From the Grammar Police

Father’s Day is next Sunday!

 

https://thegraphicsfairy.com/

 

Eliot’s two sons often have charged him with serial corniness. He pleads guilty as charged. But you can be corny — and do really bad puns — and still use good grammar. This fun gift from the boys comprised seven pencils, four of them containing errors: three comma splices and a failed capitalization. It’s seven sentences, for goodness sake. Where’s the editor?

Yet another infuriating comma splice! Beyoncé needs two more wins to make history. And she needs two more wins to check out the best outfits on the red carpet. And she needs two more wins to do even more. No. Changing a comma to a period, it’s so easy, and it makes sentences make sense, why don’t you try it.

Some people recognize comma splices are wrong, and some people use question marks properly, and some people don’t capitalize every word, what do they know.

One more time: Senators join. Donors are offering. But a group joins. A group is offering.

WATS (Wide area telephone system) still is around. A toll-free number (800, 888, etc.) to dial from anywhere. Sweet! At one time it was all the rage. It’s not used as much, now that long-distance charges don’t apply on most cellphones. But it’s still a staple for some businesses. Thing is, since the beginning, some people have wanted to spell it WATTS or watts. Some still do.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 45: Do you eat at the Jimmy Buffett? https://youtu.be/9TFzjLuTqHQ

From the mailbag: Longtime reader and occasional contributor Dr. Baruch Kahana saw our June 4 segment, “Are you Gruntled?” on words that are negatives of words we rarely or never use. He asked about feck (feckless) and ept (inept). “Feck” is a Scottish term for "majority" or "effect." “Ept” doesn’t exist. “Inept” is from the Latin for unsuitable, improper, impertinent; absurd, awkward, silly, tactless.

Readers: People have suggested at times that the “Horribly Wrong” team is just a bit too snarky, and a bit too nit-picky. In the interest of fair play, we invite you to submit examples of that from previous columns. Submit to eliot@eliotkleinberg.com!

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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

Sports edition…

Special thanks to Bob Michals and Jan Norris

Do you plan to make a playoff berth, or give birth?

Bruce Moore

Marlins? We wish.

Bruce Moore

Someone is not having a dominating grammar outing! (P.S.: Guardians’ needs an apostrophe.)

Nope. The past tense of lead is led.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 43: Lazy! https://youtu.be/3y6r-xFW9Ig

Readers: In a commercial for a medical supplement, a woman says, “before I took (product), I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do.” We could argue, does that mean she could do the things she didn’t want to do? Or are we nitpicking? Readers: Weigh in!

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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 62: Say it. Don't Spray It. Part Two

 

unsplash.com

 

Last time, we gave you a tip sheet on how to properly pronounce important words of people, places, and things. Our list contained examples that regularly get mispronounced. We’re looking at you. Here are some more.

Wrong Right

  1. Kissimmee, Florida KISS-ih-mee kih-SIM-mee

  2. Laos (nation) LAY-ohs Louse

  3. Moscow, Russia MAHS-cow MOHS-koh

  4. Nevada (state) neh-VAH-duh neh-VADD-uh

  5. Niger (nation) NIGH-juhr nih-JERR

  6. Notre Dame (Cathedral in Paris) NOH-ter dame NOH-truh dahm

  7. Thames River (UK) Thames Tems

  8. Toledo, Spain toh-LEE-doh toh-LAY-do

  9. Uruguay YUH-reh-gway UHR-uh-why

  10. Worcestershire (sauce) War-ses-ter-shy-er Wooster-sheer

  11. Yosemite (national park) YOH-seh-MIGHT yoh-SEH-mitee

12. The Year 2009 Two thousand and nine Twenty-oh-nine
*(After all, the following year is twenty-ten, not two thousand and ten. And no one ever said, “July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-six.”)

Watch this on video: https://youtu.be/bK5GaUocSJA

Next time: Opposites attract.

Items before the Assizes:
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! On the docket:

A reader recently pointed out that a politician used a term the press spelled “whack job.” The reader submits that “whack” refers to striking something, and “wack” is a corrupting of “wacky,” meaning a little off. So it should be spelled “wack job.” That’s what the dictionary says. But wait! The Associated Press stylebook, the bible of the “Horribly Wrong” team, says “whack job” is OK, although it notes it must be limited to quotes.

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

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

  2. 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

Happy Mothers’s Day!

Whats with apostrophe’s? Its a mystery!

Scott Simmons

Jan Norris

And we go to the video archives for Segment 44: Stew. https://youtu.be/4jZ3xJ9hN2I

Readers: Many of you have seen a TV commercial in which a woman says, “Age is just a number. And mine is unlisted.” Is that an anachronism? Back when people consulted phone books, or called “information” for someone’s phone number, you could arrange to remove your number from listings. Does anyone born in a year starting with “20” know about that? Or is the phrase permitted because of, well, the audience this commercial targets? Readers: Weigh in!

