann Roosevelt."
"...anti-affirmative action activist Ward Connerly's decision ... "

False titles like those are an abdication of our duty to write English sentences. They're inelegant and unnatural. But they're also easy — don't think, just string all the adjectives and nouns in front of the name (or a common noun) and move on.

But do let's think, and honor the language, and be clear, and let the reader catch a breath in the little pauses that commas contribute. "Al Avila, the Marlins' scouting director for Latin America" is natural. ("Latin American" presumably described his scouting assignment, not his geographic origin, though in fact the false title means we have to guess.) Also natural: "Jim and Ann Roosevelt, Democratic..." and "the decision by Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative action activist, ..." Other arrangements would work in all three cases, and we might want "...Connerly, an..." (not "the") for someone truly obscure.

A less obvious and perhaps less egregious abuse: "Democratic New York Sen. Patrick Moynihan later joined in the fray." Well, the only real title there is "Senator." So "Senator Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat," is a solution. English.

Sometimes a side benefit of avoiding the easy road is greater precision. Al Avila may have been "Latin American," but that wasn't the point. And if a company has more than one senior vice president (we should know), then "XYZ Co. senior vice president Joe Blow" is incomplete and misleading. "Joe Blow, a senior vice president of XYZ Co." is more accurate, and easier on the ear.

Where to draw the line? The closer to standard English — as opposed to journalese — the better. And the longer the mulligan stew of modifiers, the further we get from standard. (CJR, Jan./Feb. 2000)

Addendum, Aug. 28, 2001

A real pip, from an otherwise literate journal that apparently does this kind of thing as a matter of style:

"...says University of Southern California law professor and frequent Fox contributor Susan..."

Why, for heaven's sake?

Farther/Further

Farther? Further? Fussy?

For some generations now (but not a great many), we’ve been told to use “farther” as an adjective or adverb when distance, literal or figurative, is involved, and “further” for the sense of “additional.” (Out of gas, the car could go no farther; she made a further observation.) With all the things writers and editors need to remember, that ought to be a distinction not worth bothering about.

The words emerged in Old English as comparatives not for “far” but for “fore” or “forth,” depending on which reference one consults. The experts seem to agree that “further” came first, with “farther” born as both words mutated, in Middle English, into comparatives for “far.”

The two forms were used for centuries for both distance and “additional” applications; Shakespeare used both, both ways, with no recorded loss of sleep, and fine writers to this day have done the same. But great (and much-needed) codifying of the hodgepodge of English started in the eighteenth century, and by the end of the nineteenth the dictum about “farther” for one thing and “further” for another had taken hold.

The rule seems a distinction without a difference — a rule for a rule’s sake, regardless of the longer history and regardless of logic — and as such an unnecessary burden. These ears find “further” more adaptable, but either word ought to be usable for either task, if our editors will let us go that far.

—CJR, Nov./Dec. 2002

Addendum, Dec. 10th, 2004

Thanks to Jerry Boggs, sports editor of the Middlesboro Daily News in Kentucky, for making clear that the sermon on “farther” and “further” went too far in its zeal for throwing off shackles.

Having read the entry, Boggs then read this on the wire, about an injured quarterback: “Pennington will have further tests Monday.”

So, Boggs asked in an e-mail, “ ‘Pennington will have FARTHER tests’ would also be acceptable?”

Technically, yes, but obviously it’s jarring; the arbitrary latter-day rule has succeeded all too well, and “farther tests” pretty much defies idiom these days. For “additional” the safer choice is likely to be “further.”

The day this was written, “push the limits much farther” popped up in print. Just fine, and a reminder that when talking about distance — literal or figurative — we can still flip a coin.

Feud

Some Things Take Time

The headline reported a judicial decision that had caused an instant, angry debate. A subheading, over a story about that reaction, read, "Bitter Feud Over Ruling." That was too hasty. Some dictionaries include a definition of "feud" that fits any old quarrel, but custom has long since restricted the word to mean the kind of nastiness that goes on for a good while, sometimes for generations. (This squabble, as it turned out, was pretty much moot in a week or so, well short of even the minimalist requirements for a feud.)

Fewer/Less

The Odds Favor Less

Ed Cassidy. chief fiscal officer for a charitable agency in Buffalo, e-mailed to ask, "Can you enlighten me on when 'less' and when 'fewer'."

There's a rule, but a rough one indeed. What it says is that things counted individually are " fewer" and things counted in bulk are "less" — fewer apples, less fruit.

The rule doesn't seem as artificial in practice as the one involving "more than" and "over" (CJR, January/February 1997; on the Web, More Than/Over), but it's close. Time and again "less" is a better choice than "fewer," or certainly as good, with nouns that at first blush might seem to demand the countable treatment: less than a million dollars, less than three days, four members less than a quorum, and so on and on. Each of those plural nouns works as a single unit.

The two words were interchangeable for hundreds of years, and to an extent they still are: The choice is often a close call or doesn't matter. But the invention of the rule in the eighteenth century has had a profound influence, especially in restricting the use of "less." So while a good lawyer could probably get you off, it is at least a misdemeanor these days to say "There are less pickles in the jar."

— CJR, Sept./Oct 2005

Firstly -- See Important/Importantly

Five times below, 150% less, etc.

Nowhere to Go But Up

It wasn't clear in any of these examples what the writer and editor meant, because the math they used doesn't exist.

An expert, we were told, said a proposed power plant "would use 150 times less cooling water per kilowatt that neighboring older plants." Multiplying anything by a positive number like 150 can only increase the amount we're dealing with. Maybe the expert meant the new plant would use one one-hundred-fiftieth as much water. Or maybe not.

Rates of cancer from air pollution, another article said, vary widely, with New York City "four times the national average" (okay so far) and one rural county "five times below the average." If we multiply by five we don't end up "below" anything. "One fifth of the average," maybe? Why make the reader guess?

A report on a survey of news practices said tough interviewing was "down 160% over two years." But nothing can go down more than 100 percent; once it drops that far, it's gone. That one was caught in the editing, and the final phrasing omitted numbers. But reductions, decreases and declines of more than 100 percent, which are impossible, are nonetheless reported with distressing frequency.

