What is your pet peeve?

I'm guessing, for most people, it's apostrophes - or the lack of them - but there are plenty of others that drive us crazy too. For me, the one that really makes my hair stand on end is people who can't be bothered to spell correctly. I don't mean people who find spelling difficult but do their best, I mean people who have the word written down in front of them but think their version must be the correct one. I include in this people who have been sending me a Christmas card for 30 years (and receiving one back) but still don't know how my name is spelt!

Two things (among many) drive me slightly crazy: (a) the use of "I" where it should be "me"; (b) the misuse of "lay" for the present tense of "lie".

(As a monstrously pedantic person, I like the idea of this group. I hope people will come here to let off steam instead of clogging up linguistics groups such as I Survived the Great Vowel Shift.)

Thank you, Booksloth, for starting this group. I really do belong here! I have a long list of pet peeves, but I'll just start off with several:

1) their/they're/there; it's/its; than/then (a recently noticed but widely seen error that makes me crazy!)

2) both of the things MyopicBookworm mentioned--what has shocked me has been that our president, whose intellect I respect, has made the "between Michelle and I" error a couple of times. How is this possible?

3) There are a lot of errors I might not notice in speech but in writing they seem to jump off the page. Pronouns without a clear antecedent. Introductory phrases that ought to modify the subject but don't. Misplaced commas. Misplaced/misused semicolons. Inconsistency!

4) Confusing bring/take.

5) People who correct other people's errors but make errors in their corrections!

On the other hand, I hate to have people I care about worry about expressing themselves because they think I'll be critical of what they write. I know this isn't everybody's thing--what it really boils down to, I think, is errors in books and newspapers and other media in which one presumes that people are being paid to write (edit, proofread) professionally. If a publisher puts out a book that is full of errors, either the editor doesn't know any better and/or the company didn't bother to pay a qualified copy editor. That makes me crazy!

May I have more than one?

People who use "text message speak" in contexts other than text messaging make me crazy.

The misuse of the term "beg the question" also drives me 'round the bend.

3> ejj1955, it is a rule of thumb for me that, if I correct someone's solecism, I will commit one myself.

Meanwhile, I stumble, figuratively speaking, over split infinitives and am confused by a missing Oxford comma, which was so standard when I was a boy that it was not an Oxford comma but the way to do things.

Robert

I've had to let go of some rules I grew up believing, and the idea that split infinitives are wrong is one of them. A former boss claimed this was a rule left over from Latin, where one can't split infinitives, but I have to admit that common sense sometimes argues for splitting them. It's just too awkward not to.

I'm also a very big fan of the Oxford comma; I always find it disturbing when I'm given a style sheet for a project that says not to use them. I twitch at every sentence that I think should have them--but, bottom line again, I believe it's because they make things clearer.

Oh, another peeve--errors in appositives and the confusion between what are appositives and what are simply descriptive phrases or titles. For example, "according to Attorney General, John Jones, the case . . . " No, no, no. No comma between "General" and "John"!

I do agree with you, ejj, when you say the problem is more with written than spoken English. Colloquialisms, too, have their place, but not in a formal text. I'm not criticising anyone here for their occasional typos either (mea culpa). The ones that leave me open-mouthed in disbelief are the ones that have (or should have) been through several checks: printed signs in shops that must have been written down, passed to printers, given to proof-readers of some kind, then the final copy approved and paid for by the customers and yet they still say things like (as one I saw in Woolworths did) "Childrens' meals half price". Even the cake I saw in Tesco saying "Happy Birthday now your eight" was surely seen and approved by somebody (though, presumably, declined by the customer, which is why it remained on display for so long).

Edited for typo - see what I mean?

The old Co-op in Oxford used to have a sign over one aisle which said "Soup's" in very large letters.

Every time I go to Brewster's for my double scoop of mint chocolate-chip and strawberry ice cream, I find myself wincing at the sign that lists the themes they offer for birthday cake decorations. I've pretty much blocked the actual error from memory, but it not only includes a bad apostrophe-for-pluralization, but it leaves out a double letter (like "aniversary" instead of "anniversary") and is a fairly popular/common word to use for this kind of thing. I always want so badly to pull my ever-present Sharpie out of my bag to scrawl a correction on the window, but I'm too timid and also afraid of being blocked from my best source of mint chocolate-chip + strawberry ice cream.

Speaking of poor spelling, I saw this recently at a book fair:

#3 - At School I was taught that using 'XXX and me' was an unforgivable error but in recent years things seem to have changed.

Having checked with the BBC though I see that in fact there remains a constant - which is this...

I - me Personal pronouns in English have one form (I, he, she, we, they) when they are used as the subject of a sentence and another form (me, him, her, us, them) when they are used as the object of a verb or follow a preposition (with me, after us, etc). This applies to all personal pronouns, as listed above, except you and it which remain the same in both subject and object forms.

So whether you say you and I or you and me in co-ordinate phrases depends on whether they function as subjects or objects in the sentence

In other words, if the President and Michelle were the subject of his statement the use of the word I would be correct...

And I don't expect to hear the Queen refer to 'My Husband and me' anytime soon.

No; as I mentioned, this error was following the preposition "between": "between Michelle and I," which should be "between Michelle and me." This is the single grammatical error that I most remember my mother drilling into us by a very pointed correction every time we got it wrong: "between you and ME," she'd say.

>10 Okay, aside from the obvious spelling error, what books were they featuring? Austen didn't write either "sequals" or sequels. Were they referring to books written about her characters by others?

#13

Between you and I or Between you and me?
"Because the pronouns following between are objects of the preposition, the correct phrase is between you and me. Yet the phrasing between you and I is appallingly common" (Garner, The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style).

Sorry yes, your example did say 'between' but is the rule still true without the use of the pronoun 'you' following it?

And that is a genuine question....

>14

Which rule do you mean? You always use object pronouns (me/us, him/her/they) after prepositions. I've heard people say "between she and I" quite often, likely for the same reason they say "between you and I" - I was told once a long time ago that it was a sort of over correction stemming from the usage of "me/us" in compound subjects (as in "John and me went to the store").

The instruction "Get rid of the other person" makes sense to me (not that one is ever likely to be saying "Between me").

I think it is covered by

Compound Objects of Prepositions

Wrong: with Jake and I.
(The pronoun must be in the objective case, because along with "Jake" it is the object of the preposition.)
Corrected: with Jake and me.

or in this case read

'between Michelle and I'
(The pronoun must be in the objective case , because along with 'Michelle' it is the object of the preposition.)
Corrected: Michelle and Me (as ejj1955 already pointed out)

and there we have it - poor 'Michelle' has been 'objectified' by proper English usage! ;-)

Nothing wrong with being the object of a preposition here or there . . . or even the direct or indirect object of a verb (same rules apply: e.g., "John gave Mary and me the tickets").

>14 I think the Garner you quote is useful as a reference--but then, I worked for OUP when the first edition of that book was published!

#18 ....but then, I worked for OUP when the first edition of that book was published!

The horse's mouth no less!! (well kind of)

... at least I'm assuming when you say you worked for OUP you weren't working in the mail room...

Sorry I didn't attribute the quote, I was looking at a found web source rather than a print one so I wasn't sure who I was quoting...

No, not the mail room! I used to work for the US dictionaries program and on Garner's book I did very peripheral things like hire the proofreader and, if I remember correctly, schedule the printing with the typesetter.

BTW, I think that Keristars (in post 15), is right. Kids say things like "me and Johnny are going swimming" and their mothers say "Johnny and I!" to correct them, and it's so ingrained in their heads that they incorrectly use the same construction when it's the object and not the subject.

As Thrin pointed out earlier - it's get rid of the other person. So if you would normally say 'I am going swimming' then it's 'Johnny and I', whereas, if you would say 'leave it for me' then it's 'Johnny and me'. And, when in doubt about between, you can always cheat and say 'between the two of us'. Which reminds me a bit of when I worked in adult education and we could never decide whether it should be curriculums or curriculae as neither really sounded right. In the end we took to ordering 'curriculum x 2'.

Edited for typos again - you'll be seeing a lot of that on this thread!

What about the misuse of "fewer" and "less". That is one that really bugs me.

Also I think that some people do not realise how jarring it can be to read incorrect grammar.

Complementary and complimentary. A friend lives close to a local practice with a board outside advertising 'complimentary' health care. We imagine that's where you walk in the door and they say, 'My goodness, Mrs Smith, you're looking wonderful today! I just adore your shoes and that haircut really suits you!' (And, in a way, I can see how that would make you feel better.)

My favourite case marking mistake is "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone".

> 3

Wow. You covered all my pet peeves -- and then you closed with something very similar to what I would have typed (if I had written the post before seeing yours).

No, wait. Two more: 1) "Really unique"
Putting the period inside the quotation marks around a title, because it's ingrained to do so when it is actually a quotation. I recently nearly got into a fight over this. In future, I will take care not to put a title at the end of a sentence, if I am dealing with her.

Btw, what is an Oxford comma?

Another one: using "phased" when "fazed" is correct. Norah Roberts does this CONSTANTLY. Well, all right, once a book or so.....
*sigh*

I refuse to believe "impact" is a verb.

>26

An Oxford comma is also called a series comma--it's the one you might use before "and" in a series. For example, I went to the market and bought lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, and oranges.

The comma after "apples" in that sentence is not always used, and in theory, as long as one style or the other is used consistently, it's correct. But I prefer having that comma there because it can help avoid confusion sometimes. Without it, the last two items can seem more of a unit.

Here's another peeve (I did warn that I had a lot of them, didn't I?): automatic grammar checkers that don't know grammar as well as I do! I've turned off the one in Microsoft Word, but I sometimes answer questions on Yahoo (yesterday it was a lot of "no, you can't read recent books for free online; this is how copyright works") and it's constantly popping up a little box that says "hmm, looks like you have a lot of punctuation." Yeah, thanks for noticing. I use it where I think I need it.

#28: rockinrhombus "I refuse to believe 'impact' is a verb."

Even if it were to come up and impact you in the eye?

> 29

Oh.

I absolutely agree with you. When Miss McMinn was pounding proper sentence structure into me, she said that such a comma was "considered optional"; I grokked the tone of her voice, and I have consistently put in a comma wherever I think one should pause, however slightly.

I had to look that up too. In England it doesn't have a name - no-one's lived long enough to give it one. (That's not a criticism ejj, just an example of how what we think are errors can often be cultural differences.)

I could be wrong, but I think the "Oxford" in the "Oxford comma" comes from OUP.

Just a note on another thing mentioned in passing: there's a difference between British and American English in terms of putting punctuation inside or outside quotation marks, with the American style favoring putting commas, periods, question marks, and exclamation points inside quotation marks (but colons and semicolons outside), while the British style would put these marks outside the quotation marks.

> 33

I haven't noticed a difference when reading books published in the UK. I think it's just one of those US things of using the same rule for everything, even when it doesn't make sense. But then, English departments in universities here frequently have internal wars over what the "rules" are. Pluralizing/pluralising numerals, anyone (i.e., 60s vs. 60's; I prefer the former, for the obvious reasons)?

#33 Actually, the correct British style is to put them in the appropriate place depending on the form the sentence takes. For instance, if the punctuation mark is part of what is being said (as in - "Where are you going?" he asked) then it goes inside the quotation marks. On the other hand, if the punctuation mark is a part of the sentence that includes quoted speech or any other words that are written inside inverted commas, they go outside (as in - Have you read that book "Gone With the Wind"?)

It would certainly have an impact on me. And my eye.

I'll let that fragment stand, though I am sure it will drive everyone crazy.

>35

I consider that the correct, and logical, style. I grew up in Texas.

>23

People using "less" when "fewer" would be correct is one of my biggest peeves lately. It seems that they all just default to "less", and I haven't the foggiest idea why. Is it simply because it's seen as the antonym to "more", while forgetting that "fewer" is also an option?

>34

It bugs me when people use an apostrophe every time a number gets pluralised, especially when discussing years. It seems to me that there's a distinct difference between "1890s" and "1890's".

But I try not to let it bother me too much since I remember it being confusing back in grade two when we learned to pluralise letters with apostrophes and numbers without.

#36: rockinrhombus

When peeves collide!
I used to object when people wrote about what other features might be effected by a software change meant to apply to one feature: I would have been less unhappy with "impacted".

(Minor edit.)

#34/38 Not only numbers. It seems to be very common these days for people to apostrophise any plural that ends in a vowel. Things like 'photo's', 'stereo's', 'cameo's'. It's almost as if they're making up their own rules.

#36 See, fragments don't bother me in the slightest (as you can tell). To me, they are just part of writing in a colloquial 'voice'. Though I wouldn't use them in a letter to my solicitor. That's the thing about peeves though, isn't it? We all have our own odd ones.

And jimroberts - not sure we can really look to the bible for correct English. It seems to operate under language rules all its own. But then it has been translated about a hundred million times so maybe that's the reason.

Oh, and hyperbole, that's another one;-)

>23, 38 Arrrgh, the "less"/"fewer" mistakes drive me crazy. I made the mistake of telling my husband that and now he deliberately will do that to annoy me.

I'm also a fan of the Oxford comma, partially because the older grammar textbooks I used to read for fun (I was a strange child, okay?) all mandated its usage.

I'm also irritated by the use of "real" when people mean "really". Of course, I'm much less pedantic when people are talking, and I even criticized an old advertisement campaign for the state of Texas for cleaning up the grammar in their slogan. Somehow, "It's a whole other country" just doesn't have the same authentic ring that "It's a whole 'nother country" does.

>41 I can see that; colloquial expression has a vitality that shouldn't be muted (well, I don't mean in formal speech--but in advertising campaigns, for example!).

And yet another one about which you reminded me with the real/really distinction: "to feel badly," as, "when she remembered her unkind words, she felt badly." Uh, no. It should be "she felt bad." "She felt badly" implies that her sense of touch is compromised, as, "after sleeping on her hand and waking up to find it was numb, she felt badly."

This one is probably a losing battle, as people are so darned pleased that they remember that adverbs have "-ly" on the end, not to mention that they have any clue what adverbs are . . .

#40: Booksloth "And jimroberts - not sure we can really look to the bible for correct English."

You confused me there for a moment, because in other threads I do cite the Bible (and when I say Bible, I mean the real Bible, the AV) for examples of correct English, but normally in arguments of the form "This isn't a mistake and it's not new, it was used by X, Y, Z and the Bible".

But in this case, throwing the first stone, John 8:7 gets it right, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.". The popular form is doubly wrong, it's a misquotation and grammatically indefensible.

Nice use of hyperbole.

Not sure about the verbal use of 'impact'. There seems to be no problem with 'compact' ...

There was a burst of correspondence in 'The Independent' (One of the UK's more intelligent newspapers - they even have a weekly column correcting some of the howlers the paper itself makes!) recently, about using nouns as verbs.

My favourite contribution so far has been 'There is no noun that cannot be verbed'.

Given that there's rarely (if ever?) a difficulty of meaning involved in this practice, then as long as there isn't an another (more obvious) verb available to do the job, I find myself surprisingly comfortable with it, even with the use of 'bussed' in a transport sense (rather than in the archaic alternative sense for 'kissed', or in the American English sense for waiting at tables).

I'm happy to table a motion for the provisioning of those soldiering ...

I like Calvin & Hobbes's comment: "Verbing weirds language". I'm not too bothered about "to impact", which feels like a stronger cousin of "to impinge"; the management-speak verb that I hate is "to action".

>33 Yes, the Oxford comma is so called from Oxford University Press house style, which also favours older -ize spellings that many British people (annoyingly) think are Americanisms. Another pet peeve of mine concerns those who "correct" my spelling of words such as organization. To me, organisation, though perfectly acceptable, just looks -- well -- French.