Readers have suggested at times that the “Horribly Wrong” team is just a bit too snarky, and a bit too nit-picky. In the interest of fair play, we invite you to submit examples of that from previous columns. Submit to eliot@eliotkleinberg.com!

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 61: Say it. Don't Spray it.

Over the course of "Horribly Wrong," our call-outs have been limited to the printed word. But as people who love accuracy, we tear our hair at the ways people butcher pronunciations of names, cities and countries. Some can be forgiven. Others are just plain dumb. After all, you wouldn’t say, “Cana-day.” So why do you say, “EYE-ran?”

NAME WRONG RIGHT

  1. Boca Raton, Fla. Boca ruh-TAHN Boca ruh-TONE

  2. Pete Buttigieg (U.S. Transportation Secretary) BOO-tuh-jeg Boot-edge-edge

  3. Cannes, France Cans Cahn

  4. Denali (National Park) Din-ALLEY dih-NAHL-ee

  5. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (President of Turkey). ERDO-gahn AIR-dwan

  6. Glasgow, Scotland GLASS-cow GLASS-goh

  7. Kathy Hochul (New York governor) HAW-chul HOH-kull

  8. Iran (nation) EYE-rann, ih-RANN ih-RAHN

  9. Iraq (nation) EYE-rack ih-ROCK

  10. Kamala Harris (Vice President). ku-MAH-luh KAW-mu-lah

  11. Kiev, Ukraine Key-ehv Keev

  12. Adam Kinzinger (U.S. congressman) KIN-ziger KIN-zing-er

Harris

Kinzinger

Watch this on video: https://youtu.be/tbDJcSLX5rs

Next time: More bad speech.

Items before the Assizes:
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! On the docket:

Longtime readers and occasional contributors Bob Yankowitz, Larry Reines, and Art Fyvolent have motions before the court.
Bob and Larry submit about our April 30 “Grammar Police” segment, in which we again point out “10 p.m. tonight” as a redundancy. Both said sometimes you need to differentiate between tonight and tomorrow night. The Rules Committee has argued that tight writing is about saying the same thing with fewer words. The problem is solved by saying just “10 tonight.”
In our Aug. 24, 2022, segment, "Unforced Errors," we said, "people making third-grader mistakes.” Art asked whether it should have been: "…third-grade mistakes,"  "...mistakes made by third graders," or "mistakes made by a child in the third grade.” The Rules Committee's Lou Ann Frala opines: “Without the hyphen, it could mean mistakes made by a third grader, meaning there were two graders before the third grader got to it. According to AP style (the Associated Press stylebook), it’s fine. According to me, gentle reader is right and it’s grammatically incorrect. Any of his suggested alternatives would be preferable.”

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

People have suggested at times that the “Horribly Wrong” team is just a bit too snarky, and a bit too nit-picky. In the interest of fair play, we invite you to submit examples of that from previous columns. Submit to eliot@eliotkleinberg.com!

No hyphen in “ice water.” More importantly — and we’ve pointed out this before — some probes are identical. So it should be, “not all probes are identical.”

Again: “p.m.” and “tonight” are the same thing. Pick one.

Again: This literally says $15 billion dollars dollars.

Again: Unique is an absolute. You can’t be more unique than anyone else.

When you use bullet points, they must be consistent. The first two are commands. So the rest must be as well. We also have cleaned up various grammar and punctuation mistakes. So:

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From the Rules Committee: Recently, a TV newscast referred to Russia’s “ongoing invasion” of Ukraine. We ask: Doesn’t an invasion happen only once? The Rules Committe'e’s Lou Ann Frala opines: “Seems to me there should be another word for the post-invasion period. ‘Ongoing occupation.’ ‘Ongoing war.’ ‘Ongoing conflict.’ ‘Ongoing onslaught.’ They had better options.“

And we go to the video archives for Segment 42: Unforced errors.

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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 60: The Most Horrible of "Horribly Wrong." So Far.

 
 

It’s our 60th Segment!

Readers: In the past two years, we’ve attempted to guide you to better writing. Some people wondered if we could find enough examples of bad writing, week after week, to fill our blog. Oh, ye of little faith!

By now, you’ve seen that we run segments every other week and post “Grammar Police” in the off week. Last week, we listed the best of five dozen reports by the Grammar Police. Today is our Oscars ceremony. Here are the most outrageous examples — up to now — from five dozen segments of “Something Went Horribly Wrong.”

1. From our Jan. 31, 2021, segment on redundant redundancies:

dreamstime.com

Hot water heater

This is one of our all-star goofs. It’s not a hot water heater! It’s just a water heater! It doesn’t heat hot water! Actually, it heats cold water!


2. From our Dec. 4, 2022, segment, in which we butchered the openings to classic novels:

“The era had resulted in the most positive of outcomes. But, paradoxically, it also had been the most unpleasant period.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

3. From our Sept. 12, 2021, segment, “Everybody Doesn’t Like Grammar.”

The bridge was ordered to be torn down. The dog was ordered to be euthanized. 

