Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

chaise longue = 984,000 hits
chaise lounge = 1,430,000 hits

"Chaise lounge" is one of those terms that gets sticklers up in arms. It should be "chaise longue," literally "long chair" in French, they say. And dictionaries clearly prefer "longue."

Under the entry for "chaise" alone, Webster's New World mentions the "longue" option, but does not mention "lounge." Under its listing for "chaise longue," this dictionary doesn't even mention the "lounge" spelling.

But if you look up "chaise lounge," it's in there as a term meaning "chaise longue."

This is on my mind because I came across a "chaise lounge" in an article I was editing yesterday. I changed it, of course. And I'll continue to do so. But it looks like the tide is turning.

The Cosmos Were or the Cosmos Was

A guy who reads my newspaper column wrote to scold me about using "the cosmos were" in the column in the sentence "I realized the cosmos were begging me to question 'beg the question.'"

The reader had "double-checked" a dictionary and saw that "cosmos" is singular. Therefore, it should have been "cosmos was."

After writing this column for nearly nine years, you'd think I'd be used to stuff like that. But I'm not. I always bristle and get defensive and run around my house looking for books that back me up.

I didn't like what I found. All three of the dictionaries I checked treated "cosmos" as, basically, a singular. There is a plural form, spelled the same way, but, as the dictionaries very briefly mention it, it seems to apply only when you're talking about two or more cosmos (cosmoses?). And who the heck ever does that?

Plus, none of the dictionaries I checked had any discussion/usage notes that you see with words like "politics," which can take a singular or plural verb depending on the sentence.

But, after fifteen minutes of scrambling for weapons with which to defend myself, I had a strange urge to check the original article I had turned in to my editors. Turns out, I had written "the cosmos was." An editor changed it "were."

Often, "gotcha" e-mails inspire columns. Whether I'm right or wrong, these correspondences with readers usually deal with issues that make good columns. I'm always more eager write about the arguments I win, of course. But I can sometimes man up enough to publicly admit when I'm wrong.

But this time is different. Neither the reader nor I was wrong, per se. If there was an error (and I find that highly disputable), it was an editor's. Even if it wasn't a language error, it's always an error for an editor to make a chance s/he hasn't researched.

Still, can you imagine a column in which a columnist whines about how an editor made her look bad in a prior column? Not cool.

Will the reader believe my reply of "It wasn't my fault. Honest! I was framed!"? Probably not.

I'm not sure why I chose the singular verb to go with "cosmos." I didn't put any thought into it. Still, I'm not sure where I stand. "The cosmos are cruel" sounds much better to me than "The cosmos is cruel." And I don't know if I agree with the interpretation that the dictionaries support only the singular verb.

I'm still too frazzled to make up my mind. But someday I'll be grown-up enough to handle these things better ....

My New Pet Peeve

In a recent NPR segment, linguistic rock star Geoff Nunberg points out something I never noticed: people often apply the term "pet peeve" to things that are anything but "pets."

"Pet," in this usage, has traditionally implied something personal: "a tic or fancy that you nurture in your bosom and make your own." But, more often than not, the "pet peeves" people tell me about are more like mass peeves -- stuff like "irregardless" in place of "regardless."

That's a peeve all right. Just it's hard to call it any one person's pet.

I have a feeling that, from now on, every time I hear someone use "pet peeve" to describe a popular peeve ... oh, it's gonna peeve me.

From Today's 'Fake AP Stylebook'

On Twitter, I follow Fake AP Stylebook, which is hilarious to anyone who's worked with the real AP Stylebook. One of today's entries:

Avoid using "decimate" as someone will pipe up about it meaning "remove 1/10th of," and those people are dicks.

: )

Hello, Fodder

I have a weird problem. (Well, lots of them, actually, but you don't need to hear about cats who pick the exact worst time to plunk down on a sleeping person's full bladder or how I never tasted a Zima.)

Since 2002, I've been writing a column on grammar and usage for a couple of little newspapers, including the Burbank (Calif.) Leader supplement to the L.A. Times. And, every week for seven years, I experience the same unfounded panic: Oh, crap. I have no idea what I'm going to write about this week. I'm all out of topics. I'm all out of ideas. I'm going to blow deadline then I'll lose the column then I'll no longer be able to afford to indulge my penchant for dental floss and store-brand cola.