>40 I have been told that plurals such as taxi's are considered correct in Dutch: maybe there has been some leakage into English (???).

I'd like to know when the past tense of dive became dived instead of dove?

And when did the plural of fish become fishes?

>46 My dictionary lists them both as alternates, so I suspect the usages have existed for some time. Doesn't the King James Bible mention the "loaves and fishes"?

I could look it up to be sure, but it's more fun to risk embarrassment. 'Dived' is the past tense of 'dive.' 'Dove' is a pigeon. The dictionaries in a fit of egalitarianism have bought into 'dove' as a verb.

When I was a boy fish and fishes were both genuine plurals; the difference may have stemmed from a mass and count distinction. I tried 'fishies' on my sixth grade teacher, but he didn't see any humor or possibility in it.

Robert

Language Log on dived/dove.

RE that 'Oxford comma'. It's also known as the 'Harvard comma' so I guess you can take your pick (a bit like like the French calling syphillis the English disease and us calling it the French disease - which prompts me to ask all you Americans whether you blame another country for it too? Or do you just boringly call it syphillis?) The very fact that neither of us will own it rather gives the impression that neither of us wants it. Although I am talking about it as general usage, not as a way of clarifying. Obviously, the primary point of language is to be understood, and anything that improves the listener's understanding of what is being said is fine with me.

Definitely with rdurick on dived and dove. When I was at school, dove was considered a rather 'made up' word. It's one I sometimes use, but still feel as if I'm being ironic.

Of course, English and American spellings and word usage differ, they are essentially two different languages. I can't use your spelling myself (but then, why should I, any more than you should use ours?) but I do love many of the Americanisms that have made it into our language. In many ways, the American language can be much more expressive. Doesn't 'Way to go!' (whatever its literal meaning is supposed to be) sound much more encouraging than 'Play up, chaps!' - or whatever our alternative is supposed to be? The language has a vibrancy that English sometimes lacks. I know I'm digressing a little here and I don't really want to turn this into an English v American thread, but the one I will never get behind is the American way of saying 'I could care less'. In order to be able to care less about something you must already care a certain amount. It simply makes no sense. While, to my mind, the English 'I couldn't care less' makes perfect sense. You already care nothing, there is no further down to go. You could not care any less than you already do.

But that's the last criticism you will hear from me on American usages because I think most of the others are great!

In my world, the plural of fish is fish when you're talking about more than one watery creature with fins ("my cormorant has caught three fish this morning"), but fishes when you're being zoological ("The Bony Fishes of the North Atlantic").

And I think of dove for dived as a quaint Americanism, and would not use it seriously myself.

#45 Sorry, MyopicBookworm. If you'd been in my classes I'd have red-marked your 'organization' with a comment like 'although a valid alternate, this is generally considered to be the American form of spelling'. Whether examiners would have done the same I couldn't really tell you but my students were adults and (unlike children who need constant encouragement) I did prefer to nit-pick, even if they then went back to their preferred form.

ETA - Perfect explanation of the use of fish/fishes, though. 10 out of 10 and a gold star!
(You do know I'm kidding, don't you? I'm not really this patronising in real life.)

Well, if you'd been in mine, I'd have castigated your misuse of "alternate" for "alternative" :-)

It's very sad that anti-American prejudice has so changed British usage. I'm sure the -ize spellings were always accepted until well into the 20th century, and until recently they were house style for The Times as well as OUP.

Here's Michael Quinion talking about "I could care less" on his excellent World Wide Words site. He suggests that began to be used instead of the earlier negative form in the early 1960's in the USA, but I remember being very surprised when I first heard it, which was in London in 1962, so it may have started a little earlier and spread fast.

>46
" ... And when did the plural of fish become fishes? ... "

How about the King James Bible, Mark Gospel, Chapter 6:

"41": And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all.

Of course, it might have been two different species ... (one a red herring!)

#53 You'd have been damn right too! Put it down to the informality of LT!

ETA - And I do agree with you about those ize endings. But then that's the case with so many English words. Over here they evolved, the originals moved to the US with the Pilgrim Fathers and stayed that way, and yet now we think ours is the original version. It's what makes spelling such a touchy subject, especially between the two continents. As long as we're consistent and can be understood, it's really not the end of the world, I guess.

But about those fishes. Why is everyone insisting on quoting the bible as their source for good English? Since when was it a handbook on grammar? Yes, to be sure it's old, but so is Caedmon and we don't all expect to still be speaking and writing in Old English. Nor do we, generally, use the word 'brake' instead of 'broke'. The bible is a book written by a variety of authors, some good, some bad and some indifferent. And written around 2,000 years ago then translated through Hebrew, Greek etc, etc. So why do so many people seem to think it is the be-all and end-all example of perfect grammar? Or are people really implying that it is 'the word of god' and that his/her English is therefore impeccable?

Perhaps it's due to the focus that that particular book received for many years, from arguably the most informed and educated people in western society. Surely you would expect the more blatant errors to be addressed.

BTW, i prefer "necklace" to "pendant". But that's just me.

Two different things, MrA. A necklace is any piece of jewellery worn round the neck; a pendant has a single drop-like (or pendant) stone or other decoration, worn on a chain/ribbon etc. But maybe that's just a girly thing?

You can wear a necklace without a pendant, but you can't wear a pendant without a necklace.

#56: Booksloth "Why is everyone insisting on quoting the bible as their source for good English?"

Hyperbole again, Booksloth!

The Bible and Shakespeare are good sources of examples of early Modern English. Did anybody suggest that we should talk like that? I wouldn't usually say "when he had brake". If you would prefer to say "when he had broke", you aren't such a pedant as you claim :)

#59: Bookmarque "you can't wear a pendant without a necklace."

Can't I have pendants on my earrings?

If you wanted to stretch the term, yes, but those are typically not called pendants in the jewelry biz. Just not accepted use.

Hi Booksloth:

From what I know of British English, it has only one thing that I have ever regretted American Englishʻs NOT having: the pronoun "one" (meaning people in general. (We do have it in writing, but at the risk of sounding pretentious.) We have to say "you" to express that sense of "one". And this can be confusing. We have to qualify it with, "I donʻt mean YOU personally!"

#60 Touche! (Sorry, no accents. But then I wouldn't feel I had to apologise for that in another thread!) I wouldn't - I'd prefer 'broken'.

And 63 - I couldn't agree more that the use of the pronoun 'one' sounds ridiculously pretentious. It can be quite useful in a general sense as in 'What does one do with a didgeridoo?' but the way some people (I'm naming no names here, but her name begins with E, her job begins with Q and it's meant to be her English - but then she's not that English herself) just sounds ridiculous. I'm glad you refer to the use of the word in its more general sense, but if you had it over there you just might find your President abusing it in the same way our royal family do, so you probably should be glad it hasn't made it over there and hope it never does.

>56

" ... Why is everyone insisting on quoting the bible as their source for good English? ... "

I wasn't, for one. If you look, I was answering the question:

" ... And when did the plural of fish become fishes? ... "

Is there such a thing as a 'source for good English'?

#64: Booksloth "she's not that English herself"

We are supposed to be a nation of people with a tradition of welcoming and accepting immigrants. Surely members of a German family which has lived in England since 1714 can by now be considered English? Though I suppose their persistence until recently in importing foreign spouses tends to speak against it.

Peeve:

No one agrees to try to do anything. Failure is not an option. People say they will try and do things.

#67: myshelves "try to do" / "try and do"

Which don't you like? "try to" is slightly more often used, I think.

And what's with deplane? Did the airline industry have to invent a new word when disembark is perfectly suitable? Does anyone besides airline employees use deplane?

I say try to do when I'm not sure it can be accomplished. If I'm sure it can be done I just *do* it.

#66 You are quite right, of course, and I take my beating womanfully. That comment was made jokingly but it did expose my prejudices - not against Germans or people of any other nationality, but against the royal family and royalism in all forms.

Quoting the King James bible is done for a couple of reasons, I think. On the one hand, I used it initially to point out that the use of "fishes" as a plural form had been around for a while, making the point that it wasn't some random plural that someone thought up last Tuesday.

But, more generally, it doesn't matter so much how many different people wrote the original bible, but rather that this specific translation into English is sometimes considered to be literature, never mind how one might feel about the theology (and I do use "one," no matter if it makes me sound pretentious!). The language of the King James version is often quite lovely and, as with Shakespeare, is considered Modern English (as distinct from Old English or Middle English) even if it doesn't sound modern to our ears and we don't really talk like that.

>50 Even in the US, "I could care less" is considered an error, albeit a common one. Unless, of course, that's really what is meant (it usually isn't).

#71: Booksloth "That comment was made jokingly but it did expose my prejudices ... against royalism in all forms."

I understood that — just trying to enter into the spirit of things by being pedantic and nitpicky (not that I need to try hard).

Many who cite the King James Bible as a proof text for English usage are probably unaware of the fact that modern editions have modernized spelling, the publishers having silently amended archaic forms such as untill, himselfe, stedfast, necessitie, and remooue. The spelling in the Book of Common Prayer (1662), on the other hand, has scarcely changed at all: British spelling achieved some kind of stability in between the publication of these two texts.

So are we all a bit anal in other ways too? Let's face it, this is hardly healthy, is it?

I have come across a definition of a lexicographer as someone who knows when to hyphenate anal-retentive.

Obsessive pedantry may not be healthy, but a desire for accuracy surely is. People who misplace apostrophes might do the same with decimal points, and then where would we be?

Innumeracy is another topic entirely, I fear. Don't get me started on people who can't figure out how much the tip should be or how to make change if the cash register doesn't tell them.

Then is it an age thing, do you think? I have often stood in a Sainsbury's queue with the correct money in my hand only to have someone half my age (which is immense) stand behind me and look at me in amazement. A couple have even asked me how I knew that's what it would come to. (Or, as we're in this group, I guess that should be 'to how much it would come'.)

Partly, in that I don't know if younger folks are ever asked to perform these functions in their head or if they are always assumed to be using a calculator of some kind. But just as bad is the attitude my older sister had to math in school: she figured she wouldn't need that stuff when she was just planning to get married and have kids.

I really think high school should include a course in which kids are taught things like balancing checkbooks, figuring out how much the interest is on credit card purchases, what happens with compound interest if you put money into a retirement account, etc. And, if there are X number of diapers in a package that costs Y, how much money will you need each month if your baby needs to be changed Z times?! (Much more useful than the silly questions about trains leaving different stations at different speeds.)

#79 God, that could have been me talking! I so agree. It would be one of the most useful lessons kids could possibly learn and yet it's still not on the curriculum. (And yes, in all the years since I left school, I have still never had to use that knowledge in order to jump, mid-'flight' from one moving train to another. Though I suppose if that does come up I'll be grateful someone bothered to teach me how to calculate the excat moment they will pass.)

#68:

I almost never hear or read "try to."

I'm not sure what "try and" is supposed to mean. "And" what? Try to do and do? "Try" indicates that the result is in doubt. It is isn't, why not say "I will"? (I guess "shall" is archaic.) Is "try" just thrown in to mean "Insha'allah," or that there are no certainties in life?

checks & balances:

We practiced writing checks (we were told that if you had an account, the bank had to accept a check written on lined school paper if it had all required information), and balancing a check book, in grade school, at about age 11/12. It doesn't require algebra or calculus, just plain addition and subtraction.

And yet there seem to be many people who treat it as a mammoth and daunting task! (I confess I don't actually balance a checkbook--nor do I write more than one or two checks per year. I use a debit card and keep track of my account online--but I do know how to do that addition and subtraction of which you speak!)

I'm just watching TV (well, I'm supposed to be working but it's a helpline and nobody's calling right now) and the programme is one of those true crime things about a murder. Now, as I've said before, colloquial speech, things said in the heat of the moment, typos etc don't count, but this is a documentary which presumably had a script. And presumably that script was seen prior to recording by at least one other person. So what is the justification for using words the presenter clearly hasn't understood? He was saying that the victim, a slightly-built young woman, would have stood no chance against her attacker because he was 'big-built, 16stone, swarthy and muscular'. Excuse me? What on earth did the colour of his complexion have to do with his physical strength? I'm not sure I can dismiss that one as racism (though it may have been). I think it's far more likely that the presenter had no idea what the word meant and that the editor was sleeping on the job. Grrrrr.

I hate it when someone uses the unsplittable Latin infinitive as justification for splitting English infinitives.

Robert

#84: rdurick
Have you lost a "not" in there? It seems to make no sense as it stands.

#82: ejj1955 and earlier
Are there still people who use cheques? I haven't seen or written one for years, none of my current banks offer them.

86 - That's weird, but then am I right in thinking you are in the Netherlands? Over here we still get them though, like ejj, most of us rarely use them. I have several accounts and I've never not been offered one.

#84/85 Makes perfect sense to me but I'm off to bed so I'll leave it to rdurick to explain in greater detail.

I started reading this thread and then got dizzy from wild nodding. Maybe somebody else has said so, but I believe your "Oxford comma" is known as the "New Yorker comma" over here.
If I'm duplicating, please forgive me. I will (and I do mean will) read all 83 posts - just not now. Has anyone commented on the misuse of "myself" ("Give the report to the president or myself.")? I myself use the word reflexively or intensively.
AND a young man of my acquaintance who has just earned his PhD. is given to saying, "He is a friend of Mary and I's." That one is not catching on, DG!

#87: Booksloth "am I right in thinking you are in the Netherlands?"

Germany, but I expect Europe, at least western Europe, is pretty much the same.

Jim, regarding the split infinitive, please compare message 6 with my message 84.

The Latin infinitive is one word that cannot be split. Caretakers of the English language noticed that an adverb between 'to' and the main part of the verb in the English infinitive was most often ugly. Some of them were put on the defensive and justified themselves by asserting, truthfully, that one didn't split the Latin infinitive; ceteris paribus, one doesn't split the English infinitive. They were better aesthetes than pedants; one doesn't split the English infinitive really because it is ugly, and a recast sentence will always be handsomer. There was, by the way, no rule that one doesn't split the Latin infinitive; it couldn't be done.

Robert

#90: rdurick
My understanding of the split infinitive rule is that somebody wanted to argue that he was a better writer than Shakespeare (there have been several who so thought), so he looked for a difference in their styles. Failing to find anything obvious, he decided to avoid "splitting infinitives", abstained from then on from doing so, and as opportunity arose amended his previous works to avoid it.

From "Ask Oxford"; I'd say this pretty much reflects how I feel about it:

This is a split infinitive:

To boldly go where no man has gone before!

The infinitive is to go, and it has been 'split' by the adverb boldly. Split infinitives have been the cause of much controversy among teachers and grammarians, but the notion that they are ungrammatical is simply a myth: in his famous book Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler listed them among 'superstitions'!

Split infinitives are frequently poor style, but they are not strictly bad grammar. In the example above, to avoid the split infinitive would result either in weakness (to go boldly) or over-formality (boldly to go): either would ruin the rhythmic force and rhetorical pattern of the original. It is probably good practice to avoid split infinitives in formal writing, but clumsy attempts to avoid them simply by shuffling adverbs about can create far worse sentences.

the notion that they are ungrammatical is simply a myth

Unless you are old enough to have had points taken off for splitting one in an essay or term paper. (Yes, I know that's not a sentence.) Then it is a painful memory, and a lesson that you learned and are not likely to unlearn. Once you have internalized the rule, they usually sound ugly.

I like the example from The Hitchhiker's Guide: To boldly split infinitives that no man has split before.

Clumsy attempts at writing should be avoided.

