by Ben Yagoda
Loose (adjective) instead of lose (verb).
Mixing up quiet and quite and than and then.
Where instead of were.
And sometimes these substitutions can have a certain poetic rightness to them. The student who wrote, “The eminent [instead of imminent] arrival of spring marks a time for flip-flops, volleyball, and compost,” and the one who said, “People will say we are America and we can not let our hollowed [instead of hallowed] education system be mocked,” after the Virginia Tech shootings, made felicitous plays on words that may even have been intentional (probably not). Yet another student wrote, “In 1996, former President Bill Clinton singed the Defense of Marriage Act.” No comment.
Most of the time, however, the only redeeming social value these errors have is that they’re funny. You may be laughing to keep from howling with despair, but at least you’re laughing. I once got an assignment with the line “You can get a descent car for $2000,” which seems about right for a vehicle that can only go downhill. This nicely complemented another essay with the sentence “The narrative voice was undeniably a black man in his late thirties or early forties, educated, and possibly of middle-class decent.”
And these guys can get the New Yorker–heading–treatment as well.
I KNEW THE CRIMINALS WERE GETTING YOUNGER, BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS
…the 199-unit low-income housing district is a teething hotbed for drug deals and violent crime…
CLINT ALWAYS SEEMED PRETTY NORMAL TO ME
At 74 years odd, a weathered, contemplative Eastwood portrays this inner-struggle perfectly, naturally.
I WENT TO A FIGHT AND A CITY COUNCIL MEETING BROKE OUT
The opening of the meeting was similar to past meetings with mediation and the Pledge of Allegiance.
Try it yourself, it’s fun!
[PUT YOUR HEADING HERE]
Her gentile nature shines through her songs, which focus on love, growing up, and moving on.
Truth to tell, I don’t always know if the people who make these mistakes are aware that they’re mistakes. I do know that relying on spell-check and your instincts creates a huge blind spot as far as spelling is concerned.
c. Eggcorns
In 2003, linguist Geoffrey Pullum coined the term eggcorn to refer to common homophone or near-homophone mistakes in which the mistake makes a kind of sense. Eggcorn itself has a certain logic, for example, because acorns are roughly the shape of eggs. In writing and usage circles, the term caught on, and you can go to the Eggcorn Database (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/), where, as of this writing, 631 examples are collected and defined.
Spell-check has ushered in a golden age of eggcorns, and people can be quite creative and individualistic with them. In the Introduction, I mentioned the article I once got about a board-of-education meeting that mentioned the Super Attendant of Schools and the one on drug problems that referred to a heroine attic. Others have made reference to the environmental group the National Autobahn Society, to Linda B. Johnson, to an ex–Green Barrette, and to the punk rocker Sid Viscous. I always thought he was an oily guy.
Sometimes you have to think before you realize what was meant, as in references to a newspaper’s ethics policy being determined by its On-Buzz Man (the real word is ombudsman) and to the writer’s fondness for going out on the town wearing a sequence-covered dress. Only after searching for context clues and employing the process of elimination did I realize that that a supped up hers was supposed to be souped-up hearse.
I once got an assignment that talked about a student athlete who had to miss several games because of phenomena. I stared at that one for a few minutes before realizing it was supposed to be, that’s right, pneumonia. The error illustrates another spell-check problem. What probably happened is that the student took a wild stab at the spelling of the disease and then perused spell-check’s suggestions. Maybe the stab was so wild that the correct spelling wasn’t on the list; maybe it was and the student didn’t recognize it. Who knows. The end result, in any case, was phenomena.
One hears a lot of these in conversation, most famously for all intensive intents and purposes and Old Timer’s Alzheimer’s disease. Some of the others I’ve come upon and treasured include It’s a doggy-dog dog-eat-dog world and Any notes, quotes, or antidotes anecdotes?
Some eggcorns come up so often that they now outnumber correct usages, at least in the work handed in to me. I actually expect to read that something peaks or peeks (rather than piques) the interest; that a person poured (rather than pored) over a book; or that a storm wrecked or reeked (as opposed to wreaked) havoc. Other popular ones are hone in on (as opposed to home in on); dribble (drivel); a mute (as opposed to moot) point; and take the reigns (reins).
Listing the eggcorns and all the other spelling mistakes is well and good, but the trouble is, if you’re about to commit one, by definition, you don’t know you’re doing so. That’s the blind spot again. The answer, again, is to cultivate an attitude of deep skepticism about your own word use. Then, if you have any smidgen of doubt about a word, DO NOT RELY ON SPELL-CHECK. Use a dictionary, preferably a paper one, and look up not only the spelling but the definition.
d. Skunked Words
I’m taking a wild guess that when some readers came to the second-to-last paragraph (the one that starts “Some eggcorns…”), their reaction to at least one or two of the examples was “But, that’s right!”