The dog and bridge weren’t ordered to do anything. Neither would listen, anyway. They’re a dog. And a bridge. Maybe you could order the dog to sit. People were “ordered to euthanize the dog” and “directed to tear down the bridge.”

4. From our June 20, 2021 segment on newspaper goofs:

An unidentified suspect robbed the bank. Later, Robert DeNiro was arrested. He is suspected of being the suspect who is suspected of robbing the bank. 

In Eliot’s four-plus decades of reporting, much of it about crime, nothing was more infuriating than this one. We found the mistake in old radio shows dating to the 1930s. A suspect is someone who is suspected of something. Duh. A suspect doesn’t rob a bank. A bank robber robs a bank. Later, when police begin to believe Robert DeNiro robbed the bank, only then does Bob become the suspect. If police say a suspect robbed a bank, ask of what he was suspected when he did so. And “unidentified suspect” is impossible. Also, once DeNiro is charged, he’s not even the suspect any more. He’s the defendant.

5. From our Aug. 15, 2021, segment on the maligned comma:

When you separate phrases with a comma, you’re using it to substitute for words you don’t want to repeat. It makes for tight writing, which we love. But you have to use it right! Otherwise you create a grammatical mess. We see the same mistake a lot. In nearly every case, adding “or” or “and” in the appropriate spot fixes the sentence. For some reason we don’t understand, the greatest offenders in this regard are commercials for drugs, specifically in the usage warnings. We’re guessing this is wording the federal government requires. Sure wish those bureaucrats in Washington included someone with a basic grip on grammar. Here’s an example (To avoid a nasty call from a lawyer, we replaced the drug’s real name with that of a stimulant used in “Star Trek”):

“WARNING: Do not take Formazine if you are nursing, pregnant or may become pregnant.”

Here’s what that sentence literally is saying:

• Do not take Formazine if you are nursing.
• Do not take Formazine if you are pregnant.
• Do not take Formazine if you are may become pregnant.

Is that what the makers of “Formazine” wanted to say? We suspect it’s not. This is correct: ”WARNING: Do not take Formazine if you are nursing or pregnant or may become pregnant.”

6. From our Jan. 30, 2022, segment on misplaced modifiers:

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

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

7. From our March 27, 2022, segment on the dangers of using foreign phrases and images:

“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 tolerate this faux pas. 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.”

8. From our Dec. 18, 2022, segment on cowardly writing:

"It’s a safe bet that Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino might break the NFL career passing yards record.”

It’s not just a safe bet. That he might break the record is absolute fact. That he WILL break the record is the maybe.

9. From our Jan. 31, 2021, segment on redundant redundancies:

Convicted felon; ex-felon; ex-convict

If you’re a felon, you already are convicted. And you never are an ex-felon or an ex-convict (unless your original conviction is overturned). What the writer probably intended is that the person was an ex-inmate or ex-prisoner.

10. From our Nov. 20, 2022, segment, “More bad TV:”
“Returning now to our breaking news on last week’s shooting…” 
“We have breaking details.”
“Watch out for breaking traffic.”

The term “breaking news,” sadly, has become meaningless, and is hovering dangerously close to being a cliché, if it has’t gotten there already. And don’t start with “breaking details” or “breaking traffic.” Those make no sense. They’re what we call “cliché creep.” But “breaking news” is the primary offender. Four days after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, TV still was calling it “breaking news." It still was the biggest story, but it wasn’t breaking news. This is: A plane just crashed. People just were shot at a bus station. The U.S. Senate just passed a historic vote. The CEO of a major corporation just resigned. Two hours later, it’s not breaking news, unless another plane crashed, another shooting occurred, another historic vote took place, or another CEO quit. Supplemental developments — plane passengers arrived at the hospital, buses started running again, the Senate took a dinner break, or the CEO was seen leaving his office carrying a cardboard box — are NOT breaking news. They still are big news, but they are not breaking news. This might sound like a lot of judgment calls. It is. That’s why newspaper metro editors and TV producers get big bucks. But these days, most of the time , when TV says “breaking news,” it just isn’t.

11. From our Jan. 30, 2022, segment on misplaced modifiers:

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? Sadly, that is not what happened here. He beat his girlfriend. Almost to death.

12. From our July 3, 2022, segment, “More Lightning Bugs:”

TV commercial: "Science projects for kids 0-16." 
Church notice: "During services, we provide child care for children from birth to 8."

What exactly would be age 0? And is the church expecting babies to come to their care straight from the birth canal? Say "Science projects for kids up to 16." And, "child care for children up to 8."

13. From our May 8, 2022 segment on sports goofs:

“The pitcher has been scuffling his last few games.”

This horrible, horrible malaprop must have snuck into the country with the coronavirus!  What the headline writer wanted to say is that the pitcher has been “struggling.” As in not doing so great. A “scuffle” is a fight, usually just shoving, between two guys at a bar. 

14. From our Dec. 19, 2021, segment, “Disqualifiers: Anatomy:”

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.

15. From our Jan. 31, 2021, segment on redundant redundancies:

Pickup truck.