Robert

>94 But then we'd be missing so many best-selling novels!

On split infinitives, I am in the "it's a myth" camp.

It is a rule up with which I will not put, to reference Sir Winston.

Isn't it a bit like that Oxford/NY/Harvard comma? Usually poor practice but okay when the alternative is clumsy and awkward?

#88 Oh, thank you, LizzieD for bringing up that one! I was once on an internal flight from Heathrow when, just before landing, the stewardess walked along the aisle announcing 'A certain number of taxis wait at the airport that we can allocate before we land. If you would like a taxi when we arrive, please speak to myself.' I shuudered all the way home. Luckily I didn't need a taxi, because I think I'd rather have walked.

I don't know if this happens in America too, but over here there seems to be a general reluctance to use the word 'I'. It's almost as if people think it sounds egocentric and there are some people who will go to almost any lengths to avoid it - from the ones who have to constantly refer to themselves as 'us' (I'm not having a go at Geordies here - local idioms (idia?) are rather a different thing, though I must admit, I often do start to turn around and look for the other person they seem to be referring to when speaking to a Geordie) to those who contort the language beyond belief and recognition in trying to make 'myself' fit every possible situation. Even if they don't know it's wrong, can't they hear how clumsy it sounds?

I want to effect a change to ensure that effects are never infected by "affects". This would affect ineffective communication to the great benefit of future grammar.

I hate, with increasing venom, the misuse of words for reasons of 'trendiness'. The worst current example is the working assumption that 'epicentre' is merely a 'smart' way of saying 'centre'. I now find 'the epicentre of knife crime' and similar continually, even in the once-respected BBC (New Marketing Slogan: 'Nation Shall Speak Trendy-Sounding Garbage Unto Nation') and the newspapers once called 'quality'.

I was on a project management course last week - the instructor asked "how do we measure impact?", so I piped up at once and said "In Joules". Not the answer he was looking for, apparently.

LizzieD & Booksloth the myself thing is out of hand. I hear it misused all the time and I think it stems from our incorrect assumption that using me sounds somehow vulgar or less educated. And yeah, little do they know that they don't sound in the least intellectual. Moronic little sheep.

Business-speak is its own horrible little subset of bad English. At my last in-house job, mercifully ended in 2003, the managing editor talked about having people "take ownership" of a task or project. *Shudder*

I also had a running disagreement with a Bright Young Thing there about whether "email" would overtake "e-mail" as the common form. I predicted it would, within ten years. Umm, I'd like my hundred dollars, please. I don't know where he is with it!

I had a boss who used to ask me to 'diarise' things. In case you're still stumped, he meant put it in the diary.

>99

Speaking of journalese, a few things that often irritate me:

carnage — OK when there are actual corpses involved, but seems to have become almost a synonym for "chaos", presumably by being overused in sports reports ("It's carnage on Court Four")

trepidation — journalists seem to have confused agitation with anticipation, and the latter has clearly won ("There's a great air of trepidation here as to how this night will play out." — I'd put my money on the sun rising, but I'm not a journalist.)

acute and chronic — journalists are getting a bit better at these, presumably because there are more medical stories these days, but outside the medical field you still often see the same phenomenon described in different articles as a "chronic shortage" and an "acute shortage". And it's very unusual to have a shortage without one or other of these modifiers.

affordable — whatever happened to "cheap"?

inertia — "India is accelerating quickly after years of inertia." Surely even subeditors must have studied Newton's Laws at some point?

Courageous, when it's not referring to someone rescuing a child from a burning house, but to someone hitting a ball over or into a net.

ETA - And that 'chronic' is generally misunderstood in a medical way too. I volunteer for a health-associated helpline and I can't count the number of callers who tell me their three-day old pain is now so bad it's 'chronic'.

>105 Perhaps they are psychic?

Journalists are professionals, and most of them presumably know what they're doing: they use clichés and hyperbole because those are known to be efficient ways to tell a story. I'm sure there isn't time to be original when you're dictating a report down a telephone with riots going on in the background.

The sad thing is that ordinary people like those chronic callers (or the Brummies I overheard telling their mobile phones about "coarnidge" when the train got stuck because of a power failure at New Street) only see these exotic words in that sort of context, and never learn what they "really mean". The same way you pick up new words as a child and then keep using them inappropriately until some adult laughs at you. I doubt if there's really anything new in that, if you look at all the jokes about uneducated people using the wrong words in 18th and 19th century literature. And I'm sure today's "uneducated" people are exposed to far more words than Mrs Malaprop ever was.

decimated : The beach was decimated by the storm. (The reporter counted and found 1 in 10 grains of sand gone?)

alleged: The alleged victim was shot, stabbed, and decapitated.

Lifted from the Grauniad: "The average person now says they are devastated three times per week and 'absolutely devastated' once a fortnight, although 61 per cent spell it 'devestated'." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2006/jul/16/features.magazine27)

>108 That reminds me: there was a programme involving the French Revolution and the guillotine on TV last night, and more than once they referred to "decapitated heads". This naturally caused me to protest in a strangled voice "no, you idiots, severed heads: you can't decapitate a head..." and so on.

And probably at its worst on The X Factor - 'I'll be giving 150%'. Maybe you have to blame it on the excitement - it has, after all, been an 'emotional rollercoaster'.

>109 I think I'm more worried about their mental and emotional health than I am their language skills. What on earth is happening to people that they are devastated three times per week?

#112 Oh, you'd be surprised. They've lost their mobile phone, couldn't afford the shoes they wanted, didn't get through the X Factor audition . . . serious stuff. Heaven knows how they'll get by when somebody dies.

#100 Shame on you, thorold! If you will go on project management courses . . .

#113

Heaven knows how they'll get by when somebody dies.

A celebrity, for instance?

108> decimated : The beach was decimated by the storm. (The reporter counted and found 1 in 10 grains of sand gone?)

I think that usage is correct. Decimated hasn't meant killing 1/10th of a population since Roman times.

I understand that language is a living, changing thing, and that some old rules will give way to new rules, but there have to be limits!

One thing that bugs the heck out of me is the use of 'alright' instead of 'all right'. It's clearly going the way of 'also' ('all so', back in the day), and no doubt before I die will have changed, but I keep wanting to take a red pen to practically every book and magazine I read.

The 'lay' and 'lie' confusion drove my father nuts, and makes me twitch as well. Another one on my top ten list is using 'effect' where it should be 'affect' and vice versa.

Oh, and just about (but not quite) everything mentioned above . . .

#116

It is a pet peeve of mine when words lose their meanings because people think they sound impressive and use them instead of other words which would better convey the reality. The beach sustained damage. We have no idea of the extent of the damage; decimate is used whether it is 5% or 90%. What does it mean now if the army regiment was decimated? Have we any idea how many were killed?

I learned that decimate means to kill 1 in 10. If you look for a definition now, you find that one, and also, to kill everyone. That's ridiculous. And when did the word start applying to sand being blown away? Next the beach will be massacred.

>104

affordable — whatever happened to "cheap"?

Perhaps the better word would be inexpensive? "Cheap" has connotations of being of poor quality, which I imagine the journalists are trying to avoid.

Though, really, I grew up with "cheap" being used pretty much only to describe things that were not only inexpensive, but also of pretty low quality, and it's only been in the last six or seven years or so that I've heard it mean only inexpensive. As I understand it, the poor-quality connotation is more recent, though, right?

ALL of them!

I'll add "acquired" for "got" - but that may be only on the Antiques Roadshow......
I gave up on the misplacement of "only" ("I only ate three plates of spaghetti" --- I didn't throw it on the walls), and for singular pronouns referring to "everybody" and "anybody." As far as "alright" and "alot" are concerned, I gave up on them too, but I fought "eventhough" every time I saw it. I marked them, you understand, but I didn't scream or rant. OH! "Everyday" as an adverb! "I brush my teeth everyday."
(And none of these was the one I wanted to complain about. Old age!!!! @#(*&)^&!%^()*#*!)

Obviously, this thread has opened a gusher of peeves. I don't want to be mean-spirited, but I do want to get rid of all of this to a sympathetic readership. Once done, I'll be quiet for a bit. (I also remembered what I wanted to write in #120.)

These two are personal idiosyncracies that probably don't exercise anybody but me. I'll be interested to hear....
1. I am tired, tired, tired of hearing "share" used to mean "tell." As - "Let me share my pet peeves with you." (I'm not holding any back, so I don't really think that I'm sharing.
2. I am tired, tired, tired of people who can't say, "I have been able to depend on my friend." Instead, "She's been there for me."
3. I have sadly watched the demise of that good old word, "say." First it was, "Then she goes, 'Blahblahblah." Next it became, "Then she's like, 'Blahblahblah." Now it's, "Then she's, 'Blahblahblah."

Finally, pronunciation is giving me fits. I watch a lot of "House Hunters." Location doesn't seem to matter; vowels are distorted the same way, and I can't hear well enough to know whether there is consistency in where they are placed in the mouth. Anyway, here is a typical sentence that I hear with a woman talking about a mirror.
"Yah. She bought that mere at an antique sell somewhere out Wast. She wasn't in-ter-rest-id in getting it inshirred....."

That's it. Strangely enough, I feel better!

>114 — I know! Mea culpa. Not that I volunteered, but I'm sure I could have got out of it if I'd tried harder.

>119 — True, that was hyperbole on my part. Inexpensive is probably a better translation, but when politicians say things like affordable housing we have to understand the unspoken "...and thank goodness I'll never have to live there". I think cheap in British English has had both senses for a long time ("inexpensive" late 15th C and "poor quality" late 16th C, according to the OED). Certainly, when referring to services rather than goods there wasn't any strong association with poor quality until Ryanair came on the scene...

>121 — I always associate your (1) and (2) with Evangelical Christians, but maybe it's just Middle America? But your (3) is an interesting evolution of the spoken language, and I don't think we can really complain about it (I know, you're an English teacher, it's your job to complain about the way teenagers speak...).

>122 Wow, I would not have thought that at all--if anything, I would have guessed that "share" and "she's been there for me" might have come from some touchy-feely California movement, like EST or group therapy. But maybe I'm just revealing some of my own knee-jerk reactions?

>123 ...or I mine.

LizzieD, I'm with you all the way on 'I'm like', 'he's like' etc. If it made sense I could accept it. Well. maybe . . . But maybe we shouldn't take too much notice of 'kidspeak'. I've no doubt we had our own, and the wonderful thing about it is that it will die, just as these things always do. One day those teenagers who are constantly 'like' whatever it is there are like, will hear themselves and wonder what on earth they are talking about.

I was always taught that what you say in the playground (and I'd add to that, to your friends in a casual conversation and when chatting informally on LT) stays in the playground. The important thing is to know the difference and not use that language when you are at an interview or writing a formal letter. We've all (okay, many of us - hyperbole again - oops) had a light-hearted 'go' at each other now for typos, but my point is that if we were writng this conversation up as a serious magazine article or a speech, we would know which usages are wrong and correct them. I have, many times, written something like 'gonna' in an online message but I would never write that in a formal document. The last thing in the world I want to do is turn this thread into a rant about 'kids', because I do believe that most young people these days are a smashing lot, but they frequently have never been taught the rules and this is the way they speak everywhere and at every time. I have witnessed youngsters in job interviews saying 'Well, in my last job the boss was like " I want you to work overtime" and I'm like . . . " That's when it stops being funny.

As no-one's used the "O" word so far, it's probably about time to remind ourselves that George Orwell had more pet peeves than you can shake a stick at (to use a Dying Metaphor), but despite his best efforts didn't manage to eliminate either Bad Thinking or Bad writing - the full text of "Politics and the English language" is online (illegally??) at http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

#120: LizzieD "I gave up on the misplacement of "only" ("I only ate three plates of spaghetti" --- I didn't throw it on the walls),"

When I write technical documentation, I'm careful where I put adverbs. In everyday speech, putting "only" where it fits well for the rhythm of the sentence seems better to me.

"alot"

Are people writing "alot" deliberately? I've been thinking it's a common typo. Is it used in speech? Which syllable gets the stress?

"'Everyday' as an adverb! 'I brush my teeth everyday.'"

Are you objecting to that? What is your preference, "everyday" as adjective, but "every day" when used adverbially?

My pet peeve:

"I was sat in reception ...". No, you weren't. You were sitting, you steaming great twit.

Heavens, but it feels good being with you lot!

>#127: when used adverbially
I think that you'll find the correct usage is "adverbalectically".

How about the use of "-gate" to describe anything scandalicious?

btw, you folks do realise that i'm writing all this down, don't you? At some point i'm going to write a post that uses every single one of these. Just so you know.

#128 Can I add to that one "I was laying on the sofa"? Laying what, pray? An egg?

ET move misplaced italics

Catching up on this thread this morning and -

>110 "no, you idiots, severed heads: you can't decapitate a head..."

- caused a minor coffee incident! Priceless. Thanks for brightening my day.

>129 Wow, MrAndrew, adverbalectically, eh? I'm willing to take your word for it, but in fact, I didn't find it. My huge old *AHD* shows only "adverbially." (I'll add "-coholic" to describe any addiction to your "-gate.")
>127 Jim, I'm pretty much with you about the "only" in casual conversation. It just bugs me. Yes, "alot" is written deliberately as one word. I do insist on "every day" as opposed to "everyday." (And isn't that lovely for me?)
>122 Thorold, I live in one of the holes on the Bible Belt, so you may be right about the "sharing" and "being there for." I devoutly hope so!
Otherwise, one main goal in my English teaching was to raise students' awareness of language. When they came to me in the 11th grade, about the only discrimination they made was not to cuss in front of grandma. They felt free to write "gonna" and "ppl" and "b/c" and anything else that popped into their heads in anything they turned in. Another thing they did (and I think this is funny) was to write random capital letters in the middle of sentences. I asked about this practice early on, and the culprit told me,
"But I like the way I make capital B's." My complaint is that their teachers are now young enough not to have been taught basic mechanics and usage, so they can't teach them.

Oh, and I also am loath to jump on that ol' American v English thing, but there's one American construction that has always baffled me, viz: "May I come visit with you?"

Visit WHO with me? I find that one extremely odd!

'Quality' - the definition of quality by those who work in the quality control in industry is 'reproducable' it has nothign at all - not even a little bit - to do with how "good" something is. It requires a modifer.

A High quality product is one with low variablity - it may fall apart in 2seconds, but providing every item produced falls apart in 2s then it's still high quality.

Yes I worked - briefly - quality control. can you tell?

A more general peeve it the adaption of specific technical terms into a more widespread less general use - see quality above or 'evolution' as another. The term becomes debased from its precise meaning, and becomes almost worthless.

#134: Sophie236
I think "visit with" is American for "talk to". Is that right? And how it it come to mean that — because visitors often talk to visitees?

135> I think you'll find that the word evolution was adapted from general use to its scientific use and it never left general use. I think you should complain about those who use evolution with its scientific meaning without calling it Evolution Through Natural Selection or Theory of Evolution (although the latter is confusing because the meaning of the word 'theory' has changed).

134> Although I can't say I've never heard it, this American hears 'visit you' much more often than 'visit with you'. Maybe it's southern?

Every other person who writes in right now has me nodding and wanting to shake them by the hand! Those capital letters sure are rife. As they're often used for every noun that comes along I sometimes wonder if they've somehow strayed over here from Germany but I suspect they've really just come from advertising language, where every statement is written as a headline. When I edit something I'm utterly ruthless about cutting capitals out - they almost flinch when they see me coming.

Sorry, that last one (139) was meant to be in reply to 133 - there was a great flurry there for a moment!

