Great Minds...

I was having a conversation last night with someone who directed me to this article. The content isn't what interested me. The title did, though, and the fact that he thought to show it to me. I suppose great nerds think alike?

So Good It Makes You Cry

Gotta love The Onion...

Underfunded Schools Forced To Cut Past Tense From Language Programs

WASHINGTON—Teaching students how to conjugate verbs so that they can describe events that have already occurred is a luxury many schools cannot afford.

How hard would it be to speak sans past tense? Let's see if I can recap my morning.

I get out of bed late because the air in my apartment is frigid and I am reluctant to emerge from beneath my warm blankets. I get ready for work and head to the 6 train, where, amazingly, one is waiting. I get on the train and exit six stops later. I then make a bee-line for Starbucks, where I spend no less than 20 minutes anxiously awaiting my Venti Nonfat Chai Latte. It might be above freezing outside, but it is going to snow today. I arrive at work roughly 12 minutes late.

Okay, I admit, we need the past tense, even if we don't need to live in the past. Some good stuff from the article:

WASHINGTON—Faced with ongoing budget crises, underfunded schools nationwide are increasingly left with no option but to cut the past tense—a grammatical construction traditionally used to relate all actions, and states that have transpired at an earlier point in time—from their standard English and language arts programs.

Gotta love it! And here's the kicker:

Regardless of the recent upheaval, students throughout the country are learning to accept, and even embrace, the change to their curriculum.

"At first I think the decision to drop the past tense from class is ridiculous, and I feel very upset by it," said David Keller, a seventh-grade student at Hampstead School in Fort Meyers, FL. "But now, it's almost like it never happens."

Back in the Saddle

I was out of town for a week celebrating Thanksgiving, new additions to my family (two of my cousins are new parents), and one of my best friend's weddings. It was a great, albeit exhausting, trip.

I arrived back in New York this morning and went straight to school -- luggage in tow -- because my flight was delayed. And what better reception could I ask for than for my professor to revert back to his old, grammatically incorrect, ways? Now it's just funny... supposively.

Not Interchangeable

Bleeding ears breed scathing sneers and virtual jeers. Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to wax sarcastic in the name of grammatical perfection. Perhaps I'm a bit on edge as deadlines and graduation loom, but today I heard a writer misspeak in a way that is laughable and, also, sad. Writers, after all, are supposed to know words, right? Or, at the very least, they should actively (and constantly) consult dictionaries to resolve discrepancies.

The culprit: A poor, unknowing, aspiring writer.
The crime: Word felony in the first degree.

She discussed coloring a story with narrative vignettes. In describing them, she meant to say anecdotes.

From Dictionary.com:

an·ec·dote
-noun
a short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature, often biographical.

[Origin: 1670–80; < NL anecdota or F anecdotes < LGk, Gk anékdota things unpublished (referring esp. to Procopius' unpublished memoirs of Justinian and Theodora), neut. pl. of anékdotos, equiv. to an- an-1 + ékdotos given out, verbal adj. of ekdidónai to give out, publish (ek- ec- + didónai to give)]

—Synonyms story, yarn, reminiscence.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

But, to my obvious infuriation (once again, I don't mean to be harsh, it's just one of those days), she said antidotes.

an·ti·dote
noun, verb, -dot·ed, -dot·ing.
–noun
1. a medicine or other remedy for counteracting the effects of poison, disease, etc.
2. something that prevents or counteracts injurious or unwanted effects: Good jobs are the best antidote to teenage crime.
–verb (used with object)
3. to counteract with an antidote: Medication was given to antidote the poison the child had swallowed.
[Origin: 1400–50; late ME (< MF) < L antidotum < Gk antídoton something given against (i.e., for counteracting), equiv. to anti- anti- + dotón neut. of dotós given, verbid of didónai to give; akin to datum]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Now who can provide an antidote for this vexing anecdote? It might be a Budweiser day.

Wear With Care

Ever since screen-printed t-shirts became popular (When did this happen, anyway? Was the iconic "I Love New York" t-shirt the pioneer in cultivating an obsession with shirts emblazoned with everything from ping pong to political statements?), everyone from pre-teens to posh fashionistas have worn their emotions on their, er, chests.

