Grammar

Oh, dopey me. I thought that poachers were stealing turtle eggs in Costa Rica. But according to Yahoo! News it’s the turtles that are doing the poaching: Filed under: Hyphens, Punctuation Tagged: editing, hyphen, incorrect punctuation, proofreading, Punctuation, punctuation errors, punctuation mistakes, Yahoo!, Yahoo! News

The phrase Netflix adultery popped out at me when I read this Maureen O’Connor column in New York magazine. Netflix adultery is when you secretly watch a show that you had promised to watch with your partner. A quick Googling shows that O’Connor didn’t coin the term, but it is quite recent. There are numerous hits from various sites, all within the last two weeks. I immediately though to of the construction _____ porn, as in food porn or war porn, and wondered if there were other similar _____ adultery terms. Sure enough, Urban Dictionary has movie adultery going back to 2004. Urban Dictionary also records soapdultery from 2008, although that is slightly different in that entails watching a different soap opera. Is Netflix adultery going to catch on? (As a term, that is; as a phenomenon it’s inevitable.) Or is it just a flash in the pan, a flurry of articles about a topic the media is temporarily interested in? [Discuss this post]

Q: Why do fund raisers on public radio ask for help with the “programming,” rather than the “programs”? I’ve always thought of broadcast programming as the act of scheduling or arranging programs. What are your thoughts? A: We checked a half-dozen British and American dictionaries about the use of the word “programming” in its broadcasting sense. The results? The trend seems to be toward using “programming” broadly to mean the programs as well as the arranging of the programs. For example, the fourth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines “programming” in the broadcast sense as the “designing, scheduling, or planning of a program, as in broadcasting.” But the new fifth edition of American Heritage adds another sense: “Broadcast programs considered as a group: the network’s Thursday night programming.” The other American dictionary we consult the most, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), has this definition: “the planning, scheduling, or performing of a program.” Among British references, the Collins English Dictionary has only one definition—the one you’re peeved about: “television programmes collectively.” But another British source, the Macmillan English Dictionary, defines it as more broadly as both “the planning and development of television or radio programmes” as well as “the programmes that a particular television or radio station broadcasts.” What do we think? We feel it’s OK to use either “programming” or “programs” to refer collectively to shows on radio or TV. The use of the word “programming” in the broadcast sense first showed up in the mid-1920s, according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary. However, the term has been used since the 1890s for the writing of program notes and the scheduling of programs for events or performances. You may be surprised that the noun “program” has been around since the 1600s, according to written examples in the OED. At first, it meant a notice displayed in public, then a written preface or commentary, and later a planned series of activities or events. The OED’s first example of “program” used in the sense of a broadcast presentation is from the March 10, 1922, issue of Variety: “Among the theatres which will provide acts exclusively for the ‘Star’s’ radio programs are the Shubert, Orpheum … Royal and 12th streets.” English adopted the word from programma, late Latin for a proclamation or edict, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, but the ultimate source is the classical Greek word for a written public notice. Why is the word spelled “program” in the US and “programme” in the UK? You can blame the French—or, rather Francophile Brits—for the UK spelling. The word used to be spelled “program” on both sides of the Atlantic, according to the OED, but in Britain the “influence of French programme led to the predominance of this spelling in the 19th cent.” Check out our books about the English language

Roni Caryn Rabin, "No Easy Choices on Breast Reconstruction", NYT Blogs 5/20/2013: A syndrome called upper quarter dysfunction — its symptoms include pain, restricted immobility and impaired sensation and strength — has been reported in over half of breast cancer survivors and may be more frequent in those who undergo breast reconstruction, according to a 2012 study in the journal Cancer. [emphasis added] Reader E.S.M. wondered whether "restricted immobility" should have been "restricted mobility" or "partial immobility" or something else. Some evidence for this view comes from Margaret L. McNeely, et al., , "A prospective model of care for breast cancer rehabilitation: postoperative and postreconstructive issues", Cancer 2012 (which appears to have been one of Ms. Rabin's sources): The presence of upper quarter dysfunction (UQD), defined as restricted upper quarter mobility, pain, lymphedema, and impaired sensation and strength, has been reported in over half of survivors after treatment for breast cancer. And in general, "restricted mobility" seems to be quite common in scientific and technical writing, whereas "restricted immobility" is rare. Logically, "restricted mobility" is also "restricted immobility". "Restricted X" obviously has less of the natural properties of X than unrestricted X does, while still having some of them, and "restricted lack of X" also places us somewhere in the middle of the X scale. So perhaps this should be a free choice. But in phrases of the form "restricted X", we generally think of X as unrestricted in the normal state, with the restrictions as something added on in certain cases. The commonest nouns following restricted in the COCA corpus are stock, access, area, range, areas, airspace, use, zone, diet, model, shares, mobility, space, air, immigration, movement, sense, opportunities, set, data, ranges, … With the partial exception of "immigration", these collocates seem to confirm the notion that the unrestricted case is the normal one, with the restricted case being special. Combining this observation with the usage patterns in the technical literature, I'll tentatively conclude that E.S.M. is right.