I think--without research--that "visit with" is colloquial for "sit and talk with"; I have no idea whether it is regional. Anyone have a copy of DARE (Dictionary of American Regional English) handy?

I agree about the everyday/every day split. "Everyday" is an adjective: "Traffic accidents at that intersection were an everyday occurrence." "Every day" is an adverbial phrase: "We spoke on the phone every day."

#136 & 141 - I know it means "to talk to", but surely if you visit someone, then you're not likely to sit there in silence? The "with" just seems entirely redundant to me.

#138 - actually, the person I know who uses this phrase most often is a Canuck (from Medicine Hat - crazy name, crazy place) rather than American ...

#141: ejj1955 "I agree about the everyday/every day split. 'Everyday' is an adjective: 'Traffic accidents at that intersection were an everyday occurrence.' 'Every day' is an adverbial phrase: 'We spoke on the phone every day.'"

To clarify, I'm completely with you and with LizzieD on this usage. Back in #127 I was only aiming for elucidation.

I think there's a subtle difference between visit and visit with although I can't quite put my finger on it. To me, visit with connotes a more leisurely time with sitting on a couch and perhaps being offered a cup of tea or coffee. But maybe that's just me.

#144
But can't you "visit with" by just meeting somebody you know in the street?

It sets my teeth on edge when people say

VIN number
ATM machine
VAT tax
NIC card
PIN number

I know, I know, I know it's easier and just the way things are...but it's still dumb.

'visit with' is very common in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as is 'visiting with'. "We were visiting with Grandma on Sunday and she said..."

Like 'every day':

A worthwhile visit . . . .

but

The visit was worth while.

Just catching up...

#117 One thing that bugs the heck out of me is the use of 'alright' instead of 'all right'. It's clearly going the way of 'also' ('all so', back in the day), and no doubt before I die will have changed

Golly, how old are you?! I'm sorry to tell you that it has changed already ... I mean "all ready". And there is a sense-distinction to justify it:

"Was your maths homework OK?" "Well, it was alright, but it wasn't all right."

But "alot" is an abomination and is not, repeat, NOT accepted by any literate person. It almost defines literacy: if you think "alot" is a word, you're obviously a complete ((insert noun here)).

There is also a subtle sense-distinction in the youthspeak term "like" introducing direct speech. If you say She was like, "What do I care?", you indicate that she said or did something that made this state of mind clear, but may not actually have said the quoted words.

#125 The important thing is to know the difference and not use that language when you are at an interview or writing a formal letter

Verily.

#133 Wow, MrAndrew, adverbalectically, eh? I'm willing to take your word for it, but in fact, I didn't find it

I didn't even bother to look in a dictionary. In my (admittedly limited) experience, MrAndrew is something of a roving wag on LT whose messages may not be intended seriously.

#134 there's one American construction that has always baffled me, viz: "May I come visit with you?"

I find that one odd too. Another is the construction I heard on a Sesame Street video: "I want to show you someone". In British English this could only mean "I want to show someone TO you" (as in "I want to show you something"); but in context it clearly means "I want to show you TO someone".

#135 the adaption of specific technical terms into a more widespread less general use

Actually, what you describe is the converse: the co-option of general terms into technical vocabulary. As jjwilson61 says (#137), "evolution" meant "turning or unrolling movement" long before it was applied to the transformation of biological species; and the term "quality" had been around for centuries before anyone invented something called "quality control".

(Incidentally, the word "adaption" is formed by false analogy: the correct form is "adaptation".)

I've just had a roller-coaster read of the last day's peeves, and firstly, I realise how grateful I am for the modern prevalence of street lighting and the disappearance from sword-sticks from our streets! It's scary to think that the world is so densely populated with fulminating pedants!

Perhaps the social value of this thread in terms of steam release could be recognised by a substantial grant from those entrusted with the mental health of the literate nations!

Secondly, I'm reminded of the best example I know of a sentence which means the same as its opposite:

'Words don't mean ANYTHING today!'

or, conversely,

'Words mean ANYTHING today!'

I'll have you know that "adverbalectically" is a perfectly gramacious word.

I am against loan as a verb.
I am against quote as a noun.

I don't feel so strongly about human as an adverb, but I try to use it correctly myself.

I wonder whether I can keep everyday and every day straight.

Robert

I wonder whether I can keep everyday and every day straight.

I could try, but i doubt that i would succeed every day.

Has anybody mentioned continually versus constantly yet?

I don't have a pet peeve, I have a passel, a peck, a piping pile of peevery. (Inventing words is not one of them :)).

For instance...

"Invite" for "invitation"; "opine" for "opinion". Why, people, why?

Halleluiah! What a group!!!

>137 Add the one that really makes sense at LT --- ISBN number --- and my special favorite (especial, MrAndrew?) from school, the SIT team (SIT = School Improvement Team).
>144 I'm in N.C. and your visit with/visit distinction feels exactly right to me. I don't think anybody I know would ever use "visit" or "visit with" to describe a chance meeting on the street.
>152 Would you add "contact" as a verb to your bad list? (I would.)
(>148 I had a student who wrote "worthwild" and asked me with great skepticism what "worth while" meant.)
>152, 153 I pronounce "everyday" with the emphasis on the "ev;" "every day" makes "day" the accented syllable. Am I odd?
>153 Let's add "continuously" to the "continually/constantly" mix although the 1989 edition of *AHD* lists the three as synonyms.
>150 Last but not least, that's very perspicacious of you.
(Did I mention that I love this stuff? )

One of the best things about LT: the feeling that there are others like me. Aha! I'm not the only person on the planet who still cares about these distinctions. (And there are multiple such moments--aha, other tennis fans! aha, other night owls! and so forth.)

>155

I have to add another chime of agreement to the visit/visit with distinction, and also the point about not using visit with to describe a chance encounter on the street — unless, of course, you're old friends or family and, after meeting, settle onto a nearby bench for a spell and proceed to have a gossip and maybe a coffee or two. But I don't think I've ever consciously thought about it, except as a mnemonic when trying to remember how to use visiter in French.

Also, I pronounce everyday and every day as you do.

Here's another peeve I've been cultivating this week:

At my job, I have to call people up on the phone, and one of the services (Verizon, maybe?) doesn't always start the ringing right away. Instead, a voice says, "Please wait while your party is being reached."

Augh. Even more than I hate the cheesy answering machine messages or people telling me to "have a blessed day", I can't stand "while your party is being reached." It's like fingernails on a chalkboard, though I can't pinpoint exactly what is wrong with it. It simply drives me batty.

One of the other service providers has a message more along the lines of "please wait while the person you dialed is found" which is nearly identical to the other sentence, but not nearly so irritating. (I still can't stand the passive voice.)

152> You object to "The bank loaned me the money for my house"? Hasn't loaned been a verb for centuries?

Quote as a noun seems pretty unextraordinary as well.

158> The battle has been lost, but that it is history makes it no less tragic.

I believe the American Heritage Dictionary tried to justify the use of loan as a verb by referring to the usage of bankers, to which I replied, "What do bankers know about good usage?"

To quote is to recite a quotation that, in writing, is marked with quotation marks, but even good writers nowadays use quote to mean quotation. Alackaday!

Robert

I first heard 'momentarily' for 'in a moment' in the 70s. I was horrified -- as if I were watching my grandmother being murdered.

Was I wrong? The Romans freely created adverbs from verbs, adjectives, nouns, whatever.

On the other hand, when a speaker makes a change that ERASES A DISTINCTION (i.e., momentarily will never again mean simply 'for a moment'), then I count that as pure loss.

>158,159

The OED has examples of both quote (n) and loan (v) going back to at least late-medieval times, and they were certainly in common use 150 years ago. The odd thing about loan (v) was that it almost dropped out of use in British English, but I don't think Americans need feel guilty about using it.

I remember my father getting very worked up about Lancashire people using lend as a noun (Can I have a lend of your bike?) and sometimes turning this back into a verb to mean "borrow" (Can I lend your bike?). What I didn't know until I looked it up today is that there is (or rather was) a noun lends meaning "buttocks".

(edited to close tags)

"The airplane will be taking off momentarily." I get this urge to leave the plane before it does!

#161 - I grew up in Lancashire, and a friend who lived next door informed me one day that her dad had hired her bike. "You mean he rented it out to someone?" I said, baffled. "No, he HIRED it." Took me a good while to realise he had simply raised the seat or, indeed, "highered" it. Shudder.

And don't get me started on the headmaster of the dreadful local school I went to, who referred to how important it was to "learn these children proper". Double shudder.

#162 - I feel the same way!

If we're doing adverbs, what about hopefully, presently, actually and eventually? I work with a lot of people whose first language is German or French - when one of these words appears in a sentence, only the context can give a clue to what the writer meant. I would guess that hopefully="hoffentlich" about 90% of the time, actually="actuellement" about 50%, and eventually="éventuellement" about 99%. As to presently, not even native speakers can agree whether it means now or later.

#149: MyopicBookworm "It almost defines literacy: if you think 'alot' is a word, you're obviously a complete ((insert noun here))."

Oh dear! I've learned in this very thread that "alot" is a word (see #127 and #133) so I must be a ((insert noun here)). And there was I naively thinking that knowledge was better than ignorance :(

#158 But what is wrong with 'the bank lent me money'?

#160 But we are not Romans! (Except for any of us who are, of course.)

#161 For decades now I've heard people use lend instead of borrow - 'Can I lend your rubber?' but the other day for the first (and hopefully the last) time I actually heard it the other way round as in 'Will you borrow me a pound?' Aaaaaghhhh!

I would assume that "will you borrow me a pound?" meant that I should approach some third party on behalf of the speaker, begging a pound from that person for the speaker. I'm not sure why I would have to be involved in this transaction, though . . .

In reading this thread, I am warmed by the knowledge that the bookcase beside me holds the two-volume OED, the one with all twenty volumes printed in tiny type and the magnifying glass that makes it possible to read it. Even better, I bought this lovely item secondhand for an absurd price, maybe $15 or so.

But I still plan to buy a subscription to the online version when I win the lottery--it contains most of the work done since the 1970s so it has many more citations, antedating, new entries, etc.!

>166

No we're not Romans, but the fact that another people with a comparable inflection regularly found it useful (and unconfusing) to use that inflection is instructive.

It's not as if there were some harmonious English Language System out there, and we're trying to discover its universal rules.

Or to put it another way, if someone objects to "I was working computerly" in place of "I was working at my computer," he'd better have a better reason than "I don't like new adverbs."

I have to say, growing up, the thing that really bothered me the most was when I heard 'Can you borrow me some noun.' It's one of the few things that still really irritate me, as well as reading 'alot'. I had a teacher who received so many papers with 'alot' that she announced any paper using it would automatically fail. I have since remembered to add the ' '.

>165 "I've learned in this very thread that "alot" is a word," and you cite post 133. Please exonerate me! Usage may finally dictate that it has become a word, but I would mark it in a paper to my dying day! I will also say "lend" when I mean "lend" to my dying day (when I hope I will be lying down).
>167 I got my copy of the OED (free!) by joining a book club and buying a certain number of other books that I wanted anyway. Nifty!
Rules for usage and mechanics exist to make language comprehensible. I think that's the bottom line. If communication continues without them, well and good. Many times, however, incorrect usage calls attention to itself in ways that detract from the message. I don't think anybody has trouble understanding, "He's cloths was expense," but the point is lost in the amazement at the expression. Even my worst kids would read that and say, "That's just ignunt!" which led to an opportunity to teach. (I had forgotten how much I hate the expression "teachable moment." I never taught a moment anything.) (That also reminds me of another peeve - "healthy food." sorry.)
For the rest, language usage does have social ramifications. My worst kids again understood that the country club was not going to invite a rich man who said, "He ain't got no smarts," to join. On the other hand, in our county the people who get things done don't speak very well. That is at least one reason that I didn't get very far in persuading folks to learn some grammar.

#170: LizzieD "Please exonerate me!"

Gladly! I know you don't like the word "alot" a lot, and nor apparently do other commentators here. It's not a word I'm likely to start using myself any time soon.

How delightful to hang out with folks who brag about their OED. I married into mine (two volume Shorter edition, no magnifying glass). I told Spousal Unit that his ownership of the OED spoke volumes about our compatibility.

This has reminded me to catalog a couple more dictionaries:
OED 2 vol with magnifying glass (when we first had it, I could read it without the magnifying glass. Eheu fugaces!)
Partridge, Slang and unconventional English. I particularly like the part of the title which says "vulgarisms and such Americanisms as have been naturalized".

Someday I shall relate the most embarrassing holiday story ever: having the current editor of the OED at my sister's house for Thanksgiving . . .

How's that for sneaky OED bragging rights?!

174>

You win!

We grovel!

*backing from the room kowtowing all the way*

When I was a child we used to visit our relations; nowadays it seems one has relatives. This irks me on two levels - a purely personal dislike of change, and a dislike of the grammatical use. Correct me if I am wrong (that's what this group is for!) but 'relation' is a noun and 'relative' is an adjective describing nothing.
I'm with Rabbit on this one - he had Friends and Relations, not Friends and Relatives.

But don't have relations with your relatives. That's just wrong.

eeek.

I have used relative as a noun my entire life (as well as an adj.). I think this is a Southernism, or possibly a Westernism, here in the US. A relative is someone who is related to me.

And we *never* used relations, as that is what a married (one hopes) couple have. :-)

I was just reminded by another thread in this group that I reject most virgules as offensive.

Robert

>181

Why?

I find them quite useful, at times.

I have no idea. Useful though they clearly are, they seem tasteless to me.

Robert

Since 1973 or whenever it was that the shilling was abolished, I suppose the solidus is either useless or available to be adapted to new uses.

It already has been. Solidus.

Robert

New pet peeve: two different (pedantic) names for the same thing: solidus & virgule

*exasperated*

Why not just call it a slash?

:-)

So--that's three names, right? (Proving my right to belong to this group!)

I would add slant, and I think there're more.

Robert

PS But notice, the Wikipedia article distinguishes among them at least to some degree.

R

slash

The American English slash ( / ) is a punctuation mark. It is variously termed stroke (in UK English), slash, virgule, diagonal, forward slash, right-leaning stroke oblique dash, slant, separatrix, scratch comma, over, slak1, whack.

To Booksloth (#64)

Thanks for the corroboration, especially on "one" (the pronoun)ʻs being "quite useful in a general sense", This, rather than the pretenntiousness of its occasional use, was my main point.

I have always used "lend" instead of "loan" as a verb - born in Canada but to English parents - but Canadians use it as a verb, and it always grates with me. I just can't use loan as a verb.
I was getting irritated with "pimp" being used for non-sex-trade references but apparently the original meaning was much more general and didn't apply only to procuring prostitutes but to procuring anything. So...it's going back to its roots.

But lend and loan are both verbs but in different tenses (is that the right word?). "Will you loan me 10 bucks" vs. "I'll lend you the money if you agree to pay me back tonight."

But why do all those typographic marks have to have such obscure names: Virgule, ampersand, and octamaroon or something for (#). What's wrong with slash and pound sign (ok, I don't know a common name for ampersand).

I really wish you hadn't shown me that...

Oh dear; I was referring to the Jane Austen "sequal" sign.

My pet peeve is that my pet peeves are at war with the fact that language changes. Preferably, I'd still be speaking Middle English.

I am also peeved to find myself living in a world which no longer pays homage to the beauty of the subjunctive. I have a painful visceral reaction to the phrase "If I was ...". If I were Queen, we would all speak the Queen's English; barring the return of ME, of course.

>194 Oh, yes, I had an author come back and ask why I had changed a verb to the plural because I changed "was" to "were" for the subjunctive. Dear me.

