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.

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. 

Loose or lose?

Okay, half of you are probably thinking 'What? This is so obvious. How can people get this wrong?' Well, it is not obvious to the other half because people do get this wrong. Frequently.

Loose

Let's start with the adjective loose. This means (among other meanings) something that is not firmly or tightly fixed in place, something that is not tied up or shut in, something that is not fastened or packaged together (thanks Oxford English Dicitonary). Did you get all those 'somethings'? They are the things that loose is describing. This word has a soft 's' sound at the end of it.

I have a loose tooth!   (A tooth that is not firmly fixed in place.)

Lose

Lose, on the other hand, is a verb and it has a number of meanings but the useful ones here are to become unable to find or to no longer have or keep. This word has a 'z' sound at the end of it.

I don't want to lose my tooth or I won't get money from the tooth fairy.
(I don't want to become unable to find my tooth...)

And to finish with - a sentence with them both at the same time.

 I'm going to lose my temper because the neighbour's loose dogs are on my property again.

No need to lose it. We've got it all sorted. No loose ends!

Prepositions

I can't believe you are actually reading a post about prepositions! But since you are here, read on.

Prepositions are all those common words that work with a noun or pronoun to show the noun's relation to the rest of the sentence.

Words such as

around about before after up down in out on to with without near by through for against

are prepositions.

Where does the preposition go?

If you ask anyone what they know about prepositions most will parrot that you must never end a sentence with a preposition. This is true if you are writing Latin, but it is not a hard and fast rule in English. Generally speaking the preposition goes before the noun/pronoun it is attached to

Francis is going to university. 

But this doesn't always have to be. Both versions of the question below are acceptable.

To which university is Francis going?

Which university is Francis going to?

 The first version sounds very formal to us but you will still see it in some writing. The second version reflects how we speak.  Some people would rather avoid writing the second version but feel that the first version is too formal. You can solve the problem (sometimes) by changing the verb. In this case we can change 'go' to 'attend'

Which university will Francis attend?

Repeating prepositions

Usually there is no need to repeat prepositions in a list within a sentence

I am allergic to dairy products and (to) nuts.

But sometimes you need to so you can avoid a confusing sentence

We are talking about the movie and about eating chocolates.

Just talking about eating chocolates, not actually consuming them.

Prepositions in a title or a headline

What if you have a capitalised heading? Do you use a capital letter at the start of a preposition? This is a fuzzy area and it can vary. A good rule of thumb is to capitalise a preposition if it is five letters or longer

Between the Covers

Gone with the Wind

How do I know if it's a preposition?

Look it up in the dictionary! Weird, huh? If you're stuck without a dictionary you could try a little trick. Take 'with' out of  'Gone with the Wind' and put your suspected preposition in. If it sounds like it could conceivably fit in you probably have a preposition on your hands ('Gone Through the Wind', 'Gone to the Wind', 'Gone down the Wind' etc.).

Which preposition?

There are some standard preposition/verb combinations and we English speakers are terrible at using the correct ones. The use of some prepositions is changing to match our spoken English. My pet hate is 'bored of' instead of 'bored with' or 'bored by'. A quick look at Oxford Dictionaries online showed me that this usage is quite common now and while you are best to avoid it in writing feel free to use it in speech. Nobody tell my kids!

If you aren't quite sure which preposition belongs in your sentence you can just go online and search up 'verb preposition list' and there are any number of websites with references you can use.

Me and I and what's the difference anyway?

My grandfather was a teacher. He taught in country schools so he was used teaching everything to any age group. Car trips (to an English-geek like me) were always fun because he would give me words to spell and I loved spelling (you can see it starts young!). But Grandad also liked to correct our grammar. This was confusing to a child of ten who had not been taught grammar at school beyond what nouns, verbs and adjectives were. One lesson really stuck with me. On that day I had got me and I mixed up and Grandad shared a surefire way of getting it right. I'll let you into his secret, but first let's look at the theory.


So what exactly am I talking about? You know, when you are emailing your friends and you want to say

Come to the movies tonight. Jordan, Harper and I are going.

Which is somehow different from

Darcy has invited Jordan, Harper and me to the movies.

But why should it be different? Well, because I is a subject pronoun and me is an object pronoun. Their purpose in the sentence decides which one you should use. This roughly translates to mean that after verbs and prepositions use me; before verbs use I.

So, looking at our examples

Come to the movies tonight. Jordan, Harper and I are going.

In this example, the names are all listed before the verb ('are') so we use I.

  Darcy has invited Jordan, Harper and me to the movies.

The list of names is after the verb ('invited') so we use me.

And what was that surefire tip of Grandad's? The one that meant that you didn't have to know what a verb or a preposition was?

Take out the other names in the sentence and see if it still works.

Come to the movies tonight. I am going.

Darcy has invited me to the movies.

It works!

 

That or which?

Carrying on the theme of pairs of words, this week we are looking at that and which. These two regularly get mixed up. And then there's that bit about whether you should use a comma. It all gets a bit fraught.

You know that the aim of this blog is to make writing as simple as possible. So, let's see if we can make this easy.

Using that

Sometimes in a sentence you want to define which thing you are talking about. If you were writing about one of these two kittens you might say:

The kitten that is black and grey is my favourite.

Tough for the little ginger kitten, but you've left your readers in no doubt as to which kitten you prefer. And see how that that fits so snugly into the sentence. So, we use that for a defining clause - a clause that tells us 'which one'.

