12.17.08
Posted in language change, language misuse, write tight at 7:48 am by Bill Brohaugh
I knew Rachel Maddow reminded me of someone. It finally clicked last night while watching. She’s my 8th-grade English teacher. Her lesson:
Just because I said it’s ironic does not mean that it’s funny. But it is irony.
This was her conclusion of the unfortunate tale of American kidnapping consultant Felix Batista himself being kidnapped (and, of course, we wish him a happy fate). Maddow’s introduction:
Irony alert. Code red. Threat of disturbing irony imminent in an unfunny story.
The story is indeed ironic in the Greek tragedy sense: character action in contrast to audience knowledge of the true situation. And Maddow is right. “Ironic does not mean that it’s funny.” Irony can, I grant you, produce a certain level of amusement, in an “I have mocked thee” or a “You got your comeuppance, buddy” sort of way. Yet, irony in its most powerful sense is rather somber.
As Maddow and her writers acknowledge by way of disclaimer, irony has also come to imply ha-ha-titter-titter kinds of jokes. Pratfalls instead of tragedy, spit-in-the-wind yuk-em-ups instead of pointed sarcasm.
And the write tight guy in me wonders if she could have saved a lot of words just by introducing the story as a possibly redundant but definitely clear “tragic irony.”
It’s sad for the world that she has this story to report in the first place. And in my little part of the world, it’s also sad for the word lovers that she is forced to go to such extents to steer her audience from a softened meaning of a powerful word.
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12.16.08
Posted in redundancy, style, wordiness, write tight, writing craft at 9:17 am by Bill Brohaugh
My friend JohnnyB over at the Late for the Sky blog was un-dumbstruck by a headline he alerted me to yesterday. (Note: Just as JB introduced his email, “First off, everyone involved is alive.” Even the poor afflicted witnesses!)
Quick recap: Kid darts into traffic. Grandfather dashes to the rescue and picks the kid up, when both are hit by a car. The headline:
Child, Grandfather Struck By Car As Witnesses Look On
JohnnyB Struck By Headline As Witness (Me) Reads On: “Isn’t that what witness means?,” JB writes. “‘Witnesses see nothing’ would be contradictory (though it would be what happens in most Cincinnati crimes).” Indeed, witnesses witness. Or give witness. But JB was also raising a larger concern—that of effective writing. The subject line of his email was a snarked “A fine piece of writing.”
JB says, “The fact that there were witnesses doesn’t even have anything to do with the story. I guess the headline writer thought it added drama.” The phrase also adds a bit of misdirection. Doing something in front of witnesses implies not accident but, as JB notes, dramatic intention. Compare “Dog bites man in front of witnesses” and “Man bites dog in front of witnesses,” the former being somewhat natural and the latter being an act of “I don’t care if you think I’m crazy.”
A couple of side notes before I mention what really frustrates me about the headline: First, the story reports, “Michael Benjamin [one of the witnesses] was there when it happened.” Because witnesses witness, being there “when it happened” is implied. Second, the story wastes the opportunity for precision and drama by beginning “A young boy and his grandfather . . . .” Boy implies “young,” but it turns out that the kid was just two. Beginning “A two-year-old boy and his grandfather” would have delivered additionally appropriate gravity to this incident.
Finally, what’s further frustrating about this story is the headlinese style of “Child, Grandfather Struck by Car”—perhaps deleting that bloated, space-hoarding word and to make room for the ever-so-needed nonsensical redundancy of “As Witnesses Look On.” Now there’s concision for you. Except. The cramped-newspaper-style headline introduces a transcript of an audio TV report—and it appears on the web, the realm of infinite space to express thoughts clearly, and in natural English.
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12.15.08
Posted in Arabic sources, English origins, humor, wordplay at 6:56 am by Bill Brohaugh
I recently stumbled on a blog called The Frisky (”a daily romp on the sexy side”) and its list of “15 Most Unfortunately Named Fashion Items.” Wendy Atterberry takes jabs at garment names including skort and skong, mukluk and spat, and a few R-rated designations, as well (R is for romp, after all).