Also one of our favorite goofs. A pickup is a type of truck. You wouldn’t say “a sedan car” or “a yacht boat.” Just say pickup. Really. You can.

16. From our Aug. 1, 2021, segment, “Only, Only, Only,”

A national insurance company says in its commercials, “Only pay for what you need.” We suspect the firm has gotten emails from outraged English professors across the country. A cynic might theorize the company knowingly did it wrong to be provocative and draw attention. So, which of the following is correct?

A. Only pay for what you need. 
B. Pay only for what you need. 
C. Pay for what you only need. 
D. Pay for what only you need.
E. Pay for only what you need.

In this case, E is correct. A, the version the company uses in its commercials, would suggest you neither eat, sleep or breathe; you do just one thing: Pay for what you need.

17. From our June 20, 2021, segment, “Newspapers Goof Too:”

His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit to be driving drunk.. 

Another all-star goof. The level was three times the legal limit to NOT be driving drunk. “Limit” means top end. Say, “His blood alcohol level was three times the legal minimum for impairment.” Or “threshold.”

18. From our Jan. 30, 2022, segment on misplaced modifiers:

Tuna fish. 

Steak beef. Chicken poultry. Zucchini vegetable. Coffee beverage. Now don’t you feel stupid about all the times you’ve said, “tuna fish?”

19. From our May 9, 2021, segment on TV News:

The residents of the nursing home had to be evacuated.

“Evacuated” is another one TV gets wrong pretty regularly. “Evacuate” means to empty. You evacuate a town or an arena. Evacuating people is something in the realm of gastroenterology. One morning, TV breathlessly reported that a nursing home had caught fire and that “the residents all had to evacuate.” Bet they did.

Watch this on video: https://youtu.be/4lmcGQSusSA

Next time: It’s all in how you say 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!

 

From the Grammar Police

The Grammar Police Rogues’ Gallery

IMDB

Readers: When we started “Something Went Horribly Wrong,” we scheduled our segments to post every other week, and in the off week, we’d post real-life examples of bad writing, as submitted by our “Grammar Police.” As we approach our 60th (!!) “Horribly Wrong” segment next week, today we bring you the most outrageous “Grammar Police” submissions. Well, up to now. We expect to find plenty more as we go. Remember: We don’t identify sources, because our goal is not to humiliate, but to teach.

From June 26, 2022: We covered this in an August 2021 segment on the maligned comma. Correct: “Do not use if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant or while you are breastfeeding.”

From May 29, 2022: Here’s another bad comma assembly. Should be, “on foot, on a bike, or via horse-drawn carriage.” The rest is fine. Oh no! Wait! We missed one! The island is the size of a doormat?

From June 26, 2022: Well, yeah, the waiter said sheepishly. Should be “fried goat cheese balls.”

From May 15, 2022: OK. It’s a contentious subject. That’s no excuse for cowardly writing. This is the old double qualifier. The first sentence is correct. Not the second. “Suggests” already is a qualifier. You don’t need “could.” A better phrasing would be: “Draft opinion says court would overturn Roe v. Wade.” (PS: While “vs.” is OK for sporting events, the writing “style” for court cases is just “v.” with a period.)

From Nov. 14, 2021: This ad doesn’t know who’s who. Both sentences refer to the potential customer, not the jeweler. Change the first sentence to “How much is your jewelry worth?”

From Oct. 3, 2021: While researching newspaper archives for a project unrelated to “Horribly Wrong,” our team discovered the same mistakes it finds now. This is from 1935! When it comes to bad grammar, when will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

From Oct. 31, 2021: Aargh! It’s Santa! Already! And while he might know how to make a list, these folks don’t. Here’s what this says:
Santa said you were naughty.
Santa said you were nice.
Santa said you were laughed out loud.
Correct:
Santa:
Said you were naughty
Said you were nice.
Laughed out loud.

From Sept. 5, 2021: This literally says, “ten million dollars dollars.”

From Oct. 31, 2021: The horror of the misplaced modifier! Sounds like the quiet and careful observer is very skittish! Apparently, observers also prefer to hunt at night and sleep during the day.

From Aug. 22, 2021: These guys want to change how time works. Just say, “…leaves every 20 minutes starting on the hour.”

CNN

From Nov. 28, 2021: We give cops a break, since they don’t have to be great writers. But this one's a doozy. Under what circumstances would someone consent to being run over?

From Jan. 9, 2022: This came up when the same thing happened to former President Trump. “Suspend” implies something temporary, so “permanently suspends” is wrong. Just say “bans.” Actually, it might be more accurate to say “suspends indefinitely," because we can’t say Twitter won’t later change its corporate mind.

From Feb. 6, 2022: This headline is saying no city is able to get a train station. Huh? Say, “Not every city gets a train station.”

 

From June 13, 2021: This literally says 99 hundredths of a penny.

 

From Nov. 14, 2021: One. One. One in nine Americans faces food insecurity.

Tom Peeling

From May 2, 2021: We’re afraid to look!

