Category: grammar

Don’t like singular they? Tell Mike Tyson.

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Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth
Mike Tyson helps James “Quick” Tillis adjust his plans in 1986.

 

 Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.

Obviously, this brilliant quote from Iron Mike works both literally and figuratively. But it’s a great and timely example of the value and utility of a singular they, which was just declared 2015’s Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

If you listen carefully, you can hear copy editors and the least-adaptable among us gnashing their teeth. Late last year, the Washington Post updated its style guidelines to accept singular they, and junior high school English teachers everywhere panicked and bemoaned the decline of the language and the death of rules and meaning. Of course they probably didn’t read the memo from Post copy editor Bill Walsh:

It is usually possible, and preferable, to recast sentences as plural to avoid both the sexist and antiquated universal default to male pronouns and the awkward use of he or she, him or her and the like: All students must complete their homework, not Each student must complete his or her homework.

When such a rewrite is impossible or hopelessly awkward, however, what is known as “the singular they” is permissible: Everyone has their own opinion about the traditional grammar rule. The singular they is also useful in references to people who identify as neither male nor female.

See that? Singular they is acceptable only when a rewrite is impossible or hopelessly awkward. Most of the time, there’s probably a graceful solution. And for those rare other times when there isn’t, or we’re referring to someone who prefers a gender-neutral pronoun, we’ll continue to do what I suspect we’ve already been doing this whole time.

The language isn’t going to die, everyone. We’re all going to be OK.

UPDATE! The Associated Press has finally joined the rest of the world and is grudgingly allowing singular they:

They/them/their is acceptable in limited cases as a singular and-or gender-neutral pronoun, when alternative wording is overly awkward or clumsy.

I don’t always peeve, but when I do, it’s about something very small

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I don’t usually indulge in peevery, but I’m making an exception here.

Just a small fraction came up at work the other day, and I removed the word small, which created strife between me and the writer. A discussion ensued in which he said he wanted small reinserted because nine-tenths is technically a fraction and he was emphasizing the smallness. Without small, how would the reader know what he meant?

Yes, it’s true that nine-tenths is a fraction. And yes, one could truthfully say that a Bugatti Veyron, at $3.5 million, is a fraction of the cost of the $4 million Lamborghini Veneno. But you wouldn’t. You would never say that.

It would be a dumb thing to say because the idiom just a fraction means a very small amount. See how small is built in there? This is what I’m talking about. There’s your technical, mathematical fraction (three-fifths, etc.) and then there’s your idiom, in which the word fraction means a very small amount.

  1. a small part, amount, degree, etc.; portion

Anyway, I don’t care about who/whom or begs the question, and I’m learning to live with due to/because of. But a small fraction still gets to me a little.

My next car is probably going to be a Lamborghini Veneno, except it’s a small fraction too expensive for me. Also, I prefer the Countach anyway.

Toronto’s hockey team: Go, LEAVES!

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Most sports fans have a favorite team and a backup. Sometimes the backup team’s from a favorite city. Or maybe if your favorite team is in the Eastern Conference, for example, you’ll have a backup in the Western Conference.

For many years, the Toronto Maple Leafs were my backup hockey team, No. 2 behind the Montreal Canadiens. Why Toronto? Good question. Thanks for asking. To be honest, I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. I liked that they were in Canada, because that seemed right for hockey. I liked, too, that they were part of the Original Six NHL teams, so they had a great deal of history. Also, and probably most important, I liked their colors: blue and white. Classic.

It occurred to me more than once that Leafs didn’t sound quite right, and I wondered why they weren’t the Toronto Maple Leaves (which also doesn’t sound quite right). Turns out there is an answer. Maple Leafs is a class of word similar to still life, leadfoot, low-life, and Walkman. What Steven Pinker calls headlessness in his outstanding book The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language.

A headless word is an exceptional item that, for one reason or another, differs in some property from its rightmost element, the one it would be based on if it were like ordinary words. A simple example of a headless word is a low-life—not a kind of life at all but a kind of person, namely one who leads a low life. …

As for the Maple Leafs, the noun being pluralized is not leaf, the unit of foliage, but a noun based on the name Maple Leaf, Canada’s national symbol. A name is not the same thing as a noun. … Therefore the noun a Maple Leaf (referring to, say, the goalie) must be headless, because it is a noun based on a word that is not a noun. And a noun that goes not get its nounhood from one of its components cannot get an irregular plural from that component either; hence it defaults to the regular form Maple Leafs. … Indeed, the explanation apples to all nouns based on names:

I’m sick of dealing with all the Mickey Mouses in this administration [not Mickey Mice]

Hollywood has been relying on movies based on comic book heroes and their sequels, like the three Supermans and the two Batmans [not Supermen and Batmen]

We’re having Julia Child and her husband over for dinner tonight. You know, the Childs are great cooks. [not the Children]

This all makes sense to me, and I approve. At any rate, now that I live in Chicago, I’ve moved Toronto down to No. 3 and promoted the Blackhawks to the backup spot. Sorry, Leafs. Don’t take it personally.