The confusion about percentages can extend to increases, too. We need to remember that starting with a rise of 100 percent, the numbers are a little tricky. A 100 percent increase doubles what we started with; 200 per cent triples it; 300 percent quadruples it , and so on to 1,000 percent, which is 11 (not 10) times the original number.

—CJR, Jan./Feb. 2001

Addendum, 4/16/01

Jay Jochnowitz, state editor of the Times Union in Albany, N.Y., was prompted by that discussion to get this off his chest:

"As long as you raise the issue of percents, may I put in my 2 percent about the most heinous and hackneyed offense of all: the tendency of sports figures to say their team gave (or is expected to give) 110 percent. If a journalistic oath is ever devised, it should include a special sportswriter's clause on refusing to quote coaches or gym teachers who use this."

Let it be so.

Flaunt/Flout

A Couple of 'F' Words

The word below beginning with "f" was spelled right, and that's all the editor — your correspondent — noticed:

"As Tom Brokaw is sufficiently savvy to know this rule, his ostensible flaunting of it ..."

To flaunt is to show (something) off — She flaunted her new Porsche — and it wasn't the right word or even related to the right one. To flout, on the other hand, is to violate, defy, thumb one's nose at — He flouted the regulations daily and was never caught.

The writer, whose slip is more defensible than the editor's, obviously meant Brokaw was flouting, not flaunting, the rule in question.

'Forecasted' -- See 'Lightening; 'Forecasted'

'Former Native'

Going Native

The caption described a woman living in New York's suburbs as "a former native of Kosovo," but unless she was literally born again, that can't be. A "native" of someplace is someone who was born there, and the places where we're born never change. The woman was a native of Kosovo and always would be; she was a former resident. We can use "native" loosely, distinguishing, say, between natives and tourists, but the looseness has to be instantly apparent. "Former native" is illiterate and, alas, all too common.

—CJR, Sept/Oct 1999

Fortuitous

Some Things Just Happen

He was supposed to back up Barton,” the story said, “but early in camp Foels asked him to be a floater and learn all three positions. That proved fortuitous when Thomas was injured — White stepped in and filled the hole.”

The clear implication is that White’s learning three positions was a lucky or fortunate thing, but that isn’t what “fortuitous” means. It means happening by chance. White’s extra training didn’t just happen; it was planned. And what happens fortuitously can turn out to be good or bad.

The word used the right way can mean, for example, things stumbled upon: “Fortuitous products of poverty, such as lard-can trash receptacles and peach-basket hampers, can be the stuff that magazine layouts are made of.” Happy happenstance. But the junk that’s grist for the layout artist’s mill might be a pain in the neck for a landscape painter, and it would still be just as fortuitous.

—CJR, May/June 1997

Addendum, 3/27/2000

Afterthought: A rule of thumb would be that nothing proves, becomes, or turns out to be, fortuitous. It is fortuitous — a matter of chance rather than planning — the moment it happens, for good or ill.

A lovely, grim use of the word occurs in Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American.’ As a French jet with the novel’s narrator aboard returns from a bombing mission in Vietnam, the pilot spots a small sampan on the river below and blows it to bits with machine-gun fire. “There had been something so shocking,” Graham wrote, “in our sudden fortuitous choice of a prey — we had just happened to be passing, one burst only was required, there was no one to return our fire, and we were gone again, adding our little quota to the world’s dead.”

Whatever a pilot in such circumstances might have thought, the storyteller clearly didn’t use “fortuitous” to mean “lucky.”

'A Friend of Mine' — See Oddities

Fused Participle; ‘Off Of’

Cut That Fuse

But a bad Marino pass on the Dolphins’ ensuing series led to the ball deflecting off of running back Karim Abdul-Jabbar and into the hands of linebacker Corey Widmer.” But the bad pass didn’t lead to the ball, which is what the sentence says, literally, and what a reader might think, momentarily. It led to the deflecting. The phrase “the ball deflecting” is what language technicians call a fused participle. It’s often best to defuse it, as it were, and that’s easy to do. Make it “led to the ball’s deflecting....” The possessive pulls the reader instantly to the real object of “led to.” (And while in technical land, we should note that “off of” is a barbarism; drop the “of.”)

There are times, though, when the difference in meaning between the naked pronoun and the one wearing an apostrophe is microscopic, and any ambiguity lasts about a nanosecond. Then the choice really depends on sound. What to do with “I can’t imagine him wanting anything less”? This editor left it alone.

Addendum, 2/12/01

A good example of the need to defuse:

Starting out, the passage spoke of a research project “on the dangers of post-Communist Russia...,” which is a very broad and slightly mystifying topic.

But the article continued, “losing control of its nuclear weapons.” Only then did it become clear that the danger wasn’t post-Communist Russia in its entirety, but a much more specific problem. Make it possessive — “Russia’s losing” — and we zip straight through to the danger being researched, which starts with “losing.” The reader doesn’t need to stop at “Russia” and then shift gears.

Gantlet/Gauntlet; Stanch/Staunch

It All Depends on 'U'

"Stanch” is a verb meaning to block the flow of something — anything from blood to a company’s financial losses to emigration. It’s also possible to stanch the thing causing the flow — a wound, for example.

“Staunch” — note the “u” — is an adjective meaning watertight (a staunch ship) or more broadly, strong, loyal, dedicated, steadfast (it’s popular as a neutral substitute for “zealous”).

The words have the same root, and a discernible kinship, and the spelling question used to be considered a toss-up. But the modern consensus is that the twain should not meet, as they did here:

“Finally, Congress has already allocated $1.3 billion to staunch the flow of drugs ...” Adding that “u” to the verb is the standard error. Make it “stanch.”

“Gantlet” (no “u”) is an ordeal, originally military punishment requiring the offender to run between two lines of fellow warriors who beat him with switches, clubs or other handy toys. “Gauntlet” (with a “u” and a different root) is a large glove, originally one that protected a combatant’s hand and forearm. Throwing down a gauntlet issued a challenge; taking one up accepted the challenge, and both phrases are still used figuratively. So, consider:

“Congress had in fact already erected by statute an intimidating gauntlet of studies, findings, public hearings, and other steps the DOD would need to take before closing a base.” Congress erected an intimidating glove? Drop the “u”; that’s a “gantlet.”