On my lunch break today (I work in SoHo, which is both really fun and simultaneously detrimental to my meager bank account) I strolled by one of the many Broadway (the street, not the cluster of currently curtained plays and musicals due to a stagehand strike) boutiques that this elite shopping district has to offer. I stopped in my tracks upon reading one of the shirts in the window: "Seasons Change, So Do Boyfriend."

Ahem. If it's not grammatically correct, please, totally hip fashion designer, don't put it on a t-shirt, unless, of course, the mistake is obviously on purpose.

Toward or Towards?

I was doing some copy-editing at my internship this morning (side-note: I love that I get to copy-edit at my internship) when I came across the word towards. This is not a word I had previously contemplated, however, I always instinctively use toward without the s. As is my practice when I come across something I don't readily know, I decided to look it up.

Upon investigation, it turns out there isn't a difference. That's right, feel free to use toward and towards interchangeably. The only slight distinction is that towards is most commonly associated with British English, while toward is most often used in American English. Nevertheless, both are correct.

Check out Merriam-Webster's definition here.

A Little Class, A Lot of Sass

It's not a secret that I am highly perturbed by the mispronunciation of supposedly. I am increasingly annoyed each time I hear it, and even more so when it comes from the mouth of my accomplished working journalist of a graduate school professor. I have class once a week, and each week, it never fails, nor does it cease to amaze me. Supposively inevitably slips out.

You can certainly imagine my surprise, then, at the strange turn of events this week. Occasionally we read excerpts from nonfiction work aloud in class, and then go on to discuss the passages with regard to style, tone, content, methodology of reporting, etc. My professor was reading an excerpt from Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test when he came upon the word supposedly. I was reading a bit ahead, and I flinched. In reading the word, would he also mispronounce it, even with the -ED- plain to see and no -IVE- in sight? What would become of this momentous occasion?

Well, folks, history was made. He read, "supposedly," perfectly. Now if only he could commit that to memory.

Got Me Pegged?

For one of my classes this semester, my professor asked each of us to write a profile of another student. My classmate, Conor, had the task of writing about -- you guesssed it -- me. I found his assessment to be both funny and pretty accurate, and so I thought it would be fun to post the text of it here. I do have to say, acting as the subject of a piece certainly made me think differently about my own reporting! Thanks, Conor. Enjoy!

The Purple Prose of Tracy Bratten

By Conor Friedersdorf

On Sundays Ms. Tracy Bratten savors William Safire’s “On Language” column in the New York Times—“I quite enjoy his tone,” she confides—and her own language blog, Let’s Talk Nerdy, traffics in linguistic accidents. Consider a recent post that recalls a colleague’s inquiry about the difference between further and farther.

“These are the kinds of questions that make me tick,” Ms. Bratten mused.

Ms. Bratten’s pedantic quirk (which despite her habit of double entendre involves no facial twitching of her green eyes) is perhaps an unsurprising pleasure for an aspiring Manhattan journalist. She is a 25-year-old J-school student. Upon visiting the Museum of Modern Art she critiqued the prose of its placards. She once noted, “I'm not sure that there is anything that bothers me more than people who write ‘loose’ when they mean to write ‘lose.’”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And boom! For the notion that Ms. Bratten is a Northeastern snob is quickly exploded by certain other pleasures seldom shared by linguistic pedants, among them her love of Longhorn football and the fact that she “craves red meat like a Texan who drinks Budweiser should.”

This last pleasure is the subject of another blog entry on Anheuser Busch, in which she quotes from memory the language that appears on the Budweiser label:

This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. Our exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste, a smoothness and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price.

Of this passage, Ms. Bratten writes that “It's a bit of a phenomenon, really, that three sentences could have such far-reaching - cult-like, even - implications. I am a loyal Budweiser aficionado, and therefore thought it necessary that I post a link to some great Budweiser literature.”

Ahem. “Great… literature?” As an experienced surveyor of beer cans and bottles alike, from Rolling Rock’s invocation of the “glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe” to the antique blue ribbon that Pabst has pathetically clung to since a county fair in the late 1800s, I submit that a sneakier passage doesn’t exist in the world of brew. The weasel words “we know of” begin it—perhaps Bud’s brew masters are conveniently ignorant?—and then there is the matter of calculations: as the American beer produced in the largest quantities of course more is spent on Budweiser than any other beer, but is it the most expensive to produce per 12 ounces?

