05.28.08

The three, amused, said “he he.”

Posted in grammar, neology, persnickitors at 8:03 pm by Bill Brohaugh

Noted and cringed at:

From a 4/18/2008 article titled “NL’s slumping sophomores need patience,” from the Sporting News:

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.

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05.27.08

Doesn’t the word “blog” bring to mind regurgitation?

Posted in abbreviations, neology, ugly words at 6:09 pm by Bill Brohaugh

This is a thought I’ve expounded upon before, but I must address it here, in an early installment of the nascent Everything You Know About English Is Wrong web-log:

Technically, I suppose you could call this a “blog.” You could. I won’t. As a word person, I look skeptically at the word blog. Which is a polite way to say I despise it.

Certainly, I honor the word mechanism that created it, as I do all mechanisms of English neology. It’s an interesting specimen of word-creation, too—an abbreviation that shortens the original phrase (”web-log”) from the front, while most abbreviations lop off the end (such as info for information). Variations occur, of course, such as flu from influenza—lopping off both middle and end.

The mechanism is sound. The result is grating. Blog has all the beauty of other words that start with the same B-L consonant combination, words that have remarkable affinity to the word blog: blather, blab, blabber, blah, blase, blob and bloney. Well, just kidding about that last one.

So, this is not a blog. It’s just blah blathering blabber.

Navel-Gazing Side Note Alert: To be slightly more succinct, I could have tightened my first sentence by writing “expounded on” as opposed to “expounded upon.” But concision is a matter of mental length as well as physical length. “Expounded on” sounds almost unnatural, in that a word as pompous as expounded nearly cries out to be followed by something equally pompous. The phrase is shorter, but mentally longer. And that’s today’s Write Tight moment. End Navel-Gazing Side Note Alert.

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