—CJR, March/April 2001

Addendum, April 2004
One e-mailer seemed to be in a challenging mood, another apparently just confused, and both sent passages from textbooks clearly endorsing “gauntlet,” with a “u,” for both the article of clothing and the unpleasantness people run through. That prompted some research, which bore these fruits:

British journalists and their worldwide followers tend to use only the “u” spellings - “gauntlet” and “staunch” - for all four meanings of the two words. The applicable British statute sensibly prescribes different spellings for “stanch” and “staunch,” yet no one seems to pay attention. As for the two “g” words, despite their distinctly different origins and meanings (but in line with historical interchangeability in the spellings) only the spelling “gauntlet” seems to be recommended British usage.

Moreover - alas! - the all-purpose “gauntlet” is clearly gaining in this country as well, as the e-mailers’ evidence suggested. But some important arbiters still insist on the spelling distinction between a glove and an ordeal. That reasoning triumphs here, as well.

Gild/Paint the Lily

Brush Up Your Shakespeare, Act II

Like “honored in the breach,” the original phrase whence cometh this common error is usable just the way himself wrote it: “If you want to gild the lily, you could add herbs or minced garlic to the cheese layer” (emphasis added; the phrase in italics is the problem). In King John, some of the nobles are discussing His Majesty’s plans to have himself crowned a second time. To do so, says one, would be “wasteful and ridiculous excess,” as it would be “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily...” So our example is off on two counts: It seems to mean adding a finishing touch or a flourish, but Shakespeare meant going overboard. And it abuses the original, lovely phrasing. Let’s face it, the guy had a touch.

Other matters Shakespearean appear in "Honored in the Breach"; "Wherefore"; and "Raveled Sleave, With an 'A.'"

'Graduated College'

But not with honors

Hey, ejenk,” Charlie McDonald e-mailed from Las Cruces, N.M., where he is retired as a high school English teacher but active as a freelance writer and weekend singer-guitarist, “how about jumping on ‘he graduated Harvard in 1966’ “? Clearly appalled at having heard a famous broadcaster say that, Mr. McDonald added, “Zounds!”

Zounds it is. “Graduated Harvard” (or anything else) is a common error; the phrase needs “from.” Technically, it’s the institution that does the graduating — moving the student up a grade — and some traditionalists hold out for “was graduated from.” The “was” is uncommon these days, but the “from” is not optional if we don’t want to look illiterate.

Graffito/Graffiti

It Takes Two

Or more. This was fun, but it wasn’t quite right: “Graffiti is illegal — but it’s a beautiful crime.” When only one piece of amateur artwork adorns an otherwise bare wall, there’s a nice, useful word for it: “graffito.” The word in our example — used as a singular, as it so commonly is — is the plural.

Addendum, 2/18/99

Some challenging e-mail about that item came from Dennis Moran, assistant business editor of the Prague Post. “English borrows copiously if incompletely,” he wrote, noting such Associated Press style preferences as “referendums” and “stadiums” (not the Latin plurals “referenda” and “stadia”). Amen to those, and to “curriculums,” rather than the pompous “curricula” still widely favored in academic circles.

“In the court of common usage,” Mr. Moran went on, “it seems to me that ‘graffiti’ won out long ago as both singular and plural. Actually, it seems to me that in English it’s an uncountable noun, like ‘grass.’ The word refers to the phenomenon, and doesn’t count scrawlings.”

Outside of archeological and other scholarly writing, where the singular has uniformly been distinguished from the plural, the word is a relatively recent arrival in English, dating only from the 1960’s. And while the plural (with or without a plural verb) is more common — as are the multiple scrawlings it defines — the singular, when appropriate, still has defenders among writers and experts on usage. And, when appropriate, it’s a nicety worth preserving. Also a sweet kind of word, as Mr. Moran suggested in a subsequent note.

“Actually, I’d love it if people used the word ‘graffito,’ “ he wrote, “I guess because I love Italian words ... But I never hear it, so it seems to me doomed.” It isn’t if writers and editors decide it isn’t; we can still use it when one bit of writing is all we’re talking about. And it would be a shame if we could no longer say, should the occasion arise, “A lone grafitto graced the chapel wall.”

He or She, etc.

He, She, and Changing Times

Dale Brayden, a software engineer in Vancouver, Wash., sent a thoughtful message after reading “There’s No ‘They’ There” (see "Singular noun, plural pronoun")The item criticized the common but deplorable use of plural pronouns for singular nouns, in this case “they” for “bond firm.” The solution — use “it,” not “they” — was obvious, but it ducked a tougher question.

“Years ago,” Mr. Brayden e-mailed, “I would have written, for example, ‘no person should feel any pressure simply because he was called by the City Budget Director.’ ” But “he,” the default pronoun for generations of us, is inarguably sexist.

Granting that, Mr. Brayden had no sympathy for the faddish coinage “s/he,” which happily has not seemed to catch on. And simply alternating “she” with “he,” willy-nilly and regardless of context, can be conspicuous and distracting. The gender-neutral “one,” as in “One should not feel ... because one was called ...” has “a tendency to proliferate,” Mr. Brayden observed, and “sounds awfully upper-crusty and stilted.” It certainly does.

What to do? In contexts that are clearly male or clearly female, the appropriate pronoun is, uh, appropriate, and we needn’t strain to avoid it. Elsewhere, a broad answer is to rework the sentence; a narrow example of reworking is to use plurals — “people should not feel pressure ... because they were called...” Mr. Brayden said he saw “he or she” often and found it “awkward and inelegant,” but it’s a legitimate last resort. Maybe, if we can avoid drumbeat repetition, it will come to seem as comfortable as “he.”