It's very convenient sometimes to go for a slash, mid-sentence!

Before we move away from the wonders of the OED, I feel I should point out, for those British residents with failing eyesight, that for a couple of years now, registration at a Public Library brings with it the miracle of on-line access to the full OED in all its coruscating glory.

I've never been one to align myself with any institution, be it nation, religion, political party, sports club or similar, but this initiative, wrought on behalf of the populace surrounding me geographically, would otherwise make me proud to be relieved of my taxes by Her Brittanic Majesty's Government!

The ability to browse unhindered, on-screen, within what is arguably the greatest achievement of mankind, is one of the purest joys of a pedant's existence!

#194/195 Hear that noise? It's me sobbing with grateful relief that I'm not the only one!

>197 I'm really, really, really envious.

For those without such access, I offer this often useful link:

www.onelook.com

It allows you to search a whole group of dictionaries at once, including such standards as the American Heritage 4th ed. and MW11 Collegiate. No OED, alas.

#192 - no, I would not say "will you loan me ten bucks?"; I say, "forget about the loan, just give me the money!"...no seriously, I would ask, "will you lend me ten bucks, please?". No one has corrected me, so far, and if they did, there would be a snort coming from my direction.

One irritation for me, which re-surfaced on tonight's BBC news, was misuse of 'regularity', as in, with reference to deaths of professional soldiers in Afghanistan, ' ... happening with increasing regularity.'

Of course they mean 'increasing frequency', or (better) some other construction, using 'common', or 'frequent'.

Perhaps the confusion is the result of 'regular' being most used in association with bowel movements.

>201
Well spotted. 'Increasing regularity' means that an event is recurring with a more discernible pattern.

#192 I've never heard 'loan' as a verb described as correct usage. Is that just in America? Over here (UK) it would definitely be (as in #200) 'Can you lend me ten dollars?' and 'Thank you for the loan of that $10.' Can you cite your sources? I'm interested.

And surely we've had this one before but I can't see it (rapidly skimming) - 'very unique'? If we haven't, it's about time we did.

And all those people who 'fill out' forms. Why? Do they also fill out holes?

>206 - Nice one! Never even noticed that. I definitely "fill out" forms (and have never once been asked to fill one in); BUT filling out the form often involves filling in the individual boxes / blanks on the form. Hmm....

"Fill out" and "fill in" the form are both used here (Canada). If there is a meaning difference I would say "fill out" means complete it; "fill in" is the physical action of writing in the boxes. "Out" can often mean to complete something - "finishing out the term", "going out of business", etc.
I hate "very unique" - and it's been kicking around for years. "More complete" - some US vitamin company started using this one in its ads years ago and I think they should be punished! There are others like this: "very excellent", "really perfect"...we've all heard these grimace-inducing injuries to English!

Addendum to 206/207 - considering this further:

I would say the following -

(NOTE: these may or may not be correct, just noting how I would say them)

*A skinny young girl may fill out as she becomes a young woman.

*She may want to fill in the gaps in her education by reading more books.

*Her mother may be concerned that will fill up her head with ideas.

*Her father doesn't want her to fill up on appetizers before dinner.

*The table did fill up with appetizers as they waited.

(What's up with the "on appetizers"/"with appetizers" distinction I use there?)

*They may be offered free tickets to fill out the audience at a book lecture. (By filling in the empty seats.)

*She may offer to fill in for a friend at the library book sale.

*I would fill up my gas tank or bathtub but would fill in a gap in the hedge with a new bush.

Doesn't seem like I ever "fill down" anything though.

Edited to Add:
Regional dialects and relaxed speaking styles rarely bother me (since I use them and don't even notice) but, since this is the Pet Peeves thread, I should note that "on accident" grates on my ear like fingernails on a chalkboard.

I have just about given up on the ubiquitous use of "like" when "as" should be used. As most announcers and writers are using it incorrectly now, I should give up and admit defeat.

>209 Would you use "on accident" in a sentence, please. I don't think I've ever heard it.

#210 As most announcers and writers are using it incorrectly now, I should give up and admit defeat.
Call yourself a pedant? Shame on you!

>211 Would you use "on accident" in a sentence, please. I don't think I've ever heard it.

"On accident" is used where I would use "by accident":

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hang up on you. I did it on accident."

For a study looking at who is saying it (and where and when and how widely accepted it is - in the US):
http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/01_4/barratt16.htm

ETA
>210 - of course then I had to go look up whether or not you were pointing to my "like fingernails on a chalkboard"...

When my kids were young, they used to say "on accident" for the opposite of "on purpose"...but they did it as a joke; it was not common usage. If you think about it, though, why do we not say "by purpose", just as we say "by accident"?

Not a pedant?? Sob...

>213 Now that's what I call an answer! Thank you, Portia........ I've been out of the high school for only one year, so I don't think "on accident" has reached our teens yet. I'll do some research!
>214 I'll tell you, the interesting stuff is in the prepositions! (I think you're a proper pedant, dihiba!)

'Filling in' is something threatened to be done to one in a physical way by someone visibly capable of causing considerable harm, something replete with a level of menace that seems to be unaffected by either its etymology or its physiological/pugilistic precision.

Which recalls my childhood experience of a (significantly older) bully, who would occasionally threaten to 'do for' me. It was some years before I realised why my dictionary searches for the verb 'to doofer' had been fruitless.

I hate 'hone in on' enough to end a conversation over it.

Robert

>216 the verb "to doofer" is very like the verb "to yugal" (what Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer did in history), dear husband's childhood assumption.

Here's one that annoys me intensely; "only a fraction". After all, nine-tenths is a fraction, so why use the word as a synonym for "a small amount"? "A small fraction" makes perfect sense, and I've lost count of the number of times I've pointed this out to people (and, no, I don't get invited to very many parties these days, before you ask!).

>219
None of us here get invited to parties.

>220 Since this is the place for pedantry and exactitude, I'd like to point out that I have been invited to a barbecue party next Monday :-)

Joe Bob Briggs insists that the correct spelling is B-B-Q.

I think that's the correct abbreviation. Interestingly, the earliest use in OED (1697) is a plural spelt with an apostrophe: barbecu's.

>219 OED fraction n. 4a: something broken off; a disconnected portion; a fragment, scrap, small piece. 1609.

+ + +

There's a notice in a local bookshop here referring to modern poetry that "doesn't have to rind". I haven't worked out whether this is incompetence or some kind of joke.

#221 We have lots of ways of ensuring they don't ask you back.

I'm so glad you people are off the street.

>221

I don't think you should go. Barbecues are offensive to vegetarians, and once you've made the regulation unfunny joke about the prophet Elijah and the priests of Baal to the person who's attempting to start the fire, there's not a lot to do.

>226 I wouldn't do that: the host is a clergyman and I might get struck by lightning (especially if I try the trick of pouring water on the offering). But I don't mind offending the kind of vegetarian who is offended by barbecues. Although theoretically I might symapthize with the vegetarian option, I am currently a carnivore of the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall school: if you're going to eat meat, do it properly and use as much as you can (even the ucky bits).

Hey, I'm a veggie (well, I'm not really, but it's easier than explaining that I don't eat meat but do eat fish) and I still have barbies! There are lots of fake-meat or non-meat foods that are great barbecued. (And guests can do meat if they like.)

>There are lots of fake-meat or non-meat foods that are great barbecued

True, but most barbecues I've been to were run by meat-eaters, who either don't plan for vegetarians ("I think you'll be all right with the salad, if you pick out the bits of bacon") or buy vast supplies of some revolting chemical product that claims to be a vegetarian sausage and expect you to chomp through the lot.

Here's another peeve lifted straight from another two threads that are using it right this moment. Clicks! Do this people have any idea that a click is a noise made by snapping the fingers? It's unlikely you'll ever belong to one. The thing you may, or may not, belong to is a clique. I mean, doesn't it ever cross their minds that a 'click' is a slightly odd word to use for an exclusive group and that maybe it is worth taking a peek at that thing the library has called a 'dictionary'?

#229 - I'm a lapsed vegetarian (decided that life wasn't worth living if it didn't include Brussels pate with garlic), and my solution to the barbecue problem was simply to purchase some decent veggie sausages/burgers and present them to the cook (along with a hint that they might wish to try and keep them reasonably separate from the meat). This always worked beautifully. Well, it worked beautifully until the meat-eaters decided to snaffle all the veggie stuff as well as the meat ...! If I should ever decide to have a barbecue, I will make darned certain that the vegetarians don't get treated like pariahs (although given that summers here are wet and cold or hot and midgeful*, the problem is unlikely to arise).

*No, you won't find "midgeful" in any dictionaries, as I just made it up.

#231 You've got us all wondering where 'here' is now, I bet. Scotland?

>231

Always try Googling before you claim that a word doesn't exist — it looks as though you and Ms Beckham have a word in common! (Or maybe you are Ms Beckham?)

>233
Confession time: I'm Ms Beckham. That explains all the Roman law books.

#230: Booksloth "doesn't it ever cross their minds that a 'click' is a slightly odd word to use for an exclusive group"

Why should it? English has lots of homographs.

But not so many dictionaries, I suspect.

In America we would spell midgeful m.i.d.g.f.u.l.

Robert

#230 My high school was certainly full of clicks. (Maybe the noise was the reason nobody was paying much attention to me in class.) So, I'll add that other old French favorite, Walla!

What is it with walla? Someone very close to me uses it all the time; he spent his formative years in the USA. I thought it might be just him; obviously not.

Maybe he's from Walla Walla?

I'm assuming that the walla people never studied French (Voila!) or read anything in which people talk French - kind of.

>240 Ha!

Even though I am not one of them, I have difficulty understanding why we refer to Anglo-Saxon Protestants as 'WASP'S' since all of them are White and thus the first letter is redundant.
What's wrong with being an ASP? Is this an example of 'Genusism' or 'Phylumism' and implying that it is better to be an arthropod than a reptile? Where did the Asp loose respect? Could it be that most of the population doesn't know what an Asp is? I suppose we should never underestimate the ignorance of the proletariat.
I have been to Britain and I am told that some of those who consider themselves 'Anglo-Saxon' are also Roman-Catholic, thus they would be 'ASRC' or 'ASC'. Perhaps we should remember the wise words; " There is no 'Them', there is only 'Us'. " People seem to have an almost infinite capacity for identifying with those most similar to themselves and branding others as part of some other group distinctly different, and usually less admirable in some way. I myself should try more to recognize the similarities amongst peoples, and less to look for their uncomplimentary qualities.

(a) There's a school of thought (largely discredited, I think, but it did make a bit of noise a while back) that claims Cleopatra as a black person.

(b) Isn't "Anglo-Saxon" an even more irritating term to pedants? No-one has ever been Anglo-Saxon and Protestant in the same century. None of the modern people usually tagged as "Anglo-Saxon" actually grew up with Anglo-Saxon as a first language, and many of them will be of Norse or Norman-French origins, if not actually Celtic, Huguenot, Hanoverian, converted Jew, or whatever. So you'd be left with "P" as a designator...

Walla Walla = Welcome to Walla

#232 - yup, Dunoon, on the banks of the Clyde; or midge central, as I call it.

#233 - I'm so far away from being Ms Beckham that we're barely members of the same species!

>245 That's probably all to the good, Sophie, as we're not quite sure what species Ms. Beckham is!

#246 - some new form of stick insect, perhaps!

I don't mind the WASP thing, just don't like the negative stereotype (being a WASP - oops, ASP, myself).
Are we talking about Victoria Beckham? I thought it might be someone here on LibraryThing!

I certainly was. Victoria Whichever-Spice-She-Was Beckham.

Of course, my views have been forever skewed by seeing "Footballers' Wives." So I may not really have the most well-informed impression of Ms. Beckham.

#249 Posh. Proof indeed that she does have a sense of humour.

This may be slightly off the topic, but causes me to shriek -- people using outrageously bad foreign accents to pronounce select words. It was all the rage a couple of decades ago for television newsreaders (sorry, can't call them journalists) to spew 'Neekarrrrrawha' for Nicaragua (sorry, that's about the closest I can come to it). In the next sentence you could 'Mexico' stated as most of us regular folk do. I have a sister-in-law who loves the opportunity to say 'Barthelona', but will call Spain Spain. (When in Barthelona, she once ordered, at a sidewalk cafe, "agua con carne" -- rather than "gas". That was worth the airfare.)

There are several monumental examples from most familiar languages.

How about the misuse of Yiddishisms? For pedantic Jews like me (my wife would say 'SuperJew'), chutzpah is actually a bit of an insult, not a word to describe someone with brio (and I've probably just misused that one). And schlep: this is not synonymous with schmuck, schlub, shlemiel or schnook (or shnorrer, for that matter). To schlep means to drag something or oneself somewhere -- "I had to schlep my luggage the entire length of the terminal". It can also function as a noun now -- "the schlep I've got every morning, you wouldn't believe".

#251 I'm with you on the fact that it can be very annoying when newsreaders and others can't make up their minds whether to use local or international pronunciation but I would definitely applaud your sister-in-law for choosing to speak Spanish when in Spain, even if she doesn't always get it right. Better to try and mess up than not to try at all. This is now completely off topic, I know, but I do think it is the height of bad manners to not even bother to try a few words of the languguage of the country in which you are a guest. In my (somewhat limited) experience of Europe, there seems to be one European country (I'm naming no names) in which the 'natives' are very supercilious about their language and look down their noses at anyone whose pronunciation isn't perfect, but in the other European countries I have visited, most people are thrilled to have tourists try a few words and are only too pleased to correct and help learners with the language (in a kind and humorous way). Because so many of them are fluent in English, they know very well that it is better to try and make mistakes, than not to try at all.

And regarding the use of Jewish words and expressions - I don't do it because it 'feels wrong' somehow to use Jewish phrases with an English accent, but so many of your words are so wonderfully expressive and joyfully onomatopoeic that I love to hear them used - even incorrectly. I know that's no excuse for getting them wrong, but I do hope you won't mind the rest of the world trying to share in such a wonderful language!

My dad, child of Polish Catholic immigrants, brought home lots of Yiddish expressions from his co-workers in Chicago. (He worked for the Goldman family for many decades.) So it seems very natural for me to salt my speech with the occasional Yiddishism. It does cause my stepson (whose mother is Jewish) to look at me askance, but then he looks at me askance for so many reasons, I hardly notice ;-) ("evilstepmother" is all one word and the only acceptable usage form, right?).

The real fun was when I lived in the American South. I had a co-worker who looked at me very thoughtfully and said, "I've never heard anyone say 'Oy, vey' out loud before."

I had a co-worker who looked at me very thoughtfully and said, "I've never heard anyone say 'Oy, vey' out loud before." (#253)

I'll have to remember to drop an "Oy, vey" among the locals next time I visit my good friend in Texas. (Or failing that, the Brooklynism "fuhgeddabouddit".)

I would definitely applaud your sister-in-law for choosing to speak Spanish when in Spain

So would I: but in Barcelona, they'd be even happier if you tried to speak Catalan. (Isn't the "th" in "Barthelona" a Castilian Spanish thing? Do they actually do that in Barcelona?)

I used to take the view that since it was obviously absurd for English to use (for example) a mangled pronunciation of the French name of a German city, one should use the original names whenever possible. However, after many years working in an international environment I've come to the conclusion that efficient communication is best served by using the accepted names in whatever language you're speaking, however silly they are, because those are what people expect to hear. Of course, if the accepted name is excessively archaic, ambiguous, obscure, or likely to cause offence in a particular context (colonial names, etc.), you might need to use the local name.