Articles about English grammar in UK newspapers tend to exhibit an almost incredible degree of stupidity. In no other subject could such self-contradictory idiocy be accepted, or subjected to so little fact-checking. Today's exhibit is an article headed "English like it never should of been" by Oliver Moody in Saturday's The Times (London, 18 May 2013; don't buy a subscription just to read an article as asinine as this, but click this link if you already have a subscription; if you wasted $2.50 on hard copy as I did, look at page 3). I will deal with just one example of its boneheaded ignorance, one out of many. This was the sub-head: "Language is becoming more democratic as even MPs fail to speak properly, a study from Cambridge reveals." So, it is "democratic" to speak improperly? And Members of Parliament are actually doing that? Intelligent readers will seek evidence. But there is no hint of any support for this nonsense in Moody's article. Just one thing is said in the article about how Members of Parliament speak today: Michael McCarthy (retired from a professorship in applied linguistics at the University of Nottingham) is quoted as saying there is a "growth toward informality" in modern English over the last 20 years as exemplified in the latest version of the 2 billion word Cambridge English Corpus, and: "We can listen to debates in Parliament and hear MPs saying things like ‘gonna’ instead of ‘going to’." But this isn't improper! It is evidence that some MPs are speaking what I have suggested we should call normal-style rather than formal-style Standard English in Parliamentary speeches, and accordingly they may pronounce the going to that indicates future time reference in the normal-style variant form [gənə]. Notice that there is a grammatical constraint on this: the substitution is never made when going to means "proceeding toward". So, for example, going to Germany does not have the same range of pronunciations as going to germinate. To be more specific, going to Germany is not pronounced *[gənəˈʤɜməni] in British English (or *[gənəˈʤɝməni] in American): the verb of motion going must be pronounced something like [goiŋ]. By contrast, going to germinate is optionally and very commonly pronounced [gənəˈʤɜmɪneit] in British ([gənəˈʤɝməneit] in American), in normal style speech. To say that if you use this special pronunciation option you "fail to speak properly" is lunacy. The truth is the opposite: you fail to speak the normal style of Standard English properly if you don't use [gənə]. Saying "I am not going to put up with it" with every vowel and consonant pronounced individually in its stressed form makes you sound like an extraterrestial ("Do. Not. Fear. Us. We. Will. Not. Harm. You"). Will there ever be enough linguistic training for journalists and editors that they at least know the difference between flawless command of normal-style Standard English on the one hand and grammatical error on the other?

The Tea Leaf Nation online magazine posted this article on May 19, 2013:  "VP Biden’s Penn Commencement Speech Inspires Viral Rant by ‘Disappointed’ Chinese Student."  The article, by Xiaoying Zhou, offers an excellent account of this tempest in a teapot (as it were), and the comments that follow it are also germane. Still, a closer look at what the angry student, Zhang Tianpu, actually wrote will help us put the controversy in a clearer perspective. Zhang's accusation against the Vice President appeared in an entry he posted on his renren.com (Facebook clone in China) account.  The entry is entitled "Bàid?ng B?ndà bìyèshì y?nji?ng bùhéshíyí de y?ugu?n Zh?ngguó bùfèn" ???????????????????? (Outmoded portion about China in Biden's graduation speech at Penn). Here are the two portions of Biden's speech about China to which Zhang took exception: I love to hear people tell me how to use the vernacular "China is going to eat our lunch." China is a great nation, and we should hope for the continued expansion. But ladies and gentlemen, their problems are immense, and they lack much of what we have. We have the best universities in the world. We have a legal system that is open and fair. We have the most agile venture capital system in the world. We lead the world in innovation and technology, all for a simple basic reason. Steve Jobs, speaking at Stanford was asked by a young man "how can I be more like you, how I can become like you?" And Job famously answered: think different. You CANNOT think different in a nation where you cannot breath free. You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy, because change only comes from challenging orthodoxy. … I spent 10 days with President Xi at the request of former president Hu and President obama…I listened to his questions and the interests he had and he asked me how I felt after the 5 days in the U.S. and 5 days in China. And I said he's a strong bright man, but he has the look of a man who is about to take on a job he's not at all sure is going to end well. I mean that seriously. These sections appear at 11:05 and 17:41 of Biden's speech as recorded on this YouTube video.  Although there are a few minor errors, I won't quibble with Zhang's transcription of the VP's speech, but should point out that the very first sentence makes a lot more sense if "to use the vernacular" is set off with commas or dashes. What is remarkable about Zhang's criticism of Biden's remarks is that he focuses so heavily on the VP's use of the word "nation" to refer to China: Bàid?ng zài “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy” zhè jù huà li yòng de shì nation zhège cí. Zhè y?di?n shì zuì ràng w? qìfèn de, y?nwèi Y?ngy? zhòng nation zh? de “mínzú” de yìsi, hé country, state shì y?u q?bié de. Country, state k?néng gèng qiángdiào de shì y?gè guóji? zh?ngt? de gàiniàn, shènzhì dài y?u zh? zhèngf? de yìsi; huàn jù huà shu?, rúgu? t? zhè jù huà li miàn yòng de shì country zhège cí, nàme jiù k?y? l?ji? wèi k?néng yóuyú zh?ngzh?ng wàibù y?nsù de zhìyu?, w?men mínzú de qiánlì méiy?u 100% de f?hu? ch?lái. ??? “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy” ???????nation????????????????????nation??“??”?????country?state?????? country, state????????????????????????????????????????????country???????????????? ???????????????????100%?????? In this sentence, “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy”, he used the word "nation".  This is what really infuriated me, because in English "nation" indicates "race, ethnicity", which is different from "country, state".  "Country, state" perhaps places more emphasis on the notion of the entirety of the country, even to the point of referring to the idea of government.  In other words, if he had used the word "country" in this sentence, then perhaps one could understand that, due to va