That Ms. Bratten reproduces this passage uncritically on her language blog shouldn’t be taken as a sign that she is obtuse or careless—she is neither. Rather it underscores the reality that although she is a New York journalist-in-training, she also possesses a less ironic and cynical side, a more sentimental identity, a cultural outlook sometimes more Red State than Blue state, so that unlike most young journalists one meets these days she is a self-described conservative whose true hue doesn’t exist on the Fox News map, for it is a purple only slightly more red than blue, more denim than pinstripes.

“I root for the Astros and the Yankees,” she says, “and if they ever played in the World Series my heart would be torn. But I’d root for the Astros.”

On the other hand, although she likes country music and has performed dance steps from Texas-style line dancing to hip-hop, her preferred genre is tap, of which she writes, “Like English and Spanish, tap dance consists of words and phrases, patterns, truths and lies.” On some days, in some moods, she seems a purple slightly more blue than red.

Delve into her biography and it all fits.

She was born and raised in Houston to devoutly Christian mother (works with special needs kids) and father (builds custom McMansions). She came of age at the University of Texas at Austin, the bluest city in the Lone Star State, and among her friends she counts many from her home town who are now pregnant or already mothers, and many more from college who now live in New York City. The end product of this education: when she isn’t reading On Language she might well be engrossed in Harry Potter.

Is Tracy Bratten the bridge between Red and Blue America? Are her self-aware and yet unaffected cultural preferences the mark of some inner-strength and aesthetic independence the rest of us lack? These are the kinds of hyperbolic, inaccurately dichotomous questions one cannot imagine Tracy Bratten posing.

In fact, she has posed and answered them more elegantly in her own pedantic, folksy way on her blog, in an entry that sums up this profile better than any other.

“I am proud to be from Texas,” she writes. “Though I don't have a ‘country’ accent, as I was raised in the suburban metropolis that is Houston, I certainly appreciate the slow drawl and sharp twang that is indicative of many a Texan's Lone Star roots. ‘Y'all’ is part of my vocabulary, and I am not opposed to ‘ain't.’ I embraced such colloquialisms as "fixin' to" and such abbreviations as "prolly," though in my opinion it is only acceptable to adopt these gems of southern vernacular if and only if you are cognizant of the correct manner of speaking, in a manner of speaking. After all, would Picasso have been as successful in cubism if he had not first gained street cred by showing that he had raw artistic talent?”

Ultimately Tracy Bratten, through her language and her very life, calls us to eschew the false dichotomies of a so-called divided America by cultivating a more complicated understanding of those cultural attributes that are not our own. Prolly over an ice cold Bud.

Come Out, Come Out

Dumbledore has tumbled out of the closet.

That's right, J.K. Rowling's wonderfully wise, wand-wielding wizard who captured the hearts of millions is, in fact, gay. News of the post-mortem outing of the fictional father fixture in Harry's life was blogged about and even mentioned on CNN. The Leaky Cauldron, a Web site devoted to all things Harry Potter, discusses it. Heck, even The New York Times has devoted words to the revelation. I have no qualms with the literary genius that is the Harry Potter series, however, my question is simply this: How is Dumbledore's sexuality relevant? Furthermore, why on earth has it become so prevalent a part of the discourse?

The best article I've found comes from Salon, and is definitely worth the read. Rebecca Traister writes:

Dumbledore's gayness is one of the pieces of bonus information about her characters that she's been dispensing steadily since the publication of her magical swan song, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Thanks to Rowling's loose lips, the Potter universe continues to make news even after its end. In her desire to control and describe it, she's turning a modern assumption about what authorship means inside out. Whoever said the author was dead sure hadn't meant Joanne Rowling.

Rowling outed Dumbledore at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 19, in response to a fan who asked her if Potter's powerful mentor, who believed so mightily in the power of love, had ever been in love himself. "My truthful answer to you," Rowling said, was that "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay." According to reports, this sentence drew an immediate ovation from the crowd. Rowling continued by explaining that Albus had, as a young man, fallen for the talented wand-wielder Gellert Grindelwald. Rowling's discussion of their bond, an important plot point in her last Harry Potter novel, was incisive and moving; she told the audience that Dumbledore's youthful passion for Grindelwald blinded him, as it does so many of us mere muggles, to Grindelwald's flaws, leaving him shattered when he discovered Grindelwald to be seriously evil. Rowling further revealed that at a recent read-through of the script for the sixth Harry Potter movie, she'd had to nix a line of dialogue about Dumbledore's affection for a young woman. She said she'd passed the screenwriter a note reading "Dumbledore's gay!"