Toronto’s Dave Bolland won the Stanley Cup for Chicago last year. Thanks, Dave. (The plural of Stanley Cup is Stanley Cups, by the way.)

Words Used Well: Not everything is terrible

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I don’t drink Jagermeister anymore, mostly because nothing good ever happened to me when I was drinking Jagermeister. And also because I’m not 20 years old.

But I saw a great Jagermeister ad the other day on a taxi sign: A festive scene with the words For the we hours.

Nice. And while it didn’t make me want to take a shot, I appreciated the wordplay, and it made my morning commute slightly less tedious.

It occurred to me, too, that as a copy editor, it’s possible that I can be a little too critical. We notice things that are wrong or terrible (I’m looking at you, Chevy and your awful Malibooya ad), and we point them out probably far too often than we need to.

So I want to start acknowledging Words Used Well, an appreciation for the sublime moments in our language instead of the constant snark about its misuse. I hope to pay attention and notice the good things more.

Jagermeister, which is German for “regret,” has a pretty good ad campaign going that I don’t have a picture of. So look at this guy. Slayer’s guitar player Kerry King drinks Jagermeister. You can kind of guess that, can’t you?

UPDATE! I found the Jagermeister ad on an El platform.

Jagermeister ad
Stumbled onto the Jagermeister ad tonight on an El platform while waiting for the Brown line at Diversey in Chicago. So here you go.

Ever read something so good you’re angry because someone else wrote it?

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Yes, well, that’s where I am with this post by Kory Stamper, whose blog I found today somehow.

I know you’re surprised that I would ever be angry about anything, but whatever. She wrote something awesome, so I’m sharing it even though I resent her.

Let’s say that you feel, despite the evidence I may put in front of you, that “decimate” should not be used to refer to utterly destroying something. That’s fine, assuming you’ve gone through Steps 1-5 above. But before you move in to correct the next guy who uses “decimate” to mean “to utterly destroy,” consider: is this the hill you want to die on? Do you want your legacy in life to be “That One Person Who Bitched Endlessly About ‘Decimate’”? Are you happy with a life that will be beset by smart-asses like me asking why, if you are so interested in so-called etymological purity, you aren’t also tackling “nice” and “frankfurter” and holy hell half the month names of the Gregorian calendar?

That’s all. Carry on.

Going forward, I see potential upside to synergies

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But only if we can leverage our core competencies!

It’s been a long time, everyone. Have you missed me? Of course you have.

I’ve been away for the past few months getting used to my new day job at Morningstar, the financial people, not the sausage company. That’s right: High Finance. I bring the street to Wall Street. Or something.

Anyway, in addition to learning about daytime commuting, I’m also learning a great deal about stocks, markets, Big Business, “financials,” P/E ratios, forward earnings, trailing 12-month earnings, CAGRs. It’s a little overwhelming sometimes, but fun. I remember feeling like this before, back when I worked in the Sports department of a newspaper even though I wasn’t a “sports guy.” You get the jargon wrong in a baseball story, your coworkers will torment you for a long time.

The language of finance is really, like with any other specialty, very much its own language. The editors try to keep the jargon to a minimum, but it’s a losing battle, I’m afraid. Fact is, in any specialized industry or field, its language is a large part of what distinguishes it. Legal writing, medical, academic — a certain amount of jargon indicates authority. But it’s also often used to exclude, to show off, or to cloud meaning (obfuscate!). And the audience, too, expects a certain amount of jargon or it can feel like you’re being talked down to. Most readers of financial documents know what EPS means, so do we need to spell it out for them? I think that might be insulting to some readers. But readability is important, too; nobody likes to read a bunch of abbreviations or other shorthand.

It’s unlikely we’ll eradicate jargon, nor should we strive to. It’s just a matter of balance and purpose, I guess. Like editing any other kind of copy: You want accuracy and clarity, with a focus on readers.

Required reading for any language person

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I’ve encountered my share of know-it-alls and fussbudgets in the editing (and writing) world, many of whom probably really believe they are doing God’s work and making the world a better place by pointing out every single misspelling, misplaced comma, or unconventional usage.

