(sigh) Another Missed Latin Plural
When you have only one, it’s PHENOMENON!
Here’s the goof, by someone who ought to know better.
Although the ideas have persisted for generations, the modern Flat Earth phenomena is surprisingly recent.
This is from The Guardian, a British newspaper. If anybody ought to get their Latin plurals right, it’s the Brits! Harrumpf.
The article, except for this error, of course, is kind of a fun read. Flat Earthers say this photo is fake:
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Who and That
Here’s the rule: “Who” refers to people, “that” refers to everything else. So you say,
The person who sits next to me stinks.
Not
The person that sits next to me stinks.
Okay, maybe you shouldn’t say either sentence, but you get the idea.
I ran into an exception that works. Maybe we could call this personification. After all, aren’t dogs really people?
Besides, Mike Peterson, of Comic Strip of the Day is a dog person, so maybe that’s a good excuse, too.
PS—Unrelated bonus article: I don’t do politics here, but this appeared yesterday in The Washington Post and it’s about an English teacher correcting someone’s writing. I guess I gotta be proud.
Another Example of Linguistic Change
For a long time, the plural of “medium” meaning a means of communication was “media.” So you might ask, “What medium do you as a painter prefer?” And the answer might be, “My favorite media are tempera and watercolors.” And then TV followed on the footsteps of radio and newspapers, giving us three major media for public communication, and we called them “the mass media.”
Lazy creatures that we humans are, pretty soon it became “the media.” But we curmudgeonly types continued to complain that the word had more meanings than just newspapers, radio, and TV.
Well, it looks like we’re losing the battle. Here’s National Public Radio, in writing:
Pulitzer judges whittled their winning group from a vast number of possibilities, and the works they’ve chosen represent a vast array of styles, mediums, and much more.
I guess the plural of “medium” is going to be “mediums.”
Musk Hires Pretty Good Writers
At least when I tracked down an example of bad writing in a technical article, I found that the writer at SpaceX got it right, and the writer of the technical article got it wrong!
Here’s what SpaceX says:
The competition will focus on a single criterion—maximum speed.
And here’s (blush) Interesting Engineering:
The call says the competition will focus on a single criteria “maximum speed.”
C’mon, guys. They even gave you the correct form…
“S” not for Plural?
Not much of a lesson today, but slightly autobiographical.
I think, and have thought so for years, that “-s” being the ending on a singular verb is a little incongruous (weird), since it’s also the usual ending on plural nouns. I frequently see people whose first language isn’t English get this wrong. Can’t say as I blame them.
Anyway, here’s the Andertoons comic that reminded me about this.