My next question, then, is whether Richard Harris or Michael Gambon were let on to Dumbledore's little secret before they played him in the films. Traister continues:

I am a devoted reader and admirer of J.K. Rowling, and it honestly pains me a bit to say this, but from a literary perspective, she's out of control here. Her abundant generosity with information is surely a response to a vast, insatiable fan base that does not have a high tolerance for never-ending suspense, ambiguity or nuance. As she told the "Today" show's Meredith Vieira back in July, "I'm dealing with a level of obsession in some of my fans that will not rest until they know the middle names of Harry's great-great-grandparents."

Rowling naturally wants to provide answers for these heartbroken obsessives who perhaps are too young to know the satisfying pleasures of perpetual yearning and feel that they must must must know how much money Harry makes and whether Luna has kids.

It would also be understandable if, after more than a decade of telling stories about this world and these characters, Rowling is unable to stop. She has been a great and comprehensive builder of a fictional universe, and she's famous for keeping reams of folders containing the back stories and astrological signs of every major and minor character ever to appear in her pages. One of the things that made the Potter books so good was the sense that Rowling had utter mastery over every corner of her realm. Who could blame her for wanting to keep the kids happy by doling out bits of it? It's not as though Rowling would be setting a precedent: J.R.R. Tolkien spent much of his post-Middle-earth life tinkering with the details of the world he created, and delighting and gratifying his adherents by providing them with additional information about it.

But when too much of the back story (and, more disconcertingly, the future story) gets revealed –- especially in an age in which an author is not simply sending letters to readers as Tolkien did, but making utterances that will be disseminated and analyzed by a global network of Web sites -- it seems to have not so much a gratifying effect as a deadening one.

I, for one, don't understand the relevance of Dumbledore's sexuality to the text. I suppose one could argue that it offers readers a more thorough understanding of Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald, although after having read the books I was not left in need of such an affirmation. Perhaps it would be better to leave certain things to the imagination.

The word dumbledore is actually a 1787 Old English word for bumblebee, I learned on an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire last year (it so happened to be the $250,000 question). It's no surprise that Dumbledore's gayness has made headline news, but now that we all know, I'm sure he'd just as soon like for us all to buzz off. Or maybe J.K. Rowling herself should leave well enough alone.

And Today, At the Office...

"Supposably."

When will the madness end?

Oops! [He] Did It Again

That's right. In class today, my brilliant professor, once again, committed a word felony. Supposively...

You Know You're a Nerd When...

Amazon.com sends you this e-mail:




I guess I should resign myself to a life of reading linguistics books as Queen of Nerdland. And don't worry, I've already read all seven Harry Potters.

Move Over, Homer, This is MY Odyssey

Any semi-educated individual should be relatively familiar with Homer's The Odyssey, whose wandering protagonist spends ten years en route home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy. His brilliance and his hubris are perhaps his most notable character traits, but his epic, decade-long journey is far from facile.

An opinion piece in The New York Times this week discussed a different kind of odyssey: a stage in life that occurs between adolescence and adulthood and is marked by uncertainty, anxiety, fluidity, and prolonging inevitabilities.

The article, by Op-ed columnist David Brooks, discusses this new period of life as the least understood of all the life phases, perhaps only for its newness. He writes:

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.

Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.

They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They’re delaying having children. They’re delaying permanent employment. People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments — moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.

In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.

If that isn't hitting the proverbial nail on the head, then I'm not sure what is. Perhaps it's because I am part of the vagabond 20-something demographic, but I applaud the definition of this new life-phase. In this sense, the word odyssey as a description for this particular period of life is semantically synonymous with the term adultalescence, which William Safire included in his On Language piece entitled "Campuspeak," the text of which I posted on October 7. Hallelujah! I'm not the only 20-something who has "graduate[d] into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering," as Brooks notes Robert Wuthnow, social scientist at Princeton, explaining in his article.

Personal aside: I especially appreciate the part about delaying marriage, children, and employment, because a large group of my Texas friends are gainfully employed, married, and expecting. To date, I've either been a bridesmaid or in the house party of seven weddings (make that eight come November) -- not to mention the other handful I've been invited to -- and I have six pregnant friends and three with children already.

