Monthly Archives: February 2012

Noisome: Silent but Deadly

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Some words mean just what you think they mean. Quite a few, such as splash, clap, and kerplunk, even sound like what they mean. (This characteristic is called onomatopoeia which decidedly does not sound like what it means — it doesn’t even sound like it’s spelled!) No wonder, then, that it’s so easy to be fooled into thinking that a word that’s close to one you know has a similarly close meaning. I discussed one such word pair, full and fulsome, only yesterday.

Here’s another: noisy and noisome. They look and sound very much alike; so much so that one seems like little more than a highfalutin’ version of the other. Not so, although the definitions do in fact butt up against each other. Noise refers to sound that is loud, disturbing, or otherwise unpleasant. Its root, believe it or not, goes back to the Latin nausea.  Continue reading →

Fulsome Praise: an Oscar Staple

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A week ago, a man at the table next to me complimented his waiter on the restaurant’s “fulsome portions.” Having just asked for a doggy bag, I knew just what he meant. So did the waiter, who replied that the chef was known for piling the plates high. The waiter then glanced my way and gave me a quick eye roll. In that moment, he and I entered into a silent conspiracy. We agreed that it would be churlish — and in the case of the waiter, potentially costly — to mention that fulsome didn’t mean what the diner thought it did.

His mistake was rooted in the similarity of fulsome to full, and the natural assumption that they are therefore more-or-less synonymous. Had we been dining several hundred years ago, his assumption would have been correct. Fulsome meant abundant.

Today, fulsome now has a pejorative connotation, implying tasteless excess, especially when it comes to flattery, affection, and — as Oscar viewers know all too well — praise. Continue reading →

A Gym for Your Brain

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Bill Crystal - Born Entertainer

Verbal fluency appears to be a gift bestowed only on clever sorts who were born entertainers. (Think Billy Crystal at last night’s Oscars — and his ilk.) The rapid and reliable retrieval of words in service of razor sharp observations is a much admired trait in our society. Witness just about every sitcom, bromance, or stage comedy. Pausing to remember a name, title, or word kind of kills the moment. It also stymies writing flow. But you can develop or improve the propensity to wield snappy comebacks by practicing your verbal fluency. And sharpening your brain function overall. Continue reading →

Full of Shift

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Photo: Bartholomew Cooke

Associate professor at Oberlin Anne Trubek wrote a controversial article in the February issue of Wired  called “Proper Spelling? Its Tyme to Let Luce!” In it, she builds her argument about the perils of Autocorrect thusly:

1) Auto-correct is wreaking havoc, not just because of mistakes that are variably “adorable” (which becomes “affordable” with a slip of the left thumb), hilarious (“Wednesday” becomes an unintentional marriage proposal) or disastrous (“himm” becomes “Himmler”) — but because it is making us lazy.

2) Spelling is “a terrible mess” anyway, though, and only recently has became standardized.

3) “So, who shud tell us how to spel? Ourselves.” (I couldn’t even transcribe that sentence without the “damned” Autocorrect correcting “shud” to “shut” and “spel” to “spell,” thank you very much.)

4) Further: “The apostrophe requires an additional step on an iPhone, so we send text messages using ‘your’ (or ‘UR’) instead of ‘you’re’. And it doesn’t matter — the messagee will still understand our message.

What’s a terrible mess is this article, and this argument. There are so many holes and inconsistencies in it, I’m fighting a Swiss Cheese cliché. Continue reading →

Government Humor, nyuck nyuck

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The Federal Government is not widely known for its forays into the realm of humor. Indeed, the phrase “government humor” would fit comfortably on any list of oxymorons, especially one written during tax season. Imagine my surprise, then, to discover a humor section on the government’s own Plain Language web site. The site itself is intended to reinforce the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which requires that federal agencies use “clear Government communication that the public can understand and use.”

