Grammar

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]

Looking for a slightly used shirt? A well-worn pair of  trousers? If you’re not to proud to steal, you can get it free by raiding a closet. And Yahoo! Shopping suggests you raid your father’s closet: Of course, if you merely want to see the kinds of clothing he prefers, you could just peek in his closet. Filed under: Wrong words Tagged: editing, proofreading, wrong word, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Shopping

There's an ongoing argument about the interpretation of Katherine Baicker et al., "The Oregon Experiment — Effects of Medicaid on Clinical Outcomes", NEJM 5/2/2013, and one aspect of this debate has focused on the technical meaning of the word significant. Thus Kevin Drum, "A Small Rant About the Meaning of Significant vs. 'Significant'", Mother Jones 5/13/2013: Many of the results of the Oregon study failed to meet the 95 percent standard, and I think it's wrong to describe this as showing that "Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years." To be clear: it's fine for the authors of the study to describe it that way. They're writing for fellow professionals in an academic journal. But when you're writing for a lay audience, it's seriously misleading. Most lay readers will interpret "significant" in its ordinary English sense, not as a term of art used by statisticians, and therefore conclude that the study positively demonstrated that there were no results large enough to care about. Many past LL posts have dealt with various aspects of the rhetoric of significance. Here are a few: "The secret sins of academics", 9/16/2004 "The 'Happiness Gap' and the rhetoric of statistics", 9/26/2007 "Gender-role resentment and the Rorschach-blot news reports", 9/27/2007 "The 'Gender Happiness Gap': Statistical, practical and rhetorical significance", 10/4/2007 "Listening to Prozac, hearing effect sizes", 3/1/2008 "Localization of emotion perception in the brain of fish", 9/18/2009 "Bonferroni rules", 4/6/2011 "Response to Jasmin and Casasanto's response to me", 3/17/2012 "Texting and language skills", 8/2/2012 But Kevin Drum's rant led me to take another look at the lexicographic history of the word significant, and this in turn led me back to the Oregon Experiment — via a famous economist's work on the statistics of telepathy. The OED's first sense for significant has citations back to 1566, and  in this sense, being significant is a big deal: something that's significant is "Highly expressive or suggestive; loaded with meaning". This is the ordinary-language sense that makes the statistical usage so misleading, because a "statistically significant" result is often not really expressive or suggestive at all, much less "loaded with meaning". The OED gives a second sense, almost as old, that is much weaker, and is probably the source of the later statistical usage: "That has or conveys a particular meaning; that signifies or indicates something". Not necessarily something important, mind you, just something — say, in the modern statistical sense, that a result shouldn't be attributed to sampling error. A couple of the OED's more general illustrative examples: 1608   E. Topsell Hist. Serpents 48   Their voyce was not a significant voyce, but a kinde of scrietching. 1936   A. J. Ayer Lang., Truth & Logic iii. 71   Two symbols are said to be of the same type when it is always possible to substitute one for the other without changing a significant sentence into a piece of nonsense. And then there's an early mathematical sense (attested from 1614): Math. Of a digit: giving meaningful information about the precision of the number in which it is contained, rather than simply filling vacant places at the beginning or end. Esp. in significant figure, significant digit. The more precisely a number is known, the more significant figures it has. The OED gives a few additional senses that are not strikingly different from the first two: "Expressive or indicative of something"; "Sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention; noteworthy; consequential, influential"; "In weakened sense: noticeable, substantial, considerable, large". And then we get to (statistically) significant: 5. Statistics. Of an observed numerical result: having a low probability of occurrence if the null hypothesis is true; unlikely to have occurred by chance alone. More fully statistically