Hmm. I Don’t Think a Noun Form Exists for this One

Here’s the comic:

https://www.gocomics.com/agnes/2020/07/26

“Addled” is an adjective. For that matter, you can’t go up to the front of the room and addle, either, so I don’t see a verb form, either.

What do you think?

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Special because in this case all the nouns are proper nouns.

In case you don’t know, the character on the right is named “Rat.” And the technical name for this is “back-formation.”

So how’s your name? Could it be a verb? Mention it in the comments.

This post is mainly for the language geeks among us. I have occasionally used the expression “verbing a noun” (use the search box in the upper right corner), mainly because I had seen that usage, and had forgotten that we have a technical word for that! Backformation. In fact, to use “verb” as a verb is example of backformation. But there’s more to it than that.

If you’re interested, here’s a pretty good article about backformation:

https://curiosity.com/topics/backformation-can-make-you-invent-new-words-without-realizing-it-curiosity

Sorry, no comic today.

This post describes something useful about ordinary writing, not about Shakespeare.

First, read the comic, first panel.

Notice that you could have put “to be” between “turn out” and “so.” The sentence makes perfect sense the way she wrote it, though, doesn’t it?

Lots of languages leave out forms of “to be” most of the time. I remember hearing an interview in All Things Considered several decades ago. The guy had resolved to stop using any form of “to be.” And I’ve heard occasional remarks from teacher types who pointed out that you can replace “to be” with a more meaningful verb almost all the time, and doing so improves your writing. (I should add that using “to be” often puts a verb into the passive voice, which I already preach against.)

Give it a try: Cut down on using “to be.” It makes your writing livelier.

PS—in the second panel, for example, she could have said “Let’s go offline for the day.”

This is a fairly standard curmudgeonly (okay, grammarian’s) complaint. Is the guy in the last panel right or wrong?

Well, he’s wrong. Somehow that word (it’s called an appositive) between the subject and the verb makes us want to use “us” instead of “we.” You wouldn’t say “us are allowed to be stupid,” would you? Nah, that would be stupid!

Don’t smoke Tareytons, either.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.