Ignoranus: How to Spot one in the Urban Jungle

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That punctuational flourish limits her "good friends" category to the Steinhardts. While we're sure they're lovely people, surely Martha would count Snoop Doggy Dogg among her besties? After all, he was just on her show--fo shizzle! Here's how it works: If there's just one of something, use a comma, --The Harry Potter author, J.

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If there's more than one, don't--Magazine moguls who spend time in the slammer It's a good thing. Posted by Martha Brockenbrough at 4: You have to zoom in to fully appreciate it, but it's a story about a pastor recommending a seven-day sex solution for people suffering "martial" problems in the bedroom. Look, we're not going to judge, but if people like it rough What are we saying!

We're going to blame that bit of inappropriateness on Diet Coke, the sponsor of this blog break. We particularly liked their "mixed cliche" section. Never lick a gift horse in the mouth. Here's the winner of our copy editing contest. This piece, written by Jeff Owens, turned our question--how does copy editing save the world--on its head. The world will take care of itself with or without us. What copy editing can do is help save the language, and brother, never was that mission more urgent than it is right now.

Copy editing takes the great literary wilderness of poor grammar, style, usage and spelling used by the Great Unwashed every day and attempts to impose its own sort of manifest destiny on it, and to impart sensible order and structural soundness to say nothing of good spelling and factual correctness on a sprawling language that is constantly evolving.

It doesn' t even have to make writing great—just making it not suck is often good enough. Copy editing, then, is no less than a bastion of civilization. But the word does, and copy editing is what fights the good fight. This Week in Silly Spam. If you're peddling online degrees, this is a bad subject line to market your wares: We expect much more from con men.

To quote Desperaux's mother, "It is such the disappointment. These come from the London Telegraph. Oxford researchers compiled the list for a book called "Damp Squid," and we're pleased that some of these expressions made it into "Things That Make Us [Sic] ". Why does this please us? Because anything with an English accent gives us a giddy, girlish thrill. We can't help it. Wednesday, November 05, Historic Events and Articles.

After all the reports on the elections last night, I have a question for you. My husband, son and I believe that the phrase "this is an historical moment. We were taught that "an" preceeds letters beginning with vowels and "a" preceeds those beginning with consonants. So the correct phrase would be "this is a historical moment. Or is this another case of a phrase used so many times incorrectly that most people think it's correct? Monday, November 03, Ah, Nuance. The New York Times has a column by Stanley Fish about a plumber who might actually deserve more fame than that Joe guy.

It does contain a wee error: There is one story I shall never forget; nor shall the others who heard it one evening in Chapel Hill, N. Because the restaurant was housed in a former railway car, the passage was narrow and the tables close together. Although "shall" has largely fallen off the tongues of the masses, people who want to use it to elevate their style should do so correctly.

The old-school rule was that "shall" was the first-person form expressing something that would be done in the future. I shall and we shall are correct. For second and third person, though, "will" is the form to use. So, I shall but others will. I shall floss my teeth. Others will floss their teeth. Interestingly, this reverses with a determination, promise or command.

I will eat my grapes! They shall eat their grapes! Here's the entire column , if you're curious.

The New York Times. Punctuation in the Movies. Apparently the hyphen is one dangerous character. Saturday, November 01, Oops. How Obama, McCain have mislead voters in recent weeks The past tense "mislead" is "misled. Thursday, October 30, More Preposition Problems. The truck has a sticker that says "There's a difference in 'Living' and 'Living Well. Pity Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Times has misspelled her name just about once a year since Today is the first time they've apologized. Do you think the just have Allen Ginsberg on the brain? This Seems Sort of Mean. We get spam, er, helpful promotional marketing in our inbox for all sorts of pop culture happenings.