Mom, Dad, have no fear. Brooks continues:

The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.

I'm 25 years young. I have two undergraduate degrees and two years of "real-world" work experience under my belt, and, come January, I'll be the proud holder of an M.A. The future is uncertain, though certainly bright, especially considering that in the footsteps of Odysseus, I figure I have at least three more years to wander.

I Might Have Gone Crazy

My ears are bleeding. I just overheard someone in my office say, "She might have went..."

Totes Check It

I'm just going to go ahead and post the entire text of one of William Safire's latest On Language columns here. It usually appears in the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It's a good one.

Sketchy about the lingo being spoken by today’s adultalescents? As those in their late teens and early adulthood like to say, Ah-ite!

The sound of that last word is hard to convey on the printed page. The famous cry in comic books of a man being thrown out a window — Ai-ee-ee! — comes closer to the first semisyllable of the slurred word, but there is a hint of a t at the end. When you ask a young person conversant in this campuspeak (a word created on the analogy of George Orwell’s newspeak) a question like “Would you do this for me?” you are likely to hear the answer “Ah-ite.”

The meaning is “O.K.” The sound is an amalgam of all and right, which used to sound like “aw-rite” but now is compressed into a sliding “a’ight,” as the teen-slanguist Fred Lynch transcribes it.

Word-blending is big in campuspeak. “He’s sort of a nerd, but he’s just so adorkable” combines adorable with dork, the amalgam defined as “endearing though socially inept” by Prof. Connie Eble of the department of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Another blend is fauxhawk, combining faux, “artificial,” and Mohawk, defined as a “hairstyle achieved by combing all of the hair to the center to give the appearance of a Mohawk without shaving the head.”

Yet another is ginormous, blending gigantic with enormous (seeking to outstrip humongous, itself a dated slang blend of huge and monstrous and/or tremendous). The new slang blend submitted by members of Professor Eble’s English 314 class only a few months ago is chillax, from the adjective chill, “easygoing,” and the verb relax, the combo meaning “do nothing in particular,” an activity widely practiced in centers of learning throughout the nation.

Among the relatively new slang words: stella, “good-looking female,” from stellar, “starlike,” improbably influenced by the shouted name of Stanley Kowalski’s wife in Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire.” A synonym is shorty or shawty, imported from vintage hip-hop for “girlfriend of any height.” Such attractiveness is the opposite of the fast-fading butterface (“Great body, but her face. . . .”), and a less-than-good-looking male or female is a blockamore, who “only looks good from a block or more.”

Metaphor is teen slang at its most creative. The recent nose wide open, applied to either male or female friends, means “totally compliant,” perhaps from the older “to be led around by the nose.” (This is not to be confused with the Shakespearean Henry V’s exhortation to his troops going into battle at Harfleur to “set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide.” The current slang synonym for the subservient shlepper is sprung.)

A rhyming metaphor is thigh five, “a celebratory gesture like a high five, except clapping together the fronts of the thighs, as football players do, instead of the palms of the hands.”

The most frequently used new term at Chapel Hill is sketchy, “of dubious character; shady, potentially dangerous.” Usage: “Those middle-aged men are so sketchy. They creep me out.” It is being substituted for the long-lasting ninja of the 1980s, from the Japanese for “stealthy, secretive.” Yesteryear’s in your face has been replaced by all up in your grill. Sources elsewhere tell me that the adjective crunchy applied to health-conscious, environmentally correct types is being overtaken by the attributive noun granola. Anyhoo (nobody says “anyhow” anymoo), at Rice University the blended compound adultalescence has for the past few years been defined as “the state of moving back in with one’s parents after college graduation.”

Other youthful slang sources concern themselves mainly with the vocabulary of the three subjects, other than scholarship and sports, apparently central to campus life: sex, booze and regurgitation. (If your response to that news is Duh, the latest definition of that sound is “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”)

I am not about to yam on (“humiliate”) readers with a lexicon of making purple or doing the do other than to note that the most original compound along the amatory line is the verb sexile, defined as “being locked out by your roommate who is using the premises for an assignation to which you are not invited.” This is somehow related to hallcest, the definition of which has not been vouchsafed to me, but I suspect it is an extreme example of what diplomats call “proximity talks.”

