Leave it to a comedian to impart an important lesson. On Thursday's 30 Rock episode, Tracy Morgan's Tracy Jordan character pointed out how a simple comma can make a huge difference in the meaning of a sentence.
In sentences where a person is being addressed, the comma is required. Otherwise that word before the name becomes an adjective for the person you are supposed to be talking. Unfortunately, I see many writers who don't understand that rule.
Note the difference:
He's dead Jim.
He's dead, Jim.
When addressing someone, remember what Tracey Jordan said: "Oh, you mean, 'He's evil COMMA Tracey,' "
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Why some may use woman as an adjective
Hélène from France wrote in a comment on the "Woman is not an adjective!" post her thoughts about how so many people began to use the word in the wrong way. "We often use "femme" (woman)for words that do not have any feminine form," she wrote. "For instance : une femme médecin, as you wrote, a "woman doctor." Check out her entire comment here.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Eye can't believe it
Have trouble reading? See an obstetrician ... huh?
And when that doesn't help, I suppose you could call an chiropodist.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
We're getting a lot of complaints
One of the first things a college journalism professor told us has stuck with me forever. "There is no such word as alot"
It's two words, she told us. Not that I didn't know that already, but it was a surprise to many. And still a surprise, it appears, to the number of people who still get it wrong.
Just remember: though people have been getting it wrong for decades, it will never be one word. While some words (think to-morrow, video-tape) eventually become one word, alot won't be one of them.
It's two words, she told us. Not that I didn't know that already, but it was a surprise to many. And still a surprise, it appears, to the number of people who still get it wrong.
Just remember: though people have been getting it wrong for decades, it will never be one word. While some words (think to-morrow, video-tape) eventually become one word, alot won't be one of them.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
We're mad as hell about made-up, shortened words and we're not going to take it anymore
How angry do made-up or shortened words from ad copywriters like nitelife, donuts or lite beer? As made as the guy (or woman, it's possible) who corrected this "drive-thru" sign?
Most of us just accept such bastardization from commercial ventures, but it's good to see someone still wants to make sure everybody knows right from wrong.
Just don't get me started on the words lyricists resort to, like "pompatus" -- thanks, Steve Miller. (At the same time, thanks Simpons, for hilarity such as embiggened and cromulent)
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Apostrophe faces extinction
For the longest time (and this would normally lead into a rant about the education system and its switch away from teaching phonics and proper grammar), proper use of the apostrophe has been in decline. Added improperly (the Obama's walked to the park) or missing altogether (my mothers purse), it breaks one's heart to see so many people do not understand this common form of puncuation.
Every time I see a Tim Hortons outlet I wince, thinking the hockey player and partner who founded the doughnut chain might have had a successful business model, but not a good English teacher. (As it is spelled, the name is plural, which would only be used if you were writing about two or more people named Tim Horton).
George Jonas wrote in the National Post recently, in a column headlined "Death of the apostrophe," that "Voila, gentle reader. You're looking at the future. People not knowing where to put things will be the death of many a jolly squiggle."
Check out the story.
Every time I see a Tim Hortons outlet I wince, thinking the hockey player and partner who founded the doughnut chain might have had a successful business model, but not a good English teacher. (As it is spelled, the name is plural, which would only be used if you were writing about two or more people named Tim Horton).
George Jonas wrote in the National Post recently, in a column headlined "Death of the apostrophe," that "Voila, gentle reader. You're looking at the future. People not knowing where to put things will be the death of many a jolly squiggle."
Check out the story.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
For the final time: Woman is not an adjective!
The online version has been corrected, but out on the streets today, there it was in large bold type on the front page of the Toronto Star: Ontario NDP elects first woman leader.
Why would the NDP elect someone to lead women?
Written as such, the headline in question means they elected a leader of women. hile the headline is grammatically incorrect, most people would understand the writer means first female leader. But that doesn't forgive those who insist on using the word woman as an adjective.
For some reason, people who would never dream of using man as an adjective, forget that woman is a noun and write things like "woman doctor" or "woman lawyer."
A woman doctor, for the record, is a gynecologist.
Why would the NDP elect someone to lead women?
