The word unique is sacred. Inviolate. Untouchable by human beings. Let us worship it in its perfect splendor! Perfection cannot be modified!
Well, so goes the chant of the persnickitors. If you want to see a spray of blood popping from foreheads not unlike the famed Bellagio fountain display, just announce aloud that something is “very unique” in just about any public place. “Every English or journalism major knows the word ‘unique’ does not take a modifier!” Which is something I didn’t make up, but quoted directly from a blog, inserting the exclamation point because I knew the blogger really wanted to use one, so I’ll take the blame.
Of course, this proscription is bull (read the title of this blog again). What if I say something is “almost” unique? It’s pretty distinctive, but it does share characteristics with another instance of same. Has not unique been modified? You can say “I almost won the game” even when I actually lost, so why can’t something fail to be one-of-a-kind? Or how about “remarkably unique,” “fascinatingly unique,” “preposterously unique,” “strangely unique,” “etceterally unique.” Modifications all. In fact, the little forehead-popping that I quoted above (assisting gallantly by my offered exclamation point) was inspired by a headline reading, “A truly unique collection.” This construction violates neither logic nor grammar, and not even what “every English or journalism major knows.” Consider this concocted extension of that quote: “This truly unique collection, as opposed to collections that previously laid false claim to being unique . .”
At worst, truly in my modification is redundant, in that the “as opposed to” phrase demonstrates contrast, so “A unique collection as opposed to . . .” Even so, truly serves as clarifier and intensifier.
What our persnickitor is objecting to is not modification but a specific type of modification—establishing degree of uniqueness. The cliche analogy, of course, is “Unique is or it isn’t, just like you can’t be a little pregnant.” On the other hand, how often do you hear the acceptable hyperbole that someone is very pregnant—that is, she is far along in her pregnancy, possibly about to go into labor at any moment, and . . . look at that . . . time for the cigars. Sure, “very pregnant” isn’t precise; what hyperbole is?
And with that, I’ll sign off (very off), because I don’t want to beat the subject until it’s morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably, and reliably, not merely, really most sincerely dead.
Persnickitors would have it that you might incur a pox upon your lineage should you use the word and (or but or because or . . . yes, or) to begin a sentence. Rhythm be damned. Meaning be damned. Flow of ideas be damned. Rules are rules! And if you go swimming within an hour after beginning a sentence with a conjunction, or you’ll get cramps!
That’s why I’m pleased when I encounter reason regarding the language, and, in the case of today’s post, reason refuting the conjunction superstition. Michelle at the Write or Wrong blog provides insight into the intent of the conjunction guideline, and guideline it is, and no more.
Before adding a comment to Michelle’s post, I zipped over the the Oxford English Dictionary online to double-check the definition of conjunction. In the grammatical sense, quoth the OED, conjunction means “One of the Parts of Speech; an uninflected word used to connect clauses or sentences, or to co-ordinate words in the same clause.” (Emphasis added.)
But (oops) because (oops) I love words, I lingered on the OED’s other definitions of conjunction—to the delight of the Unfortunate English author in me. The earliest meaning of conjunction in English was generic “joining.” This led to a couple of obsolete figurative meanings of joining first recorded in the 1500s, including “marriage” and “copulation.”
So, let’s amend the “rule”: Don’t begin a sentence with a conjunction . . unless you’re writing porn.
The Comics Curmudgeon blog—pointed commentary on inane daily comics—recently highlighted a Family Circle installment in which dimly precocious young Billy is reading a generic Dictionary and declaring, “That’s weird. ‘VERB’ is a noun.”
To which blog host Uncle Lumpy retorts, “Yes, Billy, and ‘LAME’ is an adjective.”
Interestingly, ‘ADJECTIVE’ is an adjective—or at least it was when it first began, as part of the phrase “noun adjective” (accent the middle syllable, as in objective). But then adjective got nouned into its present-day use.
In which case, look at your almost-dictionary, Billy! “‘NOUN’ is a verb!”
(Non-Inane Comics Alert: Methinks Billy might actually be reading a Calvin and Hobbes retrospective, as it was young Calvin who declared the classic “Verbing weirds language.” End Non-Inane Comics Alert.)
Well, we needn’t worry about what the press release was touting. We must instead fuss about apostrophes whilst I don my persnickitor hat.