And we go to the video archives for Segment 41: TV, TV, TV. https://youtu.be/7Hf1c_2g7PQ

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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 59: A Second Set of Eyes

 

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Over the history of "Horribly Wrong," we've called out people for their embarrassing mistakes. Many of those goofs should have been obvious to the writer. But our readers remind us that even "Horribly" has a Rules Committee to catch its brain freezes and to make grammatical judgment calls. Eliot has recounted the many times over his three-plus decades as a reporter at the Palm Beach Post when Lou Ann, on the copy desk, pretty much saved his career.

Some companies and government entities can afford professional proofreaders. But smaller firms, and individuals, don't have that luxury.

That does not mean you can't get help. The internet is full of freelance proofreaders who charge reasonable fees to clean up your messes. Or you could engage a local English teacher or writer — or, better, a retired one — to take a quick look, perhaps for as little as lunch or even coffee.

Sometimes printing out the piece, and walking around the room reading it, does the trick. Sometimes it’s dropping it into an email, and thus seeing it in a different place.

And surely sure there’s a psychological or even physical human trait that leads you to look over your work and decide it’s perfect, then hand it to an editor, and even as he’s editing it, you look over his shoulder and see all the things you need to change.

Eliot often joked that he should bring in to work a big Raggedy Ann doll, and after finishing a story, get up, drop it in his chair, look past it to the computer screen, and say, “Move that paragraph!”

But the best way is through a second set of eyes.

It could be your spouse or partner, or a friend. It doesn’t take a writing expert. Just someone who sees your writing from, well, a different angle.

Another good tool to have is humility. An editor’s work on your writing is not a personal attack! Eliot begged for editing. Because he knew it would make his story better.

When Eliot worked on edits for Black Cloud, his book on the great 1928 Florida hurricane, he spent an hour on the phone with a copy editor. (This was 2003, before we did everything on the internet.) She was meticulous, pointing out not just grammatical errors or passive writing but also places where moving a paragraph made a big difference.

Naturally, at the end of the session, the chapter in question was terrific. As writers say, it sang.

The editor said, “Umm, I hope all my criticism didn’t offend you.”

Eliot told her: “Look. Some of the people with whom you work are prima donna authors. I’m a newspaper guy. We can’t afford onion skin. Every day we write something we think will cause a reader to fall to her knees at the kitchen table and weep. And we hand it to an editor who says, ‘I have only so many minutes left in my life, and I had to spend some of them on this.’"

Watch this on video: https://youtu.be/MkWtPCuGaQU

Next time: The worst of the worst.

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

Proofreaders wanted!

We’ve said that typos happen. That’s why we don’t identify guilty parties. As always, we laugh not at them but with them. We’ll say it again: Editors shouldn’t make these mistakes. But, frankly, they’re overwhelmed. 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!)

How about bandanna?

Don’t forget to record your purhcase! (Note: The misspelled headlines continued for several weeks before they were fixed. )

You want to spell the moth right.

Bruce Moore

Honcho.

Typo alert! Good news for journalists that it was fixed later (right).

NOTE: As retired journalists —actually, you’re a journalist for life — the Horribly Wrong team says it’s no mistake that attacks on journalists, whether by rogues or governments, pose a serious threat to peoples’ right to know anywhere in the world. In 2022, at least 67 journalists and media workers were killed globally. That’s the highest number since 2018 and nearly double the total for 2021. We salute our incredibly brave colleagues.

Items before the Assizes:
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! On the docket:
A reader submitted this headline: “New-look offensive line trying to jell.” The reader asked whether it is “jell” or “gel.” Our Rules Committee says “jell” is defined as “to take shape and achieve distinctness: become cohesive,” so the headline is correct.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 40: More clichés coming out your ears. https://youtu.be/AcsAxDk5Fxo

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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 58: Hundred-Dollar Words and Ten-Dollar Words

eBay,com

eBay,com

A hundred-dollar word isn't worth a nickel. And a ten-dollar word is worth a million bucks.

Hundred-dollar words are fancy words that will make you wonder if the writer's just showing off. Don’t just take our word for it. Here’s famed columnist and grammarian James J. Kilpatrick: “Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.”

One big-city newspaper assembled its own list of the words its readers most often had to look up. Is that something about which you'd be proud? If you're a reader of this blog, we're going to give you credit for having more than a third-grade education. If you don't understand some of these words, we'll argue they have no business in a daily paper. Here are the top ten. We saved you time and looked them up for you (see links.)

1. Inchoate
2 Profligacy
3. sui generis
4. Austerity
5. Profligate
6. Baldenfreude
7. Opprobrium
8. Apostates
9. Solipsistic
10. Obduracy

Now look at the opening to Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451. It, well, blazes with ten-dollar words. Somehow, you don’t need to look them up.

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“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.”

A lot of words are somewhere in between the hundred-dollar and the ten-dollar. Our best advice: Find your voice.

Watch this on video: https://youtu.be/OIbEVkRo0qQ

Next time: In praise of editors.

