Exhibit A:

Definition of DO-RAG: a kerchief worn especially to cover the hair

(source: M-W.com)

EXHIBIT B:

The apostrophe has three uses:

1. to form possessives of nouns

2. to show the omission of letters

3. to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters

(and, therefore, “yours”–along with his, hers, and its, does NOT take an apostrophe!)

source: Purdue OWL: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/

What the writer of this failed to note is that, sadly, logic and sense are rarely required to be persuasive.  Just think of bumper stickers.  I love bumper stickers, but let’s face it.  All you really need is a catch phrase.  It doesn’t have to be spelled right, it doesn’t have to be true, it doesn’t have to make sense.

Slogans just really need to be memorable and to make some sort of sense to enough people that they start spreading them.  Calling someone a fascist or a socialist requires absolutely no evidence, as long as the speaker has enough of an audience to spread the word.  Most Americans don’t even know what socialism and fascism really are, they just know (or think) that these words are the enemy of democracy and to be accused of such beliefs is almost as bad as not putting a “support the troops” sticker on your car.

If we all thought that reliability and truth were achieved through spell check, there would be no Kash-n-Karry grocery stores, Froot Loops, or Jell-o in America.

So when you want to persuade people, don’t rely on intellect and reason. After all, intellectual, reasonable people are these days equated with elitism and snobbery.  And nobody wants that.

But not really.  Because, you see, over time language changes.  Words come in from other languages, words fade out of use or change meaning, pronunciation changes.  People confuse one word for another, it hits the mainstream, and before you know it the language has altered in a tiny way. Let’s take the following sentence:

James is feeling a little (XXXX) about letting Bill borrow his shovel.

For now, the dictionary still reads thusly (all definitions from m-w.com)

Weary: 1 : exhausted in strength, endurance, vigor, or freshness 2: expressing or characteristic of weariness <a weary sign> 3: having one’s patience, tolerance, or pleasure exhausted —used with of <soon grew weary of waiting>

So, James isn’t feeling tired about letting Bill take his shovel, he’s having reservations. Let’s try another word:

Leery: : suspicious, wary —often used with of <leery of strangers> for example: They were leery of their neighbors.

and this: Wary:  marked by keen caution, cunning, and watchfulness especially in detecting and escaping danger for example: The store owner kept a wary eye on him.

Weary is obviously not the correct word in this context. But I hear it often.  I suspect maybe folks are combining “wary” and “leery” to make “weary.”  And eventually the dictionary may reflect this.

For now, though, it’s not a good idea to send a business email expressing your “weariness” about hiring John Doe or about making an upcoming presentation.

Maybe it’s all that cubicle-dwelling that business types do, but corporate America is particularly flooded with cliches.  It’s an epidemic of epic proportions.  Wait.  Scratch that.  It’s a the Swine Flu of business English.  “Epic” is a word so overused that it just doesn’t mean anything anymore.  So, please, find another word to abuse.

Epic: noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer’s Iliad is an epic poem. (Dictionary.com).

Some other examples include: think outside the box; grow your business; skill set; bring to the table.  Here’s a sentence that, if uttered in my proximity, may cause my brain to explode:

You should hire me to grow your business; I’m a detail-oriented go-getter who brings to the table a unique skill set and can think outside the box.

Yikes.  That’s not good business English.  It’s so generic that it fails to communicate any sense whatsoever of who is saying it.  Similarly, using tired out words like “epic” actually detracts from the true wonder of whatever it is we’re calling epic in the first place.  I can tell you about a prank I pulled last night that was epic, but you probably wouldn’t think much of it because all of your Facebook friends had epic adventures this weekend.

Food for thought.

Really?  “Me and Santa?”  2 problems with this: 1, the other party always goes first–it’s only polite; 2, it’s not “me,” it’s “I.”  Trying to sound like a kid might sound for the sake of a cute t shirt is not just bad grammar, it is, as my tween would say, lame (not sure why it would have a sore leg, but okay).

1) Lighted Reading Glasses

Yes, I’m serious.  I cannot sleep at night if I don’t read a bit first, and I know many book lovers feel the same.  Many book lovers’ significant others, however, hate trying to go to sleep with a light on. These glasses should solve the problem!

2) Funny t-shirt.  In grad school I got a sweatshirt that said “Free the Bound Periodicals!” Librarians and others who have spent hour upon hour combing through the bound periodicals will get it.  I still have that sweatshirt.  Here’s another good one:

3) an iPod. Or if you have some bucks, an iPad.  Yep, I mean it.  The obvious suggestion would have been a Kindle or a Nook.  And as great as they are, I love to download audiobooks from my library and listen to them while I exercise.  If you’re on a tight budget and your gift recipient has an iPod already, why not an iTunes gift card?

