From the Grammar Police

You slay me! But the correct word here is slain.

We discussed this use of unnecessary geographical verbiage in our January 2021 segment on redundancies. Anyone who sees this flyer likely already knows Davie is in Florida. Especially if they’re familiar with the place that’s 100 yards down the road. And unless you plan to write the garden shop a postcard, of what value is the ZIP code? Just say Davie! Really!

Here’s the redundancy rule again again. If you can delete one of the two words and the sentence still works, it’s redundant. Just say “26 bodies.” (Note: We have fun finding grammar goofs. We acknowledge our exercises seem silly in light of the horrors happening in Ukraine.)

We post the same mistake’s over and over and it seem’s its no use. Why do people want to use apostrophe’s when theres no need to do so? Its enough to make you tear out your hair in piece’s!

We’ve discussed this in the past as well. The operative number here isn’t six. It’s one. One child in six struggles with hunger. One in six children struggles with hunger.

Every time we see an outrageous misplaced modifier — a topic to which we devoted a segment in January 2022 — we just scratch our heads that no one at the source noticed what we saw instantly. You probably did so as well. But this banner stayed on the bottom of the screen for several minutes. Police are searching for suspects, but only after the cops killed six people and injured 12? We’re going to say that’s not what happened.

(PS: Look at panel to the right. When this network returned to the story an hour later, it clearly had realized the mistake because it used mostly the same sentence but reworked it.)

And we go to the video archives for Segment 16: That dang comma. https://youtu.be/BOMaOxR3y_0

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong" features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 33: Elements of Style

Readers: One of the bibles of writing is “Elements of Style,” a small but vital manual for simple, clean, powerful writing. It’s likely most of your writing colleagues have copies. Eliot owns three. The book was written by William Strunk Jr., professor of English at Cornell University. Its first edition topped out at just 33 pages. But each page is gold. Decades later, and after Strunk’s death, former student  E.B. White, who would become an essayist and novelist (''Stuart Little,'' ''Charlotte's Web'' ), revised the book. It has sold millions of copies, and versions are available online for the cost of lunch. 

Strunk’s first edition came out in 1918! That’s more than a century ago. Good advice for good writing is timeless.

Here are some of the book’s directives:

• “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary part.”

• “Do not overwrite; do not overstate; avoid the use of qualifiers; do not affect a breezy style; use orthodox spelling; do not explain too much; avoid fancy words; do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity; prefer the standard to the offbeat; make sure the reader knows who is speaking; do not use dialect; revise and rewrite.''

• “Clarity, clarity, clarity… select a word whose meaning is clear.’’

• “Use the active voice. The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive: “I shall always remember my first visit to Boston.” This is much better than “My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.”

•“Revise and rewrite.”

And:

•“We approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing:

“Times like these try men’s souls.”

“How trying it is to live in these times!”

“These are trying times for men’s souls.”

“Soulwise, these are trying times.”

Or:

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Do these nuggets of advice sound familiar? It’s just what we’ve been saying in this blog. But now you heard it from Elements of Style. That’s pretty darn near gospel.

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/ZnK3wcm9mmw

Next time: Using, utilizing, accessing, applying the thesaurus for fun, entertainment, amusement, diversion.

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police.” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

From the Grammar Police

Susan Salisbury

You’re listing a home for nearly $30 million! Why won’t you spend a few bucks on an editor?

The Intracoastal Waterway stretches some 3,000 miles from Boston to Key West and from the Florida Panhandle to the Mexican border. This is how it’s spelled: Intracoastal Waterway. With “Waterway.” And in capitals. It’s a waterway between barrier islands and the coast. “Intercoastal” would be from coast to coast. That would be Kansas. Or maybe the Pacific Ocean. These real estate folks added to their goof by later misspelling it “intercostal,” which is a medical term for the muscle between your ribs. Probably not what they meant.

As long as we have our hooks in this horrible paragraph, we note it contains many examples of mistakes we’ve pointed out in previous segments. Thanks for the shout-out! We’ve fixed it. You’ll have to do the work finding all the fixes. There are too many. But we did your editing for free! For further assistance, the real estate firm may contact the Horribly Wrong team.

Spectacular ocean-to-Intracoastal Waterway home on the coveted XXX block of XXX. Enjoy breathtaking sunrises on the ocean, and sunsets on the Intracoastal, right from your private property. The main house has an elevator, five bedrooms, 6-1/2 bathrooms and a two-car garage. The guest house has a full kitchen, one bedroom, one full bathroom and a one-car garage. All the windows are high-impact glass, and the roof was installed in 2018. The pool is on the ocean side, with stairs down to the beach. The Intracoastal side has its own beach area with a dock and a boat lift. This property is only minutes from the XXXX. That‘s why the water is so blue on the Intracoastal side. You will see manatees, porpoises and big sea turtles every day.

Omitting the hyphen (”debt-free”) and making runaway two words? The Rules Committee would be inclined to separately declare each a misdemeanor. But making both mistakes, in successive sentences, bumps this up to “conspiracy to write dumb.” The reader still can understand it. It just makes the company look dumb. As we said in our Feb. 13, 2022, “Bad ads” segment, an outfit’s refusal to take the few minutes required to write grammatically correct ads might provide customers insight on the quality of its product, or lack thereof. We’re just sayin’.

