And here’s the strip. You have to go to the actual site to see the alternate text (that pops up when you hover the pointer over the picture).

They say an etymologist is someone who knows the difference between etymology and entomology

Nauseous. Nauseous means “causing nausea.” Think green, slimy, glucky, and slightly quivering. Like under-cooked egg white, or what your dog upchucks on the kitchen floor. If you want to say you are experiencing the feeling of wanting to throw up, you say that you are nauseated. Don’t insult yourself by saying 1. that you are green and slimey, or 2. that you don’t know the correct usage of this word. Here’s the quote that reminded me of this error. It’s from one of the best motorcycle mechanics in the world. If your BMW needs fixing, go to him. If your text needs editing, come to me.

Some cool stuff  came out under him  and the low rider makes me nauseous….I would love a new Airhead but that aint gona happen…

Not very different from my bike

Enormity. Enormity means “extremely bad,” not “extremely big.” Yes, it looks like a version of enormous, but you have to go clear back to the Latin before enormous and enormity connect etymologically. Full disclosure: This mistake has been around a long time, a couple hundred years, and a lot of reasonably well-educated folks get it wrong. It’s still a mistake. Here’s the quote that reminded me of this one. It’s from an ebook that I’m considering buying (Chapter 1 is free). I plan to write the author and suggest he consider fixing the error. Easy corrections are another advantage of ebooks!

 “How shall I contact you?” Telisa asked, somewhat overwhelmed by the suddenness and enormity of what he offered.

Gotta show the cover of a sci-fi novel...

Niggardly. Niggardly means stingy. It’s the opposite of “generous.” Some under-educated dolts raised a ruckus a few years ago when someone in the government used this word correctly in a speech. They objected because the word is similar in appearance to nigger, and they didn’t catch the distinction. “Nigger” wasn’t even a racial slur until well into the 20th century. The words are completely unrelated. “Niggard” comes through Middle English from the Scandinavian, and “nigger” (and Negro) can be traced clear back to the Greek. It means “dark.” Speaking of Greek, one of the pastors in the church in Antioch was nicknamed “Blackie.” He was from Ethiopia. That church was integrated! See Acts 13:1, “Simon, who was called Niger…” Anyway, don’t let a bunch of lowbrows keep you from using this perfectly useful word.

Correct usage!

Healthy. Healthy means “possessing good health.” You are healthy. Your dog is healthy. Use Healthful to mean “causing good health.” Apples and exercise are healthful. And you don’t need a picture of an apple.

English has hundreds of words that can be confused, but these four are a good start to get right.

Perhaps I can define a small mistake as one that’s easy to fix. Small mistakes are not the hard part of writing.

Today, class, we look at some words whose plurals are easy to get wrong.

Data—This word is plural. The singular is datum. You generally see this used correctly in scientific writing, where they perform a lot of statistical analysis on piles (scientific term) of data, and you can see sentences like “The data are fairly convincing; only one datum is an outlier.”

The plural of "date" is "dates" and they have nothing to do with data

Media—This word is a plural. When we say “mass media,” we refer to all the TV and radio stations, and all the newspapers and magazines. The singular is medium, and sometimes you see it when someone refers to one of the media.

The medium of radio is the only one you can use while you do something else.

This word has become contaminated by the use of “medium” to refer to someone who holds séances, and the plural of this word is “mediums.” I predict that “media” will eventually become a singular and its plural will become “medias.” But not yet, so get it right.

Criteria—Our third plural. The singular is criterion. I remember a fancy restaurant in St. Paul named The Criterion. They claimed to be the standard by which other restaurants should judge themselves. I ate there once. They cut the lettuce for the salad instead of tore it. Didn’t meet my criterion for how to prepare a salad.  I recently read a pretty good article about mistakes you can make in a job interview. The article got “criteria” wrong, and it’s this sentence in the article that gave me the idea for this post.

When I am hiring though, and if you happen to apply, the above is the criteria I will use to decide.

Since the writer was referring to a list of five items, she should have written “…the above are the criteria…”

These mistakes are commonly made by well-educated professionals. The plurals are slightly more high-falootin’ than the singulars, so I could have classified this lesson under my oft-used heading, “the sin of pretentiousness.”

A.Word.A.Day–solecism

solecism (SOL-i-siz-ehm, SO-li-) noun

1. A grammatical mistake or a nonstandard usage.

2. A breach of etiquette.

3. An error, inconsistency, or impropriety.

[From Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikismos, from soloikos (speaking incorrectly; literally, inhabitant of Soloi) after Soloi, an ancient Athenian colony in Cilicia where a dialect considered as substandard was spoken.]

“`Ah! Madam,’ said Ovid, `how great a solecism would it be both in a lover and a poet if he did not look upon his mistress as the sublimest object of his thoughts!’
Benjamin Boyce and Thomas Brown; The Adventures of Lindamira: A Lady of Quality; The University of Minnesota Press; 1949.