Using which

What if you were telling your friends about your new kitten and puppy? You want to tell them all about your new pets - and you already have a favourite!

The kitten, which is black and grey, is my favourite.

Now they know a little more about your favourite pet (nothing about the puppy, though). The pair of commas (after 'kitten' and 'grey') contain the extra information in a non-defining clause. You could take that clause out of the sentence and it would still make sense, we just wouldn't know as much about the kitten.

Summing it all up

Use that when you are defining which thing you are talking about. It doesn't need a comma.

Use which when you are giving extra information. Use a pair of commas to corral that extra information. If you take out the words between the commas the sentence will still make sense.

Next time someone says to you "should it be that or which?" you can casually say to them that it depends if they are using it in a defining or non-defining clause. They will be impressed.

Amount or number?

Most of us get these words mixed up at some time - especially when we are speaking. But when we are writing our readers are less forgiving of misused words.

So how do you know when to use amount and when to use number?

Number is used for things you can count.

Amount is used for things you measure.

'I drank a vast amount of wine last night. I can tell by the number of bottles and corks left on the table.'

'Look at the number of sheep in the snow. The amount of snow is impressive.'

It's really easy when you look at it that way.

Remember:

Number is used for things you can count; amount is used for things you measure.

When do I stop?

In many parts of the world it is called a full stop. In the US it is called a period. We used to see them a lot more than we do these days. Where have they gone? And when do we use them? There's a summary at the bottom if you want to go to the cheat sheet. Otherwise...

You need one at the end of a sentence. It tells us to stop, take a breath and then move on to the next sentence. Everyone knows that, right? Well, yes, but sometimes when we are writing we get confused about where one sentence ends and another begins. That's when we end up with a run-on sentence. For example:

It was raining hard my umbrella was at the bottom of my school bag.

The two ideas just don't go together in that one sentence. Don't you miss that pause a full stop gives you? You need something to go between those two ideas. A full stop would be perfect:

 It was raining hard. My umbrella was at the bottom of my school bag.

Easy! So what else needs a full stop? In Commonwealth countries the answer to that used to be quite complicated. But now we seem to be aiming for a less cluttered look in our writing, with full stops among the first to go. 

The only abbreviation we still use a full stop for is 'no.' for 'number' (strictly speaking it isn't an abbreviation but a contraction of the word numero). The full stop is there to ensure 'no.' doesn't get confused with 'no'. Just remember to leave the full stop out if you are referring to more than one number ('nos'). 

Finally, we still use the full stop in some Latin abbreviations. It pays to check your dictionary for these. Sometimes a dictionary will have two choices. Just go with the first option as that is the more common usage. The most common Latin abbreviations we use are punctuated like this:

• a.m. (or am)
• p.m. (or pm)
• e.g.
• i.e.
• etc.
• c. 
• NB
• PS 

What do you need to remember when using a full stop?

1. Use it at the end of a sentence to tell your reader to take a pause.
2. Use it to avoid run-on sentences.
3. Use it for 'no.' (number).
4. Use it for some Latin abbreviations (check your dictionary).

Anyway, does anyone know - one word or two?

Anyone of us can read any thing and wonder if any body, any where, spots the mistakes that we do. 

That sentence doesn't look right, does it? Some of those words should be split up and some joined together. But which?

Well, here are some simple rules:

1. Anywhere and anything are always one word.

2. Any time is always two words.

3. Anybody, anyone and anyway are usually one word but not if the emphasis is on the second part of the word. For example "Any one of you could have got that question correct."

Any one of us can read anything and wonder if anybody, anywhere, spots the mistakes that we do. And now you know.

How do I know if it's 'its' or 'it's'?

Okay, this one stumps people because it seems so counter-intuitive. Let's look at a couple of sentences.

The cat licked its tummy.

 It's a black cat.

Many people want to put an apostrophe in that first sentence because, after all, don't we use an apostrophe to show possession? Well, yes, but unfortunately that is where English grammar starts to get ugly because the 'its' in that first sentence is actually a possessive determiner and they don't take apostrophes.

Before you run for the hills, it's okay, I've stopped the heavy grammar talk right there. All you need is one nice easy rule:

If it's short for 'it is' or 'it has' then use an apostrophe. For everything else just leave out the apostrophe.

So let's check the sentences near the start of this post.

'The cat licked it is/it has tummy' is obviously wrong. The sentence must be 'The cat licked its [own] tummy' so 'its' without an apostrophe is the way to go.

 'It is a black cat' makes perfect sense so we can use 'it's' with an apostrophe.

It's that easy!

The Oxford English Dictionary has come a long way.

When I was growing up we had a copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (two volumes, bound in blue fabric) on our bookshelf. It contained words I had never heard of and would never use. Archaic words and scientific terms were crammed in beside bizarre borrowings from foreign languages. It spelt disaster if referred to for Scrabble.

Forty years have passed and the OED has just released some of the latest words to make it into the dictionary. Is a future generation going to be just as bamboozled by "bants", "hangry" and "brain fart" as I was by "canthus", "dessiatine" and "lacustrian"? At the very least, the addition of new words with the letter "x", "Grexit" and "Brexit", will be welcomed by Scrabble players. Hmm, perhaps best to just stick with The Concise Oxford Dictionary.