I love the shot at cummerbund (which, by the way, is Persian for “loin-band”):
A broad waist sash worn with dinner jackets and tuxedos, a cummerbund sounds more like a grammatical error you might learn to avoid in 8th grade English class. “Molly, your sentence had a incorrect gerund, a dangling preposition and an awkward cummerbund. Please re-write.”
In language land, The Frisky might be interested to note the linguistic terms that sound a bit rompish. For instance, take the title of the blog itself: The Frisky. You see the (wink-wink) tittle there, right? Yes, I spelled it right. Tittle. That’s the dot above the letter i. Cross your T’s, and tittle your I’s. Sounds positively ribald.
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12.14.08
Posted in humor, puns, verbal stupidity at 11:33 am by Bill Brohaugh
Klaatu Barada Nikto is not the name of the president-elect (though when I Google “Klaatu Obama,” I get a few hundred pun-intended returns). Instead, these words compose what Frederick S. Clarke of Cinefantastique magazine called “the most famous phrase ever spoken by an extraterrestrial.” (This was some time before “E.T. phone home.”) They are spoken in the 1951 original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still (though apparently not, I note in my third parenthetical in this paragraph, in the 2008 remake I’m in no rush to see, and not in “Farewell to the Master,” the Harry Bates short story that serves as source material).
It’s a phrase so famous that the “In Popular Culture” section of its Wokkawokkapedia entry contains dozens of references, including one of my favorites: “klaatu barada necktie” in Army of Darkness. Here’s one to add to the section: “Klaatu barada stinko,” in the headline of Alonso Duralde’s msnbc.com panning of the 2008 revisit.
No great art to that pun, but I like it, particularly because it so accurately reflects Mr. Duralde’s snarky slapdown of the film. And because it’s Sunday, and I’m lazy, I’ll leave all snarkdom to Mr. Duralde today. Believe me, he’s doing a good job. Here’s my favorite line from the review, as it touches on things linguistic:
The new “Day” can’t be bothered to include the thought-provoking dialogue of the original, choosing instead to bury the audience with special effects that are visually impressive but no substitute for an actual script. And what words do remain are so exquisitely awful that they provide some of the season’s biggest laughs. My personal favorite? Astro-biologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) takes alien Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) to see a Nobel Prize–winning scientist and notes that her colleague was honored “for his work in biological altruism.” What would that entail, exactly? Helping frogs cross the street?
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12.13.08
Posted in punctuation, redundancy, verbal indiscretions, wordiness, write tight at 10:22 am by Bill Brohaugh
OK, so I’ve been away a bit. My thanks to the folks who wrote to check my pulse. Still pulsing, I’m happy to report, but without the boil about the language I was able to work up in recent months. I try to blame it on a quieter media season with the election and its bloviations over, but in all honesty I just got exceedingly busy in other aspects of this thing we call life.
But the blood-boil level perked up a bit yesterday when I saw this news story about the unrest in Greece:
Terrified workers in banks along Athens’ central Syntagma Square watched in fear as protesters shattered windows just replaced days ago after being damaged in the worst riots Greece has experienced in decades.
Here I would campaign for Athens’s to indicate that Syntagma Square is located in singular Athens and not a group of communities each named Athen. But there’s little boil factor in that. And I strongly suggest positioning the word just before the concept it truly modifies—”days ago”—but, again, a little blood percolation, but no boil yet. Then there’s “workers in banks.” Were they, say, construction workers who just happened to be in the banks cashing their paychecks? I suspect that they were instead “bank workers”—a clearer, shorter, more direct phrasing. Again, pulse quickened, but the little platelets are still floating around in conditions under 212 degrees.
The vascular steam engine revs up around mid-sentence. Imagine this Write Tight
boy’s surprise to learn that “terrified workers” watched “in fear.” Not only can that latter phrase be lopped off, it must be. This description is redundant, as terror is (last I heard) intense fear, but redundancy is the lesser of the two sins the sentence commits. “In fear” doesn’t merely repeat; it deflates. Terrified workers become merely fearful workers in the space of a dozen or so syllables.
So, to reassure my kind friends who checked in on me, the pulse is still there. And so is the re-pulse.