“But the AAUP’s (Association of American University Presses) guidelines go beyond correcting what it regards as solecisms to more drastic exercises in raising consciousness. Consider the traditional personification of ships as feminine. According to the AAUP task force, such usage is `quaint at best’ and should be avoided: `it’ is preferred. Along the same literalist lines, you should think twice before describing an important work by a woman scholar as `seminal’.
Speech Therapy; The Economist (London); Jun 3, 1995.

If you don’t subscribe to the AWAD email already, why are you still reading this post? Go subscribe right now. Then come back and don’t make any more solecisms.

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.

Of course I can’t resist making a grammar comment. Did you notice that the entire passage contains not a single main verb? Plenty of participles, and a “was” in a subordinate clause, but the whole thing is really a sentence fragment! At first glance it looks like an extended direct address, as if someone called “Hey you!” and then didn’t follow up with anything.

Actually, Burns isn’t quite so guilty of bad grammar. He left out the main verb (this is called ellipsis), which would have been the second word, “art” or nowadays, “are.” The verb “to be” is easy to leave out in many languages, and we use this particular construction not infrequently when we want to insult someone. Ever hear someone call out “You Sunday driver!” or “you nincompoop!” Same thing.

Only Burns did it rather more eloquently.

Everybody shows a picture of the poet; here's a picture of his home

On January 23, 2012 Yourfonts.com celebrates National Handwriting Day. Why don’t you join us and make a personal handwriting font for free?

So what is National Handwriting Day?
Well, we are not sure but we think the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA) initiated it to remind us all of the importance and power of handwriting. The date refers to the birthday of John Hancock (January 23, 1737) as he was the first to sign the United States Declaration of Independence.

Even with modern technology we still use our handwriting, and with our online font generation service you can combine the best of both worlds!

Use the special National Handwriting Day coupon that allows you to make as many fonts as you like for FREE! Of course the coupon can only be used during National Handwriting Day; January 23, 2012.

Use coupon CPN4NHD2012 when you check out and receive your font for free!
http://www.yourfonts.com/

Remember to use this coupon when you check out:
CPN4NHD2012

This offer is only valid January 23, 2012, but you can already download and fill out the template.
http://www.yourfonts.com/print.html

5 common mistakes that make you look dumb.

Of course I have to quibble—if you start a sentence with a number, spell it out, don’t use a numeral.

(I think I've actually seen art like this...)

Most of the punctuation marks we normally use are on the keyboard. Sometimes, though you can class up your writing with some punctuation that’s a little harder to enter than striking a single key. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange has defined “numbers” for many characters that are not on your keyboard, but are used in writing, such as accented letters and math symbols. Here are a few that (in my opinion) are worth learning.

Many word processing programs and utilities attempt to make it easy to enter special characters by defining special keystroke combinations or letting you pick them from a chart. On a Windows computer, however, you can enter the ASCII codes for any character (even the ones on the keyboard) directly from the keyboard, no matter what software you happen to be using. (I have found a few programs with limited editing capabilities that don’t accept these codes. One that comes to mind is Pidgin, an otherwise excellent instant messaging program.)

Here’s how it works: Hold down the Alt key while you type the four-digit code number on the numeric keypad. If you use a laptop that doesn’t have a separate numeric keypad, look for the key that changes some of the keys on the right side of the keyboard into numeric keypad keys. Mac computers don’t seem to be able to do all the special characters (for example, the times sign), but you can get most of them with the Option key and certain letter keys. Here’s a chart, one among many on the internet.

Dashes

Alt-0151 is the code for the M-dash. Use this to make a break in your thought, such  as an interruption. A pair of them can be used like parentheses when the parenthetical remark is more important than a mere aside; you want to emphasize the remark. Here’s an excellent example from Carl Sagan’s book, The Dragons of Eden:

The advances we have made in the last few million years cannot therefore be explained by the ratio of brain to body mass, but rather by increasing total brain mass, improved specialization of new function and complexity within the brain, and—especially—extrasomatic learning.

Use the slightly shorter N-dash (Alt-0150) to show a range of the “from…to” variety.

Store hours: 7–9

Accents

I think the most common accented letter in English is é, e with an acute accent over it. The code for é is Alt-0233. You know that work history document you use when you’re job hunting? It’s a résumé, not a resume, even though you’re probably wanting to resume your career. Class up your résumé and job applications by getting this word right. Hmm. Would you like me to write a lesson with a few résumé-writing tips? Shoot me an email or comment.

The dieresis is falling into disuse, but if you want to be really classy and write “coöperate,” the ö is Alt-0246. You use it to show that two vowels next to each other are pronounced separately. Sometimes you see a hyphen instead of a dieresis: co-operate.

This isn’t an accent, but since we’re thinking about résumés, if you swing in academic circles, you might call it a curriculum vitæ. The code for æ is Alt-0230. Of course, if you swing in academic circles, you probably already know that, right?

Math

Sometimes you need to write a multiplication expression, perhaps describing the dimensions of a rectangle or piece of lumber. The code is Alt-0215. A two by four is 2×4, not 2×4, or (horror of horrors) 2X4.