This arrived yesterday, on Wednesday , Oct. Thursday, October 29, — One week before the national polls open, tens of thousands of texting moviegoers have spoken! Senator Barack Obama beat out Senator John McCain by moviegoers when polled via text message "who would you rather take to the movies? It would be terribly unsportsmanlike to attack an elderly veteran who lost a lot of arm movement when he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

And Senator Obama has been so restrained up to this point though in a fistfight, he would totally beat McCain and possibly hold his own against Sarah Palin's inevitable eye-gouges and hairspray attacks. Or does the sentence mean Obama beat McCain among moviegoers polled by text messages?

We rather suspect it's the latter. Use them with care. And don't forget to vote next week. Monday, October 27, Pallet Cleanser? We found this on the Huffington Post: And just in case America was still pondering real issues rather than nonsense and name-calling, you know who was on the show after my segment? I wish that were a joke. What a perfect pallet cleanser to help Roto-Rooter out the remaining bits and pieces of rational discourse! It's palate cleanser--as in the roof of your mouth, or more idiomatically, your sense of taste. A pallet is a wooden thing you store products on at Costco and other fine stores.

We can imagine those do need occasional cleaning, particularly if Hulk Hogan and his family stand on them for any length of time. In any case, we believe a palate cleanser and Roto-Rooter used together in the same sentence is a mixed metaphor, and a painful one at that. We prefer a fruity sorbet between courses and discourses, for that matter. Posted by Martha Brockenbrough at 8: Friday, October 24, "Grambar" from the Campaign Trail. Slate posted this gem from the McCain campaign: All Star Building Materials, Inc. Thursday, October 23, Let's hope they're not worried real Americans wouldn't recognize a properly spelled let alone licensed plumber The 8th Grade Grammar Test.

A friend sent this along, much to our delight. The style of the questions is a bit stodgy and we object to capitalization for emphasis, but we're all in favor of ensuring today's eighth-graders are as competent in their language skills.

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Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the eight grade in ? Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters. For starters, don't insert them randomly into sentences. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no Modifications. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of lie, lay and run.

Define Case, Illustrate each Case. Use a semicolon or "and' to join two independent clauses. Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation. Write a composition of about words and show therein that you understand the practice and use of the rules of grammar. Monday, October 20, Bad Logic and Spelling.

Can you trespass with authorization? Is it still trespassing? Did anyone like our Rapunzel joke? Why didn't she just cut her own hair and climb down? And the Three Bears Why didn't they do that and go about their business? When Goldilocks had trespassed, they could have had her for dessert and spared their furniture So Close to the Right Word. From an exclamation-point-filled Entertainment Tonight Story: Ali met her soon-to-be husband on the set of the cave man comedy film " Homo Erectus " where the two were both wearing loin clothes!

That would be loincloths. We received this e-mail today, purportedly from the Internal Revenue Service: Posted by Martha Brockenbrough at 1: Wednesday, October 15, Democracy in the Nude! The State Board of Elections decided today to adopt a ban on clothing , including buttons and hats that directly endorse a candidate or issue. So it seems unlikely that the elections board is banning clothing. This highlights the difference an extra comma and word can make.

The state board of elections has decided today to adopt a ban on clothing, buttons and hats that directly endorse a candidate or issue. Posted by Martha Brockenbrough at 3: OK, so this is sort of silly. But we confess we have watched this gospel choir announce the arrival of our book several times.

What's especially funny is that the book title and the remainder of the announcement combine to make an ungrammatical sentence. These come from Marty B.: But that's an oxymoron. More Fuller, Less Grammatical. Nicole Kidman loves her new husband, apparently: There are some people who think a construction like "more full" is incorrect. Adjectives modify nouns; adverbs modify adjectives. Certainly "fuller" is the more idiomatic construction, but it's not a problem at all to use "more full" as a comparative with many, many adjectives.

Could we make that more clear? We don't think so. Thanks to Ashleigh for the find. Posted by Martha Brockenbrough at 2: Kerri sends this our way along with a warning: Losing weight is hard, but loosing it--miserable. We're thinking they know a different English than we do--one with really lax spelling rules.