!!!

Anybody remember the Seinfeld episode when Elaine broke up with the guy who didn't use exclamation points when he took down her messages? Her friend had a baby! This warrants an exclamation!

This article - aptly called "So Many Exclamation Points!" - that appeared in Slate reminded me of that episode. I, for one, will admit that in the initial stages of a relationship, any correspondence containing improper grammar or misuse of punctuation is an automatic strike. Remember, I'm the girl that smiles internally when I find mistakes in The New York Times. (That's right, kids. I'm as anal-retentive as they come - so punctuate those text messages!) Oh, and yes, I do think about these things.

Usually I'd quote sections of the article, but in this case, I think it's definitely worth the read. On second thought, make that: Worth the read!

To Ph.D. or not to Ph.D.?

As some of you may or may not know, I've recently been toying with the ridiculous idea that I might like to continue my career in academia by pursuing linguistics, perhaps even as a Ph.D. Crazy, maybe. This article in The New York Times certainly gave me something to think about. Among other caveats:

The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.

I'm not exactly sure how appealing the idea of completing a Ph.D. sounds when the reality might be that I'd emerge a 33-year-old-burned-out-(most likely) single-poor person, with "Dr." in front of my name.

Let's be honest, why am I even thinking about this? Well, linguistics excites me. I took courses (which I loved) in linguistics, grammar, syntax and phonetics in college, but they were all in Spanish. Plus, the idea of prolonging school is extremely enticing. Who knows what will happen!

As for now, I'm brushing up. I'm reading The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar by Mark C. Baker, and next on my list is The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Stephen Pinker. These, of course, are in addition to the reading I am doing for school this semester -- a mere 26 books total.

I wasn't kidding when I said I'm a nerd.

Names and Nuptials

These are always fun to look at, and usually hard to believe! In this case, they present a great argument against hyphenating your name!

She's On Fire!

If something is flammable, according to Dictionary.com, it is "easily set on fire; combustible; inflammable."

That's right. Inflammable and flammable mean the same thing: easily ignited. So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, it seems that the word inflammable actually predates its more abbreviated version by about 200 years and, in fact, flammable only came about because inflammable was commonly mistaken to mean "nonflammable." Just imagine the consequences. In this case, the difference is huge.

According to The Columbia Guide to Standard American English:

Flammable and inflammable are synonyms, both meaning 'susceptible of or capable of catching fire and burning rapidly.' Inflammable was the word of choice for a long time, but fire-fighting associations and insurers, apparently concerned that the in- prefix would be misunderstood to mean 'un-' or 'non-' (which in another in prefix it does) decided to remove all doubt by labeling materials, gasoline trucks, and other things that can burn flammable. Both words are still in use, and both are Standard. Nonflammable, incombustible, and noncombustible are antonyms of flammable and inflammable: they mean 'fireproof.'

Dictionary.com explains it this way:

Inflammable and flammable both mean 'combustible.' Inflammable is the older by about 200 years. Flammable now has certain technical uses, particularly as a warning on vehicles carrying combustible materials, because of a belief that some might interpret the intensive prefix in- of inflammable as a negative prefix and thus think the word means 'noncombustible.' Inflammable is the word more usually used in nontechnical and figurative contexts: The speaker ignited the inflammable emotions of the crowd.

Wait a minute, so inflammable=flammable, but incombustible is the opposite of combustible? Yep. It's one of the (many) confusing beauties of our language. And to make matters even more confusing, although genius and ingenious mean virtually the same thing -- though be sure note the difference in spelling, not only concerning the existence or absence of the prefix 'in' -- the same is not true for famous and infamous. Unlike famous, infamous has a negative connotation.

Nonplussed yet? Relax. Just don't go lighting a match near anything that is "flammable" or "inflammable." In fact, a good rule of thumb might just be to avoid lighting matches near unknown substances no matter what. After all, as our good friend Smoky says, "Only you can prevent forest fires."

Just One Thing...

If my professer uses the not-word supposively one more time, I think I'm going to request a refund from NYU.

