Is that a real word or did you just make it up?

How many times have you guffawed - out loud or smothered behind a cough - at someone's verbal gaffe? In particular, when they use a word that you know doesn't exist. Do you experience a moment of amused superiority or, at the very least, save it up to share with friends afterwards? But why do we laugh or sneer at people who unintentionally utter new words? After all, isn't our language built on the creativity of fearless word-building folk?


Our English medieval ancestors spoke a language that was already a bit of a hotchpotch thanks to various invading tribes in the preceding centuries. Then Shakespeare came along and, seeing a need, merrily invented words to suit. He added prefixes and suffixes to existing words, was an early adopter of verbing nouns, copied the Germans by running two words together to make a new one, and dreamed up totally new and different creations. A hundred or so years later pseudo-Latin words were all the rage because people thought it made them look clever. In the 1800s some smart young things thought it was amusing to invent new words such as discombobulate, presumably so that you could discombobulate those who weren't in the know.

So, if English is made up of so many made-up words why are we so quick to laugh at people who use made up words unintentionally? Some made up words are really quite useful. For instance, when a little boy in a swim class couldn't swim along the bottom of the pool, try as he might, his teacher said, 'He's really quite floatacious'. How apt. The boy was not keen to dive either and his teacher decided not to push him too far in case he decided to rebaliate. I know what she means! Once he rebaliates it's all over, believe me! At a local club a committee member thought an unhealthy tree would need to be seen by an arbitrist. Sounds like the right person to make a decision about trees.

When did I first hear of comfortability? I'm not sure, but for me it comes under the heading of 'ugly but out there' words. It's not recognised by any major dictionaries but it's definitely out there on Google. These are the words that are based on something familiar but you can't believe they are for real. In fifty years, the progress of English being what it is, I expect to experience total comfortability with these types of words. In the meantime, I'll leave that one for you to use.

Some words have caught me out. I still cannot come to terms with impactful. I read it for the first time only a few months ago and was all ready to get superior but thought I had better look it up first. It turns out that impactful has been around since the 1950s and has made it into reputable dictionaries. Who knew? Not me. Kanye West did, though. He said 'I am the Number One most impactful artist of our generation.' If you say so, Kanye.

And sometimes it's an education. In a sound bite I heard on the radio, John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, referred to occupated land in Aleppo. What a clanger, right? Er, wrong. Those of you who knew the word already can laugh at me now. 

So when you hear someone utter a word you think is made up, look it up before you snortle. There are more words out there than you can ever know and, after all, our language is built on yesterday's 'ugly but out there' offerings.

How do I use a possessive apostrophe when the word ends in 's'?

Apostrophes can be trying at the best of times, but when the word ends in 's' it gets particularly confusing. How do you know where to put the apostrophe? And what about an extra 's'. Do you need it? The simple fact is that tastes in punctuation have changed over time and now we are left with a headache as we try to follow the rules we were taught all those years ago (well, it was a wee while ago for me, but perhaps not for you).

When the possessing noun is plural and ends in 's' just put the apostrophe after the 's' and then move on. (Some plural noun examples, teachers, shopkeepers, sisters, bosses, but not firemen as although it is plural it doesn't end in 's'.)

All the teachers' pupils ran the cross country run today. Not one of those teachers accepted an excuse. Every child had to run.

The shopkeepers' concerns were unfounded. None of the shopkeepers needed to worry about their shared concerns, after all.

When the sisters' chores were done they were free to annoy their little brother. Those sisters had too much time on their hands. More chores, I say.

The bosses' combined pay would have kept me in champagne for the rest of my life. Are those bosses really worth all that money?

So far, so good. But when you are writing a person's forename or surname things can vary a little and get vague.

The name Jesus and names from the ancient world that end in 's' just take an apostrophe and no extra 's'. I should mention that some people (and countries) include other biblical names in this rule too. Some don't. Examples of names that fall under this rule are Archimedes, Achilles and, well, Jesus.

Hercules' labours were laborious. Well, they must have been or they wouldn't have been called labours, would they?

Names that end in an 'iz' sound (that's called a voiced 's') need an apostrophe and then an 's' added.  

Les's friends never know where to put the apostrophe in his name. They were pretty certain it wasn't Le's.

Names that end in 'ss' need an apostrophe and an 's'.

Mr Moss's house was painted moss green.

But, if you are writing about the Moss family's house you would drop the extra 's' because (...see the first rule at the top) it would be a plural. Like this:

The Mosses' house was painted moss green. Some people like moss green.

So what about all the other names that end in 's'? Lynne Truss, in Eats, Shoots & Leaves refers to Fowler's Modern Usage and offers the following:

...modern names ending in 's' (including biblical names, and any foreign name with an unpronounced final 's'), the 's' is required after the apostrophe.

Lynne Truss's book is an invaluable resource on apostrophes. Yes, indeed!

She used Alexander Dumas's name as an example in her book. I stole that one because I couldn't think of another foreign name with a silent final 's' off the top of my head.

This whole business is messy. It is complicated. Don't worry if your head hurts a little just thinking about it. But next time you need to place an apostrophe just re-read those rules and place that apostrophe with confidence.
 