This goof is so glaring it should jump out at you like a jack-in-the-box. Phrases using “and” are grammatical shortcuts. Split one and you often see your mistake. This one should be, “My wife’s friend” and “My friend.” And in this case, you’ve stepped into a grammatical briar patch, so back out and try again: “A friend of my wife and myself booked us a table.” Yes, it looks wrong, but it’s not. “A friend of my wife” and “a friend of myself.” Not “a friend of I.” Under no circumstances would you ever, ever, ever, say “I’s.” You know that.

Reader’s: For some folk’s, improperly adding apostrophe’s to word’s is a way of life. (Bonus: Needs a comma after “Yorkers.”)

theastrolab.com

Again, readers here know what the caption writer meant, but that doesn’t exonerate. Twenty dollars doesn’t go far when meted out to 100 cars. That’s two dimes per vehicle. Correct: “The church gave $20 in gas to each of the first 100 motorists.”

“Rio Grande” means “big river.” So this says “Big River River.”

"MD,” in caps, for Maryland, works in the post office. But not here. Sounds like a bunch of doctors got blown up. Should it have been “Md.?” That’s awkward. How about “…in Maryland blast?”

Spellcheck programs come free with most writing software. They make a big red line when you misspell. Makes things really easy.

Scott Simmons

And we go to the video archives for Segment 15: If only, if only, if only. https://youtu.be/Q1S4j22bQPA

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong" features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 32: Foreign Phrases and Images

Germany Embassy, Washington, DC

Readers: On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy electrified residents of West Berlin with a speech outlining the West’s solidarity with nations trapped by the Soviet Union.

“All free men, wherever they may live,” he said, “are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’

Did JFK made a grammatical goof? Should he have said “Ich bin Berliner?

In German, a word becomes an adjective with the addition of “er” on the end. Thus, “Berliner” means “of Berlin,” making “ein Berliner” redundant. On top of that, there’s a pastry called a Berliner. It’s a type of jelly doughnut. So that would mean Kennedy said, “I’m a Berliner.” Like “I’m a pastry.” Imagine if Kennedy had addressed an audience in Copenhagen, and instead of “I am Danish,” had said, “I am a Danish.”

History.com argues the “ein” was linguistically required. and anyway, everyone in Berlin knew what JFK meant. And grammatically correct or not, the line was momentous.

Either way, the story is a cautionary tale about using foreign phrases when you write or speak. There are nuances to translation. Handle with care. Make sure you get it right. Google Translate usually does the trick, but not always. If possible, consult someone who’s fluent or at least conversational.

Goofs can be about more than just words.

“Hispanic” and “Latin” are not the same. Hispanic refers to people who speak Spanish or whose ancestors spoke Spanish. That includes Spain, the mother country in Europe. Latin/Latino/Latina/Latinx refer to people who are from Latin America — or whose ancestors were. Not all of them speak Spanish. Just go to Rio and you’ll see.

Those of us of a certain age know that the TV comedy “I Love Lucy” was historic in many ways. One of them was the idea of a woman with a Hispanic husband who had a less-than-perfect command of English as well as a thick foreign accent. In that regard, Lucy was groundbreaking. But the writers made a mess of things in an episode called “Be a Pal.”

Lucy decides Ricky is homesick for his native Cuba. Ricky comes home one day to find a burro and a man asleep in a sombrero. The apartment is festooned with hanging colored blankets and other accoutrements. These are stereotypes not of Cuba but of Mexico!

Later, Lucy emerges as the iconic singer Carmen Miranda, she of the fruit-laden hat. But Carmen Miranda was from Brazil, and the song, “Mamãe Eu Quero,” is in not Spanish, but Brazilian Portuguese! We live in South Florida. Portuguese is not Spanish.

This was the second “I Love Lucy” episode ever to air. It seems surprising Desi “Ricky” Arnaz would allow this, since he obviously knew better. Or perhaps it was a joke on Lucy getting it wrong. But the storyline doesn’t say that. It being the politically incorrect 1950s, the show’s writers could get away with such tone-deafness. Not today.

Florida Archives

On the subject: Hispanic surnames are a minefield. Many people in Hispanic cultures use their last name, followed by their mother’s family name. For example, Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega is Daniel Ortega de Saavedra. But his last name’s Ortega, and that’s what you would use on second reference. In olden times, royals would add to their surnames the region they ruled. That’s how everyone mistakenly writes the first name of Juan Ponce de Léon as Ponce, and his surname as DeLeon. His name is Juan Ponce (pronounced PON- say.) His family ruled the duchy of Léon.

And then there’s this fun exercise:

“Principal: This morning my daughter came home to say her teacher was discussing how Americans use foreign phrases without even knowing it. What kind of chutzpah is that? Who the heck is this prima donna? Does she think she has carte blanche? And in kindergarten! How do I know she's even bona fide? I don't need her going on ad nauseam about this. And en masse to the class no less! Don't think I am accepting this as a fait accompli. It's caveat emptor, as you know, and I'm not going to let this faux pas pass. If that's your school's modus operandi, you might just find yourself persona non grata. And don't forget; you're not doing this pro bono. Everything has a quid pro quo, and I'm not going to accept the status quo on this. And I’m not just being macho.”

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/fGW0hrWTatM

Next time: Elements of Style

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

From the Grammar Police

Repeat offenders: Read this column!

This is Eliot’s number one news bugaboo! Journalists — and police — have been getting it wrong for decades. A suspect is someone suspected of something. A suspect doesn’t rob a bank. A bank robber robs a bank. Later, an individual is identified as the person suspected of robbing a bank. Only then is he a suspect.