#255 I've no doubt you're right. I've never heard any Spanish speaker not use the soft 'th' but maybe I've only spoken to Castilians. Though again, I'd say that any attempt, however 'wrong' is better than not trying at all.

I have used a single plural "s" on the end of decades for years (decades, in fact) - 1960s, 1970s, etc. And of course, 1900s. The prevailing custom seems to be to shove an apostrophe in there, making it a possessive, i.e. "The '60's saw a lot of cool happenings, man". Who's right? Lately I have been giving in, yet again, to the majority. Perhaps I should. Perhaps I was wrong. Who can tell me???

Either way is perfectly legible. Does one of them have to be wrong?

Doesn't have to be wrong but I'm with you, dihiba! It's not a possessive word so there is no good reason for it(s) having a possessive apostrophe. There might be an excuse if there was some misunderstanding about what is meant by 1980s etc, but there isn't. I don't really see how legibility comes into it. If I type 'Oy, you, git over 'ere!' that is legible but it's not necessarily good English.

They just might be both right. 60's - belongs to the decade and 60s is a plural of the individual years of that decade.
I guess by correct I mean which one is correct in a semantic sense?

The apostrophe doesn't just mean possessive. Which sentence is clearer? "How many lower-case as are in this sentence?" or "How many lower-case a's are in this sentence?" Given that the apostrophe is used in this case to indicate a plural it isn't ridiculous that it be used in 60's, even though it isn't really necessary to make it clear.

#261 You're absolutely right about that - I assumed you were talking in a 'plural' context.
#261 No, it's also used when a letter or letters are missing. That's not the case here either. The apostrophe after the year date does nothing to make anything any clearer.

Fowler doesn't seem to mention this one, but according to The good word guide "the apostrophe in a series of years is now generally omitted: in the 1980s, the 1800s" (s.v. DATE).

That suggests that it used to be the practice to include the apostrophe, but isn't any more. I don't think it's that we think of "sixties" as a possessive, rather that we're not comfortable with sticking plural '-s' on the end of something that isn't a word (cf. abbreviations like NGO's; or 7's meaning multiple instances of the digit 7). It could be correct to have a preceding apostrophe (e.g. '60s) when you omit the century, though I doubt if that's necessary for understanding either.

It's not a possessive word so there is no good reason for it(s) having a possessive apostrophe. (#260)

So that's why so many people mix up their itses!

Edited to correct spacing.

>258 In a former life, I used The Chicago Manual of Style constantly. I seem to recall that it favored no apostrophe in decades and similar usages, calling the apostrophe in this context 'dated.'

I don't have a Manual to hand or I'd check out what they say now.

I'm glad to hear that it's dated, but it seems to be still widely used.
I like the comparison - sixties and 60s...in other words, it's not sixty's.

Of course, when I were a lad, 60s was the same as three quid, just as 60d was five bob!

And change was what you couldn't get from a taxi driver ...

...because you could come home on the tram and still have change out of a farthing?

In the '50's I was taught in elementary school in New England to use the apostrophe in plurals of numbers and abbreviations along the lines that Thorold described in his second paragraph in message 264. I still pluralize that way as in DVD's (about which I don't understand why the spellcheckers insist on majuscules).

Robert

I don't think anyone has mentioned my pet peeve, dangling participles. These crop up constantly in texts I have to edit and are committed by the best of travel writers:
Walking towards the cathedral, the town hall dominates the square...

#271 Possibly the reason no-one has mentioned those yet, overthemoon, is because they can so often be a source of unintentional hilarity. Yes, I deplore their use from a grammatical point of view, but they have probably given me more laughs than any other grammatical boob in the history of the world so I'm going to make a big plea for those who use them to carry on doing so! And thank you for reminding me and for your lovely example!

#69: "Deplane" is what Tatoo on Fantasy Island announced to his boss.
#79: If it makes you feel better, I DID learn those things in high school!

Peeves: misuse of the word orientate for oriented and the use of the word conversate for conversed. Use of "Ax" instead of ask in conversation. And no one mentioned IRREGARDLESS!!!

'Deplane' is what an airport does when a plane takes off.

When people leave the plane, the plane 'dehumanizes'.

My wife always says orientated. Just one of those crosses...

The phrase "live audience" has always annoyed me. Surely few people perform before the dead.

And "pre-planning." Planning to plan?

Surely few people perform before the dead. (#276)

But it seems they do pan before the dead. ;)

Uh?

>278
"Deadpan". Best thing I could think of.

Sorry - I'm not having a good day for getting other people's jokes.

Here's my pet peeve. People who say "you" when they mean "I". This happens a lot when people are interviewed on TV. They extrapolate their personal experience or view onto the rest of us.

Example I heard today: "They give you a credit card so you spend and spend and you don't think about how you will pay back the debt."

#281 Now you're talking about idiots, Darrow. Their grammar is the least of their problems.

Back to one of my hobby-horses --- words losing their meanings.

"Bork" as a verb was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002. It means (meant) to prevent someone's appointment to public office. The reference, of course, is to the defeat of Robert Bork, who was nominated to a seat on the Supreme Court.

I'm seeing "borked" widely used on LT to mean "broken" or "not functioning correctly." Manual adding is borked. Resizing is borked. Tag combination is borked. Links are borked. I can't understand why anyone would grab hold of a word with a specific and unrelated meaning, and use it instead of a word which accurately conveys what is meant.

#283 - never heard of this one, living in the Great White North has its advantages. Now I can add a fairly useless word to my lexicon and no none here will know what I mean.

- here's a pronunciation pet peeve - when people say "triath-a-lon" - making 4 syllables out of a 3 syllable word. Tri-ath-lon! Sports announcers do it all the time...shouldn't they know better?

And why is it that, although that (#284) annoys the hell out of me with a lot of words I just love the Irish 'fillum'.

I agree that triathlon should be closer to three syllables than to four, but I find it almost impossible not at least partially to make a syllable of the voiced l following the unvoiced th.

The generic you where some would say one and for which the French have on is common enough that there seems to be a demand for it. I don't slap my wrist if the usage slips into my speech although I avoid it in writing.

Robert

>#283: maybe there is a secondary meaning that hasn't made it to the OED yet.

bork

• noun 1 to prevent someone's appointment to public office (origin: the defeat of Robert Bork). 2 an incoherent mess (origin: the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show) .

Or... maybe they just are mispelling it.

Manual adding is björked. Resizing is björked. Tag combination is björked. Links are björked.

283, 287 >

I would think that "borked" is a LoL Cat-type spelling of "broken". I doubt if the original Bork is anywhere in the meaning. However, I do like the idea of a Swedish Chef origin, even if it's not true..

Right this minute, it's people who mangle Latin. The worst of it is, it's in somebody's LT handle--repetitive injury to my eyeballs!

I can't bring myself to say anything, in private or public. What if they WANT it that way?

Eheu!

>289
You mean things like ad nauseum? (Always makes me think: 'Slouching Ad Nauseum'.)

Aiiieee! Don't DO that! :)

Yes. Things like that. And it's in their "name". Above each and every post. And they post quite a bit.

I'm going to bed before I develop a tic.

Ad nauseum bugs you? Is it because the locative 'nauseum' doesn't need an 'ad'?

I don't think we can really take people's LT names that seriously, can we? Many people just have to put up with what they can get after their first choices have been turned down and I wouldn't imagine 90% of them pass the 'good grammar' test - or any kind of logic test either (I don't like to give away too many secrets, but I am not actually either a book or a sloth - sorry to disappoint everyone). I also think it's a bit tough to criticise anyone for not being fluent in a language they may not have ever learnt. We Greek speakers get a similar shudder every time we hear someone talk about the hoi polloi but that really is taking pedantry to its outer limits!

#293

Not only can I not take the "name" seriously, I can't take the person seriously. Tragic, I know. And I'm certainly not criticising them for not being "fluent" (in Latin, of all things...) All I'm saying is, if someone's going to disport a Latin phrase above every word they post, some of us would be grateful if it were correct.

By the way, I don't think there ARE outer limits to pedantry.

#292

You have to ask?

That's one way of putting it--I'd prefer to say that people are unaware that the proper form of the much-used "to the point of nausea" is ad nauseam. I doubt that anyone who knows what a locative is would be making this mistake.

>293,294 outer limits to pedantry

Aren't the outer limits to pedantry a bit like the longest possible English sentence, or the largest real number? You can always find something in a quibble to quibble about, or you can take an example a step further. With the hoi polloi, you would have to ask: what about the Alhambra or the alligator? (Personally, I'd say: "if Gilbert used it, it must be permissible.")

Do you cringe at television?

I don't, but then I was the one who said that was taking it a bit far!

ETA Do I cringe at television? Have you ever seen You've Been Framed?

#295 - no, I no longer cringe at television, because we don't have one in the house. Hallelujah!

And: "There's been allegations made. And when I find out who the alligator is ...". Sorry. I'm in a frivolous off-topic mood today!

>293
Quite right. The correct form is "talk about the tois pollois."

And yes, "television" should be either "teleopticon" or "proculvision."

#298 I just call it crap.

On the other hand, if television's fine, homosexuality CAN'T be an abomination.

>294

Edepol!
Habebasne onus illud diu?
Errare humanum est.
(Precor ne dea Carmenta me induxerit in permultos errores.)

*grin*

To messpots:

". . . about tois pollois"

LOL!

People using "literally" as emphasis rather than to point out something as fact. For example, if you say "I literally lost my marbles" means that unlike the idiom which means you've lost your mind, you actually misplaced your little round glass things. This would be the correct usage. To say "I literally like grammar" is just emphasis - it doesn't change the meaning of "I like grammar". At the rate it is being used as emphasis it will lose the original meaning.

dihiba, we've lost it already, and it is so sad.

Robert

#304 Not if dihiba and I have anything to do with it! One of my biggest peeves too!

#305 - I completely agree. When people misuse the word "literally", it makes my head literally explode with rage. And you can imagine the mess that causes.

Me ditto. Sure, it's risible to picture the literal action being implied, but what's happening to the language isn't so funny. I'm not going to literally die laughing (ooh, no, another split infinitive!).

Ok, I'm stuck at home today and not feeling very peppy and it's humid; all these negativies have got me irritated with the incorrect use of the present continuous/progressive tense and I blame stupid McDonald's for this with their NA campaign "I'm lovin' it". How can I stop myself from correcting people? (I'm a teacher and I do it for a living, but school's out!)

Don't you mean 'I'm doin' it'?

I thought I was the only one who is driven crazy by the misuse of "beg the question." This particular error seems to be on the increase . . . why do you think that is?

>> 309. ha ha. Of course, it depends if you mean teaching in the sense of the action or teaching in the sense of the occupation (abstract)..."I am not teaching present progressive today because my students have threatened an uprising if I do", as opposed to "I am not teaching right now because I haven't got a job".

McD's may realize that customers only say "I'm lovin' it" as they scarf back a burger or two which works with the present progressive. Ten minutes later, when they feel queasy, their tense will change and they might say "I hate it", the simple present being the tense of habit and day-to-day activity. The PP tense is very short-lived.

>311
Ten minutes later, "I'm barfin' it up."

Half an hour after that: "I'm never goin' there again."

#310: mjeanmorris "I thought I was the only one who is driven crazy by the misuse of 'beg the question.' This particular error seems to be on the increase . . . why do you think that is?"

I think you're wrong. On the contrary, fewer and fewer people are misusing "beg the question" as a silly name for a logical fallacy and more are using it correctly to mean "demands that the question be raised".

More peeves:
Putting punctuation marks inside quotes when they belong to the sentence containing the quoted material.

Using "tense" to mean "aspect".

>314

Which, er, begs the question: if a traditional usage is wrong and a corrupted misinterpretation being widely adopted is right, what are you doing in a group of pedants?

And the conventions for where punctuation marks belong, in or out of the quotation marks, differs between British and American English. One might disagree with how one's cousins across the pond do this, but don't we have to judge correctness by the conventions of the language being written?

#316: ejj1955 "what are you doing in a group of pedants?"

As my first point in #315 (intentionally) shows, I too can stupidly overreact to a minor illogicality.

See also this OP.

To Jim (#314)

"Begging the question" is NOT a "silly" name for a logical fallacy. It is the English of "Petitio Principii" a term in logic that is old enough to have a Latin name. "Introduction to Logic" by Irving Copi and Carl Cohen (Pearson, 2002) has 5 paragraphs on it, pp 159-160. In their "glossary/index, p625 and p639, they define the Latin and the English as having the same meaning: that, in b t q/ p p,
"... the conclusion of the argument is STATED or ASSUMED in one of the premises." (emphasis added.) The b t q definition does call it "an INFORMAL fallacy, but thatʻs not the same as "a silly name for alogical fallacy".

Yes, I know that "beg the question" in its technical meaning came into English as a calque of "petitio principii". I think it is a pity that ever happened, and I am glad to see the back of it.
Admittedly, this was not always my view. Having been required to learn the term, like others I once at one time immaturely preferred to show off this bit of trivia when opportunity arose.

Edit for clarity. (Did it help?)

>317 Ah, yes, that does make things clearer!

>284

'triathalon' is a so-called sport in what gets called 'athaletics'.

Sport, however, is another country ...

I, too, get upset with the apparently recent confusion between "than" and "then." I think the nearly universal use of a spell-checker allows typos (likely to be "then" instead of "than" since the fingers will want to type "the..." as the start of a word) to get through, and the lazy writer doesn't read again for the sense. "Then" and "than" can in no wise be substituted for one another in any sentence I can imagine and still make sense; neither do they sound all that much alike, except when "than" is unstressed. Mostly, "than" is a conjunction, while "then" is usually an adverb.

I wonder if people can hear!

I'll tell you what I think: I think it's from a generation having no spelling in the lower grades. That trend is changing here, but for years I had students who thought "then" and "than" were the same word. (I also saw, in children from families whose parents were functionally illiterate, spellings like "went" for "went," "with," and "were." I mention this because I could expect eight or ten of them in a class of 30. Really.)
From the other thread where we are discussing the use of "that," I just had the thought of the double condition (at least that's what I call it in my mind) that is pretty ubiquitous around here. "If I would have done that, something good would have happened." Crazy-making and impossible to treat!

#323: LizzieD "I just had the thought of the double condition (at least that's what I call it in my mind) that is pretty ubiquitous around here. 'If I would have done that, something good would have happened.' Crazy-making and impossible to treat!"

Interesting. That's common among German speakers, including, unfortunately, my children. As you say, impossible to treat :(

And of instead of have, as in 'I would of done it.'

>324 Jim, I had only one semester of German. Is that construction acceptable in German? I have to say that it's one that is on the rise here in N.C. if nowhere else.

>325 Oh yeah, Booksloth. I definitely should have written, "If I would of done....."

House of Leaves, billed in one place as an experimental novel, often substitutes of for have. I like the book, though, because the word house is in blue.

Robert

#326: LizzieD "Is that construction acceptable in German?"

Wenn ich dies getan hätte, wäre das passiert.

Definitely. As close as translation gets, and apparently how a bilingual mind with leakage between the languages works.

(I hope my German is good enough to have got my example right :( !)

A really silly peeve, and I supppose resolvablewith a little more patience than I have:

Magazines which list an article on the cover which you can't find in the table of contents (because the cover title has been so much changed from the
"official" one (the table of contents title).

I think that is deliberate. The publishers would like you to buy the magazine, and not read just the article that caught your eye (via the cover) before you have your turn with the cashier.

I can't say I blame them!

Good explanation,msladylib

People incorrectly use the word enervate for energize. They're almost opposites.

Enervate - lacking physical, moral, or mental vigor.

Energize - to impart energy to.