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12.02.08
Posted in write tight, writing craft at 8:18 am by Bill Brohaugh
Susan over at the I’m Just Saying blog recently gave some “Advice for the Day.” It’s good social advice, but it’s also good writing advice. Susan counsels:
If an email you’re sending to me includes the phrase, “I’m not trying to be provocative,” then you should rethink what you’re writing to me; 1)You probably are being provocative, 2)You probably know it and 3)You come across as a total jerk.
In the context of writing, Susan has identified a counterproductive technique we can call “telegraphing your punches.” Verbally. “Excuse me, Mr. Raging Bull—I’m not trying to be aggressive, but I believe I’ll next try an uppercut. You ready?”
In Susan’s case, the writer is a correspondent signaling attack at some level. When threatened with attack, we tighten up, put up our shields, and prepare for, at best, strong defense and, at worst, pre-emptive counter-attack. Bring it on! If the attack comes, we react and likely even overreact. On the other hand, what if what follows that phrase is not provocative? “I’m not trying to be provocative, but the sky is blue.” Dashed expectations, confusion and maybe even frustration ensue.
Such telegraphed punches are far too common in communications. “This joke is hilarious,” crows the party socialite. With audience expectations and skepticism raised, the joke faces increased chances of falling flat on the teller’s face, like egg. The joke might be very funny, but if it isn’t hilarious, the speaker has failed in rising to his own self-inflated standard.
Or take the banal cliche delivery of the TV newscaster: “The numbers will astound you!” Hearing such intoned pronouncements, I don’t lean in toward the idiot box with bated-soon-to-be-astounded-breath. Instead, I lean back and think, Prove it, and almost always, they don’t.
Never apologize for what you’re about to write; never hype it. Just deliver it in as carefully crafted phrasing as you can, and let the words and not the “previews of coming attractions” do the talking. Accusations, attacks, jokes, pranks, mystery-novel endings, compliments, and demonstrations of love are at their most powerful when delivered without forecast, but with a modified level of surprise you have prepared with the consistent foundations laid by your previous actions in real life and your story-telling in writing.
I’m not trying to be instructive, but . . .
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11.30.08
Posted in eponyms, myths and misconceptions, word history at 10:22 pm by Bill Brohaugh
I continue with my recent name dalliance today, and in doing so, I present an “old” joke. The joke itself is not old (I wrote the damn thing and it appears in my Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
—name sound familiar?), but the misconceptions involved in the joke indeed have a bit of dust on them. Actually, I’m pretending to make a point about word histories while hoping that one of the major media companies will see the following as a charming conglomeration of historical characters providing the stuff of an animated movie or at the very least a graphic novel). With such intent in mind, I gather a cast of characters into the promised joke:
An inventor, a Philadelphia entrepreneur, a doctor, and a Civil War general walk into a bar.
The barkeep says, “What can I get you gentlemen?”
“I’d like some of me,” says the Philadelphia entrepreneur.
The general nods. “One of me, as well. Two if you know where I might find me.”
“Good idea,” agrees the doctor. “And since I’ll be accompanying the good general, I’d like to purchase a couple of me, as well.”
The bartender says, “What the hell are you guys talking about?”
“Oh, never mind,” huffs the entrepreneur. “Just give me some rotgut whiskey.”
The general says, “Know where I can find a prostitute?”
“And do you sell prophylactics here?” says the doctor.
The bartender is appalled. “We don’t have any of those things here, gentlemen!”
“None at all?” the inventor says finally. He angrily spits out, “Me!”
The bartender is agitated by now. “Just who do you guys think you are, anyway?”
Says the entrepreneur: “I’m Philadelphia distiller E.C. Booz.”
The military man stiffly says, “I am Union General Joseph Hooker.”
Says the doctor, “Dr. Condom here.”
When the bartender insists that no me’s are available at his establishment, the inventor snaps again, “Oh me!”
The bartender looks at the inventor. “’Me!’? Don’t tell me . . . you’re the inventor of the Valveless Water Waste Preventer.”
“Thomas Crapper at your service!”