An e-card for everyone

They can say "I love you" or "I'm just not that into you." They can serve as a method of harmless flirtation or the means to a heartless break-up. Either way, electronic greeting cards run the gamut of sentiments, and the newest object of my affection is a Web site devoted to a collection of often crass and sarcastic, rarely sweet but always humorous (if you can stomach inappropriateness in small doses) e-cards. And here's one of my favorites: Beware, though, if you do visit the site, as some of the cards are offensive, or could be construed as such. Some of them are just plain mean. But they'll definitely have you in stitches.

How Do You Spell...

Again, this photo is self-explanatory. I saw it while walking on the East side after having taken a stroll along the East river. No worries, I did not see any bodies floating. It's amazing how often my cell-phone camera comes in handy!


Word to the (not very) wise: use a pencil. If it doesn't look right, get a second opinion. If you don't know whether it looks right because you don't know how to spell (or appropriately pluralize), perhaps consider outsourcing for your home-made posters.

Can't Resist...

Hey, graphics person, perhaps it would be a good idea to employ a copy editor for the Nightly News. Can you see the mistake?

Thanks, TVNewser!

Cat Got Your Tongue?

I've long been obsessed with all things related to language, and have even recently begun researching programs to further my studies in linguistics, so it is no surprise that this caught my eye. The Times reported today in their Science section that the world's languages are dying off faster than Britney Spears fans. A little biblical history:

Genesis 11:1-9
New International Version (NIV)

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel — because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

But now, it seems, the languages are dying. The article reads:

Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists say, nearly half are in danger of extinction and are likely to disappear in this century. In fact, they are now falling out of use at a rate of about one every two weeks.

Some endangered languages vanish in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual cultures, as indigenous tongues are overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace and on television.

New research, reported today, has identified the five regions of the world where languages are disappearing most rapidly. The “hot spots” of imminent language extinctions are: Northern Australia, Central South America, North America’s upper Pacific coastal zone, Eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and Southwest United States. All of the areas are occupied by aboriginal people speaking diverse languages, but in decreasing numbers.

Isn't there something we can do to preserve endangered languages? Certainly there won't come a time when we will all speak the same tongue? That languages are disappearing from existence is disturbing in an almost Orwellian sense. According to the article, English is threatening "the survival of the 54 indigenous languages of the Northwest Pacific plateau of North America, a region including British Columbia, Oregon and Washington," while "many of the 113 languages spoken in the Andes Mountains and Amazon basin are poorly known and are rapidly giving way to Spanish or Portuguese." What's next, Newspeak?

Back to School

My hiatus from the blogosphere is officially over. Much has changed, though my obsession with all things grammatically correct certainly hasn't.

I have begun my final semester at NYU, and will finish with my Master's in December.

I moved into a much nicer, much larger apartment with one of my best friends.

I started a new internship at mediabistro.com.

I have taken on some freelance work, so I'm busier than ever!

I continue to take tap dance classes so as to increase my fluency in the language of tap dance.

Here's to my last semester. I can't believe I have been in New York for an entire year! Of course, I'm a nerd. I'm excited about school starting. Perhaps after this degree I'll shoot for a Ph.D...

Summer Break

My break from the blogosphere will end soon. This summer has been hectic; I've been burning the candle at both ends with my internship, tap classes, visitors, and summer socializing.

In the meantime, check out the differences in meaning between the words hiatus, sabbatical, and break. Or how about siesta, leave of absence, lull, intermission, and suspension They're subtle, yet significant.

But always know the stipulations of your time off. After all, "on a break" meant something very different to Rachel than it did to Ross.

Keeping the Faith

Thank goodness our justice system in this country got it right this time. This article references the egregious pants case I blogged about before.

The Name Game

Gwyneth Paltrow named her firstborn Apple. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's daughters are Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. The wacky celebrity baby-name game doesn't stop there, though. Here's a link to a list of some of the oddest names given to the children of the rich and famous. These are a couple of my personal favorites:

Frank Zappa named his children Dweezil (son), Ahmet Emuukha Rodan (son), Moon Unit (daughter), and Diva Muffin (daughter).

Robert Rodriguez named his five children Rocket, Racer, Rebel, Rogue (all boys) and his daughter Rhiannon.

Rob Morrow and Debbon Ayer named their daughter Tu Simone Ayer. This makes her name, effectively, Tu Morrow. And here's a fun fact: Ayer means yesterday in Spanish.

Penn Jillette of the comedic duo of magicians Penn & Teller named his daughter Moxie Crimefighter.