Addendum, 12/6/99

Reporting on a poll, this passage avoided the “he or she” problem at a price: “...Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton (neither has officially announced candidacy) are in a statistical dead heat.” The absence of pronouns before “candidacy” was noticeably awkward. Maybe “a candidacy” would have seemed more natural. Or duck the issue with “neither has officially decided to run.” Or maybe even “neither has officially announced his or her candidacy.” Unlike the generic “he or she” situations that crop up so frequently, this was a case of a real him and a real her.

Historic/Historical — See Adviser/Advisor

Hitting Milestones

Watch Out for the Rocks!

Alex McKale, a research and development manager at Hewlett-Packard, heard the phrase “hit a milestone” not long ago and thought it odd. “Wouldn’t hitting a milestone damage the vehicle,” he asked by e-mail, “and thereby hinder further progress?” Well, yes. A metaphor should work literally as well as figuratively, and hitting real stones isn’t a positive experience. Holding that thought, we’d expect to find the athlete in this headline in the trainer’s room, at least: “Veteran Defenseman Bodger Hits Milestone.” And this poor little guy had a real run of bad luck: “Calvin, 11 months old, has been hitting developmental milestones.”

A quick Nexis search found some variation of “hit a milestone” used more than 1,000 times in less than a year. That may not be worth losing sleep over, but why risk the risible? We’re better off letting people and things reach milestones or pass milestones, not run into them.

—CJR, Jan/Feb 1999

Hone/Home

It's Not a Hone Run, Either

Mark W. Freeman, who writes his newspaper column as the Washington Country Curmudgeon (see Wangle/Wrangle) e-mailed to depose as follows:

“I deplore the use of ‘hone’ for ‘home,’ as in ‘the critic was honing in on his target.’ What I deplore even more is the tendency of dictionaries to accept usages such as this on the ground that ‘lots of people make this mistake.’ Lots of people say ‘chimbly’ for ‘chimney,’ but because they aren’t TV news anchors, the dictionaries haven’t accepted this. Yet.”

And not soon, one hopes. “Home in on,” meaning aim at, narrow a field to, and apparently evolving from the homing performed by pigeons (and then airplanes and missiles), certainly seems more logical than a phrase that evokes a razor strop.

Honored in the Breach

Brush Up Your Shakespeare, Act I

Here, as often happens with this allusion, the great man’s meaning is turned around: “Perhaps it is a saving grace of Russian politics these days that laws and orders are honored more in the breach than in the observance.” What the writer meant was that the laws and orders were broken more often than they were obeyed. But Hamlet, who said it first, meant something else. When he described his stepfather’s boozy carryings-on as a custom “more honored in the breach than the observance,” he meant that it was a bad custom, more honored when violated than when followed. Not the same thing, and the pretty phrase is usable in its original sense.

Other matters Shakespearean appear in "Gild/Paint the Lily"; "Wherefore"; and "Raveled Sleave, With an 'A.'"

Hopefully -- See Important/Importantly

‘Human Race’ — See Oddities

Hung/Hanged

Pictures and People

An e-mail correspondent wondered about this passage from a magazine article: “The majority of the people had not died from natural causes. Most had been hung - the ropes were around their necks - hit over the head or stabbed.” As a past tense for the word meaning to put to death by hanging, “hung” is accepted by some dictionaries as one alternative. Most modern authorities, though, still argue that pictures are hung and people are hanged.

Hyphens

Those Wild and Crazy Hyphens

Stacy Moore, managing editor of the Hi-Desert Star in Yucca Valley, Calif., e-mailed to ask about hyphenation, a topic that could fill a book (now there’s a chilling thought). She and a writer at the paper differed over whether to hyphenate “big city,” “beach front,” and “ice cold” as compound adjectives in front of nouns. Ms. Moore concluded, “I say hyphenate ‘em all.”

Agreed.

The classic reason for using hyphens with compounds is to avoid ambiguity. The hyphen links two or more words instantly for the reader’s rapidly moving eye. “Big-city” is a perfect example. A “big city man” is a large man from a city. A “big-city man” is a man from a large city, and the hyphen is mandatory to pull the two words together to make one modifier. “Forty-odd employees” would be silly without the hyphen. So would “small-business man” (which requires splitting “businessman” in two).

Beyond that, “big-city” just wants a hyphen because convention calls for it. And, even though they’re not likely to be misunderstood when they’re hyphen-free, that’s also true of “beach-front” (also reasonable as one word, noun and adjective) and “ice-cold.”

Or so it says here. Some decisions about hyphens, especially decisions about what convention requires, are open to argument. And because of largely arbitrary choices involving style, the same compounds will appear hyphenated in one good publication and naked in another.

Some editors, including this one after many a year, like hyphens better than others do. But we of the pro-hyphen school would do well remember a Churchillian pearl: “One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided whenever possible.”

—CJR, Sept./Oct. 2002

Futhermore:

In the second paragraph above, the phrase “rapidly moving” combines an adverb and a (verbal) adjective to form one modifier describing “eye.” Yet the compound takes no hyphen. That’s because the adverbial ending “ly” is almost universally considered to perform the bridging function that a hyphen would otherwise take care of.

“Very” also needs no hyphen to link it to an adjective, by common consent — “very popular singer.” It’s just an adverb modifying an adjective. So, usually, are “most,” “more,” “least,” “less” and other such words used in phrases like most beloved teacher, least likely outcome, less complex solution.

That last was published with a hyphen, and there’s no reason for one. Nor was there in “the nation’s most-populous state” or “several more-famous plays,” also hyphenated in print. (An exception with “most”: the FBI’s Most-Wanted List. It’s not a list that is somehow most wanted, it’s “most” and “wanted” linked to make one adjective describing “list.” It needs a clarifying hyphen.)

In deciding whether to use a hyphen, it may be useful — and, of course, it may be maddening — to remember that printed lines can break in funny places. Look how these broke:

1. “... he was the longest”
2. “ ...just months removed from the end of Juan Antonio Samaranch’s dictatorship of arrogance and secrecy, along came a figure”
3.”...said one of the deportees, Sor Vann, 34, a heavy”
4. “...many officials recall how Mr. Bush’s father seemed ill”

This is how those passages continued:
1. “serving of the chief rabbis in Europe”
2. “skating scandal at the Winter Games”
3. “equipment operator”
4. “attuned to economic conditions”

The guidelines for clarity or convention or both seem to require hyphens after all of those end-of-line words; their placement just compounds the problem when the hyphens are omitted. (The same guidelines surely called for a hyphen in the phrase “infectious disease expert,” which was a tad risible without one, and “obstruction of justice laws,” which was just a tad tough to read.)