That little tale is as fictional as the etymologies involving the characters’ names. Supposedly, these mostly real persons lent their names to the items they were seeking in the bar. However, we knew of booze long before the coincidentally (and perhaps fortuitously intentionally) named whiskey distiller E.C. Booz sold hooch in the cabin-shaped bottles of the early and mid 1800s. There’s no evidence of a Dr. Condom, though the device is often said to be named after said 17th- or 18th-Century physician. Prostitutes were called hookers before the army of loose-moraled General Hooker was accompanied by concubine camp followers, and the word crap was in use before Mr. Crapper developed a patent for a toilet flushing device in 1882.
Now, my first draft of this story was quite a bit bawdier, but I bowdlerized it to make it more suitable for a family audience, employing the process that was indeed named after a real person, Thomas Bowdler, famous for his editing Shakespeare into G-rated productions in The Family Shakespeare in 1818 (“To G or to PG—that is the question”). Yes, a number of words result from surnames of persons both real and otherwise.
Keep this rule in mind: If the person’s name makes you snicker, it’s unlikely that the name was the source of our present word. If the supposed source person’s name is boring, the etymology is more likely to be correct: Mr. Bowdler (bowdlerize); the Speverend Rooner—er, the Reverend William Spooner (spoonerism, from around the turn of the 20th Century); the fictional Mrs. Malaprop (malapropism from an 1830 play); Union General Ambrose Everett Burnside (burnsides, and later sideburns in a delightful syllable swap, from the 1800s); Nicolas Chauvin (chauvinism, from the mid 1800s); Thomas Derrick (derrick, because his name became associated with his tool, the gallows); Capt. Charles Cunningham Boycott (self-explanatory, from around 1880); Capt. Charles Lynch (self-explanatory, from the early 1800s)*; Louis Pasteur (pasteurize, late 1800s); Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry (gerrymander, early 1800s); James Thomas Brudenell (the Earl of Cardigan, who likely was not wearing a sweater while he led the legendary Charge of the Light Brigade, but still got one named after his stomping grounds).
Two challenges to the “boring” rule, however, are the shepherd hero of a 16th-Century poem who gave us the name of something the Civil War general sought to prevent with the device of the good doctor (the poem being “Syphilis, sive morbus Gallicus”), and the real-life Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, who advocated use of one of the garments the Civil War general would seek to invade—the bloomer dress, or bloomers.
* If you want your name to become an active word in the English Language, it apparently helps if you change your first name to “Capt. Charles.”
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11.29.08
Posted in redundancy, wordiness, write tight at 10:46 am by Bill Brohaugh
Quoted from England’s Daily Express, which I know is the world’s greatest newspaper because the paper itself prints that precise slogan under its logo, and you must believe everything you read, particularly everything you read in the world’s greatest newspaper:
“It seems to me that you need to remind people every now and then that you can’t communicate to people in a language unless you know the grammar and the syntax and, indeed, the punctuation,” the prince told a Georgian Group awards ceremony at The Ritz in London.
The prince quoted above is England’s Prince Charles. Bless his royal-blue heart, his intentions are good, but his attempt to “communicate to people in a language” needs a bit of precision. This flabby sentence should feature all the precision of the Buckingham Palace guard, yet exhibits the wasted motion of fans in an artist-formerly-known-as-Prince (the other one) mosh pit. Let me pick royal nits:
- The statement is imprecise and, in a sense, not true. You can communicate with grammar, syntax and punctuation lapses. We do it all the time. “I ain’t got none of them cookies no more, they’s gone.” Are you confused about my cookie inventory? Prince Charles meant that you can’t communicate precisely, without distraction, and with authority if you haven’t mastered the big three.
- The good prince’s declaration not only fails to address but also itself employs another obstacle to communicating to people in a language: squishy and indirect word use. To wit:
- “It seems to me.” If it didn’t seem to you, why would you even say it? Unnecessary. Besides, the phrasing has a subtle sense that he is at odds with general thinking (”they say one thing, but it seems to me that . . . ”)
- “you need to.” you must is shorter and more powerful.
- “remind people every now and then.” remind people occasionally would have been more direct, and more in tune with an audience sitting in the Ritz.
- “to people.” Who else would you be using grammar, syntax and punctuation to communicate to? The dog? Rover doesn’t care if the command “Rover sit” should feature a comma. And not many inanimate objects can hear you at all, not even the chair in Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said.” Delete “to people.”