Do you go extinct or become extinct?

This is a captivating image. Well, for me it is. Where I come from we don't talk about things going extinct or that something has went extinct. In my part of the world things become or became extinct.

Yet, there it was, in my morning paper: an article on how Neanderthals went extinct. My first reaction was that this article was written by a five-year-old who hadn't quite grasped the basics of which verbs to use and when. Surely this wasn't written by a trained journalist? All my (mostly) latent grammar and language snobbishness came scrabbling to the surface but I womanfully pushed it back down and looked at this from a more investigative point of view.

Further into the article I discovered that the journalist was reporting the work done by some researchers who had published their findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. After using the search engine of my choice to do a little research of my own, I discovered that some North Americans commonly use went extinct or go extinct or whatever the tense of the verb to go is required. Some people in the United Kingdom got quite defensive about their use of go extinct as well.

I dug some more and discovered that among professional editors the preferred usage was to become extinct. All the online dictionaries included sentence samples using the verb to become. Very few included a sentence sample with to go extinct. 

Editors were of the opinion that the use of to go extinct might be in common parlance in some parts of the world but it wasn't the correct usage. Certainly 26,775,000 online search results for become extinct or became extinct suggests that it is the preferred choice. Go extinct and went extinct only managed 1,585,000. So, where does this leave us? I would suggest that you stick with become extinct if you want to look like you know what you are talking about.

As for the newspaper article, perhaps the research paper was peer-reviewed but never passed in front of the eyes of a professional proofreader. And perhaps the journalist lifted some sentences or snippets intact from the published findings. However it occurred, it is indicative of the change in the way journalists must work. More and more errors slip through as the pace at which they work speeds up. As we see more errors in print I wonder: if they aren't getting enough time to get the basics right (grammar, spelling) then what else are they getting wrong that we don't know about?

Lay 'lie, lay, laid and lain' confusion to rest

If you already know the difference between  lie, lay, laid and lain you can smugly go and do whatever you want. For the rest of us, let's lay the confusion to rest, once and for all!

To understand the difference between these words you just need to know that we use verbs to describe something we are doing right now (present tense), something we have done already (past tense) and something we will do after this point in time (future tense). There are other variants as well, but those are the basics.

The key to using these words is just work out if you are talking about something that is happening right now, or something that happened in the past.

Lie

Lie mainly refers to being in a horizontal position on a supporting surface.

In the present tense (happening right now) we can say

I lie on the bed.
I am lying on the bed.

In the past tense (already happened) we can say

I lay on the bed.
I had lain on the bed (...for what felt like a minute and then the alarm clock went off.)

Lay

Lay mainly refers to putting down something gently or carefully, or putting something down and setting it in position for use.

In the present tense (happening right now) we can say

I lay the floor tiles in position.
I am laying the floor tiles in position.

In the past tense (already happened) we can say

I laid the floor tiles in position.
I had laid the floor tiles in position. (...when the next door neighbours' dog came running over them and messed them up. Just saying.)

Once you have worked out what you are doing (lying horizontally or placing something) you can easily choose the correct word.

 

 

When to use utilize and how can you utilize use?

Does the misuse of utilize get up your nose? Do you feel like the author is trying to come across as more knowledgeable than they really are by using that word? You are not alone. Utilize (or utilise) is one of those words that was picked up from its little niche and dropped into the place usually occupied by use, presumably on the grounds that seven letters were better than three. It is commonly found in the company of other business jargon and it has been bugging me for years.

Use

Use is a perfectly helpful word that everyone understands but just for the record, the Oxford Dictionaries gives the following definition:

Take, hold, or deploy (something) as a means of accomplishing or achieving something.

We can use use as I have in this sentence. We use a toothbrush to clean our teeth. I use my blue teeshirt to bring together the other colours of my outfit. I use cardboard boxes to hold my belongings when I shift house.

Use is easy. We use it all the time and never even think about it. But, somehow, this seems to devalue it in the eyes of those trying to make their writing look more important. These people want more, they want a longer and more impressive sounding word...they want utilize.

Utilize

Utilize has its own meaning and it is not quite the same as use. According to our friends at Oxford Dictionaries again the definition is:

Make practical and effective use of

Bill Bryson in Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors writes that we can also use utilize for 'making use of something that wasn't intended for the purpose...or for extracting maximum value'.

I can utilize my blue teeshirt to make a cat house. I can utilize the offcuts of dress fabric to make rag rugs. If the cardboard box maker utilizes the cardboard carefully they will be able to get more than one box out of each sheet of cardboard.

So, there is a place for utilize, just not as a replacement for use. The (almost) final word must go to Eric Partridge who says in Usage and Abusage says that utilize is

   '...99 times out of 100, much inferior to use...the one other time [it is] merely inferior.

Think carefully before using utilize.

A number of vs the number of

I'm going to let you into a little secret: proofreaders don't remember everything and sometimes we have to look things up. And we double-check a lot because people like to point their fingers in a superior way when a proofreader makes a mistake. Consequently, I take twice as long as anyone else does to send emails and texts (was that double check, double-check or doublecheck?).

