Grammar

It’s not the worst typo a writer can make, but it’s an easy one to spot if you’re writing about Ray Halbritter: Maybe the writer needs some assistance in the proofreading department: And editor who knows that either is singular and it’s is the contraction for it has would certainly help: But something is afoot at Yahoo! Sports‘ “Prep Rally”: There’s no proofreader or editor at hand. Filed under: Apostrophes, Confused Words, its/it's, Misspellings, Punctuation, Subject-Verb Agreement, Wrong words Tagged: afoot, apostrophe, bad grammar, bad spelling, Cameron Smith, Commonly confused words, editing, funny writing errors, funny writing mistakes, grammar, grammar errors, grammar mistakes, homophone, homophones, incorrect grammar, incorrect spelling, it's, misspelled celebrities, misspelling, Prep Rally, proofreading, Punctuation, punctuation errors, punctuation mistakes, Ray Halbritter, spelling, spelling error, spelling mistake, Subject-Verb Agreement, verb, wrong word, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Sports

This is another in my occasional series of posts bringing to light unjustly forgotten inhabitants of the byways of history (see, for instance, Sofya Engelgardt). Reading Catriona Kelly's excellent A History of Russian Women's Writing 1820-1992, I got to her discussion (pp. 152-3) of the disjunction a century ago between the Russian feminist movement (supported by writers in the realist tradition) and the Symbolist/Acmeist modernist crew ("not one Russian woman author of modernist prose or poetry manifested any interest in, or sympathy for, the debates around female emancipation in the feminist movement itself"); in a footnote she says "The critic and writer Zinaida Vengerova, one of those most instrumental in introducing Western modernist ideas to Russia, was another example of how the supporters of 'new arts' also had little interest in feminism." I was intrigued, and did a little digging; my main source of information is the invaluable Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (thanks to Look Inside, since I can't afford $234.60 even with FREE Shipping). Zinaida Afanasievna Vengerova (Russian Wikipedia) was born in 1867 in Helsinki (then, of course, part of the Russian Empire). She attended the Bestuzhev Courses in St. Petersburg and studied French literature at the Sorbonne; she also took courses in Vienna, England, and Italy, and met many of the leading lights of European literature. One of her first publications was the article "Poety-simvolisty vo Frantsii" [The symbolist poets in France]; Bryusov said it was a "revelation" that sent him to the bookstore to buy Verlaine, Mallarm?, Rimbaud, and Maeterlinck. She lived in London from 1908 to 1912, lecturing on Russian literature (and again in 1914, when her nephew, the director Alexander Tairov, stayed with her); she wrote articles in French (?Lettres russes?) for the Mercure de France (1897?99) and the Revue des revues and in English for the Saturday Review (1902?1903), introductions to the collected works of Schiller and Shakespeare, and a number of entries for Brockhaus and Efron (available at Lib.ru); her collected critical articles appeared in three volumes (titled Literaturnye kharakteristiki [Literary characteristics]) from 1897 to 1910, covering the pre-Raphaelites, Oscar Wilde, Ruskin, Ibsen, Gerhart Hauptmann, Emile Verhaeren, and of course the French symbolists, among others. And back in Petersburg she was an intimate part of the Gippius-Merezhkovsky circle; it was presumably around this time that she visited the Nabokov household on an occasion commemorated by VVN in the Paris Review interview:H. G. Wells, a great artist, was my favorite writer when I was a boy. The Passionate Friends, Ann Veronica, The Time Machine, The Country of the Blind, all these stories are far better than anything Bennett, or Conrad or, in fact, any of Wells's contemporaries could produce. His sociological cogitations can be safely ignored, of course, but his romances and fantasias are superb. There was an awful moment at dinner in our St. Petersburg house one night when Zina?da Vengerov, his translator, informed Wells, with a toss of her head: ?You know, my favorite work of yours is The Lost World.? ?She means the war the Martians lost,? said my father quickly.(Note his characteristic refusal to use the feminine ending on Russian names.) Via Gippius and Merezhkovsky she knew the terrorist/novelist Boris Savinkov, and her translation of his 1909 novel Конь бледный appeared in 1917 as The Pale Horse. I'll let the Dictionary of Russian Women Writers take it from there:Continue reading "ZINAIDA VENGEROVA."