- “in a language.” The phrase’s construction and placement weakens its connection to the language elements about to be listed. See my edit below.
- “the.” Instead of “the grammar and the syntax,” how about “its grammar and its syntax”? Despite the being a definite article, “the grammar” gives the noun a general, unconnected air. Its clearly ties grammar to language.
My suggested revision isn’t poetry, but it would likely carry far more of the authority and confidence we expect of the man who will be king: “You can’t communicate precisely and credibly without command of the language’s grammar, its syntax and, indeed, its punctuation.”
And then I’ll take it even further: “You can’t communicate precisely without command of grammar, syntax and, indeed, punctuation,” as grammar, syntax and punctuation are components of language and few other things (name one), and, combined with the word communicate, these three words clearly imply language.
In other words, to fight the good fight, write tight.
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11.27.08
Posted in humor, myths and misconceptions at 7:33 am by Bill Brohaugh
The 11/23/08 installment of the Frazz comic strip begins with this exchange (at least in some papers it does; it is a Sunday intro panel that papers can eliminate for space):
Young female student (looking at open books): “There’s only one word that rhymes with ‘rhyme,’ that’s spelled like ‘rhyme.’”
Frazz: “A sage observation, Rosemary.”
I admire the delicate touch employed by cartoonist Jeff Mallett. Here he didn’t need to flap the word thyme at us like a semaphore flag; in fact, he didn’t use the word at all. But we know it anyway.
And everything we know about English is wrong. Have I established that yet?
Let me allow you to digest the fact that another word spelled like rhyme also rhymes with rhyme. And once digested, that fact will be chyme. In two literal senses. Chyme, you see, is the intermediate substance that results when your stomach’s gastric juices partially digests food, including herbs, leading to partial sage, rosemary and . . . thyme.
(And happy Thanksgiving!)
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11.26.08
Posted in assorted weird crap, myths and misconceptions, unfortunate English, write tight, writing craft at 8:54 am by Bill Brohaugh
With Black Friday looming, I today offer unhumble suggestions for your holiday shopping list. (It’s a commercial, dammit! I admit it! And I’m not kidding about the headline.)
I’ve just received the good news that Writer’s Digest Books will publish my Unfortunate English in paperback in Fall of 2009. The hardcover remains available, and I humbly suggest it for the word lovers on your Christmas list. And other lists, as well. The subtitle of the book is “The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use,” which is so appropriate for the upcoming festive season, don’t you agree? Classy cloth binding, nicely creepy illustrations, and the same snarky sense of humor you’ve come to expect in this blog (for better or worse).
Other vaguely humble suggestions for my books that are possibly enjoyable by people other than my mom (see the headline):
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Write Tight: Say Exactly What You Mean With Precision and Power
> ”These days, most creative-writing courses teach self-indulgence. Write Tight counsels discipline. It is worth more than a university education. Its advice is gold.”
— Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times bestselling author
> ”If you read Write Tight, and if you apply its lessons, you will be a better writer.” — Lawrence Block, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master
> ”Write Tight is a supremely valuable ‘must-have’ for aspiring writers in all fields.” — Midwest Book Review
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Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
> ”If you love language and the unvarnished truth, you’ll love Everything You Know About English Is Wrong. You’ll have fun because his lively, comedic, skeptical voice will speak to you from the pages of his word-bethumped book.” — Richard Lederer, author of Anguished English and other popular word books
> ”The book provides a good counterpoint to Lynne Truss’s anxiety-inducing Eats, Shoots & Leaves and will be enjoyed by everyone who can’t quite admit to being amused by William Safire because they can’t get past his politics. In other words, Brohaugh is funner.” — FeatureBook.com
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The Grill of Victory: Hot Competition on the Barbecue Circuit
> ”It’s not about words, but it uses them.” — Bill Brohaugh, author of The Grill of Victory”
> ”Thank you, William Brohaugh. Thank you for writing this book. Barbecue is the better for it.” — Doug Mosley in The National Barbecue News
> ”A must read for aspiring pit masters and great for armchair cooks, too.” — Steven Raichlen, author of The Barbecue Bible
> ”The blend of travel, social and culinary history is exceptional and fun in this highly recommended pick.” — Midwest Book Review
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