This headline doesn’t say people are suspected of attacking the base. It says they absolutely did attack. Then it calls them suspects? of what? They were suspected of something else before they stormed the base? Just say, “Authorities: Gunmen Storm Joint Base Andrews.” (It said later they were male.) Notice we cut out a word and tightened the headline.

Milt Baker

It’s possible the good doctor wanted to say it was excepting — leaving out — Saturday appointments. But we’re pretty sure of what he meant: That he’s accepting Saturday appointments. And a reminder about appointments from a February 2021 segment: Your visit to the doctor is not an appointment. It’s a visit. An appointment is something you mark in your calendar. Substitute “reservation” for “appointment” and you see how it doesn’t work.

We previously have acknowledged that we might already have lost this battle. Keep in mind that no one is stopping you from using incorrect writing. We’re just here to show you the right way. A pickup is a type of truck, so this is a redundancy, similar to “sedan car” or “yacht boat.” So in mentioning this tragedy, you just can say “Pickup crash kills 9.” Really.

This is full of redundant redundancies and cowardly writing. Can we assume a user is smart enough to know what happens if he presses the power button, so that won’t be an option? And it’s nice that they say, “Please,” but we never figured out this practice. You don’t want to push the button? Frankly, the TV maker doesn’t give a hoot. How about: “To turn the screen back on, press any button.” We just tightened 15 words to nine.

Again: “Less” for volume, “fewer” for items. So, “Less pain” and “fewer steroids.”

“Princess Bride” is one of the Horribly Wrong team’s favorite movies. But the mistakes made by this film website are, well, inconceivable! First, the writer turned two words into one and changed a boy home sick to a homesick boy. Then the writer invoked the misplaced modifier to make the grandfather home sick. Or homesick. Or the guy who killed Inigo Montoya’s father.

How about: “While a young boy is home sick in bed, his grandfather reads him the story…”

And we go to the video for Segment 14: More horror in the boardroom. https://youtu.be/hoFfKcfK-pI

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong" features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 31: Not generic!

Readers: Companies pay a lot of money to come up with brand names, and they guard them passionately. They know that if a trademarked product becomes a commonly used part of the lexicon, courts can void its proprietary status. See the list below, courtesy of La Salle University. None of these is generic! Not all facial tissue is Kleenex. 

• Band-Aid

• Brillo Pad

• ChapStick

• Clorox

• Coke

• Cool Whip

• Crisco

• Jacuzzi

• Kleenex

• Kool-Aid

• Styrofoam

• Tabasco sauce

• Tupperware

• Vaseline

• Ziploc bags

And the rules committee’s Lou Ann adds: “Also AstroTurf, Frisbee and, believe it or not, Bubble Wrap.”

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/UyB_PCbHBSs

Next time: Foreign phrases. ¡Cuidado! Mise en garde! Vorsicht!

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

From the Grammar Police

Milt Baker

Sorry. “E” not included.

This was an official press release on the White House webpage. The dictionary says to announce is to "make a public and typically formal declaration about a fact, occurrence, or intention; 'he announced his retirement from football.'" Replace "announce" with "reveal" and you get "President Biden will reveal later today that he's nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson." To which you stand up and say, "You revealed it just now!"

You’ve forgotten the “only” rule already? This commercial suggests you don’t eat or sleep. All you do is get one body. Correct: “You get only one body.”

In this one caption, we find at least two goofs, both of which we’ve dealt with in previous segments. First, the awful cliché, “go missing.” You don’t go missing. People discover you are missing. The other mistake is one of apples and oranges. San Francisco is a city. Oregon is a great big state. Which part of Oregon? We don’t know. Maybe, “between San Francisco and the Oregon state line,” or “between San Francisco and central Oregon,” or “between northern California and central Oregon.” Also: “between” indicates “not including.” If you disappear between San Francisco and Honolulu, that means somewhere in the ocean. Not on Nob Hill or Diamondhead. If any of these incidents happened right in San Francisco, or in wherever the other end is, then “between” would be wrong. “From XX to XX” would be correct.

A boat anchor is an inanimate object and takes “that.” A television news anchor is a person and takes “who.”

Anna Kavanagh

Does Friday come with fries?

As longtime newspaper folks, the Horribly Wrong team laments that struggling newspapers have had to cut back on proofreaders. It’s possible this publication now is being assembled in another part of the country. But if you are writing headlines for the Fort Myers paper, you should know how to spell Fort Myers.

And we go the video archives for Segment 13: Horror in the boardroom. https://youtu.be/-R3ooeAcsSI

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong" features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 30: Politically incorrect

WARNING: Some readers might find this segment offensive.

Readers: This segment shouldn’t even be necessary. You should know better. These words and phrases rightly have been tagged as offensive, or at least tone-deaf, so don’t use them! Especially in the company of people who belong to any of these groups. And certainly not in your writing.

•  Retarded. Also a mental “vegetable.” Also “brain dead,” unless an attending doctor has used the specific medical term.

•  Deaf and dumb. Also “deaf mute.”

•  Crippled. Also “deformed,” “lame,” or “an invalid.”

•  Dwarf, midget.

•  Crazy. Wacko. Nut. Psycho.

Stanford University

•  Colored. Also Uncle Tom, for a Black person who’s subservient to whites. Also “Oreo,” a term some Blacks use for someone they say acts as if Black on the outside and white on the inside.

•  Oriental. Also “Chinaman,” “Jap,” or “Chink.” As if we needed to tell you.

•  Indian (for Native Americans). Also Redskin (finally!). Also warpath, squaw, etc. And be careful lumping together all Native American groups. In North America alone, they can be as ethnically diverse as people from England and Turkey. And don’t use “tribe” in this context unless the group does. Most prefer “nation.”