Of course, if that were a valid fear, I wouldn't be in my seventh year of writing the dang column. Yet every week, the same stupid fear. It's like Pavlov's dogs continuing to salivate long after they learn that bell ring is only going to get them a bonk on the head.

Anyway, I was just starting to stress over this week's column when I saw NY Times website today. There's a piece by a Times staffer about little language issues that perplex writers and editors at the paper. Not very interesting issues, as far as I'm concerned, but whatever.

However, the comments left by readers are pure gold. They include an assertion that you can't use "like" to mean "such as" (you can), a rant about "one of the only" (sticklers insist it should be "one of the few"), overstated complaints about the Times style of putting apostrophes in numerically designated decades like "1930's" (a bad but nonetheless defensible choice on the Times' part) and unfounded peeves against stuff like "in the hopes that" and "iconic."

Houston, we have a column ...

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

outdoors

A colleague just asked me: Is it "the great outdoors are" or "the great outdoors is"? And I'm none too happy with what then transpired.

Webster's New World and American Heritage online give no instruction on whether the noun takes a singular or plural verb. Dictionary.com and Merriam Webster online do. They both say it takes the singular verb: "The outdoors is a wonderful getaway location."

But I'm not sure I trust them. I'm disappointed that American Heritage online didn't have any further instruction because that's the dictionary that's usually best for this kind of thing. For many such gray areas, the American Heritage includes rulings of a Usage Panel -- experts who give their two cents.

For a moment, I tried to make this a Wonderings and Googlings topic. I tried Googling "the outdoors is"/"the outdoors are," "the great outdoors is"/"the great outdoors are." But it turned up too many wild cards -- stuff like "One person who enjoys the outdoors is" and "Some things you'll find in the outdoors are." Pretty useless.

I'll check my "Garner's" and "Fowler's" when I get home from the freelance gig tonight. Until then ... Oy. Just oy.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

snicker = 1,480,000 hits
snigger = 409,000 hits

Dictionaries treat "snigger" as a secondary spelling of "snicker." I was just curious how secondary it was. It's more popular than I would have guessed.

(To control for the candy bar, the actual search terms were "snicker -snickers" and "snigger -sniggers. [Who knew that I would ever find occasion to use the term "control for the candy bar"?])

Hopefully, These Types Will Go Away

A reader of the Kansas City Star recently criticized the paper's use of the word "hopefully" as a sentence adverb meaning "it is to be hoped that" or "I hope." Like so many other tragically misinformed members of a certain generation, the reader believes that "hopefully" is only a manner adverb and that it means only "in a hopeful way." In other words, these people believe that "Hopefully, I'll see you tomorrow," is wrong, while "I will hopefully apply for the job" is right.

I wonder if that reader also knows the meaning of "For the love of freakin' Zeus, will you schmoes please remove your lips from the butt of your English teacher who died forty years ago and open a damn book?"

Here's what these people don't get: Usage dictates grammar. Usage also dictates word definitions. In fact, it is the very basis of word definitions.

I don't mean this in a partisan way. I mean that, quite literally, "a grammar" is a description of how people arrange words, and a dictionary is a formal documentation of how words are used.
Our very ideas of "right" and "wrong" grammar and usage are based not on whether some language czar has sanctioned something or forbidden it. They're based on what English users do. Again, that's not partisan. It's fact.

Nor is this some form of grammar anarchy reflecting an ideology in which nothing can be wrong. Some structures are ungrammatical. "Me wants you I visit," for example, is ungrammatical. It is inconsistent with the standards established by English users. There are many, many such things that can be labeled as "wrong."

But the "hopefully" in question isn't one of them. Dictionaries allow "Hopefully, I'll see you tomorrow." Strunk and White didn't. But, as I've said, Strunk wasn't writing for you and me, anyway (though they were happy to take our money and their copyright holders continue to).

It's hard to loosen a white-knuckle grip on comforting, rock solid ideas of right and wrong. I, for one, still cringe every time I hear "there's" before a plural. But that's no excuse for the the Kansas City Star reader who said that "hopefully" as a sentence adverb is "never okay ... no matter what."

Hopefully, these people will give it a rest.

Omelets Are Better Than Omelettes, the Apostrophe Does Not Swing Both Ways, and Is Texting Destroying Our Language?

A couple of tidbits to share today that I present in kinda bare-bones form since I'm a little too sniffly-sneezy to weave them into a more entertaining form.

* Three out of three dictionaries I checked with prefer the spelling "omelet" to "omelette." All of them, however, allow both spellings.