Hugh MacDiarmid is one of my oldest poetic lodestones; he was one of the first poets I quoted at LH, back in 2002, and I did so again a couple of years ago, but those were both examples of his early short poems in Scots, the poems almost everyone prefers ("We enjoy your films! Particularly the early, funny ones"). Today I feel moved to quote from a couple of his later, longer, less immediately lovable poems in standard English mixed with quotes from all over. I'll begin with his "In Memoriam James Joyce, from A Vision of World Language," a very long poem with a difficult publishing history (he wrote to Eliot in 1941 "You will remember the huge poem of mine you read a year or thereby ago. It was to have been published by the Obelisk Press, Place Vendôme, Paris; but the Fall of France quashed that project"; Eliot loved it but said "in this time when we are really being starved for paper it is works like this which must suffer," later calling it "a magnificent tribute to language"). It begins with a roll-call of those who have practiced epeolatry (OED: "The worship of words"):We who are concerned with 'the living whole Of all the poetry that has ever been written,' And the sodaliciis adstricti consortiis Of all the authors who have been, are, or will be, We remember Jacint Verdaguer whose Atlàntida and Canigó Did for Catalonia what Mistral's Mirèio did for Provence, And the Italian, Marco Girolamo Vida, Who duly figured in Chalmers' collection of British Poets (Trust the English to appropriate all they can !) [...] Rolfe with his tyrianthine style, diaphotick verse, Orchidaceous vocabulary, and his archellenisms, Argute, deaurate, investite, lucktifick, excandescence, Galbanate, effrenate, dicaculous, pavonine, torose, Hybristick, gingilism — Rolfe whose mantelpiece held A card inscribed Verro precipitevolissimevolmente, Hardy with words like lewth, leazes, dumble-dores, Spuds, cit, wanzing [...]Continue reading "EPEOLATORS ALL."

It’s not news to readers of  Yahoo! News that the writers and editors frequently make mistakes, including these that appeared at the same time on the same page: That is supposed to be “Star Wars,” of course. And the Barbie Dreamhouse is trademarked: And so is Ping-Pong: The common noun for the sport is “table tennis.” Filed under: Capitalizing, Hyphens, Punctuation, Wrong words Tagged: Barbie Dreamhouse, capitalization, editing, Ping-Pong, proofreading, punctuation errors, punctuation mistakes, Star Wars, trademark, typo, typos, wrong word, Yahoo!, Yahoo! News

I liked my first Booker’s bourbon box cacti planter (see previous post) so much that I made a second one, this time with even more succulents!

From Simon King: I am pleased to announce that the English section of this year's Blizzard Challenge listening test is now live. Please help us out by taking part, and encouraging your colleagues, students, friends, contacts, etc. to take part too. It's your chance to hear a range of speech synthesisers, including some really good ones. Please circulate this message widely - for example, on mailing lists, forums and using social media - we need to reach as many people as possible in the coming month or so. In order to participate, sign up here and follow the instructions.