•  Canuck (Offensive as a generic for a Canadian. But OK for the National Hockey League team.)

•  Don’t call someone a Haitian or a Romanian or a Pakistani if they moved to the United States years ago, especially if they are U.S. citizens. “Haitian American” would be OK only if relevant. Otherwise they’re just an American. Just like you. 

•  Hillbilly. Also redneck. Also WASP for a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Also “Florida cracker,” which is, analogous to “hillbilly,” although some use the term proudly.

•  Fireman, lawman, congressman, chairman, spokesman. Use only if you are sure they’re all males. Some use just “chair.” Don’t use “chairperson” etc. because — let’s face it — no one ever uses that term except when it’s a woman. Don’t be a cowardly writer!

•  Fag or queer. (Note: Some LGBTQ groups have appropriated “queer” as a term of pride, the way some Blacks use the N-word.)

•  “Jesus Christ!” Also “Christ Almighty!” “For Christ’s sake!” And, for the love of God, never say, “Jesus F**ing Christ.” Also, don’t say, “For the love of God.” All offensive. Or even, “Oh my god,” which is more a cliché.

•  Gypsy. Don’t use for the ethnic group, whose members prefer Romany, and don’t use as a colloquial for a nomad.

• AD, BC, Old Testament: The Associated Press stylebook says AD is acceptable for anno Domini: “in the year of the Lord,” and B.C. is acceptable in all references to the period “before Christ.” We’ve said many times that “Horribly Wrong” defers to AP. But we also counsel you to know your audience. Non-Christians aren’t comfortable with A.D. or B.C. because, with all respect, it’s not their lord. Jews will substitute “CE” for “Christian Era” or “BCE” for “Before Christian Era,” though non-Jewish audiences will be clueless about the acronyms. Also, while AP is OK with “Old Testament,” keep in mind that it presumes a “New Testament,” which many non-Christians don’t recognize.

Confused? Unsure? As the Horribly Wrong team says, you always can “write around it.”

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/dA_vKxul-xo

Next time: Hand me a Kleenex!

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

From the Grammar Police

“Between” is a demanding word. You can’t be between one thing. Since you never will get more than one second shot, we ask: The time between the second shot and….what? We suspect they meant, “time between first and second COVID shots…” Then they repeat the mistake.

The Horribly Wrong team calls this a grammatical optical illusion. Your eye and brain want “couple” to be plural. A team or a school or a company sounds like it should be plural, but like those examples, couple is singular. So the couple “helps” foster kids. Good for them. (That sentence is OK, because we no longer are modifying “couple.”) Also found in a national newspaper: "None of us is." Should it be "None of us are?" No. "None" essentially is a contraction of "no one," and when you say "No one of us is," the answer is clear. But, the Rules Committee’s Lou Ann notes, “The language evolves.” She says some corners have ruled phrases such as “couple help” and “none are” as acceptable. The Horribly Wrong team will not. NOTE: Our British cousins violate this as a rule, as in “Arsenal won their match one-nil.” Another cause of the American Revolution. Look it up.

Susan Salisbury

We don’t take pleasure in calling out our friends in local TV news. But as we’ve said, they make it too easy. Four grammar mistakes in three lines! First, the headline is a classic misplaced modifier that suggests the parents, not the child, were forced to live in a garage. Then, the redundant “13-year-old teen.” Then, teenagers’ instead of teenager’s. And, of course, it’s the child who was adopted; the arrestees are the adoptive parents. And a bonus: You’re not arrested for something. The last sentence gets it right. Whew! Did we miss anything?

This place probably makes great pizza with the money it saves on writers. Where to start? For one thing, the place must have sold all its punctuation marks to pay for pepperoni. How about, as with good pizza, we start from scratch? “America’s first pizzeria, Lombardi’s, opened in 1905 in New York. Let’s celebrate tonight at (name). Two dollars off any pizza!”

You go, Nathan Chen! Many, many eyes are on you. But not all. Really. Readers: Are we being too exacting? Should we sometimes allow hyperbole? The Horribly Wrong team says no, but let’s discuss.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 12: Even newspapers goof. https://youtu.be/h62Bvtfphzo

From the mailbag:

Dr. Baruch Kahana, Miami Beach, posed two questions to the Rules Committee (edited for space):

1. “The other day I read: ‘A TD Bank was evacuated Wednesday after a robbery suspect barricaded their self inside the bathroom.’ Are gender-based pronouns — he, she, etc. — no longer kosher? Also: I recently encountered the phrase ‘pregnant person’. I’ve delivered a number of babies in my day, and each of those babies came out of a woman.” Response: English is cursed with a lack of a gender-neutral pronoun. If the police didn’t specify a sex, you can write, “A TD Bank was evacuated Wednesday after a robbery suspect barricaded himself or herself in a bathroom.” That’s not good. Our policy always has been, “Write around it.” So: “A TD Bank was evacuated, police said, after a person robbed it and refused to leave a restroom.” (Notice we got around the horrid word “suspect” and also accurately described the loo, which did not have a bathtub.) As to the pregnant woman, it’s hard to argue the doctor’s point. He was there.