One of the site’s humor pages offers up a list of rules, titled “How to Write Good.” The list was written by ad man Frank L. Visco, and originally published in the June 1986 issue of Writers’ Digest. The list appears on several sites in addition to that of our government. Make sure, as you read each item, that you savor the irony — and don’t miss the one in the introductory sentence!

Continue reading →

I’m Not Judging You

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I’m not scolding you, either. But I will point out, for what seems like the zillionth time, that how you speak and write — i.e., the way you present yourself to the world — has an impact on the world’s opinion of you. With that in mind, I was gratified to stumble upon a Facebook group called “I judge you when you use poor grammar,” and to learn that it boasts a membership of more than 430,000 like-minded souls. Continue reading →

Lin-guistics Lessons

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Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s a Phoenix?

No. It’s a Knick. I first took notice when “Linsanity” started trending on Twitter. Then I heard Lin’s story on NPR. (There has to be a very long arm for a sports story to reach me.) And what a feel-good story it is: A Chinese basketball nobody rises — like a Phoenix — to become a worldwide somebody in just a week. It’s been Lincredible!

Yes, the combinative possibilities of Jeremy Lin’s last name have incited an near riot  of neologisms — newly coined words — and jumping in the fray is proving virtually irresistible. As a word meme, “It beats ‘Tebowing‘ for me,” says one panelist on the “What’s Trending” video cast, Real Time Conversation, where Lin-erisms get batted around like bad-Lin-ton birdies amidst gleeful “Linning” gestures — a photo fad with people forming fake nerd glasses with their hands around the eyes. Continue reading →

Comma Contest Results

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The number of entries in last Thursday’s comma contest didn’t cause too much congestion in the Ballpoint inbox, but the responses we did get were awfully clever. Just by way of an aide-mémoire, we asked for sentences whose meanings would be altered by the absence, presence, or positioning of a comma. On Friday we posted a four-word sentence — Stop clubbing baby seals — that, depending on punctuation, has four distinct meanings.

Here’s another example, which happens to be the title of a surprisingly successful book on punctuation: Eats, Shoots & Leaves. As originally punctuated, the phrase calls to mind a hunter (or, if you prefer, a photographer) who has a snack, takes a shot at his target, and then walks away. Remove the comma and a different story, one of a friendly herbivore, is told.

Then there’s the vintage story about a wife sending a cablegram from Europe to her husband for permission to buy a $75,000 bracelet. Her message ends “May I buy it?” His reply “No price too high” sent her into paroxysms of joy — and back to the jewelry store waving a wad of cash from the bank. Alas, the comma had been omitted — he’d’ meant to send this reply: ”No, price too high.”

Continue reading →

Diagram My Valentine

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www.English-Grammar-Revolution.com

Elizabeth O’Brien of English Grammar Revolution — Grammar the Easy Way — is our 2012 Valentine. We love how she took her insecurity in grammar and turned it into a strength. Her innovative and accessible approach to Sentence Diagrams is designed to help others who are teachers, writers, and copyeditors be more confident. Bravo for your work, Elizabeth. And thanks for the Puppy Love graphic!

Lovelace, from #OEDonline on Twitter: n.: A seducer, a libertine. Derives from the name of Robert Lovelace, a character in Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa (1747–8).

Colon Forth

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"Punctuation Personified"

No less than correct word and phrase usage, good punctuation can be critical to quickly grasping the meaning of a sentence, either outright or its possible nuances. Lately, we’ve focused on the common comma because its misuse is often so problematic in casual writing. (HAPPY NOTE: We’re giving you an extra day to enter our comma contest. Winners will receive a promo copy of Phrase Wit.)

Somewhat rarer in everyday writing (emails and texts), colons recently were the subject of one of our favorite language bloggers, Liz Bureman (“Liz here”) of The Write Practice, who writes with a self-professed grammatically correct snarkiness. (Is there any other way? Meow!) Her humorous opener in a recent post about the colon starts off snappily (if not snarkily): “We’re going to talk about the cousin of the semicolon, the colon. No, not that one. Gross.”