The subject is far from exhausted, but the writer isn’t. A closing thought from John Benbow, once editor of the stylebook of the Oxford University Press, quoted in the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage by William Morris and Mary Morris: “If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.” Are we there yet?

Addendum, 12/02/02

The last word on this subject in this space goes to John Kilkenny of Melbourne, Australia, who waded through that “lucubration” (as he called it, not kindly but justifiably) and begged to differ with one example. The phrase “several more-famous plays,” he e-mailed, needs a hyphen to say that the plays are more famous than the one being discussed. With no hyphen, it can be read to mean — our bugaboo ambiguity rearing its head — several additional plays that, like this one, were famous. The hyphen seems unusually unlovely in such a phrase, but without rewording, it’s defensible unless the context is totally clear.

'If Not'

Whaddya Mean, 'If Not'?

In the passages below, and in thousands like them, the little phrase “if not” is inescapably sloppy, and it can be unfair.

“...at worst, he bullied his opponents and impugned their integrity, if not their patriotism.”

“Off and on for two decades, Dr. Lee’s behavior was curious, if not criminal.”

“If not” in both cases achieves the rarefied status of perfect ambiguity.

Did the writer mean that the subject in the first passage actually stopped short of attacking his opponents’ patriotism? Did the second writer mean Dr. Lee’s behavior was probably not criminal? Distinct possibilities, but the terse yet flabby “if not” doesn’t get the reader there.

Or, perhaps more likely in these examples (and more commonly), “if not” could mean the writers wanted to imply guilt without quite coming out with the charge. That’s dirty pool. Whatever meaning is intended, saying it directly — and providing supporting evidence later — is the responsible way to go.

A third distinct possibility, a cousin of the second, is that a writer doesn’t have a clue, but just wants to cover all bases by slipping in the possibility of something ugly. That’s both sloppy and unfair.

—CJR, May/June 2001

Implement — See ‘A Reader’s Potpourri’

Imply/Infer

Think 'M' Before 'N'

To imply is to suggest, hint, get an idea across — deliberately or by accident — without saying or writing it in so many words. Politician A might not quite say Politician B was a crook, but he certainly might try to make his audience think so.

It would be up to the audience to infer. That means to read or listen to something and deduce, or guess, what is meant. Inferring is a thought process.

The confusion between the words is a lot more common than it should be, and almost always involves “infer”:

A government official issued an apology for “inferring that a 14-year-old girl might have instigated a sexual relationship with a clergyman.” What he inferred didn’t matter; what he apologized for was putting the thought into words — implying it.
A writer discoursing on a denizen of the deep — the horseshoe leatherjacket, no less — declared, “As the name infers, this fish has a horseshoe-shaped pattern on the side of its tough thick skin.” A name can’t think, so it can’t infer; it implies.

A stab at mnemonics: Someone iMplies, then someone else iNfers — “m” before “n.” Or, the sPeaker imPlies. Or, the listener or reader INfers, as in INgests, as in takes IN ... or maybe...

— CJR May/June 2002

Important/Importantly

Important ? Well, Interesting

Steve Parrott, associate director (later director) for university relations at the University of Iowa, e-mailed to ask, “Please consider a few words on ‘more important / more importantly.’ ”

Okay. Mr. Parrott had in mind sentences or clauses that begin with one of those phrases, like “Most importantly, the charges are tied directly to the original topic Mr. Starr was supposed to investigate.”

The short answer is that either form of the word is acceptable. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1994) has a lengthy and interesting (really) discussion of the longstanding argument (really) over important vs. importantly, with many citations, and concludes that “both are defensible grammatically and both are in respectable use.”

The tilt here, though, is toward “importantly.” The adverb can stand alone at the start of a sentence or clause — without “more” or “most” or any other modifier — and the adjective can’t.

Try it. Drop the “most” from the example quoted above; the sentence still works. Then, with “most” gone, drop the “ly” from “importantly”; the sentence no longer works.

(Some mindless aversion to “ly” adverbs at the start of a sentence — an extension of misguided rigidity about “importantly”? — must have been at work in the following sentence, since no human being ever spoke this way: “Not surprising, a variety of polls indicate...”)

The arguments for “most important” are strained, as an e-mail discussion with the freelance copy editor Christy Goldfinch of Fort Worth made clear.

“Important” commonly fails to modify any specific part of its sentence, so the adjective advocates contend that it can be understood to modify the whole thing — a “sentence adjective.” Well, “importantly” can certainly be called a “sentence adverb.”

But with “importantly” there’s no need for that dance. The adverb has an element to grab hold of within its sentence, the verb or the overall predicate. (And that, quite apart from any “sentence adverb” justification, makes the literalists’ objection to “hopefully” at the start of a sentence fallacious, as well as outmoded.)

Another argument for “most important” is that the phrase “What is” is understood to precede it. If that were a natural supposition, all sorts of adjectives (with modifiers) could start sentences. But “Most happy, the storm ended,” just doesn’t make it.

The “most” approach is acceptable (not preferable) with the one adjective “important” not on logical grounds but because it is widely used and well established. And in passages that start with modifiers ending in “ly” — “equally” comes to mind — using “important” is handy.

P.S.: Nothing in this sermon should be construed as enthusiasm for “Firstly...,” an irritating start for an even more irritating series.

In, Up and On

Three Very Little Words

Linda Leonhardt, a decorative painter in Great River, N.Y., e-mailed to report a domestic dispute:

“My husband and I were hotly discussing ‘between and in between’ the other day, and we haven’t settled a thing.”