2. “I recently read: ‘Public assistance is needed to identify the people who robbed an ATM.’ Shouldn't that be ‘stole?’” Response: It should be “stole from.” The Rules Committee’s Lo Ann Frala says “robbed” and “stole” often are “used interchangeably and incorrectly. There are nuances and differences of legality.” She cites no less than the Canadian federal government’s “Writing Tips Plus: “Rob and steal once were exact synonyms, but in modern usage they differ. A thief will rob a place or person (of objects), but steal objects (from a place or person).” And from criminaldefenselawyer.com: “Robbery, like theft, involves taking someone's property without the owner's consent, but it has some elements that theft doesn't require. Robbery involves taking property from a person and using force, or the threat of force, to do it.”

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong" features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 29: Bad Ads

Readers: We told you about commercials that butcher the word “only,” or create ridiculous comma shortcuts. But wait. There’s more!

Commercials are rife with bad writing. Most of these broadcast and print ads are not so much criminally misleading as they are just guilty of using stupid grammar. As in, “A second-grader knows better” stupid.

Advertisers: Your refusal to take the few minutes required to write grammatically correct commercials might provide customers insight on the quality of your product, or lack thereof. We’re just sayin’.

1. “YES! I want the commemorative coin. I agree to make just five easy payments of $15.95. Your coin will arrive in four to six weeks.”

In these sentences, two people are talking. The first few sentences are you. The last one is the merchant. How did no one notice that? You’re not sending them a coin in four to six weeks. They’re sending you one. All the merchant had to do is change one word: “My coin will arrive in four to six weeks.” Done.

2.  It’s the biggest no-brainer in the history of mankind.

You know what? It’s not.

3. You’re probably paying too much.

A common grammar mistake. “You probably are paying too much.”

4. Before starting Reposado, your doctor will test you for liver problems.

It’s not your doctor who is starting on Reposado. You are. (Bonus: Search Google to find “Reposado,” the product we substituted for the actual drug named in the commercial.)

5. “Our walking cane is designed to dramatically improve your posture, help you move easier, and feel less pain.”

See #4. You are saying the cane is designed to feel less pain. Canes don’t feel pain. Correct: “…dramatically improve your posture and help you move easier and feel less pain.”

6. I personally invite you to visit our showroom.

Don’t say “personally” unless you mean “personally.” It means you and the other person are in the same room. Not that you are looking at a TV camera and talking to thousands of people simultaneously.

7. The safety and comfort of our customers is our top priority.

Brutal, brutal cliché. And let’s be honest. It usually is insincere.

8. Rest assured.

What would that look like? (By the way, we actually have seen ads say, “Please rest assured.” Thank you. I believe I will.)

9. I’ve been dealing with dry eye since I can remember.

This literally means, “I’ve been dealing with dry eye since the last time I could remember.” This usually would lead to an offensive joke about Alzheimer’s disease, and we don’t to do those. Say, “I’ve been dealing with dry eye for as long as I can remember.”

10. There’s never been a better time. And there never will be a better time. 

It’s almost a certainty that neither statement is true.

11. "Mortgage rates still remain high."

Redundant. “Mortgage rates remain high" is enough.

12. “Come in for a free gift.”

Redundant. A gift is free.

13. “Our products are packed with wholesome goodness!”

These are million-dollar words that aren’t worth ten cents. What the heck is goodness? The state of being good? As opposed to what? And couldn’t any food product claim to be wholesome, unless it’s made out of dirt? Even potato chips are wholesome, the Horribly Wrong team supposes.

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/K2z8qhvVXVM

Next time: Politically Incorrect

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

From the Grammar Police

We’ve covered this goof in the past. This headline is saying no city is able to get a train station. Huh? Say, “Not every city gets a train station.”

We did our “misplaced modifiers” segment just last week. Someone didn’t pay attention! A family has owned and operated several people since 1981? We’re going to say no. How about we instead treat this as a comma splice infraction? We’ll replace the comma after “1981” with a period and allow the partial sentence because it’s an ad. Boom. Fixed. Also, don’t Arbitrarily mix Up lower Case And caps.

The Grammar Police made a similar bust Nov. 14, to no avail. Again: The operative word is one. One. One in four is an immigrant.

theastrolab.com

There might be a foreign-language issue here. And maybe there’s some “Increment of the weather” we don’t know about. But we’re guessing they meant “inclement weather.”

Once again: The Horribly Wrong team will not pounce on what simply might be typos made in the heat of live TV. Unless we surmise the person instead wielded a homophone like a drunk with a loaded gun. Which probably happened here. You pour lemonade. You pore over documents.

Its a shame when a high-end restaurant wont use it’s resources to get good writer’s. (By the way, the axiom gets it backward. It should be, “Eat your cake and have it too.” Think about it.

Redundant. It already was a fatal shooting when the first officer died. How about: “Second police officer dies after shooting in NYC.”

And we go to the video archives for Segment 11: Bad TV, weather edition. https://youtu.be/Ovgiues5qbc

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 28: The Misplaced Modifier

Readers: On a Saturday morning in February 1974, Eliot, then a high school senior, was in a Miami classroom, sitting for his College Level Examination Program (CLEP) test. He would pass it, allowing him to enter college as a sophomore. Sweet!

Eliot came across a question that actually caused him to start laughing. The people taking the test around him probably figured he’d snapped. But if you’ve been paying attention to our columns on bad writing, we suspect you’ll giggle at this as well:

“Encased in Lucite, a student can study a bug closely.”

This, of course, is a marvelous example of the infamous misplaced modifier. Wonder if the test makers threw it in on purpose to see who would snicker.

We dealt with a version of this common grammar misstep when we tackled “only.”  It creates an optic the writer definitely did not want, and one that often sparks chortles among the “Horribly Wrong” team. A student encased in Lucite? Help! 