It’s not unusual to make a teensy, weensy mistake when you’re writing. A simple typo, like typing it instead of is, is the kind of error most readers can overlook. But there are some mistakes that readers can’t overlook and can’t forgive. One of those is misspelling the name of your subject and doing it in a headline. That’s what the writer did on Yahoo! Sports‘ “Prep Rally” when writing about a team from McDonough School: If only there were a way the writer could see the name of the high school — like a photo of the team wearing jerseys with the school’s name. Wait, wait! This article is accompanied by a photo and this time the writer actually spelled McDonogh correctly. Unfortunately, he misspelled Baltimore — but it’s not his fault. He didn’t have a picture of Baltimore in front of him: But that’s just a typo, which any good proofreader would have spotted. But this is just an out-and-out error: Perhaps it’s time the writer handed the reins over to a real editor or proofreader — one who knows that a monarch reigns and a horse is controlled with reins. Filed under: Confused Words, Misspellings, reign/rein Tagged: bad spelling, Commonly confused words, editing, homophone, homophones, incorrect spelling, misspelling, proofreading, reign, reins, spelling, spelling error, spelling mistake, typo, typos

It’s one of the simplest rules of punctuation, and yet one of the most frequently ignored by the writers and editors at Yahoo!. This time the offense appears on the Yahoo! front page, where millions of people can point and laugh: The rule is simple: A question mark goes before a closing quotation mark if it is part of the quoted matter. In this case, it’s not. The title of the movie is not “Bling Ring?” The entire phrase is the question: Real-life ‘Bling Ring’? Filed under: Punctuation, Question Marks, Quotation Marks Tagged: editing, incorrect punctuation, proofreading, Punctuation, punctuation errors, punctuation mistakes, question mark, questions, Yahoo!, Yahoo! front page

Liwei Jiao sent in a selection of signs from a Chinese website that was originally part of a collection assembled in the Daily Mail. We've seen most of these Chinglish signs before, and have already discussed several of them over the years. But this one is new, at least to me, and unusually inept: mínzú yuán ??? ([Minority] Nationalities Park) The mistake arises from making the wrong choice among the multiple meanings of the word mínzú ?? ("ethnic group; race; nationality; people"). The reason this mistranslation is particularly inappropriate is because of the infamous (but not historically accurate) sign at the entrance to Huangpu Park in semi-colonial Shanghai — "No dogs or Chinese allowed" — which is one of the most frequent instantiations of racism from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I don’t want to even think about where the writer’s head was when he wrote this headline for Yahoo! Sports‘ “Big League Stew”: The expression is “head over heels” and it means “to roll, as in a somersault.” Filed under: Hyphens, Punctuation, Wrong words Tagged: Big League Stew, editing, head over heels, hyphen, proofreading, Punctuation, wrong word, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Sports