“In” is clearly unnecessary in a phrase like “in between the pages,” and in most standard writing is probably best omitted. And yet — the “in” doesn’t do any real harm, and may just add a sense of precision or specificity lacking in an unaccompanied “between” (just as “in there, up there” and so on can be more informative than a mere “there”). And unlike the single word “between,” “in between” sounds natural standing on its own: the fighters charged each other, and the referee was caught in between.

When a writer said “I called up” a source, Phil Dechman, a retired editor at the Independent in Grimsby, Ontario, was reminded of a conversation at a gathering of his parents and some of their friends when he was a child. “The use of ‘up’ was denigrated,” he wrote, “after which one sharpie raised his glass and offered the toast, ‘Bottoms!’ “ But in “call up,” Mr. Dechman suggested, the “up” is always redundant. So it is, unless we’re talking about military forces. “Call up” may fit in intentionally casual or conversational writing, though.

As Wendy Bryan, then a Web specialist at the Columbia Journalism School, noted, “online” (one word) has become a noun and adjective for the Internet universe. But she was puzzled when she read about someone who “stood on line at the bank machine,” and wondered, “Do I get behind those on line, or may I remain in line?” “On line” is apparently a regionalism; The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage declares: “Few besides New Yorkers speak of standing on line. Follow the usage of the rest of the English-speaking world: in line.” The “on” version may be spreading, but “in” is still the unassailable choice.

Individuals/People/Persons

People Need People

The article attributed new developments in a banking scandal to “individuals who have direct knowledge of the investigation.” Why “individuals”? Why not “people”? The answer is that bureaucratese is infectious. At times it’s necessary to distinguish between individuals and groups, so “individual,” singular and plural, has its uses as a noun. Otherwise, such solid old English words as “man,” “woman” and “people” are just fine. (And “people” is almost always preferable to the stilted “persons,” except on signs about restaurant occupancy, where the bureaucrats rule. See below.)

—CJR, Nov/Dec 1999

After reading that last, Margo Young, director of academic publications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Business Administration, e-mailed with a question.

She noted that in “Elements of Style” by Strunk and White, a kind of mini-bible for generations of American expository writers, “persons” gets preference for some contexts. The good book declares: “The word people is best not used with words of number, in place of persons. If of ‘six people’ five went away, how many people would be left behind? Answer: one people.” Citing that passage, Ms. Young asked, “Whom should we use today as the standard: Streisand or Strunk and White?”

As respected as Strunk and White should be, we’re better off with Streisand on this one. “Persons” has never seemed natural, but a lot of us learned to use it years ago as part of the near-ubiquitous Associated Press style. Times change. It’s no longer style at the A.P. or, also in a change, at the New York Times. Both prescribe “people” except for such established idioms as “displaced persons” and “missing persons.”

And the Strunk and White argument didn’t really make sense. If we started with 45,000 people (would anyone, anywhere, say “persons”? ) at a football game and all but one left the stadium, how many, and what, would be left? Answer: one person. That’s what would be left in the S & W example, too. For centuries, the natural, standard English plural for “person” has been “people.” And S & W to the contrary notwithstanding, using “people” as an all-purpose plural never locked anyone into using “people” as a singular.

—CJR, March/April 2000

In Order To

Point of Order

An e-mail questioner wondered why people kept saying "in order to" when "to" was all they needed, and it's a fair question. None of these needed the extra words:

"In order to demonstrate this struggle..."

"Incorporate the business in order to take advantage...."

"...what others need to do in order to get there."

But what about this one?

"...to preserve our present in order to build a better future."

At a minimum, that would be unpleasing—choppy, unrhythmic—without "in order," and it might even be confusing.

"In order" can usually be omitted, or deleted in editing, but any hard-and-fast rule is dangerous. Once in a while the phrase is needed to avoid (not, in this case, "in order to avoid") misunderstanding.

May / June 2007.

Interface -- See ‘A Readers’ Potpourri’

Invoke See Evoke/Invoke

Irrelevant (Not ‘Irrevelant’)

Relevant, as in Middle East

There’s an old name for the lands just east of the Mediterranean — “Levant” — that can help us avoid some trouble with a couple of much more commonly used words.

One article applauded a “very strong, revelant message to the people.” Another deplored the “devilishly clever labels on a collection of random, irrevelant scenes.”

Typos both, maybe, and an easy slip to make. But a database search suggests that a widespread switching of middle syllables — “vel” replacing “lev” — is going on out there. That strong message, if the writer was right, was “relevant.” Those scenes, by contrast, were “irrelevant.”

To avoid the misspellings, it may help to think of “relate,” to which “relevant” is, as it were, related. But that will carry us only as far as the “l” in the correct spellings (a critical place to reach, though). So “levant,” with the appropriate prefix, may be the best mnemonic. And there are extra showoff points for working “Levant” into conversation.

'Issues'

Taking Issue

Through his pain, Robert Brown found a bit of humor.

“One day will you please address the ‘issue/problem’ issue (er, problem),” his note said. “In my dictionary, I don’t see ‘problem’ as a definition for ‘issue.’ Everyone is using ‘issue’ in a problematic way (when will there be ‘issuematic?’).”

The e-mail from Mr. Brown — who said he lives in New York City, owns an art gallery, and writes about gastronomy on the side — touched a nerve. Most fads are ignorable, but the “issue” fad has been as sweeping as any in memory. The word is used in countless sloppy ways. A weatherman warns of “cloudiness issues.” A sports announcer notes a team’s “penalty issues.” And from the print world: “health issues, such as high blood sugar”; the college whose chief, according to a news article, “wants the mold issue resolved”; radio stations that “bombarded their listeners with the issue.”

As a standard-English alternative to the wimpy “issue,” we should certainly consider the straightforward “problem.” Or “concern” or “weakness” or “question” or “topic” or “matter” or . . .

Lend/Loan

Very Well, a Loan

If he could spare the money,” the popular novelist wrote, “he’d gladly loan it to me.” Why take a perfectly good noun and make it a verb when there’s already a perfectly good verb? A loan is what you get when somebody lends you something.

Lie, Lay, and All That

Lie This to Rest?

No, of course not. But the confusion between “lie” and “lay” was different and subtler in a passage that said someone who maneuvered for a job too overtly “did not do what a shrewd operator would do and lay low.”