That's written English, though. Spoken English is quite another thing. When I'm speaking I'm more worried about getting my idea across (before someone talks over the top of me) and less concerned with being absolutely and grammatically correct all the time. So, late one evening, after watching an episode of War and Peace and still recovering from the amputation scene at Borodino, my mind wasn't quite up to the casual question thrown at me by a family member. I chickened out and said 'I dunno, I'll look it up.'

Here's the question:

When I'm using 'a number of' do I use a singular or a plural verb?

 Well, you could add another question to that one.

When I'm using 'the number of' do I use a singular or a plural verb?

Did you see the subtle difference? 'A number of' and 'the number of'. Don't be fooled by how alike they look. We treat them differently.

A number of

A number of soldiers are in the medical tent.
(Not a number of soldiers is in the medical tent.)

The soldiers (more than one so it's a plural noun) are what we need the verb to agree with (match). For one soldier we would use the singular form of the verb ('a soldier is...'). For more than one soldier we use the plural form ('the soldiers are').

The number of

The number of soldiers in the medical tent is horrifying.
(Not the number of soldiers in the medical tent are horrifying.)

This time the noun we want the verb to agree with is 'the number of' and this is a singular noun. So we use the singular form of the verb ('the number of...is...).

Simple Rule

A number of needs a plural verb.

The number of needs a singular verb.

Handy tip:
If you are having trouble with what the singular form of a verb is for this situation then just use the verb that goes with 'he/she'.   he runs, she congratulates, he was, she has
For a plural form of the verb use the form that goes with 'they'.   they run, they congratulate, they were, they had

  

Sorry, was that Dr Whom or Dr Who?

Before we begin, I know you are wondering why I am even mentioning whom. Who uses it these days, anyway?

I remember sitting in a quality control meeting over twenty years ago engaged in a discussion started by Fred, the minute taker, as to whether he should use whom when recording the minutes. The general feeling was that whom was archaic and nobody used it anymore. But apparently it was still important enough to Fred to raise this matter before he started to record the minutes. I loved that guy!

So, apart from Fred, who can be bothered to use whom? In The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words Bill Bryson writes that Theodore Bernstein asked that very question in 1975. Bernstein asked twenty-five usage experts 'if...there was any real point in preserving whom except when it is directly governed by a preposition (as in 'to whom it may concern').' A staunch six said we must keep it, four couldn't make their minds up and fifteen said get rid of it.

Bryson goes on to mention that even 200 odd years ago Noah Webster called whom needless. It is left over from the times in our dim, distant past when we used to decline our pronouns. Well, whom is the only relative pronoun still hanging in there after we declined all the others and it just doesn't seem to know how to leave the party. And, what's worse, if you use it the wrong way People Will Notice. What we need are some simple rules to help us so that our writing gets noticed for the right reasons and not because some grammar snob is sniffing at our syntax.

Sorry, not quite up to the simple rules yet because first we need a very short grammar lesson.

We use nouns to label things, places and people. eg.Jim, saucepan, school, TARDIS

We use pronouns to take the place of nouns to make our sentence sound less repetitive. There are eight different types but we are particularly interested in relative pronouns, in this case whom and who.
  
Grammar lesson over, let's get on to the simple rules.

Simple Rule Number One

Try a different pronoun in your sentence.
Who went to see Amy Pond? The Doctor (he) went to see Amy Pond.
If 'he', 'she', 'they' or 'we' fits in you should use who

Simple Rule Number Two

Try a different pronoun in your sentence. This is not a mistype!
Whom did the Doctor go to see? The Doctor went to see Amy Pond (her).
If 'him', 'her', 'us' or 'them' fits in you should use whom.

Simple Rule Number Three

If there is a preposition in front of it you should use whom.
To whom it may concern.

Sometimes it will sound a bit old-fashioned.
From whom did you receive your Valentine cards?

In that case it's OK to change it around so that the preposition is at the end of the sentence and just use who.
Who did you receive your Valentine cards from?

You will be able to get away without using whom in your day to day conversation but someone will always notice if you get it wrong in your writing. We are stuck with it for now but, armed with your three simple rules, you can impress the snobbiest of grammar purists. 

Summer and grammar

In my part of the world it has been a long hot summer. El nino and global warming have combined to bring us the most consistently warm summer we have had in several years. The flies and mosquitoes have fed and bred in a riotous celebration of their favourite season. We have lit citronella tea light candles and dipped ourselves in potent chemicals yet still the flies sit on our hands as we eat our dinner. We might as well live in Australia!

When you give up working in an office building you give up free air conditioning. It may comfort you to know that at 95 per cent humidity and 28 degrees Celsius (it's all relative, people) even a self-confessed language freak like me finds it hard to concentrate on the finer points of English grammar.

Happily the mercury has snuck (thank you US English speakers for that most excellent word) down a point or two and my energy levels have risen correspondingly, so I am back into it again.

The next post is coming very soon, but until then consider John Mayer's words:

"Ladies, if you want to know the way to my heart...good spelling and good grammar, good punctuation, capitalize only where you are supposed to capitalize, its done."