I Seldom See this Done Correctly!

—So I’d better call attention to it. Even though the speaker got everything else wrong.

“All right” is always two words, folks! “Already” can be one word, though.

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Headlines are notorious for being misleading. They use oversimplification and distortion, mainly, I think. Many headlines amount to clickbait. I recall a recent series of articles that said Mt. Vesuvius had turned one victim’s brain into glass. What had actually happened was the heat had vitrified a couple patches of brain tissue next to the inside of the person’s skull. A few bits of overcooked tissue is not the same as turning the brain into glass!

This headline is bad for another reason: the punctuation is wrong, and it makes the headline misleading.

New Nanoparticle Eats Away At Heart Attack Causing Plaques

Interesting Engineering, Jan 31, 2020

The first time I read this, I supplied a comma after “attack.” A nanoparticle eats away at heart attacks? It causes plaques?

Okay, I can understand using the singular to refer to many of one type of thing, so I’ll give the writer a pass on that. But compound adjectives should be hyphenated! The headline should say “heart-attack-causing plaques.” The nanoparticles eat away at the plaques—plaques that cause heart attacks no less.

So think about your adjectives. Remember, if people can misinterpret something, they will.

Here’s an artist’s conception of this:

Adjectives in English almost always appear before the word they modify, but sometimes they appear afterwards. This happens so seldom, we have a word for them: postpositives. A few weeks ago, a site I have recommended several times, A Word A Day, featured several.

ad litem
errant
aforethought
immemorial
laureate
elect
to be
martial
general
public
simple
emeritus

You probably recognize them. Do the nouns they usually go after come to mind? If you need help, go to https://wordsmith.org/awad/archives.html#2020 (hint: several are legal terms.)

Here’s a picture of a poet laureate. See the crown of laurel?

A neologism is a word that you (or someone) made up to fit a circumstance that doesn’t have a word. Here’s a pretty good example.

It’s a bit long, but it has a pretty good ring to it, and I think the definition is pretty good, too.

This kind of word is also called a portmanteau word: Two (or more) words combined to make a new word, in this case blunder and catastrophe.

A rule in English is to put modifiers as close to what they modify as you can. Adjectives generally go directly before the noun they modify, a blue car, for example. (Except for post-positives such as “malice aforethought.”)

Adjectival phrases can go afterwards, but what do you do when you have more than one of those phrases? You put the phrase as close as you can to the thing it modifies. Here’s a guy who didn’t:

Decades ago, psychologist Benjamin Libet monitored subjects’ neural activity while they chose to hit a button, and he discovered a burst of activity preceding the conscious decision to push the button by a split second.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/my-go-to-arguments-for-free-will

What does that split second refer to? It refers to the burst of activity, not pushing the button! He didn’t need so many big words, either. How about this:

… he discovered a burst of activity a split second before the decision to push the button.

Well, I think the sentence is easier to follow now.

This sort of thing is part of good writing. No clear-cut rule, just good judgement.

• When you write, think how you might be misunderstood, and don’t do that.
• Try not to cause bumps for your reader.