Getting negatives right

rogersgeorge on December 20th, 2013

An English professor once remarked that it was mildly interesting that two negatives make a positive in English, but two positives never make a negative. A voice from the back of the room came out with “Yeah, right.” So if you include sarcasm, you can do it. I’ll add an interesting linguistic fact: In Greek, two negatives make the negative stronger.  It’s as if to say “definitely not!”

I like the comic Candorville, by Darren Bell, partly because the main character, Lemont, is not only a writer, but also  is somewhat of a grammar curmudgeon, rather like me in both cases. Here’s a lesson, from  September 22, 2012 in getting a negative right.

2012-09-22-can't-hardly-wait

And don’t get me started on “I could care less.”

P.S. This comic appeared just after I finished this post. http://www.gocomics.com/zackhill/2013/12/17#.UrBMdj6fKas.email.

 

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Weird plural

rogersgeorge on December 18th, 2013

English has a lot of words derived fairly directly from Latin, mainly thanks to our penchant for things scientific. And mathematical. The ecclesiastics had their fingers in the pie, too. Today let’s look at datum, a piece of information. Its plural is still a Latin plural, data.

(First, I need to mention that the field of surveying and geographical measurement has a special meaning for datum, which we won’t go into here. It’s how they name a location.)

Datum comes from the Latin word for “give,” and it came to mean the thing given. I suppose an analogy is the football expression called a hand-off. Anyway, the plural of datum is data. For some reason, people don’t have a problem saying “data,” but they have a hard time thinking of “data” as a plural, and pretty much the only people who do it right (i.e. use a plural verb) are scientific folks and pedants. If you read Scientific American, the paper version anyway, you’ll see the articles say things like “the data are…” rather regularly.

All that to serve as an excuse to pass along the June 26, 2013 edition of Sheldon. The duck gets it right.

sheldon june26

We don’t have problems with bacterium, paramecium, and flagellum (bacteria, paramecia, flagella), so don’t let get datum and data fool you.

Accident: on or by?

rogersgeorge on December 16th, 2013

I’ll tell you right now, it’s “by accident,” not “on accident.” This blog makes me seem curmudgeonly, I suppose, but this guy takes the cake. I’m sorry that I neglected to record its source, except I’m pretty sure it’s on  tumblr somewhere. If you find who did this, tell me and I’ll give credit. I like the comment on descriptive grammar in the fine print.

on accident

I won an award!

rogersgeorge on December 14th, 2013

My third! (The other two were a long time ago, from the Society for Technical Communication for some software manuals). The Writing Rag’s official address is Newark, Delaware, and I’ve seen plaques from this organization in assorted businesses over the years, and apparently the competition among restaurants for these awards is lively. So I think it’s legit. At least it’s not my name in a book that I have to buy if I want to see it. They do sell the plaques, but I have no place to put one, so I’ll pass.

Here’s the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Writing Rag Receives 2013 Best of Newark Award

Newark Award Program Honors the Achievement

NEWARK December 4, 2013 — The Writing Rag has been selected for the 2013 Best of Newark Award in the Editing category by the Newark Award Program.

Each year, the Newark Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Newark area a great place to live, work and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2013 Newark Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Newark Award Program and data provided by third parties.

About Newark Award Program

The Newark Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Newark area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The Newark Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.

SOURCE: Newark Award Program

I found two nits to pick: “those” where “the” will do, and a missing Oxford comma. Hey, if I’m such a good editor…

Good ol’ comprise. Again.

rogersgeorge on December 12th, 2013

Correct use of “comprise” is one of my hobby-horses; I recently found a couple examples of it being used correctly, so I decided it’s time to have a repeat lesson.

Shall I tell you why people get “comprise” wrong? Because they want to sound educated. In other words, they’re being pretentious. It’s the same thing that leads people to say “prior” when they mean “before,” and Latinize the plural of “process” into “processese.” Artificial fancy usages are pretentiousisms.  “Is composed of” sounds so mundane, they have to class it up with a fancier word. Trouble is, they get it wrong.

“Comprise” means “is composed of,” which is a passive construction. You want to avoid using the passive when you can, so “comprise” is a handy alternative.

 A hybrid eclipse comprises a total solar eclipse and an ‘annular eclipse’, depending on an observer’s viewing location on Earth.

Four of the five remaining Santa Cruz cypress habitats are now parklands or ecological reserves. The population comprises a healthy 33,000 trees or more, so the fws [Fish and Wildlife Service] has proposed reclassifying the species as merely “threatened.”

You can find the first quote at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=41862 and the second quote at http://www.world-science.net.

Rule of thumb: Start with the single, big thing, then comprise, then more than one smaller thing. So, Hybrid eclipse comprises total and annular. Now you do the second one for practice. Be clear, not pretentious.