Someone was thinking of the expression “to lie low,” meaning to hunker down, make oneself inconspicuous. Introduced by “did not,” as it was in the example, the verb required the present tense: the job candidate “did not ... lie low.”

“To lie” means to rest, be at rest, repose, or just exist on or in some place (“the fault lies with the captain, not the crew”) or in some condition or position (lie low, lie down). “Lay” is the past tense of “lie” — she lay low for awhile. The past perfect tense uses the participle, “lain” — until that day, she had lain low. Thus we have:

Lie, lay, lain.

Probably because its past tense is “lay,” the word is often confused with ...

... “To lay,” meaning to put or place something somewhere (including to bring forth an egg). It takes an object — lay that pistol down, babe — and no form of “to lie” does. (Well, “lie your heart out,” but that’s another “lie.”) The past tense of “lay” is “laid,” and so is its past perfect tense, and the trio is:

Lay, laid, laid.

The failure to distinguish between “lie” and “lay” is widely considered illiterate, yet it’s surprisingly common. Is the only answer rote memorization? Seems so, but anyone with a mnemonic trick that has helped avoid the confusion is welcome to send it along.

Addendum, Aug. 4, 1999

The murder suspect, the article reported, “laid low, escaping suspicion...” He didn’t put something (except himself) someplace, so he “lay low.” Lie, lay, lain. (If someone had knocked him out in a barroom brawl, we might say he’d been “laid low.” At his funeral, he’d have been “laid to rest.” Lay, laid, laid.)

‘Lightening’; ‘Forecasted’

Lightening Was Forecasted?

Lisa Aug of the Office of Communications at the Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children found this on a television network’s Web site: “Powerful storms are forecasted for parts of the region again tonight.” “Forecasted?” she asked, in obvious dismay. Alas, some major dictionaries do give that form as a second-choice past tense, and it turns up a lot. But it looks and sounds ignorant. “Forecast” does the job for the past as well as the present.

In the same spot, Ms. Aug also found a story on fires in the West “spelling the electrical phenomenon ‘lightening.’ ” That’s also surprisingly common, but fortunately the dictionaries don’t seem to support it, even as a copout alternative. The word is “lightning” — no “e” — unless we’re making something literally or figuratively less weighty or less dark. Lightning, as it happens, has a lightening effect on the sky.

Like, With an Object

That Ole Devil ‘Like’

No, not the one in “John likes Mary.” And not the weird but widespread affliction of such expressions as “It’s, like, cool”; that’s not worth talking about. Our topic is the “like” that compares things. This one, by continuing consensus, was wrong:

“ . . . like Edwards and his Jets did . . .”

“Like” means “similar to,” which obviously wouldn’t work in the fragment above. The rule of thumb: Don’t use “like” if what follows is a noun (including a name) or pronoun that is the subject of its own verb. So it should be “as Edwards and his Jets did” or — it often sounds more natural — “the way” they did. In speech, the form “like they did” is virtually universal. For even moderately formal writing, our rule of thumb remains much the safest bet. At least for now.

Confusion seems to arise about “like,” though. Consider “ . . . the current wave of terror, as the ones before it, represents . . . .” Someone — writer or editor — was afraid of “like.” But the phrase between commas has no verb of its own; “wave,” despite the parenthetical interruption, is the subject of the verb “represents.” “Like the ones before it” was right choice.

— CJR, March/April 2003

Loath/Loathe

If This Isn't Loath...

Pick a winner: The villain in the novel said, “That I am loath to do.” The newspaper article said, “It’s a strategy that ... the council is loathe to pursue” (emphasis added). There’s at least one respected reference work that says it doesn’t make any difference how we spell the italicized adjective in those sentences, which means “reluctant.” The suggestion is that we drop the “e” if, in speech, we choose to pronounce it with a hard “th” as in “Goth” or “pith,” but use the “e” if we opt for a soft “th,” as in, well, “loathe,” meaning to abhor, to hate. Fortunately, several other reference works don’t go along with that permissiveness. Let the verb be “loathe” and the adjective “loath,” however you pronounce them. Inviting the world’s writers to flip a coin also invites a bit of chaos, and could drive alert readers crazy.

May/Might

I Wish I May...

May have,” as part of a verb, puts the verb in the present perfect tense, and means that at this moment, we’re not sure whether something has happened or not. So sentences like this one don’t say what they mean to: “They knew that if they could have somehow played the first half the way they played the second half, they may have won.” That says it’s still possible that they won. They didn’t, as the sentence makes clear; make it “might have won.”

Me, Myself (Reflexive Pronouns)

Call Myself Anytime?

From the redoubtable Jane Greer of Bismarck, N.D. (see “A Reader’s Potpourri”):

“ ‘If you have any questions, contact my secretary or myself.’ Writers use this because they remember (correctly) from English class that “Bob and me played ball” (where “me” is part of the subject) is wrong, and generalize (incorrectly) that “Give the ball to Bob and me” (where “me” is part of the object of the preposition) must also be wrong — or at least somehow less genteel than “Bob and myself.” No, no, no. The “self” words are reflexive pronouns, to be used only when the subject and object of a verb are the same person or thing, as in “I hurt myself” or “He hurt himself” or “The dog hurt itself.” Similarly, “Don’t hurt yourself” is right because the understood subject, “you,” is the same as the object, “yourself.” But “I’ll send this to Jim and yourself” is wrong; “I” and “yourself” are two different people. The English for it is “to Jim and you.”

Speaking of “myself,” a note prompted by the discussion in these pages of “Older Than Him“ came from Loren Tretyakov, head of the translation department at the Russian news agency Interfax, where all reports originate in Russian. Noting that her copy editors, native English speakers, often misuse pronouns, she went on:

“My contribution is: ‘ “It is assumed that somebody, clearly Primakov and myself are meant, sells Cabinet positions,” he said.’

“Wouldn’t ‘Primakov and I’ be correct?”

It would. Broken down, the clause says that “Primakov is meant and I am meant.” What’s wanted in such cases is a pronoun that is a subject, in this case “I,” not an object. We can’t say “myself (or me) is meant,” so we have to say “Primakov and I are meant.”