I wrote about the topic earlier this year when people corrected President Obama’s grammar on Reddit, but this blogger’s series of posts are far more graceful and informative. If you work with words, either writing or editing, or are interested in language at all, her posts should be required reading.

Fact is, language is hard, and some people are better at it than others. And there are a lot of people who only think they’re good at it. Best policy, as with many things, is to be less judgmental.

The language of Abraham Lincoln

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I got to see Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” recently, and it was a dazzling film. Daniel Day-Lewis, of course, was incredible, but he had a great script to work with. Screenwriter Tony Kushner really nailed it. Ben Zimmer at the Boston Globe writes about how Kushner pulled it off:

One key to making the language historically suitable, he told me, was having the 20-volume print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary close at hand. A complete set of the OED—which includes deep histories of all its entry words, with examples—was one of his first purchases when he started earning money from his 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play, “Angels in America,” Kushner said. Through the many drafts of “Lincoln,” he checked every word that he thought might not have been appropriate for 1865.

The 20-volume OED is about $1,300, by the way. But the dialogue in “Lincoln” really is a treat to listen to, so I’d say it was money well-spent. And Tommy Lee Jones’ character (Thaddeus Stevens) has some especially good lines. Well-done, Mr. Kushner. Very impressive work. I am a little disappointed, though, that grousle isn’t a word anywhere.

And, again, Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance was flawless — and surprising. Add to the long (and getting longer) list of things I did not know: Abraham Lincoln apparently had a high-pitched voice. Not high-pitched like a woman or a crying cat, but higher than what you’d expect coming from such a large man — in stature and presence. Civil War scholar Harold Holzer wrote last year at Smithsonian.com about what Lincoln might have sounded like:

When Holzer was researching his 2004 book Lincoln at Cooper Union, he noticed an interesting consistency in the accounts of those who attended Lincoln’s speaking tour in February and March 1860. “They all seem to say, for the first ten minutes I couldn’t believe the way he looked, the way he sounded, his accent. But after ten minutes, the flash of his eyes, the ease of his presentation overcame all doubts, and I was enraptured,” says Holzer.

Same with Daniel Day-Lewis. After about 10 minutes, the incongruous voice starts to make sense and it just becomes part of the character.


Here’s an interview where Daniel Day-Lewis talks about finding the voice he used.


The trailer for Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”


Tommy Lee Jones using words as weapons in “Lincoln.”

Of course the very best Daniel Day-Lewis character ever is Bill the Butcher in “Gangs of New York.” So here’s a clip from that movie for no reason at all. Enjoy.

Apparently, I watch Jay Leno now

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In the past week or so, I’ve watched two episodes of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

It makes me ashamed a little, but it’s not like I planned to watch it. OK, that’s not entirely true. The other night, someone I know happened to be on a segment of the show, so I watched it on purpose.

But tonight, it was just on. I guess I could have changed the channel, but Monday night, apparently, is Headlines night, which comes with a special schadenfreude for me.

I’m going to go ahead and just man up to watching Jay Leno sometimes. Judge if you must. I can take it.

Jay Leno Headlines
Is it wrong that this brings me so much joy? Probably. I am probably a bad person.

Sometimes spelling is extra important

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I’m usually not one to get too twisted up over language errors and typos and such. English is hard, and mistakes will happen. I might have even made some myself in the past, though I can’t remember when.

At any rate, most of the time, I’m a live-and-let-live kind of person and don’t take great pleasure in pointing out the deficiencies of others. But context is important. When you’re a teacher, for instance, involved in a high-profile strike in a high-profile city, you might want your protest sign to be error-free.

Wonder if there’s a market for sign proofreading.

But how is this different from the president’s lapse I wrote about the other day? Good question. Shouldn’t the president be held to high language standards, too? Of course. I guess, to me, there are a couple of differences: First, the medium is different. This is a sign created for the public to see. Obama, on the other hand, was having a conversation that, while publicly visible, was essentially the same as speech. In the Reddit forum, the manner of communication can be less formal and more forgiving. Second, this sign is at a public demonstration of teachers. So while it might not be any different in substance, its perception is certainly more important than a typo on a topic unrelated to teaching or education.

Or maybe this is just some kind of anti-education bias. Who knows. I used to always worry about misspelling a word or getting something wrong when I edited an education or spelling bee story. It seemed better to make a mistake on some other kind of story than on one about language. But again, like I said earlier: Mistakes will happen.

Photo by emily_quirk