The apostrophe in “head’s up” has, of course, wandered in from the great catapostrophic* void. As the phrase is presented here, the press-release author is giving me an up that apparently belongs to a head.
“Heads up!,” as all of us except the press-release writer already know, is a warning call, akin to shouting “Fore!” when teeing off. We used the call quite a bit in my thankfully brief days in the theatre. While building sets or mounting lights, the occasional clumsy technician (whose days in the theatre would be thankfully brief) might drop something or knock something over, potentially onto someone’s head. Heads up! Or, more succinctly, Heads! And not Head’s! It’s very difficult to shout an apostrophe.
Do catapostrophes make you cringe happily, the way people go to horror movies or take ride roller coasters to scream in fear and have fun? Check out the Apostrophe Abuse blog. My favorite abuse recorded there? “Bake’t muffin.” That should make my head spin. Instead, it make’s my head’s pin.
The half-reason to not learn English from sportswriters in the headline above comes from telling half the story . . .
. . . old-fashioned pitcher’s duel . . .
One pitcher dueling with himself? On the psychiatrist’s couch, maybe. I submit that perhaps pitchers’ duel or simply pitchers duel (with pitchers serving as a descriptive adjective and not a possessive) would signal the extreme likelihood that two pitchers were engaging in the activity described by that time-honored word with “two” implicit in its meaning.
And, what the heck, here’s an unrelated bonus clipping:
I’m not above a cheap shot—mainly because I’m so rarely in a position to pull one off. But you gotta love this typo a few days back in a link to a New York Times story (which has no headline typo when you arrive):
Oh, imagine the “party politics” we’re going to miss at such Democratic “fun-raisers”!
One of my consistent writing foibles is forgetting to close parenthetical thoughts (leaving me with odd sentences like this. Perhaps my subconscious is trying to tell me to skip the parentheticals entirely. After all, like footnotes and phrases like “by the way,” parenthetical text is often superfluous—if it weren’t, why wouldn’t you elevate it to the main text in the first place?
So I have to be kind to the following news quote from 12/14/2007, one that exhibits the danger of a lost comma that demarcates the end of a clause:
Stuart Bowen, special inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction gestures during a news conference in Paris . . .
Lacking the important second comma, this story apparently introduces us to a new governmental post: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Gestures.
The ability of English words to cross functional boundaries simultaneously gives writers and speakers freedom and pitfalls. The word gestures in the above quote, without punctuational guidance, seems at first glance to be a noun. With such flex words, we must construct sentences carefully to give organizational and contextual clues to just what part of speech is being called for.
But let’s return to this story: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Gestures. I can only imagine what those gestures might be.
Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki and Hunter Pence finished 1-2-3 in the National League rookie-of-the-year voting last year. And by April 15 of this season, each had been benched, giving him time to free his mind and find his lost games.
This exemplifies how we can stumble when trying to adhere slavishly to numeric agreement in grammar. The persnickitors* would have taken Ryan Braun’s weak bat to the SportingNews editors had they allowed “each had been benched, giving them time to free their minds . . .” But I suggest that they would have been justified in allowing it, and I might go as far as to encourage them to allow it.
Yes, each is singular. Their is plural. That’s a technical disconnect. Technical. An often more important connection is that of meaning. By writing each, author Gerry Fraley stated the individual but implied the group, and the group (a singular noun, as well) were (a plural verb) individually engaging in a common activity of freeing their minds. (A diplogrammatic* way to have phrased it would have been to write “all had been benched, giving them time . . .”)
The communication problem here is that the reader is jarred by a shift from discussing three players to stating one him. Which him? Ryan? Troy? Hunter? (And suppose the same sentence structure had been applied to three players in a mixed softball league, Fred, Harry and Sally? Who him then?) The impact of the paragraph was diffused by unclear reference demanded dictatorially by numeric agreement.
By the by, “the group were” is very much standard English in England, a place that has spoken the language for a decade or two.
* Neologism alert:Persnickitor–one who persnickets, one who fusses too hard about grammar from atop the mount; Diplogrammatic—a diplomatic way of sidestepping a grammar problem. End Neologism Alert.
author in me. The earliest meaning of conjunction in English was generic “joining.” This led to a couple of obsolete figurative meanings of joining first recorded in the 1500s, including “marriage” and “copulation.”
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