To understand why they’re not, it’s helpful to think about “skunked terms,” a phrase coined by Bryan Garner, in his excellent book Garner’s Modern American Usage. (No comma after book because Garner is the author of several outstanding tomes.) Garner explained: “When a word undergoes a marked change from one use to another—a phase that might take ten years or a hundred—it’s likely to be the subject of dispute.” Even as the new meaning gains popularity, traditionalists—or, as they’re sometimes called, “prescriptivists”—dig in their heels and roundly condemn it as ignorant, illiterate, unacceptable, etc.
Garner observes—and I agree—“To the writer or speaker to whom credibility is important, it’s a good idea to avoid distracting any readers,” and thus he counsels avoiding these words and phrases. I agree with that, too.
The trouble is, like the language itself, the corpus of skunked words is always changing. To take just a few examples, I can remember when prescriptivists and sticklers used to grumble about the use of contact as a verb, as in When are you going to contact the senator? Hard to believe, but it’s true. Obviously, they lost that battle a long time ago. Even longer ago, the expressions champing at the bit, stamping grounds, tit-bit, and pom-pon roamed the earth. Eventually (more specifically, by the end of the nineteenth century), they turned into chomping, stomping, tidbit, and pom-pom. If you used the older forms today, you would get some seriously strange looks.
Again, I’ll note that writing and speaking have different standards. In conversation, getting your meaning across is really the important thing, while writing for publication or in a business, journalistic, or academic setting demands a higher standard of rules and propriety. Thus new words and new meanings gain acceptance in conversation years or even decades before they do in writing.
Going back to the list of common eggcorns, let’s take a look at duct tape, a roll or two of which you can probably find less than fifty feet from where you’re sitting. It’s called duct tape because its original use was to tape up ducts, but duct is hard to say, so people started calling it “duck tape,” and then people started writing “duck tape.” You can even buy a brand of duct tape called Duck Tape. There’s a fun Web site called Google Fight (http://googlefight.com) that allows you to type in a pair of words or phrases and see how many times each of them has been used on the Internet. I just staged a fight between duck tape and duct tape. Duct tape won, but by a relatively slim margin of 1.83 million to 1.07 million. Before too long, duck tape will prevail, and duct tape will seem as antique and dusty as an e-mail message. But that day is not here yet, and u
sing duck tape will still make you seem a bad writer, to at least some of your readers.
A list of current skunkers is below. Once again, some may seem perfectly fine, but all have traditional meanings different and in some cases opposite from the ones in popular use. (If you don’t believe me, look them up.) Going beyond the list, the best general way to avoid these guys is to read good writers in books and respectable publications, and follow their lead. As for an individual word, if you have any doubt as to its meaning, look it up in the dictionary. Either the skunked meaning won’t be there, or it will be the fourth or fifth definition, followed by a note that says something like nonstandard or objected to by some. And Google Fight is useful as well. If a onetime skunked term wins by a standard of at least two-thirds, I hereby declare it sanitized and ready to use.
The word in the left-hand column is the current skunked term; acceptable alternative(s) follow. When the skunked term has a different meaning, it’s given in parentheses.
alumni alumni is correct for plural, but for singular use alumna (female) or alumnus (male).
alot a lot
alright all right (However, similar words such as already and awhile can can be okay if used carefully.)
bemused amused (Bemused = distracted or bothered.)
cliché (as adjective, as in That’s so cliché); clichéd.
comprised of composed of; made up of
couple (as in couple things) couple of
disinterested uninterested (Disinterested = impartial.)
fortuitous lucky coincidence; felicitous (Fortuitous = accidental; unplanned.)
fun (as adjective, as in the funnest vacation ever) most enjoyable, or rewrite sentence.
genius (as adjective, as in a genius idea) inspired; brilliant; ingenious
grow (transitive verb, as in grow the business) develop; build up
less; fewer Less is used with a general, uncountable entity, as in less water or less energy, or as a general proposition: He wanted more, but I wanted less. Fewer is used with what can be counted: fewer cars. Less money means fewer dollars.*
hopefully I hope that
impact (as verb) affect; have an impact on
myself (as subject, as in Jesse and myself spent the whole day in the library) I
nonplussed unfazed; nonchalant (Nonplussed = taken aback.)
novel book (Novel = book-length work of fiction, as opposed to drama, poetry, or nonfiction.)
notorious, infamous famous (Notorious, infamous = famous for something bad.)
penultimate ultimate (Penultimate = second to last.)
phenomena (as singular) phenomenon
presently currently; now (Presently = shortly; soon.)
verbal oral; spoken (Verbal = in or having to do with words.)
One short skunked word and its relatives demand a fuller explanation. The word is they when used as an “epicene pronoun” (EP), that is, in place of a singular antecedent. For example:
1. [Any student who wants to attend the game should bring their ID card to the ticket window.]
2. [Arcade Fire and about 20,000 of their fans turned the PNC Center into a raucous party Thursday night.]
3. [The Court Street Pub is changing to their summer menu this week.]
The EP has a lot of arguments in its favor. In example 1, replacing their with his would sound sexist; her sounds like you’re trying too hard not to be sexist; and his or her could come off as stilted. Meanwhile, using it for a rock band just sounds weird. Consequently, the EP—and all three of the above examples—are perfectly fine in conversation. I predict that they’ll be acceptable in formal writing in ten years, fifteen at the maximum. However, they’re not acceptable now, so you have to make adjustments.