'Media,' Plural

'Media' Matters

We can skip examples of the use of the word as a singular. They’re practically infinite, and maybe the outposts (like CJR) that are holding out for “media” as a plural will be overrun someday. But there are arguments for trying to mount a counterattack.

One has to do with literacy. The word has a useful and much-used singular form, “medium.” It came from the Latin into English along with its Latin plural, “media,” and both have been established in English since time immemorial. (The Anglicized “mediums” is rare these days, except in reports on the spirit world.) How can “medium” and “media” both be singular? It’s not logical, and really not literate, despite those myriad examples of misuse.

Another argument for the plural is philosophical. Public figures — politicians, athletes and their coaches, performers of all kinds — like to blame journalists and journalism for all that isn’t lovely in their lives. They consistently say sneeringly that “the media is” whatever, as if all of us in the ole news game were the same. Polls that put us down among politicians and used-car salesmen in public esteem suggest that people are buying that notion. But even in a period when traditionally responsible news outlets wallow in sleaze from time to time (and agonize about it), it’s unfair to imply that the best and the worst among us are indistinguishable. Subtly, “the media is” does that. We do well to fight for the plural, and to be even clearer by specifying “the news media” when we aren’t talking about the trash peddlers or infotainment folks. A subtle counterattack is fair, and literate.

—CJR, May/June 1998

Addendum, June 16, 1998:

Via email from Baxter Omohundro of Columbus, Ga., a retired Knight Ridder editor: “My list of abused words is long, but the next time you feel like leaping to the defense of an increasingly neglected singular I would nominate ‘bacterium.'
'This bacteria is...' Ugh!"

Monies

Monies? Balonies!

'Public monies would lessen the need to sell so many sponsorships.” On the rare occasion when we need a plural — “the moneys of Central and South America” — the sensible solution is to add an “s” to “money,” though dictionaries do include “monies” as an acceptable plural. But as a substitute for plain old “money,” or “funds,” or “financing”? Leave it to the bureaucrats.

More Than/Over

Dumb and Dumber

Somewhere along the line, a lot of us were taught that we had to say “more than,” and not “over,” when dealing with certain amounts. Somebody could be over six feet tall, but we had to say more than ten years.

It’s a picky rule — “over” is at least as common as “more than” in literate speech for the relevant situations — and worse than annoying when, as happens often with rules, we follow it out the window. Then we get something like this: “...a salary just under “$25,000...and well more than Clinton himself would make as attorney general.” Arg. “Well more than” flat-out mangles idiom; nobody says anything but “well over.” So if we ignore the rule — honor it in the breach, as it were — we’ll never perpetrate “well more than.”

—CJR Jan./Feb. 1997

Addendum, 9/11/00

Another lulu born of that silly rule: “He should command well more than $10 million a year.” Clank. That $10 million isn’t even the kind of thing “more than” is supposed to describe -- an amount understood to be counted individually. That $10 million is a sum, a single unit. “Well over” is the only literate phrasing.

More On 'More Than'

Doris I. Fenske, an editor at Ernst & Young in New York, e-mailed to say she was repeatedly running into uses of “over” like this one: “The concert was attended by over 1,000 people.” Long ago, she said, she was taught to use “more than” in such instances. “But lately I am seeing ‘over’ everywhere, and my red pen can barely keep up,” Ms. Fenske wrote. “Am I fighting a losing battle?”

It’s one that should not have been joined; the rule long foisted on huge numbers of us doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing wrong with “more than” (assuming we avoid the “well more than” dissonance) but there’s nothing wrong with “over,” either.

According to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, the idea of insisting on “more than” for quantities treated as individually countable sprang full-grown from the head of William Cullen Bryant, the poet and journalist, in 1877, when he was editor of the New York Evening Post. Bryant gave no explanation for his edict, but journalists picked it up, and taught it, down to our time.

Yet for both countable quantities and round amounts, the dictionary says, “over” has been standard English since the 14th century. All those centuries of precedent would seem to make “over” unexceptionable. Better still, natural.

Resources

All entries A — M.

Adverb Placement

It Should Usually Be Early

Adverse/Averse

Adverse Effect

Adviser/Advisor; Historic/Historical

Distinctions and Differences

Affect/Effect

Think 'A' ... or 'E'

All the Differents

Getting Along

Along With

Getting Along

Alternate/Alternative

Alternating Current?

Antecedents

Remembering Those Gone Before

'As Such' (Transition)

In Transition

As, Then As

What's Better Than 'Than'?

As Well, Too (Start of Sentence)

Starting Well

AttorneyS general

They're Not Generals

The Authorities

Experts or Cops?

Bacterium/Bacteria -- See ‘Media, Plural’

Feel Bad/Badly

Two Ways, With Feeling

'Because' and 'Since'

Since You Asked...

Beg the Question

Sneaky Beggar

Between/Among

Among You, Me, and the Lamppost?

'Between...and' not 'Between...to'

Between the Cracks

Cracks to Fill

Between/In Between -- See In, Up and On

Bid, Bid, Bade

Do Not Hasten to Bid

'Big of a'

Of Idiom

Borne Out, with an 'E'

Born to be Borne, or Vice Versa

Both

Putting Two Together

Brackets

The Bracket Blues

Call Up - See In, Up and On

Cardinal/Ordinal Numbers

Cardinal Rules

'Collective'

Don't Call Collect

Collective NounsSensible Notion

Comprise

The Whole and the Parts

Could/Couldn't Care Less

It's About Caring

Criterion/Criteria; Phenomenon/Phenomena

Give Us An A! Give Us An... On!

Curriculum(s) — See Graffito/Graffiti

Danglers

Memoirs Don't Write

'Decimate'

It Takes Ten, Roughly

Declined to Comment

But Who Offered?

'Democratic', as Adjective

No Taking Sides

'Democratic', as Adjective

No Taking Sides

Different From/Different Than

All the Differents

Difference/Differential

Vive la Differential?

Double Possessive

Possessed, but only Once

Collective Nouns
Sensible Notion