Monday, October 06, The Word of the Day. This comes from one of those Indian news services that pilfers content and reproduces it without attribution they have done this to our Encarta columns , so we don't know if the punctuation errors are original or added. Or is the penalty for misspelling death? Quoting the tests as "unnecessarily distressing" [this is a direct quote? According to Debbie, the whole process left the children with a sense of failure when the words learnt by them at home were finally reproduced in the test wrongly spelt.

It should be odd students--otherwise, it's calling the students "odd" when they're merely sissies for falling to pieces over spelling exams. This Does Not Please Us. Our e-mail has been unreliable for the last two days. When we wrote to customer support, we received this message: We would like to apologize but we have a common issue wherein exchange issue are still on going.

There has been a mail delays on random exchange servers and we would like to apologize where your account is affected. If we knew what it meant, we might feel better. Craig Conley sends this curious construction our way. It's the first time we've seen "Bible" used as a verb. No less interesting is the story behind the tricked-out bus.

A Bible publisher is traveling across the country to get a handwritten version of the good book. And because of its accuracy, clarity and literary quality, the NIV has become the most successful Bible translation of all time," said Moe Girkins, president and CEO of Zondervan, in a released statement. In any case, we wish them well as they Bible in their "luxury" motorhome donated by a company called Spartan Motors.

The world is a strange place, indeed. Have It Your Way. No doubt this is somebody's favorite way to enjoy a Whopper. We're guessing, though, that the sign-maker needs to consult the menu a little more closely. There should at the very least be a space between "a" and "cheesy. Friday, October 03, Diagramming Sentences.

When we first heard about sentence diagramming, we tingled with excitement. Our anticipation soured, however, when we learned that sentence diagrams were not pictures that went along with the words. This sour feeling turned to out-and-out nausea when we actually took to the task of diagramming, which our teacher made us do with a ruler to ensure every line was straight.

We do not like sentence diagramming. Nor do we like fancy terms for parts of speech and constructions. Like raw oysters and roasted beets, those are fine things for people who like those things. We are not those people. Nonetheless, we recommend this Slate article on diagramming Sarah Palin's sentences. The author argues that sentence construction offers a window into the mind the person who spoke or wrote it. We tend to agree. Sarah Palin, alas, has uttered some sentences that are the equivalent of a window overlooking a scrap heap.

Grammarians can't find much meaningful substance in a few of her more notorious squirts of prose. We do take issue with one point in the Slate article--that a really complex, convoluted sentence can signal a "richly educated mind" with a "Proustian" grasp of language. Truly finely tuned minds can take complicated ideas and express them so that people don't need to whip out a straightedge and Warriner's English Grammar and Composition to understand what's going on. It's an assault on the very notion of good writing to argue that such things should ever be needed to understand words on the page.

People who take pleasure in rat-nest constructions care more about impressing than communicating. They are the ones who write the textbooks that make students alternate between weeping and sleeping. They are the ones who write laws that confuse and alienate. They are the ones who write novels that are so inscrutable, very few people find actual pleasure in reading them--and instead have to settle for the satisfaction of completing them and the bragging rights they confer at cocktail parties with assorted cakesniffers.

Don't be cowed by this sort of thing. The difference between good writing and bad is the difference between steak and sawdust. You can chew on either, but no one who cares about you would feed you the latter. The Trouble with Cliches. Sarah Palin demonstrated last night one sort of trouble you can run into when you use cliches.

In fact, we believe those people are right now lubricating the axis of evil with rendered baby fat, or something along those lines. But we're guessing Sarah Palin thinks the expression means something else--perhaps "the end"? When our brains go on autopilot and insert entire phrases that sound familiar and vaguely right, we should beware. Unless we really know what the whole phrase means, we shouldn't use it. It reminds us of that scene in "The Little Mermaid," where Ariel combed her hair with a fork. Disney meant that to be funny. Sarah Palin probably wasn't playing nukes for laughs.

