Number 42
The other day I heard a talk by a nice, bright woman who is or was an English teacher, but whose speech was flawed by numerous blunders. It's not quite fair to fault someone for errors made in unscripted speech, and in fact she was an interesting and effective speaker, but I will lay into her here because (a) she's an English teacher, (b) I'm a compulsive editor, and (c) certain kinds of mistakes come from bad habits of speech or from sloppy thinking, not just passing carelessness, and so deserve our unreserved opprobrium. (Hate the fault, castigate the English teacher, love the human being.) Here's what she said:
Aside: The aforementioned English teacher did not make this particular error, but Fred mentioned that he particularly dislikes it when people use reflexive pronouns incorrectly, as in, for example, "Bill told John and myself the story of his life," or worse, "Sue and myself drove to the beach." Why do people do this? It seems to be one of those strained and nervous attempts to sound a bit better than one feels one really is (it has the same air as "between you and I"). But "myself" can't be used as a subject, and as an object can correctly be used only when I am referring to myself, you're doing something to yourself, etc., as in, "Nobody was around to give me a ride so I drove myself to the beach."
"I grew up in that time era" ~ Is there another kind of era? Even an English teacher can't avoid all redundancy, but this was superfluously and excessively redundant.
"Think about any relationship you've had friendshipwise" and "[my roommate and I had] conflicts cleaningwise."I wrote about the "wise" adverbial suffix in PO 40, "Bad Back Formations." These two horrible examples speak for themselves, stylewise, but I'll speak for them further. Why not say, "Think about any friendship you've had" and "My roommate and I had conflicts about cleaning"? An English teacher should avoid these clumsy constructions.
"You've heard people say all's fair in love and war ~ but obviously it's not. We see a lot that's unfair in love and war." Well, duh. That's not what this almost Machiavellian saying means. It does not mean that all actions in love and war are fair, a statement that would be obviously and ludicrously false. It means that any unsportsmanlike behavior in love or war is acceptable because the end justifies the means ~ that it is judged by different standards than ordinary situations are. Also not true, of course. That's why we have rules of war, and even in love. An English teacher should have figured this out.
I've taken to listening to library books on tape or CD when I travel or commute, as a change from music (mine or theirs) and commercials (theirs), and I recommend it for anyone who has even a short commute. Someone recently told me that sometimes she's eager to go to work just to get back to whatever book she's got in her car. Even if you travel by subway or bus, you can listen on headphones.
Right now I'm listening to Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, by Garry Wills, six hours of interesting historical background to that short speech. Wills' thesis is that the speech was revolutionary in emphasizing the Declaration of Independence over the Constitution, and he also explains its rhetorical sources and influences in the Greek Revival of the period (America loves revivals, doesn't it?), Transcendentalism, the Victorian period's romanticizing of death, etc.
I only skimmed a few of the reviews on Amazon.com, but had to copy for you this excerpt from another self-confessed English major:
"As both an english literature major and general reader of American history this book exists at the intersection of these interests, and as such, I found this book exceedingly enjoyable."
I believe he is a real English major because of the obvious reaching for an elevated style, a common affliction of English majors; I've done it myself, and not always ironically. (For some reason, the word "enjoyable" seldom works in this setting; it seems to belong on a lesser rhetorical plane.) Anyway, first, he didn't capitalize "English." That could be a simple typo, but what's worse, he opens with a dangling participle and continues with another one. At least I think "as such" is dangling, although I'm not perfectly sure what "such" refers to. It's as well we don't know where he's going to school. Perhaps he was a student of the above-mentioned lady.
Since "importantly" means "in an important manner," some think it is incorrect when used like this: "More importantly, the president is making a speech at ten." The idea is that you should write "more important" here ("What is more important, the president etc."), because you are not saying that the president is speaking in an important (or perhaps self-important) manner. It's always worthwhile to make distinctions, but people who accept this "rule" don't seem to apply it to similar adverbs such as "significantly."
Unfortunately (or it is unfortunate that), once someone points out a "rule" such as this, I usually remain conscious of it. I think this rule could be expunged from the record, though the phrase "more importantly" could also be expunged from many sentences to make way for one more precise and elegant. In any case, because this is one of those "rules" that so many people have imprinted on their brains, like the split infinitive (PO 24, "Unruly"), writers and editors may want to avoid the usage for certain audiences.
By the way, until now I've avoided discussing "hopefully," which triggers a kindred response in readers, because although its original meaning is "with hope," the meaning "it is to be hoped that" is commonly accepted now in dictionaries. It is hopeless to think its most common usage, the latter one, is going to go away. While www.yourdictionary.org says this usage became common in the 1960s, I suspect it's older. They offer this interesting discussion:
Usage Note: Writers who use hopefully as a sentence adverb, as in Hopefully the measures will be adopted, should be aware that the usage is unacceptable to many critics, including a large majority of the Usage Panel. It is not easy to explain why critics dislike this use of hopefully. The use is justified by analogy to similar uses of many other adverbs, as in Mercifully, the play was brief or Frankly, I have no use for your friend.* And though this use of hopefully may have been a vogue word when it first gained currency back in the early 1960s, it has long since lost any hint of jargon or pretentiousness for the general reader. The wide acceptance of the usage reflects popular recognition of its usefulness; there is no precise substitute. Someone who says Hopefully, the treaty will be ratified makes a hopeful prediction about the fate of the treaty, whereas someone who says I hope (or We hope or It is hoped) the treaty will be ratified expresses a bald statement about what is desired. Only the latter could be continued with a clause such as but it isn't likely. It might have been expected, then, that the initial flurry of objections to hopefully would have subsided once the usage became well established. Instead, critics appear to have become more adamant in their opposition. In the 1969 Usage Panel survey, 44 percent of the Panel approved the usage, but this dropped to 27 percent in our 1986 survey. (By contrast, 60 percent in the latter survey accepted the comparable use of mercifully in the sentence Mercifully, the game ended before the opponents could add another touchdown to the lopsided score.) It is not the use of sentence adverbs per se that bothers the Panel; rather, the specific use of hopefully in this way has become a shibboleth.*I don't think these examples are perfectly analogous. The play could be merciful in its briefness, in the first case, and in the second, the "I" of the sentence is clearly the one who is frank. I've e-mailed them about it.
But about the "importantly" question, they say "both forms are widely used by reputable writers, and there is no obvious reason for preferring one or the other."
Go figure.
On the other hand, I'm currently disgruntled by "task" used as a verb, although this selfsame dictionary says it's OK. You might as well say "chored." We do have "job" as a verb, however (e.g. "he jobbed around as a landscaper"). It's just that I've only noticed the verb "task", as in "I was tasked to write a report for the board meeting," in the last few years and only in business-speak, which is often suspect.
From www.inpassing.org:
"I don't know, it's hard to put it in words."
"Too much Chex, not enough mix. That's your problem."
"Ok, I guess it isn't hard to put into metaphor. Just words."
~ Two girls talking outside Ross
My pretext for including this snippet of conversation is that it refers to words and metaphor. In Passing is a great web site by a grad student at Berkeley, who posts funny bits of conversations she hears just walking around. I sent in a couple of items two or three years ago (page 5 in the Passed By section, under "Rondaria").
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