1. Any student who wants to attend the game should bring his or her ID card to the ticket window.
A write-around is even better:
If you want to attend the game, you have to bring your ID card to the ticket window.
2. Arcade Fire and about 20,000 fans turned the PNC Center into a raucous party Thursday night.
3. The Court Street Pub is changing to its summer menu this week.
(For Skunked Grammar, see II.C.2.d.)
3. WRONG WORD
The spell-check errors and the eggcorns get the headlines and the laughs, but a more common and insidious problem is word choices that are off, sometimes by just a hair, sometimes by a Howard Stern wig and a full beard. Too often, reading student papers is like listening to a routine by Norm Crosby, the malapropeptic comedian who referred to having a good “rappaport” with a like-minded friend. Here are some real-life examples, with what I guess to be the right word in parenthesis:
On the Mason-Dixon Line: An Anthology of Contemporary Delaware Writers exemplifies (consists of—but even better would be is) a collection of essays, poems, and short stories by Delaware’s own authors.
Of the many things the students aspired (expected) to see, a terrorist attack was not one of them.
…the drop in candidates can be accredited (attributed) to…
Stories about the hurricane invade (dominate) the entire first section of the newspaper.
No one can blame (accuse) John Henrickson of being an apathetic college student.
The vast proportion (majority) of students is enrolled in the College of Arts and Science.
She said it was her father’s participation in the army which possessed (inspired, motivated) her to join the College Republicans.
Then there’s this one, which seems to encapsulate all the problems students are having:
The land, which is currently occupied with (by) older, run-down homes, will be rejuvenated (I’m not sure what the right word is—I just know that rejuvenated isn’t it) to fit the positive stigma (image) that the city manager (is trying) to uphold.
How to fix or avoid the problem? Again, it’s a toughie. There’s not much more you can do than undertake a close scrutiny of your writing, dictionary in hand. Be very wary of the online thesaurus. If you are having problems with word choice, you also might do well to find a smart, well-read friend and agree to read each other’s work.
One common wrong-word subcategory happens when writers have a decent idea in mind and start it off well, but aren’t rigorous about matching up their subjects and verbs. Consider:
[Investigations at that time did not uncover the source of the outbreak, and the number of infections soon ceased.]
Well, infections may have ceased, but numbers don’t cease. The fix is simple:
Investigations at that time did not uncover the source of the outbreak, and infections soon ceased.
Similarly, in
[In the past two years the national unemployment rate has doubled and is at a high that falls second to only one other peak in history, occurring in the 1980s.]
the word fall doesn’t really belong and got the writer in trouble. Various adjustments could be made to spruce the sentence up, but at the very least you can say:
In the past two years, the national unemployment rate has doubled; it’s now at a high that is second to only one other peak in history, occurring in the 1980s.
D. Grammar
As I suggested in the introduction, grammatical mistakes are overrated—by which I mean they get a disproportionate amount of attention as a source of bad writing. By definition, native speakers of a language know its grammar. No American above the age of four would say, “Him gave the book to I.” However, we might say, “Peter and him went to the movie with Sarah and I,” which is nonstandard, or, to put it bluntly, wrong.
That, like virtually every other common grammatical “mistake,” is an instance of vernacular or colloquial expressions clashing with the standards of formal or public writing and usage. The mistakes fall into three categories: Sanitized, Skunked, and Still Wrong.
1. SANITIZED
This refers to usages that at one time were verboten but, over the decades and sometimes centuries, have become acceptable to everybody, or just about eve
rybody. In fact, in most of these cases, the formerly “correct” usage now sounds either too formal or just plain weird. However, you may have a supervisor, editor, or teacher who sticks to the old-fashioned dicta. If so, he or she, unfortunately, is the boss and nothing I say or write can change that. Still, you have my permission to wave this section in the air and protest that you read in a book that it’s perfectly acceptable to:
a. End a Sentence with a Preposition
Who are you going to the movies with? (But see III.C.7.)
b. Use Who Instead of Whom in the Objective Case
Who are you going to the movies with?
The exception is immediately following a preposition: To whom should I send the customer-satisfaction survey?
c. Use Objective Rather than Subjective Pronouns in Comparisons, Following the Verb to Be, and in First-Person Plural
They have a bigger house than us. (Alternatively: than we do.)
Hello, it’s me.
We are all at the mercy of Mother Nature. But especially us astronomers.
d. Judiciously Split Infinitives
To avoid damaging the wall, you carefully have to carefully hold the picture hook and hammer it in.
e. (And Similarly) Break up a Compound Verb with an Adverb
He has frequently woken up frequently in the morning with no idea where he spent the night.
f. Use Like (I)
This little word, depending on the way it’s used, can be alternately sanitized, skunked, and still wrong. (And that’s not even getting into the way young people famously use it in conversation, as a filler [“I’m, like, tired”] or indicator of attribution [“He was like, ‘Why aren’t you going to the concert?’”]. Even young people know enough not to use it this way in formal writing.)