Written as such, the headline in question means they elected a leader of women. hile the headline is grammatically incorrect, most people would understand the writer means first female leader. But that doesn't forgive those who insist on using the word woman as an adjective.
For some reason, people who would never dream of using man as an adjective, forget that woman is a noun and write things like "woman doctor" or "woman lawyer."
A woman doctor, for the record, is a gynecologist.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
A licence to practise
Practice, practise; licence, license.
This one is for Canadians only. Americans, I really don't understand your use of the two words, but I do know that you, through your printed and computer dictionaries, don't help the matter north of the border.
Up here, I see it wrong more often than not. Many of the young writers I've seen seem to have just given up and play the odds -- they know they have a 50-50 chance of getting it right.
For Canadians, though, it's pretty simple: use the 's' version for the verb form and the 'c' any other time.
My hockey practice is at 6 a.m. In order to get better, you must practise.
A doctor's practice. He practises quack medicine.
Driver's licence; licensed to kill.
Got it?
This one is for Canadians only. Americans, I really don't understand your use of the two words, but I do know that you, through your printed and computer dictionaries, don't help the matter north of the border.
Up here, I see it wrong more often than not. Many of the young writers I've seen seem to have just given up and play the odds -- they know they have a 50-50 chance of getting it right.
For Canadians, though, it's pretty simple: use the 's' version for the verb form and the 'c' any other time.
My hockey practice is at 6 a.m. In order to get better, you must practise.
A doctor's practice. He practises quack medicine.
Driver's licence; licensed to kill.
Got it?
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Hot for teacher
Who says learning about words can't be fun? Check out Marina Orlova, a Russian-born philologist (word historian) who was voted World's #1 Sexiest Geek. Her YouTube channel, HotForWords, boasts more than 170,000 subscribers. All of them wanting to learn about words.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Kill the redundancy
Here's another one from the department of redundancy department: "humanely euthanized." Once again, people who don't fully grasp the words they are using throw an adjective on top of a word where it is not needed.
Like "forever home" and "first-ever," the meaning is already there in the original word. No need to modify it, so please, please don't.
euthanize |ˈyoōθəˌnīz|
verb [ trans. ] (usu. be euthanized)
put (a living being, esp. a dog or cat) to death humanely.
(right now there are 50 stories with "humanely euthanized" popping up on Google News)
Like "forever home" and "first-ever," the meaning is already there in the original word. No need to modify it, so please, please don't.
euthanize |ˈyoōθəˌnīz|
verb [ trans. ] (usu. be euthanized)
put (a living being, esp. a dog or cat) to death humanely.
(right now there are 50 stories with "humanely euthanized" popping up on Google News)
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A first is a first is a first
Sunday, Sept. 2, 1990. Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Dave Stieb threw his first no-hitter (and to this day the only no-hitter for the Jays) in a 3-0 win over Cleveland.
First. Pretty simple concept, really. But even back then there were newscasters saying "first ever" and my father wouldn't stop.
"First means first. No modifier needed -- it's the first. What's so hard to understand?"
I'll never forget that and to this day use the Stieb example when trying to get writers to understand the proper usage of the word.
From the trusty Apple dictionary:
first |fərst|
ordinal number
1 coming before all others in time or order; earliest; 1st : his first wife | the first of five daughters
• never previously done or occurring : he threw his first no-hitter.
First. Pretty simple concept, really. But even back then there were newscasters saying "first ever" and my father wouldn't stop.
"First means first. No modifier needed -- it's the first. What's so hard to understand?"
I'll never forget that and to this day use the Stieb example when trying to get writers to understand the proper usage of the word.
From the trusty Apple dictionary:
first |fərst|
ordinal number
1 coming before all others in time or order; earliest; 1st : his first wife | the first of five daughters
• never previously done or occurring : he threw his first no-hitter.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
A home is already forever
Heard this on a radio advertisement for my local SPCA. They have animals waiting for a "forever home." Nothing grates on my nerves more than someone thinking a perfectly good word needs some sort of modification because they believe the general public doesn't understand the original one anymore.
It's different in a cheesy ad for a chocolate bar or something, but for a serious institution to do something like this, well, someone has to say something. Home means permanent already -- no need to modify it.