In any case, it's the mark of a fine and creative mind that can dispense altogether with second-hand phrases. Pardon that terrible headline. For many died -in-the-wool progressive Democrats, it would be natural to be cheered by the scholarly findings that our 43rd president has set a new low. Instead, I just want this long national nightmare to be over. Dyed , not died. Though wet sweaters, we admit, smell deadly. Back from the Dead to Threaten Us All. Sue sends this headline along from the Archaeologica Web site: Ancient Saxons could hold up supermarket The story itself is about an archeological find that could impede construction of a supermarket.

My daughters were doing their homework and much to my chagrin, Judge Judy was playing in the background Though using the wrong word isn't technically a grammar error, it's the sort of thing that drives language lovers up the proverbial wall. We might even actually get around to making a YouTube video clip one of these days. Tuesday, September 30, Shrink, Shrank, Shrunk. And recent surveys have shown that her popularity overall, while still strong, has begun to fade.

In one, a Fox News-Opinion Dynamics poll, her net positive rating shrunk from 27 points in early September to 11 points a week ago. At the same time, the candidate has been widely perceived to have struggled through a pair of TV interviews, particularly the recent one with Katie Couric of CBS. Her positive rating shrank. Her positive rating has shrunk. The New York Times , verb.

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Sunday, September 28, A Short Story. I am very passionate about modeling. However, there are not many places looking for short girls. I was wondering if there are some certain places that deal more with my type of look. I have a proportionate, petite body. But I just need some help! It seems that anyone in search for a model, is looking for someone over 5'7''. She means aspiring , of course. We're sure, though, that the inspirational story of a tiny teen with towering dreams will be the next reality-show craze.

Don't let anyone steal your dreams, you miniature models and knee-high NBA hopefuls! Saturday, September 27, Nouns and Adjectives.

This is from a headline that appeared in our local paper. China farmer sentenced for faked rare tiger photos Unless the man is growing porcelain, this headline should read "Chinese farmer sentenced for faked rare tiger photos. Thursday, September 25, So Very Special. We recently reconnected with members of our third-grade elementary school class on Facebook. Join us as friends , why don't you?

One of our former classmates posted this picture she'd taken at a protest of the National Day of Silence to honor gay, lesbian and transgendered students at her local high school. Apparently, some children who haven't experienced the suffering that's commonplace among kids who don't belong to the heterosexual majority think they deserve a "special day," too. We completely agree with the boy in this T-shirt. Congratulations, you sad clown. We don't know why all the letters are capitalized. It's not an acronym. So we can only assume she means to shout it from the rooftops.

Anyway, she's encouraging people to "nourish the inner aspect. We will stick with our workout. And we will mind the space bar. We still have no idea what the inner aspect is, and what sort of food it likes. Every day means every single day. Every day I ride the bus. Monday, September 22, The Bailout Bicycle. From The New York Times this morning: But toxic mortgage-backed securities were pedaled by plenty of foreign banks.

See the whole column. We believe the word the author intended was peddled. But some of these financial products were innovative, so who knows? Perhaps they had wheels. The New York Times , Vizzini. Thursday, September 18, Passive Voice Alert. It's a way to build a sentence so that the true subject isn't performing the action--like this one from this morning's New York Times: It can really make a sentence hard to understand, even though it's not grammatically incorrect. Here's a better way to write it: The network liked that the idea came from the actor Ashton Kutcher, who produced other "reality" shows, including MTV's "Punked," a "Candid Camera" update, and CW's "Beauty and the Geek," which paired models with nerds.

The passive voice and parenthetical asides really muddy the waters in this particular example. Passive voice isn't always bad, though. Sometimes, the subject is less important than the object and the action. For example, "The man was charged with murder. The passive voice can be sneaky, though. And why is no one taking responsibility? To quote Milton-Bradley or was it Hasbro? An Ode to the Semicolon. Jan Freeman has a nice piece on Boston. Does this make us nerdy? Or just very excited for the upcoming National Punctuation Day?