People saying "between" when they should say "among". Between is for two people, among or amongst for more than two.
I heard this on a British TV show yesterday and was appalled - if the Mother Country can't get it right, what are we colonials supposed to do?!

#333: "Between is for two people, among or amongst for more than two."

That's a statement that's widely repeated but perhaps oversimplified. When the speaker specifies exactly two entities, as in between you and me, the enmity between India and Pakistan, or the ecumenism between Lutherans and Catholics, then between is the correct choice. But when there are more than two entities or the number of such is not specified, our choice depends on our intended sense. In a five- or six-row classroom, there's a difference between The spitball fell between the rows and The spitball fell among the rows. The former implies that no one was hit, though we don't know which rows the spitball fell between. The latter suggests that the spitball's landing spot is even less certain, and we don't know whether anyone was hit. The point is that both statements could be correct but convey different senses. We would tend to use between if we mean to treat the rows as separate, distinct units. We would use among if we treat the rows as an indistinct whole.

Other complications between these two words also exist. We could say about tribal conflict conflicts between tribes or conflicts among tribes. The former doesn't necessarily imply only two tribes. Rather, it suggests each tribe (say five, for the sake of argument) acted independently without alliances. The latter implies that the conflicts may have occurred among shifting alliances.

Well, enough for now, though more complications exist between these two words.

I was referring to something being shared - for example, the chocolate bar was divided between us - despite there being 4 people. It should be amongst us, IMHO. This is the usage I object to.

I do understand there are some fine points - "nothing will come between us" for a group means everyone will stand together (there is still the idea of two entities - one person and the rest of the group) whereas "nothing will come among us" has a different meaning, perhaps in the literal sense - no object or person will appear.

Peeve I underwent just this morning:

News broadcasters (in this case CNN) who give a short preview of a segment (as if to be shown right after the commericals) that they are going to do -- and DON"T do it in the next segment. Nor the next; nor the next, etc.

For all I know they may eventually do it -- long after you've fallen asleep or turned the TV off.

Given the group, I think this thread is meant for language-related peeves.

>336

That's all right; if you're old enough, you can copy the post into this thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/64366

Or even if you aren't old enough; we don't discriminate.

On NY Times web page this moring: "The Obama's Leave Town"

What's a "leave town," anyway?

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Geez, I thought it was bad seeing a similar error on A&E tv channel the other night. But the NY Times? Bad, very bad, and sad, too.

>339 Maybe it's time to give up hope...

Here's another pet peeve: people who spell "fazed" as "phased" - aaagghhh (and I've seen it here on LT)!

>339 Just went to their site - they've fixed it - the editor must be on LT! I read the column - not very well written, IMHO. The second sentence of the third paragraph is an incomplete sentence.
Where are all the good writers? The level of writing now is what I could have done in high school.

This is from the column. Can you spot the horrible writing?! (I am actually appalled that this is on the NY Times page).

"I am personally thinking that he should grab a copy of Tom Ridge’s memoir to read on vacation, come back and change the terror alert level to orange."

To messpots: (#339)

In my observation (not my approval!) the working rule for a sentence like "The Obama's..."
is: "If you see a final s, put an apostrophe in SOMEwhere; it doesn't matter much where."

I have reviewed The Lexicographer's Dilemma by Jack Lynch. I think most people following this thread will be interested in this book.

To re-ignite the "between Michelle and I" discussion—horror: I would never commit such a blunder!—, it took me a while to decide which of these two sentences was correct:
- she's a much quicker reader than I
- she's a much quicker reader than me
I opt for the first one, because I assume that it could be naturally completed as
- she is a much quicker reader than I (am)
But am I right?

How about this gem, just received in a commercial email:

"If you're escaping to sunnier climbs this September, ...."

An epitaph on the death of reading as an art? Or evidence for climbate change, perhaps ...

.

#346: Pepys "But am I right?"

Both are OK: "I" because, as you say, it can be completed; "me", because it's complete as it stands.

Go what what feels best in context.

#347: CliffordDorset
"If you're escaping to sunnier climbs this September, ...."

Why climb a gloomy northern mountain when you can climb a sunny southern one?

#350: CDVicarage "the verb to be takes a complement rather than an object."

I seem to be missing something. What has the "verb to be" got to do with the question?

Oh dear, a combination of typing before thinking about an imperfectly-remembered lesson from long ago and missing the point. I've deleted my post and I hope that you will all forget about it. Sorry.

I've just found this. It's a very long answer to a short question... Gods! How English is complicated!

#354: "Is this amazing or not." Yes, it is.

>346
To re-ignite the "between Michelle and I" discussion—horror: I would never commit such a blunder!—, it took me a while to decide which of these two sentences was correct:
- she's a much quicker reader than I
- she's a much quicker reader than me
I opt for the first one, because I assume that it could be naturally completed as
- she is a much quicker reader than I (am)
But am I right?

----I would opt for "She's a much quicker reader than I (am)" - I believe this is what is called a "double subject" - both She and I are equal and the verb (to be) applies equally to both, so both she and I are the subjects. The first person is not the object; if it was, we could use "me", as in, "She threw the ball to me".

Heard a CNN reporter say "very terrible" yesterday. This does not sit right with me, but am I wrong? I would say terrible is a superlative.
(Down with all those folks who say "very excellent"!)
Then again, we do say "It was the most terrible thing that ever happened to me".
"Very terrible" just doesn't sound right....

The correct terms are "very bogus" (also acceptable: "most heinous"), and "most excellent".

Party on, dudes.

>357

My first instinct is that "very terrible" is acceptable; "terrible" is not by itself absolute. I think some things are certainly more terrible than others and, as you note, "most terrible" sounds acceptable.

>358

Which most egregiously raises the question: What is a stallyn (wild or otherwise)?

(On behalf of those of us who watched 'Bill and Ted' for all the wrong reasons!)
.

#358 One of TinyBookworm's favourite T-shirts carries the inscription "most excellent small person". It's one of my favourites too.

#356 (Sorry to be so late to the party) I don't think any current dictionary recognizes "than" as a preposition, so "than me" is incorrect in classic, standard English usage. HOWEVER, (to apply one more lick to that dead horse), what we say or type to our friends in casual conversation is not what we use in academic, business, or other semi-formal or formal situations.
I'm aggrieved to find "than him" twice in the first ten pages of my current ARC from this lovely place. Granted that it's popular history, it is history and I expect better writing. In fact, that and a sentence like, "But in fact this was no last-minute whim on Caterina's behalf..." have me doubting the scholarship. (The not-whim is Caterina's own; nobody had it for her.) I have an uncorrected proof, but I also have an untested theory that most publishers have laid off their copy editors. (In case anybody cares, the book is The Artist, the Philosopher and the Warrior by Paul Strathern.)

edited to close parenthesis

>362 I also have an untested theory that most publishers have laid off their copy editors.

That...OR their copy editors are incompetent and 1.) can't read 2.) can't spell 3.) can't recognize a grammatical mistake if their life depended on it (since their job obviously doesn't.)

Has anyone brought up "mute point" yet?

On a related note - is anything other than a point ever "moot"?

ETA - so, of course, the minute I hit submit I am struck by a few examples: arguments and distinctions could be moot but I would probably phrase them:

This argument is now moot, because the decision has been made.

That distinction is moot, because it doesn't matter which one you use.

Apparently the original use of moot was for a noun - a meeting of law students to discuss points. Then it became an adjective. It does have roots in the same word for meet, meeting.

It is one of those words that are now only used with an other or others - e.g. "to and fro" (fro) - there's a name for these, but I can't remember what it is!

I have heard that the newspapers and magazines are not hiring as many copywriters in an effort to save money and keep their publicatons afloat.

#362: LizzieD "I don't think any current dictionary recognizes 'than' as a preposition"

Here's a link to the first dictionary I tried: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/than%5B2%5D

#365 - Yeah, Jim, but it's an ONLINE dictionary. I never let my poor students use them because I found so many misleading definitions and usages there ---- especially in Merriam-Webster. Of course, I can't think of a single example now, but I found curious stuff so many times that I made the rule. Or maybe it's just M-W that I dislike....
#363 Add "moot court." (I do wish that some of those points were mute.)
#364 Is there a word for those words like "fro"? How interesting! I'd love to find it.

To Portia Long, et al.

I havenʻt heard "mute point", but itʻs the type of substitution I can easily imagine.

The main (mis)use of "moot", as Iʻve read/heard it, is to have it mean "complcated and difficult to
decide". I think I first saw it in writing in a P.G. Wodehouse passage where he describes a "complicated and difficult to describe" situation, and then asks the reader, "Dashed moot, eh?"

My Websterʻs Collegiate Dictionary of the 70s makes this the primary meaning of the adjective "moot" (there are also the noun, as noted in #364 and the verb). The THIRD (!) meaning of the adj. is the one that I have always thought to be the only "correct" one: "made abstract or purely academic". And, I thought, it means"made abstract or academic"--usually in a law case-- BECAUSE OF some intervening action or situation which was not there when the case began, but is there now.

If WebsterʻColl. is right -- but are they?-- Iʻve been holding the usage of the adjective to too strict standards.

The Cornell University law school had a moot court room in its building. I saw it because visiting lecturers, for example Paul Krassner, gave their presentations there, but I believed it was for practicing arguing in a realistic setting.

Robert

My 1989 (not so new!) American Heritage Dictionary (based on the 2nd collegiate edition) has these definitions for "moot" as an adjective. They reflect my understanding of the word.
1. Subject to debate; arguable
2. Law Without legal significance. {

>363+intermittent responses ...

The only instance that I have seen it used or been tempted to use it (even if incorrectly as "mute") is the "made abstract or purely academic" definition which, to me, translates as "trivial" (by my definition of trivial which is that it is fun to talk about/debate but is, ultimately, non-productive/unimportant in the long run).

Re moot (adj.): I've always understood that "open to debate" was the typically British use, whilst "purely academic, made irrelevant by circumstances" was more typically American. But I've certainly seen English lawyers using it the "American" way, so perhaps the distinction between the two senses has become moot...

1) Quite a few old English towns still have Moot Halls, originally for the purpose of deciding those matters whose resolution was not obvious, but moot.

2) When decrying online dictionaries, can we please make an exception of the Oxford English Dictionary Online? I've given a paean of praise to this elsewhere in this columns, and I apologise that it's expensive for most non-Brits, who get it free.
.

>372 Exception noted, CD. If only I could afford it, I would enjoy it.

A few things about dictionaries . . .

I'm not crazy about MW Collegiate for a number of reasons (too many definitions are simply cross-references, for one), but I believe the online version is the same as the print version (ditto the American Heritage found online in number of places, including www.bartleby.com).

The New Oxford American Dictionary also gives "conj. & prep." as the parts of speech for "than." There's quite a long usage note about the parts of speech, which concludes "Whatever the grammatical analysis, the evidence confirms that sentences like he is smaller than she are uncommon in modern English except in the most formal contexts."

that sentences like he is smaller than she are uncommon

My inner grammarian screams such as. Maybe I'm just channeling my old boyfriend the copy editor, who used to edit the "likes" out of my copy. He didn't work for New Oxford, obviously.

Yes, I have quite a mixed feeling about this. As a copy editor, I generally edit the "likes" to "such as," also. But as the project editor for that dictionary, I didn't copy edit it. I'm not sure without checking, but we probably picked up the usage note from the British original of the dictionary, the New Oxford Dictionary of English. So I'm going to blame my esteemed British colleagues!

>375, 376
My partner copy edits my manuscripts, and a few days ago she went to work on my 'likes'. It was a piece for a British publication. I had used the likes because the alternatives were truly awful: in such a way as, in the same manner as, etc. I couldn't get away with a simple 'such as' in any of the instances.

>377

Maybe "similar to"?

This made me wonder if there were a usage note at "like"; there is. It says "Although like has been used as a conjunction in this way since the 15th century by many respected writers, it is still frowned upon and considered unacceptable in formal English."

So I guess we'll have to continue trying to copy edit our way out of it!

I'm astonished at my brashness as I find myself in the presence of real copy editors who know their jobs! Wow!
I would never say, "He is smaller than she," although I might try, "He is smaller than she is." The point for me is that English is such a flexible language that a person who cares about the language can usually rephrase a worrisome usage. (The fact that than as a preposition has a usage note raises a red flag for me.) (Somehow my students never found any online dictionary but MW, so I guess MW itself is the object of my ire.) I will now tiptoe quietly to the back of the room.

Sit next to me, LizzieD. We can enjoy the show together.

Thank you, Jennie. That's a real kindness. (I'll bring my knitting.)

In the absence (sob!) of online access to the OED, a site I find really useful is www.onelook.com. A search there returns links to a number of different dictionaries, including not only the American Heritage and MW Collegiate, but also some Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, the Webster's New World dictionary, the MW 1913 unabridged dictionary, and specialized dictionaries in art, science, medicine, computing, etc.

The dictionaries vary quite a bit in degree of detail/sophistication, which I think would make it a very good site to recommend to students.

>379 No tiptoeing to the back! Front and center with your opinions, please!

#379
I must say that an inapproproately placed "that" is definitely one of my pet peeves, especially when it replaces 'which', 'who' or 'whom' and is then left out altogether when it should be there as in "He said (that) the world was flat".

One of our ABC newsreaders used to replace all the absent thats but he has now, sadly, retired

#383: . . . {that} is then left out altogether when it should be there as in 'He said (that) the world was flat'.

I don't know why we should insist on the inappropriateness of the elliptical that. By this time in this matter, writing, even formal writing, has caught up to colloquial speech, hasn't it? Few would pay a missing that any mind in speech, and I'm not certain what we gain by always insisting upon its presence in writing.

If omitting that from the beginning of a dependent clause causes no confusion, then why insist upon it? Where its omission does cause a lack of clarity, then we must include it. After all, what is confusing about the iambic "He said the world was flat." To my ear, that sounds more elegant than "He said that the world was flat." The extra syllable disrupts the rhythm and seems inelegant in both speech and writing.

#384
Not so much in the written word, although I am a pedant, but when spoken, as in the News on radio or TV it could be interpreted as 'He said, "The world was flat".' Does this mean that the world was once flat but is now spherical? I used a simple example and I intentionally made it so but leaving out the 'that' can lead to mis-interpretation.

It can make for a clunky sentence which gramatically doesn't make sense. The 'that' distinguishes a direct quote from the reporting of an opinion.

Hi pinkozcat:

If he did mean that the world WAS ONCE flat.... then the sentence as you punctuate it would be the only correct way to record it (without the "that");

If I saw the same wording without the quotes, I would think that it SHOULD mean "...WAS ONCE flat...", but wouldnʻt count on its having that meaning in ordinary usage.

Interesting ...

So how do you feel about the other misuse of the word 'that'.

"The cow that has just had a calf" instead of "The cow which has just had a calf"?

>387

I don't think that's a misuse--I think one is a restrictive clause and one isn't, and the one that isn't should have a comma:

"The cow that has just had a calf is the one I meant."

"The cow, which has just had a calf, should be given extra feed."

As I remember the Microsoft Word grammar checker used to correct that way, ejj1955, but when I tried it a few hours ago it made no comment on any of my four sentence with that and which with and without commas. Even so, in my own writing, I can't always hear the distinction.

Robert

I had to turn off the grammar checker, having concluded that I knew grammar better than it did! What's really annoying, BTW, is the feature on Yahoo questions that pops up and says "hmm, it looks like you have a lot of punctuation" whenever I use an em-dash! Yes--and I know how to use it!

ETA: But I usually don't use so many exclamation points.

LOL

I suspect that popular useage will eventually over-ride all our pet peeves and the grammar check is probably bowing to the inevitable.