Somewhat less often you want the division sign. It’s Alt-0247.  Doesn’t 365÷7 look a lot better than 365/7? for one thing, you’re sure it’s not a fraction.

That will do for now. I suggest you make a little chart and attach it next to your monitor. You’ll memorize the ones you use in no time.

Please don’t read any of the rest of my site today. I hope you feel some sense of loss at not getting your daily dose of curmudgeonly grammar, which is my choice of free speech.

.

Maybe one of you WordPress gurus can tell me how to make these pictures go side by side.

A microscopic part of Greek verb forms

English still has plenty of subtleties to confuse the careless and unwary. Here is one:

Subjunctive mood. You use the subjunctive when you talk about something contrary to reality. Here’s a correct headline from Scientific American recently:

What if There Were no Gravity?

(I could quibble and say they shouldn’t use a “there is” or “there are” construction, but that’s a topic for another time.) Does gravity exist? Yes. Therefore the condition of no gravity is contrary to reality, so they used the subjunctive form of the verb.

You would be incorrect to say “What if there was no gravity.” Ahem, notice that I used “would be” rather than “will be.” I’m suggesting that in real life you always get it right.

Here’s a rule of thumb: You’ll usually use the subjunctive when you see “if” in the sentence. Most verbs in English don’t have a separate form for the subjunctive, so we tend to forget about it. But the verb “to be” does, and we use it when we want to have a subjunctive form. So watch out when you use that verb.

Remember the drinking song, which has it correct: “I wish I were single again, again, I wish I were single again. If I were single, my pockets would jingle, I wish I were single again. “

So many of these little mistakes exist, I would make you cross-eyed if I tried to cover more than about three at a time, and you would forget most of them anyway. So here are three, and they are similar. That should help you remember them. They all involve using unnecessary words.

I call these sorts of things the Hard Part of Writing, by the way, because they are items that require you to think about what you’re writing to get them correct.

Rule 1. When you use “additional,” be sure you need it. I recently read an article about being persuasive. Among the article’s good advice was a comment to use a headline, and then write a paragraph that supports the headline with additional details. What’s wrong with that? A headline does not have details. It’s a headline! The details are not additional. So:

Write a headline, then write a paragraph that supports the headline with details.

That’s not only cleaner, it’s truer.

Rule 2. When you use “different,” be sure you need it. You encounter this mistake when you see writers make informal lists. “Ten different people friended me  after I told my doggie story.” Get rid of that “different,” and you have a cleaner sentence. It goes without saying (if you think) that you wouldn’t be writing about ten of the same person. Since they have to be different people, you don’t have to say so.

Ten people friended me after I told my doggie story.

I could have used “circled me” in the example, but then it would have been a hundred people, and some of them would have been really different, if you know what I mean.

Rule 3. The third little mistake is saying what you’re going to say. Perhaps you see these unnecessary words most in expressions such as “I’d like to say (thank you for all these wonderful gifts)…”  and “I just want to say that (you’re the best audience ever)…” These introductory expressions are unnecessary. (I was going to say “totally unnecessary” but “totally” is as unnecessary as “different”). They are a way of stepping back from actually saying what you have on your mind by saying that you’re going to say it. Just say what you want to say.

Thank you for all these wonderful gifts. You are the best audience ever.

More personal, direct, and straightforward, isn’t it? Since this is the Hard Part of Writing, I have an assignment for you: Write a short paragraph of nice things about someone, and see how many unnecessary words you can leave out. You have permission to send it to them.

Make your page look good.

The article I saw is a seven-page pdf titled The Debunking Handbook, by John Cook and Stephen Lewandowski, two Aussies who did some research on how to convince people that they were misinformed about something. This point, about the readability of the page, came out. It makes sense. People are less likely to read something if the page looks unreadable.

For example, a few years back I had a writing contract with a multinational bank. My first act was to reformat the documentation in their IT department. Immediately people decided the documentation was excellent, and I had changed hardly an actual word. Of course, I cleaned up the text too, eventually, but the change in appearance got my foot in the door so to speak.

For a counter-example, look at an old King James Bible. Two narrow columns fill each page from top to bottom. Narrow margins. Each verse starts a new line. No spacing between paragraphs; all dense text. Almost no white space. If it weren’t for the influence of Christianity itself, no one would read the book at all.

Columns made even narrower by small-print annotations along the sides

For technical documentation, I recommend the Midwestern style for page layout. San-serif headings, body text indented half an inch or so, in a font wider than Times New Roman, for goodness’ sake. There’s more to it than that, but you get a document with a relaxed, airy feel to it, room for notes, and you can skim for what’s there (both content and structure) because the headings are easy to see. I can’t show you an example from the bank because it’s all under a confidentially agreement, but if you’re really into it, email me and I can send you a couple-page sample of something else. If I get enough response, I’ll put up a series of posts about page layout. Then we can get back to grammar and punctuation.