Read her column here. National Punctuation Day , semicolon. Friday, September 12, Speaking of Certain Death. And if anyone has doubts, authorities quickly put an end to them. The state news media often makes examples of people who fail to move out — and who are killed or injured. We get how it would be annoying and all to have your citizens ignore sensible advice from the government. But is killing off scofflaws the way to proceed? Of course, it's possible that authorities are putting an end to the doubts , and not the Cubans. You just can't tell, though, from the way these two sentences are written.

We are printing this poem, verbatim, from our junk-mail folder. It is noteworthy for its generous use of punctuation: Pestiferous Else; Conceit Instant? Forest; Forest; Else; Rain? Could Face Certain Death. Ike storm surge begins, Houston hunkers down People still in low-lying areas warned they could 'face certain death' The article itself says residents of the low country have been warned they "face certain death.

It does the opposite. The residents were, in fact, warned of the dangers of staying in their houses during the hurricane.

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This headline turns sense into nonsense. Is anyone else utterly dismayed at the state of our wimpypants media, so afraid of errors or perceived bias they will edit the sense out of everything? In any case, we have a newsflash: Each one of us faces certain death. It's a bummer, but there you have it.

Actually, this one was overheard on IM after being overheard on Dr. Phil I know, he's disgusting and one of the "expert women doctors" he's got on there giving advice just talked about the " stigmata " of getting cervical cancer. Do you even believe? The word she wanted was stigma: Barbara's pun was a great one. Hysterical means extremely funny or affected by hysteria--an uncontrollable emotion such as grief. Its root is the Greek word for womb. Hysteria literally means wandering womb. We refrain from casting judgment on long-dead Greeks. Wait, no we don't.

Thursday, September 11, Oh, I Doo. Perhaps it's a fiber-arts kit that was shelved in the wrong section of the store. In any case, constipation isn't fun at any age. If this kit solve the problem for the 8-and-ups, we're all for it. Was It a Circus Bear? The headline of an AP story we read this morning: Teacher OK after crashing into bear on a bicycle That's a pretty talented bear.

Monday, September 08, Portmanteau Contest: And the winner is: Thank you, everyone, for playing. Our copy editor contest is still running. A Day for Sausage Humor. The Nashville News found a funny typo on a sausage wrapper , using it an excuse to slip in a filthy punctuation-based joke. Equally funny are the jokes in the comments section. We'd Rather They Used Vegans. Jim sends along the following photo. The New York Times has just written about some of its recent grammar and language gaffes--and the reporter managed to work " hot naked guys " into the piece. We firmly believe that many, if not all, discussions of language are improved thus.

Your mileage may vary. At any rate, "not-naked guys" which should have been hyphenated are abundant. Are women really so easily pleased? Needless to say, we do not regret the error. A Preposition You Can't Refuse. If there's anything that marks a person as a new or inept speaker of English, it's the misuse of prepositions.

There is something wrong of my car newbie error. Or Where is my car at? David Thatcher calls them "the banana peels of modern speech. Now a retired English professor, he presents a downloadable guide called "Saving Our Prepositions. SPOGG is grateful, delighted, and amused. It's quite good, and almost certainly the only language manual that makes any sort of reference at all to the beauty of the word "gonorrhea.

This comes from the Sunday Dallas Morning News: Errors on signs becoming a 'regualar' occurrences Wouldn't some cheep gas be nice? But if you park your car, you've been warned: These mangled spellings — on real-life signs around the Dallas-Fort Worth area — underline the obvious: Spelling isn't always high on our list. Sexy Slang's Bedroom Challenges. Pot Psychology's How to Be. Stories of Casual Sex. How to Flirt with Your Husband: Dating Makes You Want to Die. The Fetish Deluxe Sampler.

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Ignoranus: How to Spot one in the Urban Jungle

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