Here’s more:

1. I shot an elephant in my pajamas!

The great Groucho Marx line. Followed by, “How it got in my pajamas, I’ll never know.”

2. After shooting at 10 people, police caught the gunman in the woods.

The police shot at 10 people?

3  The policeman shot a man with an AR-15.

Was that really necessary, officer? Of course the cop didn’t have the AR-15. “The policeman shot a man who was brandishing an AR-15.”

4.  He almost beat his girlfriend to death.

What if he almost beat his girlfriend to death, but she got out a window before he could touch her? That is not what happened here. He beat his girlfriend. Almost to death.

5. After roasting for three hours, we turned off the oven.

Ouch! Better than a day at the beach! Say, “After roasting the turkey for three hours, we turned off the oven.”

6. Siblings were reunited after 20 years apart at Walmart.

Trapped wandering separate aisles for two decades! The horror. Say, “After 20 years apart, siblings are reunited in Walmart.”

7.  Having hung on the mantel for decades, Lord Saltire fired the shotgun.

All those years poor Lord Saltire dangled from the mantel! How about: “Lord Saltire fired the shotgun that had hung on the mantel for decades.”

8.  Elton John wrote the opening lines to “Candle in the Wind” flying to New York on the back of his boarding pass.

Was the boarding pass a miniature flying carpet? Instead: “On a flight to New York, Elton John wrote the opening lines to ‘Candle in the Wind’ on the back of a boarding pass.”

9. Kim Ng was named general manager of the Marlins, the first woman to ascend to the top post in a baseball operations department.

The Marlins are not “the first woman…” Easy fix: “…named general manager of the Marlins, making her the first woman….”

10. He died after injuring his head in a fall while going down steps and was hospitalized.

Hospitalizing a dead man seems a little moot, dontcha think? This was just an inadvertent anachronism. Say, “He had injured his head in a fall while going down steps and died later at a hospital.”

11. “Former cop charged with murder of George Floyd in court.”

He killed George Floyd in a courtroom? No. How about: “Former cop charged with murder of George Floyd is in court.” One word changes everything.

12. Meghan Markle made her first public appearance Tuesday since giving birth wearing Givenchy.

She gave birth wearing Givenchy? Wish we could have seen that!

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/9VVUqN8G5m8

Next time: Bad ads

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

From the Grammar Police

Lou Ann Frala

We’ve said the Horribly Wrong team will not beat up on people who make simple typos. Unless we suspect the person really thought that’s how it was spelled. Or if a mistake went unnoticed for a long time. In this case, it was fixed only after the goof had been there for several hours, during which numerous viewers had tweeted and had emailed the network — including Horribly Wrong’s Lou Ann. Cleveland? Really? It’s a big city. Can’t miss it.

Same rule here. We posted this exquisite goof in a Grammar Police segment all the way back on Oct. 3. Who knows how long it was there before that? Since then — week after week, month after month — we’ve watched this outfit run the same ad, with the glaring misspelling, and symbolically bit our tongues. This past week, we found the ad had been redesigned. With the spelling mistake repeated!

This is redundant! And technically inaccurate. He wasn't the former secretary during the 2016 campaign. So it just should be "...national press secretary for Hillary Clinton's campaign." Horribly Wrong’s Lou Ann says, “The misuse of ‘former’ is a particular peeve.”

Next week we will deal with the world of misplaced modifiers. This is a doozy. And about a tragedy. He didn’t kill her in a notebook. Should be, “FBI: Laundrie admitted in recovered notebook to killing Petito.” And it misspelled her name.

Remember: “Less” for volume and “fewer” for counts. So: “Less pain” and “Fewer sick days.”

And we go to the video archives for Segment 10: More bad TV. https://youtu.be/7o02NVQiz20

From the mailbag:

Longtime friend and loyal reader Art Fyvolent of St. Petersburg challenged part of our Jan. 9 “Grammar Police” segment in which we said “residential community” is redundant. We’ve said “residential neighborhood” is. But Art says there can be many kinds of communities: “Business community. Church community. A very small city (unincorporated) or neighborhood…” We ran this past the Rules Committee. It concurs with Art!

Dr. Baruch Kahana of Miami Beach wrote, “The venerable NYTimes annoys me by insisting on being hyper-specific, to no real advantage. For example, when mentioning Putin, NYT insists on naming him “President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia”. That is much more information than we need to know, unless we might think of President Vladimir A. Putin of Albania, or President Vladimir B. Putin of Bolivia, or President Vladimir C. Putin of Canada, etc. Why not simply mention “Russia’s Putin”? Readers: You might recall our Nov. 7, 2021, segment on "Style." While most newspapers follow Associated Press style rules, some, especially big ones, have certain style rules of their own. The New York Times considers itself America's newspaper of record, and so it has very proper style rules, including inserting Mr., Mrs. etc. in front of names and including middle initials.

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 27: Very!

Readers: Each of the following is wrong. Each word is an absolute. It cannot be modified. But bad writers make this mistake on a regular basis.

• Very unique

• Most iconic

• Very pregnant

• More overwhelmed 

• Very dead

• Most unique

• Very fatal

• More straight

• Very right

• More dead

• Very final

• More identical 

• Very wrong

• Most perfect

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/KRWAhcl8zdY

Next: Now where did I leave that modifier?

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

From the Grammar Police

Grammar Police celebrate one year!

Redundant. Just say “recorded.” If not previously, when was it recorded?