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

These clichés were wrong the first time we pointed them out, and they’re wrong now. By definition, destiny and fate are things that cannot be controlled.

There’s that bad comma splice again, you’d think they’d catch on by now, there has to be a period there, you knew that,

I’ll have the soup.
Which soup?
I said I’ll have the soup.
Which soup?
Aha! *

*(Cynics: No, soups weren’t further down or on the other side of the menu. Funny thing, the waiter said that, yes, they had soup. Chicken soup. Not as good as Eliot’s mother’s. Not in the same category.)

Did they mean the committee announced today that its final meeting will be Monday? Or that on Monday it will announce the date of its final meeting? We’re pretty sure it’s the first one. And we know the graphics operators have limited space. But this one needed work.

We presume these guys meant “shingle” and someone just made a typo. Just to be sure, we looked up ''smingle.” Found it in urban dictionary. It means “available for dating.” Might be one of this roofer’s services, but probably not.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 39: Lightning strikes again. https://youtu.be/8vgBB189QNY

Items before the Assizes:
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! On the docket:
 Loyal reader and occasional contributor Neal Horner respectfully submits for consideration: “My pet peeve is what I think is misuse of the term ‘reform’ or ‘reforms’ with regard to changes to laws. The press using the word ‘reform’ says it is generally accepted that the changes in law actually ‘improve’ the the law. Usually what is termed a ‘reform‘ is making it worse for many people, so ‘change’ would be a better, unbiased term to use instead of ‘reform.’"
The Horribly Wrong team would contend that reforms can be good or bad, but it’s only much later that such a conclusion can be made. Which means no matter how you feel about it, you can’t call it that now. We therefore CONCUR.

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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 57: Not so fast!

 

Amazon.com

 

Readers: We spend a lot of time explaining grammar goofs. Today we highlight words and phrases that appear to be wrong, or which have been pointed out as wrong, but really are correct! Most of these are alleged oxymorons.

  1. Assistant supervisor: You can have various levels of supervisors. Probably more than you need.

  2. Uninvited guest: If he’s in your house, he technically is a guest, whether you invited him or not.

  3. Dry lake: OK as long as it once was a wet lake.

  4. Forward lateral: The quarterback intended it to be a lateral. Instead, it was a penalty.

  5. Jumbo shrimp: This gets into the very nature of size adjectives. It describes an item only in relation to like items! Small shrimp. medium shrimp, large shrimp, jumbo shrimp. A skirt is much bigger than a shrimp. But no one has a problem with “miniskirt.”

  6. Highly depressed: See “jumbo shrimp.”

  7. Clearly confused: His confusion might not be clear to him, but it’s clear to you!

  8. Open secret: The phrase snidely points out that it was supposed to be a secret.

  9. Peaceful protest: Who said all protests must be violent?

  10. A small crowd: Crowds can be eight people or eight thousand.

Watch this on video: https://youtu.be/12-t1jqtMEw

Next time: Hundred-dollar words and ten-dollar words

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

We keep telling you. But do you listen?

Way back in Segment 26, on Jan. 2, 2022, we argued that crude writing is, in most cases, bad writing. Our ears can handle the coarse phrases and imagery. But they just make us feel, well, dirty. And expose the writer as lazy. We especially are bothered by people who use euphemisms and forgot, or actually don’t know, what they really mean. Look at this popular comic strip. You just remembered a pair of what. Didn’t you? And now this is doubly unsuitable. Because it uses a really crass term. And because these are not things you can grow. Especially if your name is Tiffany.

In Segment 51, “Maybe,”on Dec, 18, 2022, we talked about cowardly writers who use too many qualifiers. In this case, the former president potentially is included in the indictment recommendations. In fact, any of the dozens of people who were even tangentially connected to the investigation “potentially” is included. “Potentially” is a pretty low bar.

Our Aug. 1, 2021, segment covered the problem of putting “only” in the wrong place. This sentence suggests that after Trump refused to comply, the DOJ didn’t write him or have breakfast or watch TV. The agency only searched his home. Correct: “DOJ searched Trump’s home only after he refused to comply.”

We dealt with this hyphen in our May 8, 2022, segment on sports. Doors open at 11 a.m. Doors are open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pick one.

wwwtheastrolab.com

We’ve pointed this out before. No matter how you season it, .75 cents still is three-fourths of a penny.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 38: The greatest movie of all time. https://youtu.be/kjUVA87ZLbY

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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 56: Back to School

 

Unsplash,com/Marcus Winkler

 

In case you are wondering whether the “Horribly Wrong” team, at least half of it, came late to the issue of good writing/bad writing:

Recently, Eliot came across a paper he wrote in April 1977 (!!!) for a Journalism 301 class at the University of Florida. It was “BLOOPERS: Sloppy editing and its ramifications.” Talk about “The more things change, the more they stay the same!”

(An aside: Eliot was a grammar policeman even then. When guys in his frat pinned to the bulletin board notes about a concert ticket for sale, or an upcoming social, or a need for a ride home for spring break, Eliot would take a red pen to them. Honest. Made him real popular.)

