Language Lovers Unite II

June 1, 2009 by Jerry

language_lovers1

In an earlier blog, inspired by London’s Ben Schott, whose “Schott’s Vocab” column in the New York Times asked readers “to exorcise their linguistic pet peeves and vocab vexations by posting a comment,” we listed 22 of the most frequently-referenced peeves of the many comments he received. We also invited our readers to share their own peeves. Here are the top results we received:

Tow the line versus toe the line	The data is versus the data are
Pour over text versus pore over text	Loose versus lose
Discreet versus discrete	Try and do something versus try to do something
Alright versus all right	Anyways versus anyway
Administrate versus administer	Acrost versus across
Orientate versus orient	Would of versus would have
If I was drunk versus if I were drunk	Excape versus escape

Special mention is due to the prolific outpouring in multiple comments from “classicalgeek” on Huffington Post who not only extended the list of confused and abused words, but also provided us with three valuable discussions on grammar, as well as a link to an entire website dedicated to grammatical mistakes. First, the list:

Preventive versus preventative	Principal versus principle
Who’s versus whose	Eminent versus imminent
Hung versus hanged	Compliment versus complement
Than versus then	Advise versus advice
Figurative use of “literally”	Council versus counsel
Misuse of compare with and compare to	Farther versus further
Misuse of that and who	Peak versus peek
Ad versus add	Apostrophes on plural forms

Astounding that that last practice still exists after all the ridicule in countless articles and books—particularly Lynn Truss’ monster bestseller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

Next, classicalgeek’s discussions of modifier placement, subject-verb agreement, and ending a sentence with a preposition:

Placement of “only” in the sentence (most often it’s before the verb, and it should modify what it’s supposed to
modify). E.g. “Only I want to be your friend” (nobody else does); “I only want to be your friend” (I want it but I
don’t want to put much effort into it); “I want only to be your friend” (the way most people mean); “I want to be
only your friend” (nobody else’s friend); “I want to be your only friend” (don’t be friends with anyone but me); “I
want to be your friend only” (not your lover or colleague or anything else).

On the other hand, “they” as a singular, non-gender-specific pronoun doesn’t bother me in the slightest. If it
was good enough for Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the many other luminaries of English literature who used it,
it’s good enough for me.

There is a difference with ending a sentence with a preposition that requires an object, and a stranding
preposition. Stranding prepositions (prepositions without objects) are native to all North Germanic languages
and are an integral part of English. Otherwise you get such artificial-sounding sentences as “This is the sort of
nonsense up with which I will not put.”

“Before I start foaming at the mouth,” classicalgeek concluded, and then gave us a link to a site called “Common Errors in English Usage,” based on a book of the same name, written by Paul Brians, Emeritus Professor of English, Washington State University.

Thank you, classicalgeek, and thank you, Professor Brians, for uniting us. Special thanks, too, to Lynn Truss, whose immortal words offering a fitting climax:

If you adopt a zero tolerance approach, when you next see a banner advertising “CD’s, DVD’s, Video’s, and
Book’s”, you won’t just stay indoors getting depressed about it. Instead you will engage in some direct-action
argy-bargy! Because—here’s the important thing—you won’t be alone.

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