Also redundant. If you prevent something, you prevent it before it happens. That’s the only time you can prevent it.

Why do person’s alway's make the same error’s, goof’s and mistake’s, especially in ad’s? It make’s us guy’s want to scratch our head’s. One more time: NO APOSTROPHE!

This came up when the same thing happened to former President Trump. By definition, a suspension is temporary. Say Twitter “shut down” or “closed” the account.

Forget for a moment whether the statement is true. Get rid of those comma splices! Also extraneous capitalizations. We’ll allow the partial sentences because this is an ad. So: “No one has died from medical marijuana. Zero. Not a single one.”

Amazing how a little punctuation changes everything. You are saying I respect my neighbors? How do you know?

The "Horribly Wrong" team originally was not going to post this one, since it might just have been a slip by a harried and overworked graphics operator on live TV. And this is a case where the misspelled word is itself a word, so any spell-check program would have missed it. However, we'd be curious to know if this person really thought this was how you spelled "rogue," rather than what was typed, which is a shade of red and a form of makeup. Also, we'd be curious to know if the error was fixed for subsequent broadcasts.

Scott Simmons

Misspelling “condominiums” is bad enough. What about no space between “and” and “local?” And “Residential communities” is redundant. Boy, these guys should get a refund from the lettering company! As with the “rouge” planet, we’d be inclined to give them a break, except we wonder how long the window has looked like this?

And we go the video archives for Segment 9: Bad TV.

From the mailbag: Sharon Abramson, a former Palm Beach Post colleague of both members of the “Horribly Wrong” team, drew our attention to our Dec. 12 segment, in which we pointed out an incorrect caption mentioning “a bouquet of flower” instead of “a bouquet of flowers.” Sharon rightly noted that “bouquet of flowers” is redundant anyway!

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 26: NSFW

WE’RE STARTING OUR SECOND YEAR!

WARNING: Some readers might find this segment offensive.

Readers: As we mark one year of “Something Went Horribly Wrong,” we visit the acronym NSFW. It means “not suitable for work.” As in, “Don’t accidentally send that crass joke to your boss.” 

Our marketplace of ideas, via social media and other platforms, has shed its shackles of censorship, and now you are free to send and receive Facebook postings riddled not just with vile personal attacks but also foul language and pornography. Don’t you feel smarter now? Isn’t the world a better place?

When Eliot’s dad was managing editor of the old Miami News, he once rejected an applicant for a reporting job. The young man’s portfolio included a clip from his college newspaper in which he’d used a coarse word for poop. The applicant said, “Don’t you believe in free speech?” Dad said: “Yes, you have every right to use these words personally. But good writers don’t need them, and they disqualify good writing, so I have every right not to hire you.”

If you are writing a novel, there’s a time and place to introduce profanity, usually in dialogue, where you want people to talk like people really talk. Even then, make sure you use it only as much as you need it; don’t be gratuitous. When writing as the narrator, use it at your peril. It’s not that readers are innocents who will faint away because you used a bad word. It just that it makes the reader feel a little dirty. And, as Dad explained, makes the writer come off as lazy.

Many phrases have entered the lexicon but really shouldn’t have. Look at these. You probably use them all the time. Do you ever take a minute to consider what each literally means? Go ahead. Look on the internet if you have to. “Urban dictionary” is a good source. We’ll wait. Yes! Right! OMG! Now you know! Good. So just avoid using them.

Frankly, it makes us feel dirty just listing them.

• “My opponent sucks.”

• “My opponent doesn’t have the balls to respond.”

• “I will knock the crap out of my opponent.”

• “My opponent is full of B.S.”

• “My opponent is an S.O.B.”

* “My opponent is a bastard.”

• “My opponent is a schmuck.“ (Check the Yiddish dictionary; “schmuck” refers to a specific part of male anatomy.)

• “The Cubs kicked ass.”

• “My opponent is an a**hole.”

• “He’s a frigging idiot. He’s a freakin’ idiot.” (“Frigging “or “freaking” clearly is used in place of the “F-word.” What about “darn” and “heck?” Maybe “frigging” is OK? Discuss.)

• “We really screwed up, and our clients got screwed. You don’t like it? Screw you!”

• “You’re a douche bag.” (Look it up. Yuck!)

• “He’s a brown noser.” (Again, look it up. Eww!)

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/DZR4WGFEouY

Next time: Very, very, very

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

From the Grammar Police

Time to take down the tree and clean up the kitchen. While you’re at it, clean up your grammar!

Lou Ann Frala

Grand Marnier liqueur and hollandaise sauce are interesting additions to any dish. Take a moment and spell them right. Or you might just get a visit from the Grand Mariner. Shiver me timbers!

How many “Floridas” do you need? Certainly not two. In fact, in this case, you don’t need any. Everyone who reads this ad knows Riviera Beach and knows it’s in Florida. And as we said in our January 2021 segment on redundancies, unless you plan to write the liquor store a postcard, do you really need a ZIP code? Also: If you are using the postal abbreviation “FL,” you do not need a period. But if you are abbreviating “Boulevard” to “Blvd.,” you do.

Lou Ann Frala

What a tough brake.

Forget the grinch. Here comes the comma splice again. You need a period after “closed.” And in the interest of tight writing, you can lose the :00 and just say the place opens at 9, right? Plus, why do you need quotation marks?

Add an apostrophe. It’s so easy, even a child could do it. And make up your Mind about which words you Capitalize and where you Put punctuation.,:?