Just like they way anniversary is wrongly used, let's not allow "forever home" to take hold.
From my trusty Apple dictionary:
home |hōm|
noun
1 the place where one lives permanently, esp. as a member of a family or household
It's different in a cheesy ad for a chocolate bar or something, but for a serious institution to do something like this, well, someone has to say something. Home means permanent already -- no need to modify it.
Just like they way anniversary is wrongly used, let's not allow "forever home" to take hold.
From my trusty Apple dictionary:
home |hōm|
noun
1 the place where one lives permanently, esp. as a member of a family or household
Saturday, January 17, 2009
You can make your "point" without "quotation marks"
You can see them everywhere: Somebody "somewhere" who thinks "quotation marks" are "required" for people to "understand" what is "important" in a "sentence."
In the news business, we get all sorts of submissions with totally wrong use of quotation marks. Most of the time, it seems people use them for emphasis of what they think are the key words, when what they really should be using is italics.
Of course, they usually want to emphasize nearly every word, not understanding that people will understand it better without the confusing and wrong punctuation.
Bethany Keeley has been pointing out the misuse of quote marks for a few years now. For a few laughs, spend some time checking out The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
In the news business, we get all sorts of submissions with totally wrong use of quotation marks. Most of the time, it seems people use them for emphasis of what they think are the key words, when what they really should be using is italics.
Of course, they usually want to emphasize nearly every word, not understanding that people will understand it better without the confusing and wrong punctuation.
Bethany Keeley has been pointing out the misuse of quote marks for a few years now. For a few laughs, spend some time checking out The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
I'll start using cold-mageddon when hell freezes over
Before Christmas, some genius (or just bored forecaster trying a social experiment) at Environment Canada thought it would be good to describe three or four days of snow in the lead-up to the holiday as "snow-mageddon."
Inevitably, the media picked up and ran deep with the term. For days it was all you would hear about it newscasts and weather forecasts. While it may be a fun new word, it was surprising the play it got since any weatherman worth his salt would be able to explain that this was far from a disastrous event. Blizzard of '77 -- that was a snowmageddon. Four days spread out over a week with a few inches on each of them and high winds on one of them did not a blizzard make. It really wasn't anything more than a typical Canadian winter.
Today, with high winds and double-digit lows in the old five-day, I expect to hear about cold-mageddon. Hopefully not, as the need to create words like this belittle those who have real problems in the world.
Inevitably, the media picked up and ran deep with the term. For days it was all you would hear about it newscasts and weather forecasts. While it may be a fun new word, it was surprising the play it got since any weatherman worth his salt would be able to explain that this was far from a disastrous event. Blizzard of '77 -- that was a snowmageddon. Four days spread out over a week with a few inches on each of them and high winds on one of them did not a blizzard make. It really wasn't anything more than a typical Canadian winter.
Today, with high winds and double-digit lows in the old five-day, I expect to hear about cold-mageddon. Hopefully not, as the need to create words like this belittle those who have real problems in the world.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Yous guys are killing me with you're errors
Thankfully, while many people may say something like "yous guys," either for fun or thinking it is the proper plural of you, that slang/error hasn't seemed to make it into writing with any great regularity.
Mixing up your and you're, however, is another matter. Why can't people get it right? We see it wrong quite often (here are a couple of funny, though extreme, "you're place or mine?" and "you're car is on fire."
Your, a possessive adjective, is a lot different than you're, the contraction of you and are. Let's also mention yore, as in days of yore.
Just like who's and whose, the best way to get it right is to take a moment and sound it out fully before you write it. If you really mean "you are" then by all means use you're.
We won't even get into Net/text/slang like UR or yer.
Mixing up your and you're, however, is another matter. Why can't people get it right? We see it wrong quite often (here are a couple of funny, though extreme, "you're place or mine?" and "you're car is on fire."
Your, a possessive adjective, is a lot different than you're, the contraction of you and are. Let's also mention yore, as in days of yore.
Just like who's and whose, the best way to get it right is to take a moment and sound it out fully before you write it. If you really mean "you are" then by all means use you're.
We won't even get into Net/text/slang like UR or yer.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Who's this guy whose blog you're reading?