Eliot’s “Bloopers” essay is no Elements of Style. But it has something in common with that revered tome: Goofs are not new. That doesn’t excuse them. In nearly a half century of writing, Eliot himself has made his share.

In JM 301, there wasn’t a lot of leeway. Students used actual police reports or other documents to write a news story. Eliot’s paper notes, and he grimly recalls, that a story turned in with a typo — recall we still used typewriters! — was an automatic one-grade drop. And any fact error — it could be a simple misspelling of a name — earned an automatic failing grade. (For some reason, UF used “E” instead of “F.” It allowed professors to smugly advise that a student should have been a little more diligent and was getting an “E for easy.”)

Eliot’s paper acknowledges what "Horribly Wrong" is saying decades later: “As has been seen in this class, some slip-ups can often be very humorous. But they can also be damaging and dangerous." (Yes. Grammatically, it should be “often can” and “also can.” Is there a statute of limitations?)

The essay gave some examples Eliot had found in area newspapers. Among them:

  • A story said Eastern Airlines (remember them?) changed a Miami-to-Gainesville flight from 7:15 p.m. to 7:05 p.m. But the story said 7:15 a.m. (No self-respecting college student would be up at that hour.)

  • A story said, "Women can obtain abortions if pregnancy is after 14 months." Biology 101 anyone?

  • A headline misspelled then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle as “Roselle.”

  • A series of news briefs included a 30-below-zero reading in Minneapolis and an anti-gay effort in Florida. The headline writer, desperate to be clever, wrote, "The Cold and the Gay."

  • A multi-deck headline ended up in the wrong order:

Stathe Plans
To Bring
And Plaza
Downtown
Back to Life

Eliot’s paper also says, "A story that has been written well but gets hurt by a typo or poor layout is not fair to the reporter who worked so hard to get his story right." In his ensuing career, Eliot lost some of his conceit, as he learned the hard way that far more often, it was the other way around. It was the editor who caught Eliot's goofs, thus averting catastrophe and saving Eliot from a dressing-down, or worse. Many times at The Palm Beach Post, that editor was none other than Lou Ann Frala, the "Horribly Wrong" Rules Committee.

PS: Eliot’s paper got a B-plus.

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

Next time: Not so fast!

 

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

 
 

“New?” Ummm, something you guys want to tell us?

We continue our challenge of “around the corner.” This email dropped Jan. 25. The NCAA Tournament starts March 14. That’s 48 days. Seven weeks. Nearly two months. Again we ask: How close must something be to be “around the corner?” Readers?

For the operators of this hotel, “Men’s Room” just didn’t look right. So they took the awkward step of scratching out the apostrophe. You can see the space. But Men’s is correct. It’s not Mens,’ because Men already is plural. And it sure isn’t just Mens. To aggravate things, the operators decided that on the other side of the alcove, Women’s was just fine. Go figure.

You do a great job making chairs, why don’t you make sure to end sentences in periods, don’t end a sentence in a comma, thank you.

Everyday is an adjective meaning common, which probably isn’t what you intended. The sign suggests breakfast gets interesting only after 10:30 a.m. (It actually goes away after 10:30 a.m.) No. You want folks to come to your fast-food place for a great breakfast every day!
Also, this place’s do-it-yourself ordering kiosk had a button to checkout. Should it say check out? This is a judgment call, because checkout is a noun for a place to check out, so maybe that’s what they meant.
One more item: while the place spells breakfast right on this big sign, on a smaller sign out front, it spells it break fast. While yes, the definition of breakfast is in fact, breaking a fast, we suspect you didn’t mean that. A loyal reader pointed out the folks behind the sign might have been trying to be clever, as in accentuating “fast.” We aren’t so sure. Note: You might spot these goofs yourselves. This is a chain with locations across North America. Remember, Grammar Police: if you see something, send it in!

And we go to the video archives for Segment 37: Homophones! https://youtu.be/IbiDXmT8y8w

Items before the Assizes:
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! On the docket:
Longtime reader and loyal Grammar Police contributor Dr. Baruch Kahana submits this newspaper headline from the Feb. 13, 2023, tragedy at Michigan State University: “Three dead, multiple injured.” He asks the Rules Committee to distinguish between multiple and many.
The Modern Language Association of America’s MLA Style Center suggests “many” for things happening over time and “multiple” for things that happen at the same time. So, “many shootings in 2022” but “multiple injured at Michigan State.”
The Rules Committee’s Lou Ann Frala says:
“While I can accept the MLA’s ruling, I have to say ‘multiple injured’ looks wrong. It grates on the ears. If the number of injured was not known or not revealed, I understand the hedging, but my immediate sense would be that “many injured” would be preferable.”

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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 55: Hiding in Plain Sight

 

Unsplash

 

Readers: It’s bad enough that people use clichés. Sometimes they have no clue what they’re saying. They certainly don’t know the phrase’s origin. Some clichés are anachronisms, which we covered in previous segments. Some have obvious origins. Others, not so much.