I come from a part of Australia where the school you attended and the way you speak defines your social status (I know - I didn't suggest that it is a good way to define people but that is the way it is there) and spelling or grammatical error, even in a physics or chemistry exam, lost us marks when I was at school.

I abhor common useage but realise that the language changes and eventually we have to go with the flow ... BUT I refuse to use texting.

Except my opening remark, of course :)

Is there anyone else mourns the passing of the word 'before', used almost exclusively prior to its cruel slaying by the wordier construct 'prior to'?

An example of the fancification of laguage?
.

I've never ever considered the before/prior to shift. I guess that I didn't notice it happening.

However, I found a beauty in the local paper today and I quote:

"If the bouncer lets in someone under-age, they can be infringed $400 ... "

Whatever happened to 'fined' for goodness sake!

>393 Sorry, that's just stupid. One wonders if the writer (and editor, if such exists) even knows what the word means.

And yes, I think that "prior to" is some ijjit's idea of sounding fancy or perhaps it's the encroachment (shudder) of legalese (language devised to obfuscate).

>392 I do. "Before" is simple.

A similar annoyance is the ubiquity of "at (this/that) point in time," when simply "then" or "now" will suffice. I cringe; it's like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard.

#395: msladylib "at (this/that) point in time"

How absurd! Obviously it ought to be "at this instantaneous temporal juncture".

Nixonians were ridiculed duriing the hearings on watergate in th 1970s for sometimes answering an ostensibly "Yes OR No" question with:

"NOT at THAT point in time."

Though a democrat, I thought they were unfairly ridiculed, for that COULD be the exactly correct answer. (I suppose it would amount to a qualified affirmative, questioning the implied chronology in the question.)

The same principle applies to Bill Clintonʻs notorious answer: "It depends on what you mean by ʻisʻ." Again, though awkwardly phrased, that was just quesitoning the chronology.

Speaking of legalese, I find it strange when we have a perfectly good word 'people' to hear police spokespeople talk about 'persons'.

I was brought up to think that the plural of person was people.

Next we will have mouse and mouses ....

As long as we're adding to the list of baddies, how about the old "due to the fact that" for "because"?
I also end up listening to the police scanner a lot more than I'd like because DH turns it on and leaves. I hear a lot of "green in color." (What else would a "vehicle" be "green in"? I'm afraid that this one is going to get out into the general public.)

At this point in time?

Parallel to "green in color" is "not fast of foot" which used to be said often by baseball broadcasters.

It was almost always said in the negative -- of someone on the concluding end of a double play, for example, to explain why he was out. I donʻt remember anyone who was said to BE fast of foot.

As with "...in color" , what else would you have to be "fast of"?

#398: I was brought up to think that the plural of person was people.

Do you or does anyone else know of a dictionary or usage reference that shows that the plural of person is people? I've made a brief online search but haven't found any. The plural of person is persons, not people, it would seem. I agree, however, that persons often sounds odd. When I hear it, I say to myself, why didn't Joe just say six people attended the meeting rather than six persons? In legal contexts, however, persons does seem to be preferred. Thus, the police might very well prefer persons to people for legal reasons that I'm unqualified to explain. But if, for example, the police say, "We are searching for the person or persons who have committed this crime," their logic seems sound.

. . . spokespeople talk about 'persons'.

Curiously, I find the expression spokespeople talk awkward. Spokespersons talk, still unwieldy, sounds less so, though I'm not enamored of it either. Finding gender-neutral terms that aren't awkward and clumsy often seems like a chore. Or am I just lazy?

The Macquarie Dictionary describes 'people' as "human beings as distinguished from animals", however the Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the definition "persons in general" so it looks as though, on balance, persons is correct but I shall still continue to use people as the plural of person.

>403

I think you are right that "people" sounds more natural in most uses than "persons," but feel constrained to point out that they are etymological different. "Person" comes through Latin from a word meaning "mask," and "people" from the Latin "populus."

I think you would tend to use persons rather than people when you want to stress that they are all individuals: in the legalese use it may well be that they are all individually responsible for something. That fits in with the etymological distinction: persona implies a role or identity, whilst populus is a group or crowd doing something collectively.

(There's also the technical point that in some legal systems you have the concept of a legal person, i.e. a corporate body treated by the law as though it were an individual: the term persons would include these.)

#399, #401: "green in color"

What about "My car is green, it has a hybrid motor."?

Well, old JR, you got me again! In the context of police reports, however, our force is not generally concerned with air quality but with tracing a stolen car...... so .......
>404 Good point! I'd also like to throw in the plural of "people" is "peoples," by which we mean more than one ethnic or national group.

one goose, two geese.
one person, two people?

#408: suitable1 "one person, two people?"

Yes, or "two persons". Person is a strange word, it has two plurals. English! You've just got to love it!

#407: LizzieD "Well, old JR, you got me again! In the context of police reports, however, our force is not generally concerned with air quality but with tracing a stolen car...... so ......."

In the context of Pedants' Corner, however, we are not generally concerned with being sensible, but with scoring petty pedantic points.

Not to muddy things, but in Roman law, the law of peoples (ius gentium) is quite different from the law of persons (ius ad personas pertinens). So in English we're careful about our use of "peoples" and "persons."

#411: messpots "These books belong to myself and my spouse."

"These books belong to me and my spouse."

ETA: Oops, sorry, I actually wanted to congratulate you on your apposite use of Roman law.

This isn't so much a pet peeve about writing, but about speaking. Although one could make this type of in either type of communication, you tend to hear it more than you see it. I'm talking about using words, and especially well-known expressions, incorrectly. Here's an example: a public speaker I know says (frequently) that this or that person was "waxing eloquently." (I always think of the Karate Kid practicing. . . .) There are other examples. One has the impression that they occur because the speaker is trying to sound eloquent but doesn't quite know what the proper grammatical construction should be. Good grief.

Earlier today I called my real estate agent and their voice-mail message stated:

"Currently, I am assisting another client at the moment."

Redundant and repetitive, no?

>#414: Redundant and superfluous, yes.

At least they didn't say "servicing".

Perhaps 'persons' can be considered a 'count noun' and 'people' a 'noncount noun'. In other words, you can count how many are in the room (5 persons) or you are referring to a crowd of unknown number (people). If this is so, 'people' may be the one that has taken on a count-noun status when it shouldn't have. It could also have something to do with original dialect use in England, and one just became more widespread or fashionable, etc.
People can be pluralized as well, "the peoples of the world", referring to the sum total of all national, ethnic and racial groups. It is still a noncount noun in this sense, as it is referring to an uncountable group, one we can't put a specific number to.

On the subject of wrong useage, I once again wrote to the editor about a journalists comments on "a ubiquitous lone pine tree ..."

Pointed out that it was a contradiction in terms but once again I received no reply and *sob* no pat on the back either.

>417 *pat, pat* There, there, Pinkozcat, you are among people (or persons) who understand and care.

>412
On my profile I have:

"These books belong to myself and my spouse."

because some books belong to me alone, and some to my spouse. To write "belong to me and my spouse" suggests that the library belongs to us jointly.

More generally, I don't leap on every redundancy. Good writing is more than denotation. If someone wants to write "green in colour", this may be because it takes longer to say, and for the sake of euphony, comprehension, whatever, the writer needs to take a little longer. One-syllable words go by very fast.

And what about "These books belong to me and to my spouse" (with a repetition of "to")? Wouldn't it also suggest that some books belong to yourself and others to your wife? Or doesn't it make any difference? Or would it be bad English?

Edited PS: And hasn't this thread got really too long? Woudn't it be time to open a new one?

#420
I second that. It is very daunting for anyone coming, new, into the group.

I agree, I think police say things such as "green in colour" for emphasis, to get people's attention - as a teacher, I know people don't listen very well, and miss a lot of information.

New thread here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/73249&newpost=1#lastmsg

Carry on!

How's this for getting things egregiously screwed up? It appeared in an 'internet-posted' short story:

“Woe their Missy,” he patronized.

I wonder if the author ever reads anything ... or just writes (rites? rights?) ...

I think even a horse given this instruction in written form might 'whoa' in sheer surprise, patronized or not!
.

#417

I think "ubiquitous lone pine tree" is rather good, actually: it beautifully evokes a cliched landscape in which there seem to be lone pine trees everywhere (as in Scotland, where there are also hordes of lone pipers!).

I must admit I haven't read ALL the messages in this thread, but have just been searching for those discussing 'myself'. I'm glad I'm not the only one irritated by misuse of that (>88, >97, >101)! I used to work in a large company's documentation department, and at one point we'd put together a huge proposal in about three lever-arch files, which we'd carefully formatted and proof-read, and so on. The last thing required was that the salesman (who was to take the files and deliver them to the customer) was to write a covering letter to go in the front. When he came round with it, we took a quick glance, saw that he'd written something like "If you have any queries, do not hesitate to contact myself", and told him to go away and re-do it. "The only person who can contact yourself is you! The word you want is me!" Classy.

As far as pet peeves, it really bothers me when someone says "as far as X" and then ends the phrase there. These days it is very rare to hear the predicate ("as far as pet peeves are concerned" or "as far as pet peeves go").

The first time I heard people using this weird truncation was about 15 years ago. Since then it's become so commonplace, I'm beginning to believe I'm the only person still annoyed by it.

I can't remember having heard that one chamekke, but I think I would be annoyed by it if I did!

And here's another of mine - not really a grammatical error, just sloppy speaking - and I have to lay a lot of blame with the man of my secret desires, Simon Cowell. "The thing is, IS . . . " If you haven't noticed him saying it before you will now. He does it all the time and it drives me crazy.

In fact that leads me on to another that has annoyed me for years - the redundant query, as in "Are you coming out tonight, are you?"

There goes another flood-gate.

>428 I think of that as a verbal tic, similar to "like" or "you know" or "umm." But then I also adore Simon Cowell; I think American Idol will be pointless without him. I don't mind Ellen on the panel, I think she's a great improvement on that twit Paula, but nobody else's comments ring as true as Simon's. You can see, season after season, that even the contestants take the comments of the panel with a grain of salt until they get Simon's review.

Sorry: off-topic a bit?

Completely off-topic. Bad ejj1955! And I completely agree. ;-)

#427: chamekke "As far as pet peeves, it really bothers me when someone says "as far as X" and then ends the phrase there."

What has happened is that the sequence "as far as" has acquired a new meaning, rendering the use of a continuation such as are concerned redundant and giving us a more economical way of expressing ourselves. What's not to like?

I have a theory about "The thing is, is ..." and comparable constructions: the 'is' must appear an odd number of times. So:

The thing is, it's raining (RIGHT)
The thing is, is, it's raining (WRONG)
The thing is, is, is, it's raining (RIGHT)

This is because 'is' stands in for 'equals':

'The thing is, it's raining' expresses 'The thing = it's raining'.
'The thing is, is, is, it's raining' expresses 'The thing is = is, it's raining'

But you always need an odd number so that there's equality on either side of the middle 'is'.

I expect unanimous agreement on this.

Don't think you're going to get it, messpots;-)

>432
Actually, you're right only insofar as a) one is an odd number, and b) a second "is" there is just plain wrong. But the third and fifth "is" are no more correct than the second.

Also, I've never heard any rule that states further equals signs, when appearing in herds, must come in pairs to create an odd-numbered herd.

The thing is, is, is, it's raining.

really is

The thing = = = it's raining.

In other words, the problem isn't whether you have an even or odd number of them, it's whether you have more than one at a time.

</stickler>

>433, 434

Well to be frank, I ran this by my wife, and now I'm sleeping on the couch. But I stand by it. And here's my proof:

1. 'The thing is, it's raining' is correct.
2. Therefore 'The thing is' is correct (a predicate is allowed) and '... is, it's raining' is correct (a subject is allowed).
3. There's no rule that says you can't make the two clauses in no. 2 equal.
4. Repeat as desired for 'The thing is, is ...' and 'is, is, it's raining'.

Now we're all agreed.

Um, no. Your wife may well be another stickler, and though sticklers don't always play nice, she and I seem to be in agreement on this.

Well now I know how Galileo felt.

I don't think Galileo ever expected the universal agreement you expected in post 432.

I don't think Galileo was kidding.

>437
Eppur si si si muove?

>440
Yes, ipse dixit. The wicked church purged two of the sis.

>439
To which of messpots's statements are you referring, the Galileo one or the universal-agreement one?

Can't "the thing is" be isolated as an introductory phrase that stands alone? When you say "The thing is, is that true", "The thing is" is one piece and "is that true" is another and the words in a sense get subsumed in the whole and it doesn't matter that there are two is's (ises, is'es, iss?) in a row.

Look, the thing is, it's not raining!

The other thing is, is that this thread was continued here back in September and is itself over 300 posts long!

Oh dear, that's two sentences in a row with explanation points on the end.

"Free gift" seems to me to be the most painful modern redundancy. Every store or bank or newspaper ad trumpets this illiteracy. A gift is by definition free. If you have to pay for something, it becomes a purchase.

#445 - "for free" is another bugbear of mine. You either get something "for nothing" or you get it "free"! However, this is so widespread that I think we may as well give in ...

#446 Don't give in Sophie! You're not alone.

Let's get together here on this new thread!

Most of us already have, jim. Why does it bother you so much if some of us want to add a comment to what has been posted here? Is there a law I missed?

ET explain - I meant, most of us know it's there. On most threads the 'rule' (if there is one) seems to be that we start a new thread when the old one gets hard to load. I hadn't noticed that happening here yet but if you want a new thread that's fine. Could you not yell at the rest of us about it though pretty please ;-)

This will be the 450th post on this thread. That is much longer than most continuing threads go for.

This thread was continued onto a new thread way back in September and that thread went on to over 300 posts.

For the convenience of most people, most threads are restarted after 300 posts (some GD threads excepted).

If you wish to continue here, I really don't give a flying Philadelphia fuck, I was just trying to help.

Oh yes, thanks, justjim. 451 posts are enough. The new thread is like a bit of fresh air. And your photograph with the traffic signs is splendid. (But I do not know if you are likely to read this, unless you want to make a further reply...)

I always understood that after 451, paper spontaneously ignites. Does that mean if we adopt Celsius, paper will get more flammable?
.

I was just wondering how long this thread will go on.

Robert

Scientists have long puzzled over the question of how long is a piece of string, but I don't think they've reached the end yet ...

Here's something relevant to earlier discussion in this thread, so better here than in a continuation.

The currently latest post in Language Log is this one about the history and current status of "begging the question". It ends with wise advice: "My recommendation: Never use the phrase yourself — use "assume the conclusion" or "raise the question", depending on what you mean — and cultivate an attitude of serene detachment in the face of its use by others."

I have come to agree with that.

Robert

'Raising the question' does say the same sort of thing, admittedly, but 'begging' it is much more powerful, even if, in this context, it is so over-used as to have become a cliche.

#446: Following on from "for free", does anyone other than Jonathan Ross say "for why" (as in "I've been interested in x this week, and I'll tell you for why...")? Goodness knows where he got that from, the "for" is entirely redundant...

#458: dtw42 "does anyone other than Jonathan Ross say 'for why'"

I've heard it from quite a few people, but it never struck me forcibly enough to make me notice any pattern, like regional origin.

I suppose "For why" is a pseudo-translation of
"for what" -- which is the literal translation of
French, Spanish, and Portuguese "why". --Sort of start out "translating" and then revert to Enlgish "why".
I donʻt remember hearing it myself, but it wouldnʻt surprise (or amuse) me. I say "pseudo-" because I assume it is done (even though not successfully) for comic effect

...in the style of Bluebottle from the Goon Show saying "What is it, that it is?", you mean? Could be...