Here's another homonym pair that mixes up many a writer, even professionals. Proper use of who's and whose is a little tricky, but like the rest of the rules of English it's not that difficult to get it right with a little thought.
(You can see an example of MSNBC getting it wrong -- it should be whose life, rather than "City Worker Meets Family Of Man Who's Life He Helped Save")
Who's is the contraction of who and is. Whose is possessive. If you want to get it right, just sound it out fully before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) -- if you mean "who is that guy" or "who is going to write that," then use who's. Otherwise, whose is probably the word you are looking for.
(You can see an example of MSNBC getting it wrong -- it should be whose life, rather than "City Worker Meets Family Of Man Who's Life He Helped Save")
Who's is the contraction of who and is. Whose is possessive. If you want to get it right, just sound it out fully before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) -- if you mean "who is that guy" or "who is going to write that," then use who's. Otherwise, whose is probably the word you are looking for.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
You can lead a horse to water but cannot make an intern think
What's the most common homonym error? I don't have stats on it, but judging from what I read in print and see on TV it's probably using lead rather than led when writing the past tense of the verb lead.
Ex.: Stephane Dion led (not lead) his party to defeat.
One place you will often see it is in the crawler at the bottom of the screen on newscasts (I an example on CBC Newsworld right now). Based on the number of mistakes you see in those little news tidbits, I think they must have half-asleep interns at the switch.
It's an easy enough error to make when in a rush -- the heavy metal lead is pronounced the same as led (though one never sees a Led Zeppelin fan spelling the band's name wrong) -- but during a quick self-proofing one should be able to catch the error.
Just remember:
lead (led): a heavy metal
lead (lēd): show the way (present tense)
led (led): showed the way (past tense)
Ex.: Stephane Dion led (not lead) his party to defeat.
One place you will often see it is in the crawler at the bottom of the screen on newscasts (I an example on CBC Newsworld right now). Based on the number of mistakes you see in those little news tidbits, I think they must have half-asleep interns at the switch.
It's an easy enough error to make when in a rush -- the heavy metal lead is pronounced the same as led (though one never sees a Led Zeppelin fan spelling the band's name wrong) -- but during a quick self-proofing one should be able to catch the error.
Just remember:
lead (led): a heavy metal
lead (lēd): show the way (present tense)
led (led): showed the way (past tense)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Banished: Monkeys, mavericks, the First Dude and anything green
It's here ... the Lake Superior State University 2009 List of Banished Words. Topping this year's list are environmental buzzwords, including just about anything "green." Also sent out to pasture are Sarah Palin-inspired words like maverick and First Dude, and -monkey added to anything.
It's New Year's Eve -- all day long
Every year I seem to have an argument with somebody as I point out to them that there is no such thing as "New Year's Eve day," or "New Year's Eve morning."
While many like to think the eve part of the phrase denotes evening, it is in fact the entire period, or day, before New Year's Day (also applies to the Christmas holiday).
From my Apple dictionary:
While many like to think the eve part of the phrase denotes evening, it is in fact the entire period, or day, before New Year's Day (also applies to the Christmas holiday).
From my Apple dictionary:
eve |ēv|So please just leave it at New Year's Eve. If you want to be more specific, say New Year's Eve at 12:33 p.m.
noun
the day or period of time immediately before an event or occasion : on the eve of her departure he gave her a little parcel.
• the evening or day before a religious festival : the service for Passover eve.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Then they found more than a dozen dictionaries
Everyone messes up homonyms once in a while. But there are some pairs of words that trip up a great number of people more than others. Then and than are one example of a pair you are likely to regularly spot wrongly used. Amazingly, it's a pretty common error in newspapers (see this example of "less then" from the Detroit Free Press, among the 523 stories with that error currently found on Google News), an industry which at one time in the 20th century showed the way with their stewardship of the English language.
It's not difficult to get it right -- if you stop and think for a moment, you can get it correct every time. Just remember this: then refers to time, while than is used in comparisons:
It's not difficult to get it right -- if you stop and think for a moment, you can get it correct every time. Just remember this: then refers to time, while than is used in comparisons:
- If ever there was a time, then this is it; if you want to die, then by all means leave a candle burning in your living room.
- Items in this store cost less than a dollar; it costs less than you think.
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