* If it ain't facing left, it ain't an apostrophe. In my copy editing work, I'm coming across a lot of right-facing apostrophes (that is, ones with their openings to the right, like the letter C). MS Word likes to make them when you hit the neither-right-nor-left-facing apostrophe key. There's a name for a right-facing apostrophe: an open single quotation mark. Real apostrophes face left.

* I finally found an expert to answer the question, "Are kids screwing up our language with their technology and texting and IMming and blogging and ROFLing?" The answer: No. Technology is not hurting the language at all. Happily, it's just poisoning kids' minds. I got this from a Noam Chomsky clip I found on YouTube. (The whole talk is long, so if you want to hear just this portion, skip to around minute 50.) He makes a good case.

Language Butcher du Jour

The copywriter who wrote a radio spot I heard recently promising, for just $2,900, "bigger, more sexier breasts," using those words not once but twice.

Oy.

Pith of a Salesman

I got a great e-mail yesterday:

I work with a bunch of really smart sales and technical people that have an
uncanny knack for butchering the English language. About a year ago, my
boss and I started keeping a list that we call "The Board." I thought you
might enjoy a few of the gems we have collected via e-mail or while in
meetings:

For all intensive purposes
We need to broil it down
I wanted to go straight to the horse
I have built a close niche team
He is a loose gun
Throw icing on the cake
I am venomitly opposed to that idea
I don’t want to cry chicken
I’m going to put all my ducks on the table
We need to shuffle the dice
I don’t have a photogenic memory
I want to get ahead of the 8 Ball
I don’t want to throw him under the table
He has been under the sheets for a while
Their business is cylindrical
This deal is starting to get feet

(Thanks to C for this great stuff!)

Dispatch From the Dark

I've been dark for a few days, and I will be for a few more (I'll 'splain when I'm back up and running), but had to log on once to say: IT'S HERE!

My new book, Mortal Syntax, is out tomorrow.

It's a list of the 101 most-clobbered usage choices -- stuff grammar snobs pick on (think I feel badly, I could care less, so fun, like used for such as, etc.. For each item, I check my reference sources and determine whether the usage is really bad language choice or just a myth.

Thanks for indulging this shameless self-promotion and I'll be back from the dark to resume regular posts soon.

- J

Strunk, Whited Out (First in an occasional series on what White did to Strunk)

As I wrote for my upcoming "A Word, Please" column:

To read the back cover of Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style," you'd think it was God's gift to the English-speaking world -- "excellent," "timeless," "delightful," "… should be the daily companion of anyone who writes for a living and, for that matter, anyone who writes at all."

That's a lot of sunshine blowing around. But something about the beloved nature of this little book has always sat funny with me.

For one thing, most other style reference books get updated from time to time. But "The Elements of Style's" status as a "classic" means no one dare touch it (except maybe to add pictures) -- even when its prescriptions become ridiculously out of date.

But there was something else that bothered me about this "beloved" little book that I was never able to put my finger on until I scored a copy of the original "Elements of Style" by Cornell professor William Strunk, Jr., long before his student E.B. White landed the job of revising it.

Consider this entry in the original "Elements of Style"

Headings. Leave a blank line, or its equivalent in space, after the title or
heading of a manuscript. On succeeding pages, if using ruled paper, begin on the
first line.

Ruled paper?

Now, I had always known that "The Elements of Style" was born of a college classroom. But it never really occurred to me what a fraud was perpetrated on the reading public when White "revised" the thing. Basically, his task was to take a book written for a small and specific group of students and make it marketable to you and me. Sure, this happened because the original "Elements of Style" had already found an audience outside Strunk's classroom. It sort of caught on like wildfire. But White nonetheless pulled a fast one on us when he tried to make Strunk's student instructions required reading for everyone who might ever hold a pen.

For example, before Strunk's passage above, White inserted:

"If the manuscript is to be submitted for publication …"

Then he nixed that reference to "ruled paper," knowing full well that newspaper editors, resume writers and business-correspondence writers who were the book's new target market don't use ruled paper.

But Strunk never meant "The Elements of Style" to be a book of iron-clad rules for you and me:

"This book … aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention … on a few essentials."

Yes, "The Elements of Style" contains some great wisdom, mixed in with some old-fashioned silliness. But unless you're a Cornell student stuck in a time warp, don't consider it an ultimate authority.