4) Chocolate Scrabble game.  Oh, the regular version will do, too, but who can resist one that has the letter pieces made of chocolate?  True word fans know that Scrabble isn’t really about the words–it’s about points, and the word “Za” can net you 33 points or more (especially if you spell it two ways), but word lovers everywhere seem to love this game all the same.

5)  Bookends. We readers use our bookshelves for, well, BOOKS! HGTV would have us all clearing out our bookshelves and placing just a few expensive objets d’art  on them.  But I have books 2 deep on every shelf.  An art piece I can find useful would be great, and bookends come in an endless (hee hee) supply of designs. Here’s a whimsical one that would look cute in a child’s room:

Have a great holiday season and to all those out shopping on Black Friday, good luck! No shopping for me–I’m spending the day putting up Christmas decorations and watching Christmas movies.  Might as well get the kids all whipped up into a lather over the holidays right now, right?

Can you see the pictures? The bottom image shows a shopping mall marquee in the family oriented Citrus Park/Carrollwood area in Tampa, Florida. The top  image just shows the names of the anchor stores.  Notice the very bottom two.

Nice.

Lay is a transitive verb.  It means to put something down, or, if you are a chicken, to bring forth an egg.  You lay your body down (it’s “now I lay me down to sleep” not “now I lie me down to sleep”).

But when we just simply go to bed–we don’t actually put ourselves to sleep, we lie down.  We lay our babies down in their cribs at night (picture me…mommy…putting baby into bed).

Transitive verbs are incomplete without an object (now I lay the baby down to sleep).  If you don’t have “the baby” in this sentence it’s just “I lay.”  Totally different meaning.

You can’t lie a baby down.  You just can’t. It’s an intransitive verb.

OK, if the grammar talk it getting to you, just remember. If you are putting something down, you lay it. If you are just taking up an action, you lie.

PG-13 remark:

It’s called “get laid” for a reason, people.

Oh, my.

This article is a great demonstration of Aristotle’s concept of ethos; here we have a middle school principal who sends out an email with numerous typos, punctuation errors, grammar errors, and mixed or inappropriate metaphors.  While many of us would just read through an email like this from a friend and think nothing of it, someone who is in a position of authority over children’s education really needs to be a grammatically correct, if not inspired, writer.

This is the same reason so many people made fun of George W. Bush; there’s a longstanding tradition of presidents being solid, if not great, communicators.  Sure, these days they all have their speeches written by lackeys–I mean speechwriters–but Bush just could not string a grammatically or intellectually coherent thought together when speaking extemporaneously. Does that make him a bad president? No. A pad person? Of course not.  But when an audience has particular expectations of a person, and that person fails those expectations, his or her credibility is shot.  This is ethos: a person’s character or reputation.

If I had a nickel for every time a person said “oh! I better watch my grammar!” when they found out what I do, well, I’d have a lot of nickels.  They assume that I am a certain kind of person–an English professor turned writer has a certain reputation, right? I always reply with, “I don’t grade unless I’m paid,” but the fact is, in casual interactions I don’t care how you speak or write or communicate, as long as I can understand you.  In fact, my English is sadly lacking in conversation because it’s informal.  That’s how it should be. But if you’re being paid (and in NY, where this principal is located, the pay is astonishingly high) to supervise other teachers and educate students, you bet your bippy I’m going to judge your grammar.

My great great grandmother was born in Italy. Do you cap any of the G’s?? Hyphen any where??? Same with great grandmother. . . [and what about] Step-Great-Grandfather, Anthony – is this correct?

The general rule for usage is to hyphenate greats.  And capitalization is for proper names, not generics. So, the answers would be:

great-great-grandmother

great-grandmother

step-great-grandfather Anthony

It’s complex, but keep in mind that most grammar and usage rules exist to create clarity.  If you said “my great great-grandmother” a listener might think you were bragging on great-grandmother Lucy, rather than referring to her mother, your great great-great-grandmother.

Which brings to mind a recent joke I heard, which seems to have gone viral and may be an urban myth.  In this story, a nurse looks at a newborn baby’s chart and comments on the unusual name, La-a.  She asks the mother how to pronounce the name, and the mom looks at her like she’s an idiot and says, “It’s LaDASHa–the dash ain’t silent!”

Me being me, I immediately had to wonder: what kind of dash was it? An em dash? An en dash? Or was it, secretly, a hyphen aspiring to dashhood?