1. Hue and Cry. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary,  it can be traced to the Old French words hue, meaning "outcry" or "noise," and cri, meaning "cry." 

2. Rank and File. According to Dictionary.com, “This phrase comes from military usage, where enlisted men march in ranks (close abreast) and files (one behind another), whereas officers march outside these formations.”

3. Right wing/Left wing. According to History.com, in the events leading up the French Revolution, “anti-royalist revolutionaries seated themselves to the presiding officer’s left, while the more conservative, aristocratic supporters of the monarchy gathered to the right.”

4. Win hands down. According to MentalFloss.com, in horse racing, “if you’re way ahead of everyone else, you can relax your grip on the reins and let your hands down.”

University of North Texas

5. Over the transom. You might hear a writer say he wasn’t optimistic about an agent reading his manuscript because he sent it cold. He'll say he submitted it “over the transom.” In the days before air conditioning, this was a small window that remained open for ventilation even when an office was locked up for the day. The idea was that a publisher — or agent — would find the thing when he/she opened for the morning. And good luck with that.

6. Loose cannon. According to The Phrase Finder, on warships, a cannon that broke free on deck was a double threat: firing a shot into the crew or running someone over.

U.S. Navy

7. Fly off the handle. According to Reader’s Digest, the heads of poorly made axe heads sometimes flew off in use, leading to a phrase that describes dangerous behavior with unpredictable results.

National Hardwood Lumber Association

8. Knock on wood. This expression for luck, usually said after a wishful statement, is believed to stem from any of a number of tales about trees holding spirits that would grant wishes, or evil spirits who could block wishes unless confronted. Some Christians link it to the wood of the cross of Crucifixion.

9. Without further ado. What’s ado? According to Grammarist.com, it’s a contraction of “at do,” a “Middle English term meaning trouble, fighting or conflict. In time the word ado came to mean a fuss, hubbub, or trivial chaos.” Remember Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing? OK. So why the heck do emcees, before introducing someone, say, “Without further hubbub?”

10. Phone it in. Mail it in. Most people probably could figure this out if they thought about it. You’re communicating by phone or mail because you’re too lazy to come down in person. It’s become a metaphor for making the most minimal effort.

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/aMkitBA7YTE

Next time: Back to school.

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

Nope. When the Jags make a comeback, they come back.

We tell you again: You fall through the cracks. The part between the cracks is the floor. You can’t fall through that.

Ever have been on a plane that diverted? How about one that had an emergency landing? They are not the same. When you divert, you are flying just fine; you just need to land somewhere other than your planned destination, due to weather or maybe an unruly or ill passenger. If you are making an emergency landing, it means something’s really wrong, and you have to land now. Right now. And it might not end well. This flight just was diverted. It landed just fine.

Passer-bys? No. Passers-by,
Attorney generals? No. Attorneys general.
Secretary of States? No. Secretaries of State.
Court-martials? No. Courts-martial.
Brother-in-laws? No. Brothers-in-law.

Whoops. This is correct! We thought for sure there was no apostrophe. But the Associated Press Stylebook, the bible of the “Horribly Wrong” Rules Committee, has decreed this acceptable. We yield to the AP.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 36: One word or two? https://youtu.be/6fobNDldgjU

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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 54: Your government at work

 
 

Readers: Last year, Gary Comp of Sarasota sent us a memo he’d been saving for more than two decades. It was from his supervisor in the local government agency where Gary once worked. Only a bureaucrat could write a memo complaining about bad writing, and fill it with bad writing! Extraneous capitalizations, misspelling, grammatical mistakes and unintelligible wording. Yikes.

In 1975, Eliot’s first year of college, he was floored when a political science professor asserted there were not three but four branches of government. The known three: executive (president), legislative (Congress) and judicial (courts). The fourth: the bureaucracy.

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We’ve talked about the breathless excess of TV news and the hurts-my-brain vocabulary of the corporate world. Today we tackle government bureaucracy, which — on your dime — regularly spits out items that either state the obvious or are hopelessly unintelligible. It seems there’s nothing in between.

In 2010, the federal government passed the Plain Writing Act. That should have done it. Right.

These are actual things said by local, state or federal agencies:

  • “We are monitoring the situation.”
    Hello, Captain Obvious! Also, weather always is in the area! And, oh yeah: It’s “updated.”

  • “We’ll provide more information as soon as it becomes available.”
    Good thing they don’t provide information before it becomes available.

  • “Our goal: To drive a continuous improvement culture of excellence that achieves a measurably high level of public satisfaction.”

  • “A proud, proactive, progressive team committed to innovation and leadership through the provision of services enhancing the quality of life in our community.”

  • “(Entity) will continue to be a healthy and progressive community that supports development opportunities, lifestyle quality and open, flexible governance.”

NBC

  • “Please listen carefully, as our telephone options recently have changed.”
    This nearly always is a lie to get you to pay attention; many agencies run this same “recently changed” warning for months.“

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/chCLmG9egoY

Next time: Hiding in plain sight.

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!