A big drawback to a column like this is being perceived as having insufferable attitude: “So, Mr. Expert, I guess you think you’re so superior.” It’s not like that. Word nerds do custodial work. A lot of brilliant people can’t write. Ernest Hemingway was a terrible speller. Word nerds don’t think they’re “better”—do janitors think they’re better than the office workers they clean up after? I often wonder why I bother about details that concern so few normal people. Oh, I know what Arthur Conan Doyle said: “[T]he little things are infinitely the most important,” but on the other hand, I once saw Dick Cavett take a swipe at noted Harvard law professor-author Alan Dershowitz by correcting his grammar. Dershowitz made a sour (but unperturbed) face and shot back that unlike Cavett, he was too busy making a difference in the world to worry about language trivia. So it’s not about word nerds’ delusions of superiority. We feel like anachronisms, displaced in a world of shifting values and priorities. We live in an idealized past. We each have our own preferred era, be it the time of Shakespeare or Swift or Dickens or Twain or Shaw, when people read a lot more and savored the mot juste. Oh, and everyone you knew could write, spell, and punctuate, and felt enriched by a good vocabulary. Anyway, onward to this week’s entries of infamy… Irregardless I’ve heard a lot of bright people say this nonsense word, which results from confusing and combining regardless and irrespective. If people would just think about it, what’s that dopey ir- doing tacked on? In technical terms, ir- is an “initial negative particle.” So if “irregardless” means anything, it means “not regardless” when its hapless speaker is trying to say the exact opposite. Center around The whole play centers around the consequences of ill-gotten gains. This common, misbegotten expression results from the unhappy union of two similar terms: center on and revolve around. Because the phrases are roughly synonymous, if you use them both enough, they merge in the mind. What’s annoying about “center around” is that it’s imprecise, and disheartens readers who take writing seriously. The center is the point in the middle. How, exactly, would something center around? You get dizzy trying to picture it. Hone in This is another mongrel, like the two that preceded it. It’s the brain-dead combo of hone and home in. We simply can’t allow confusion to be the basis of acceptable changes in the language. In recent years, “hone in” has achieved an undeserved legitimacy for the worst of reasons: the similarity, in sound and appearance, of n and m. Honing is a technique used for sharpening cutting tools and the like. To home in, like zero in, is to get something firmly in your sights: get to the crux of a problem. Reticent This trendy word properly means “uncommunicative,” “reserved,” “silent.” But sophisticates who like to fancy up their mundane blather are now using it when they mean “reluctant.” I was reticent to spend so much on a football game. When I hear something like that, I wish the speaker would just reticent the heck up. Allude Allude to means mention indirectly. In one of its most unspeakable moves, Webster’s lists refer as a synonym. Horrors! When you refer to something, it’s a direct transaction: I refer to Section II, paragraph one, Your Honor. When you allude to something or someone, you don’t come out and say it; you’re being subtle, sly or sneaky: “Someone I know better wise up.” Off (of) “Hey! You! Get off of my cloud,” sang the Rolling Stones, unnecessarily. The of is extraneous, and off of is what’s known as a pleonasm. That means: starting now, avoid it. Couple (of) Hey, gimme a couple bucks, wouldja? When I was a kid, this is how neighborhood tough guys talked, while cracking their chewing gum. Don’t drop the of; one more little syllable won’t kill you. This grammar tip was contributed by veteran copy editor and word nerd Tom Stern.

You know what would be better than this from Yahoo! Screen‘s “Daily Shot”? If the writer had taken the time to learn how to spell Steve Carell’s name. And if the writer had taken the time to figure out how to write a link: You’d think that someone working for one of the biggest Internet companies in the world would know how to do both. Filed under: Links, Misspellings Tagged: bad spelling, Daily Shot, editing, incorrect spelling, links, misspelled celebrities, misspelling, proofreading, spelling, spelling error, spelling mistake, Steve Carell, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Screen