This is something we’ll address in depth in a future segment. It’s a double qualifier. Democrats either know for a fact these things may harm them, or they fear these things will harm them. Extra qualifiers are a form of redundancy — and a form of cowardly writing.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 8: Clichés. https://youtu.be/ABoi9z0N_aY

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 25: Disqualifiers, Part Three: Anatomy

healthfixit.com

Readers: You don’t have to be a doctor to write about the human body. But don’t make stupid mistakes.

One we see every day is “stomach.” Almost every reference to it in literature and news reports is wrong!

Your stomach is in your chest, just above the centerline of your torso. It’s next to your liver and just below your lungs and heart. And yet time and time again, people point to the area around the belly button and call it the stomach. Punched in the stomach. Shot in the stomach. Stomach ache. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That area comprises your intestines. OK. You don’t want to say that. But say “abdomen” or “belly” or “torso.” Don’t say stomach. Also, why do you say someone was lying on his stomach? He was lying on all his other organs as well. Say he was lying on his belly. Or his chest.

Also, if you are writing fiction, you have to decide whether you want to deal in medical fantasy, or be accurate. If the latter, get it right or it becomes a disqualifier.

How many novels and movies showed a man taking a 2-by-4 to the head, or a punch to the chin, and going down like a carp, only to come to 15 minutes later, rubbing his noggin or jaw and saying, “What happened?” Then standing and winning a shootout? In reality, either of those attacks would have caused serious or even fatal injuries. 

And while we’re on the subject of shooting, if you ever get a chance, and you have the stomach (see above) for it, look at actual emergency room photos of a bullet wound. In the movies, a guy gets it in the gut (not stomach), and no blood or gore spurts out. Also, guys get shot and keep fighting. Try it sometime.

If you are going for farce, fine. If you are trying to be medically accurate, don’t insult the reader.

20th Century Fox

Some works do the whole thing for farce, so you let it go. None is more famous, or infamous, than “Home Alone.” After the movie came out, an organization of emergency room physicians listed the various attacks 8-year-old Kevin inflicted on the two hapless burglars, and explained what the medical impact would be in real life. Here’s a partial list:

•Iron to face: Probable concussion. Possible loss of vision. Possible fracture of base of skull.

•Red-hot doorknob: Second-degree burns.

•Partly-filled paint bucket to face: Concussion, broken nose, fractured skull.

•Crowbar to chest: Cracked ribs, potential internal bleeding and damaged lung.

•Flamethrower to head: Possibly fatal.

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/mGbzbheMs0E

Next time: Not suitable for work

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

From the Grammar Police

Editors, editors, editors!

At least they spelled Omicron right!

We will say it again: A suspect doesn’t shoot someone! A shooter does. When they catch John Doe, he is the man suspected of being the shooter. He’s the suspect. Not to mention that in this case it’s redundant. Just say a ranger was shot. Period. It’s not like you had a lot of options. Shot by a moose. Shot by an SUV. Shot by a rock. C’mon.

Journalists for whom English isn’t the first language should get a break. But if that’s the case here, that means this caption passed through several American editors before it ended up in our local newspaper with two big errors. Should be “A bouquet of flowers lies on the tomb of…”

Amy J Volkers

People who bet are bettors.

We’ll say it again: Editors shouldn’t make these mistakes. But because fewer people subscribe to, or advertise in, newspapers, they can’t afford as many editors. Want to see fewer goofs? Support your local newspaper! (You should anyway; it’s your only comprehensive source of local news!)

And we go to the video archives for Segment 7: More Lightning Bugs. https://youtu.be/y_fMjkAs1i4

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!

Segment 24: Disqualifiers, Part Two: History

Readers: Our last column mentioned goofs of geography. Today we tackle history, Eliot’s favorite subject and one that’s regularly used incorrectly in writing.

In our previous segment, Eliot mentioned giving up on bad audiobooks after they made a glaring goof. In one of those, the protagonist was a law student who was asked one day by his teacher about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1918. Wrong! That’s the year the war ended. The archduke was shot in 1914. With the availability of the internet, an author’s failure to take the time to double-check such basic facts is a grievous sin. And a disqualifier.

As Eliot toiled on his Civil War novel, Peace River, he fretted constantly about mistakes he inadvertently might be inserting. Historical fiction is a real minefield, and in no arena is this more profound than the Civil War. America is rife with Civil War “nerds” who gleefully will point out to a writer that a soldier’s sleeve should have had two stripes, not three. That that model of rifle hadn’t yet been created. Or that those tracks would have been on the other side of the river. 

blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu

Sometimes, you are a victim of the Rumsfeld Rule. That’s former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Iraq War-era edict that “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Once, Eliot was in a writer’s group when a member gave him the bad news that he’d identified a character as Czechoslovakian, when that nation didn’t exist in the 1860s. Yikes! 

Also: A note about Wikipedia. If you want to use it as a primary source, that’s your call. Newspapers don’t. The Horribly Wrong team won’t. It’s not that Wikipedia lies. It’s just that it’s an encyclopedia by committee, and prone to honest mistakes. What you can do is go to the bottom of the entry where it lists sources and go to those sources yourself. If you want to compare your local college’s student population to that of the University of Michigan, do yourself a favor. Just go to the webpage of the University of Michigan.

Bibliothèque nationale de France

One final anecdote: Thomas de Mahy, Marquis de Favras, was sentenced to death in 1790 after being accused of trying to rescue the royal family during the French Revolution. Upon reading his death warrant, Favras’ only remark was, “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.”

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/HzAwRcjI53w

Next time: Bad Anatomy

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!

NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!