Here are the corrections and explanations for this week’s entries. MONDAY Find, identify and correct the errors in the following pieces. I suggest there are three. Feel free to disagree. “Reidel said one of the consequences of having the extra CUPE Local 82 workers doing parks department work has been less summer students being hired.” “Less” cannot be used to something that can be counted because its meaning is different. “Reidel said one of the consequences of having the extra CUPE Local 82 workers doing parks department work has been fewer summer students being hired.” “Eight millimetre projectors, an old piano, and a clunky wooden 20th century desk similar in appearance to the Resolute desk used by US presidents.” Where is the verb? I also object to the use of the comma after “piano” because it is redundant when “and” is the next word. “Eight millimetre projectors, an old piano and a clunky wooden 20th century desk similar in appearance to the Resolute desk used by US presidents were found in the warehouse.” TUESDAY TRAGEDY/TRAVESTY “Tragedy” is a noun referring to a calamity, a cataclysm, a disaster or a play in which the hero fails in some way. “Tragic” is the adjective form. “Tragedian” is another noun form referring to an actor of tragic plays. “Tragically” is the adverb form. “The tragedy of the devastation of New Orleans is still being felt and the city may never fully recover from such destruction by nature. “Travesty” is a noun referring to a parody of something, a farce, a burlesque, a mockery or a ludicrous treatment of a serious subject. “Many a teen singer becomes a travesty of himself when he ages and desperately tries to be the teen idol he once was. WEDNESDAY Find, identify and correct the errors in the following pieces. “City lawyer Patrick Brode said in a report to be considered by council on Tuesday that the purpose of the policy is to ‘keep violent or disruptive persons off of city premises,’ to guarantee public access to city services without interference and to ensure the safety of municipal staff.” “Off of” is redundant and incorrect grammatically. The two prepositions cannot be used together. “City lawyer Patrick Brode said in a report to be considered by council on Tuesday that the purpose of the policy is to ‘keep violent or disruptive persons off of city premises,’ to guarantee public access to city services without interference and to ensure the safety of municipal staff.” “Barbara Brazier, a fellow award recipient, said she was just doing what she had to do when helped rescue her neighbour from his burning house in early December.” This is an example of careless proof reading because a word was left out and that causes confusion. “Barbara Brazier, a fellow award recipient, said she was just doing what she had to do when she helped rescue her neighbour from his burning house in early December.” THURSDAY REEK/WREAK “Reek” is a verb meaning to give off smoke, to smell or to stink. “Reek” can also be a noun. “The skunk that was killed on the road reeked to high heaven and repulsed the walkers and joggers who had to pass close to it.” “Wreak” is a verb meaning to cause to happen, to bring about, to bring into being, to inflict or to execute vengeance upon. “The storm wreaked havoc upon the armada of ships and many were lost to its brutal might.” CORRECTIONS & EXPLANATIONS Corrections and explanations for this week’s entries will be posted tomorrow, Friday. BONUS: Correctly identify the relationship between the words “tomorrow” and “Friday” in the sentence above and receive a GOLD STAR. “Friday” is a noun that is in apposition to the word, “tomorrow”, immediately before it in the sentence above. Note that “tomorrow” is in apposition to the “word” I the first sentence of this explanation. “Apposition” means “next to”. Words in apposition to other words are usually the same types of words such as, in this case, nouns. TOO OFTEN IGNORED “No sword bites so fiercely as an evil tongue.” Sir Philip Sidney,

From the 5/16/2013 decision of the Third Circuit, invalidating an NLRB decision based on the argument that the "recess appointment" of one of the board's members was invalid: The "main purpose" of the Recess Appointments Clause, therefore, is not—as the Eleventh Circuit held and the Board argues—only "to enable the President to fill vacancies to assure the proper functioning of our government." Evans, 387 F.3d at 1226. This formulation leaves out a crucial aspect of the Clause‘s purpose: to preserve the Senate‘s advice-and-consent power by limiting the president‘s unilateral appointment power. Accord Noel Canning, 705 F.3d at 505 (explaining that the Eleventh Circuit‘s statement of the Clause‘s purpose "omits a crucial element of the Clause, which enables the president to fill vacancies only when the Senate is unable to provide advice and consent" (emphasis in original)). The importance of this aspect of the Clause‘s purpose is difficult to understate. [emphasis added] More than you probably want to read on this topic: "Why are negations so easy to fail to miss?", 2/26/2004 "We cannot/must not understate/overstate" 5/26/2004 "Overstating understatement" 6/22/2004 "Multiplex negatio feblondiat" 7/14/2007 "Weird logic and Bayesian semantics" 7/15/2007 "'Cannot underestimate' = 'must not underestimate'" 11/6/2008 "Misunderestimation" 4/4/2009 "Gov. Cuomo and our poor monkey brains", 1/21/2011 "…not understating the threat", 6/5/2012 "(Not) Underestimating the Irish Famine", 9/16/2012 "Overestimating, underestimating, whatever", 1/10/2013 "CIA unable to underestimate the effect of drone war", 4/7/2013 But in case you need more…. [h/t Jonathan Falk]