And it's not just celebrities who are getting creative with what to call their offspring. Recently, in New Zealand a judge did not allow a couple to name their child 4Real, saying numerals could not be used. Check out that story here. Closer to home, my mom told me she once met a student whose given name was spelled quite unfortunately. His name is pronounced "Ty-ree," but spelled "Tire." I personally know of a girl whose parents named her Tyranny. Do these people have a dictionary? They might as well have opted to call her "Totalitarianism."

I applaud creativity, but this is absolutely absurd. Is it time to establish some sort of Department of Names for the sole purpose of making sure that no child will ever have to endure the endless torment that will inevitably ensue after his parents name him Tire? I've got six pregnant friends (and counting), and I expect that they will have the necessary compassion to name their as-yet unborn children something that won't cause undue teasing.

Tracy-Tracy-Bo-Bacy-Banana-Fanna-Fo-Facy-Me-My-Mo-Macy, TRACY! I think I did just fine. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Tap Out

I've made it clear that I'm passionate about all things linguistic. I possess an affinity for idiomaticity and an ear for grammatical correctness. But it is not only the spoken language that interests me. Another of my passions is tap dance, which I regard as a different kind of language, but a language nonetheless.

Like English and Spanish, tap dance consists of words and phrases, patterns, truths and lies. Just as words have etymological roots, tap steps come from somewhere. An article in the New York Times discussed one of today's most popular tap dancers, Savion Glover, most recently recognizable for his contributions to the hit movie Happy Feet. He is currently appearing in Invitation to a Dancer, reviewed here. He is a magician on the floor, but just as occurs in many other intimate circles, not everyone sees eye to eye.

I was disappointed when I read that article, because Glover criticized the hoofers of today of being egocentric and money hungry, abandoning, in the process, organic tap dance education. Tap City comes to New York next week, and I have no doubt that many aspiring hoofers will be inspired by the language of tap dance.

An Expensive 'Suit'

Merriam-Webster defines egregious to mean conspicuously bad or flagrant. Judge Roy L. Pearson of Washington calls the conduct of Custom Dry Cleaners, with whom he entrusted the task of altering his designer suits, "egregious." He is suing the neighborhood cleaner for $67.3 million because they lost a pair of his pants. To me, Pearson's is the conduct that reeks of egregiousness (read: outrageousness).

The New York Times article is aptly titled Judge Tries Suing Pants Off Dry Cleaners, and is definitely worth a read. I applaud the clever copy-editor for the silly headline, which I think is quite appropriate for the ridiculousness of the described situation. The tone of the article is light-hearted and captures the absurdity of the case.

In the spirit of my inability to resist a good double entendre, I'll close with this: though, according to the article, Judge Pearson recently lowered his request for damages to $54 million, it's still quite an expensive suit.

Although I'm quite confident that this photograph is self-explanatory, I can't resist commenting, especially considering the timeliness of the mishap: last night a champion was crowned at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. He is 13-year-old Evan M. O'Dorney of Danville, California, and I'm willing to bet that he could spell "tomorrow" without a problem.

A Fox News article that features the above AP photo reads:

The Democratic presidential hopeful pitched a technology plan to Silicon Valley executives in California Thursday, with the misspelled message, "New Jobs for Tommorrow," plastered in large white letters on a banner behind her podium.

Of course, Hillary is hardly culpable for the unfortunate banner, but the event certainly gave Fox News some ammunition with which to poke fun at her. I've got an idea for a new job: how about proofreader?

Bad Press = Good Press?

Last night I curled up on the couch and watched Morgan Spurlock's acclaimed documentary Supersize Me. I watched it for the first time in the fall, and was absolutely amazed at the transformation that Morgan Spurlock went through in a mere month. Being an aspiring journalist myself, I admire Spurlock for embarking on such a courageous and dangerous endeavor in order to show the public the horrible effects that fast-food behemoths like McDonald's have had on American culture. The documentary shows, among other frightening realities, school-age children to whom Ronald McDonald is more easily recognizable than Jesus. There is even one section in which a family cannot properly recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and yet one of them rattles off the Big Mac® slogan verbatim without giving it a second thought. (Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun). I highly recommend the film to anyone who has so much as smelled a french fry.

According to the film's own website:

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock hit the road and interviewed experts in 20 U.S. cities, including Houston, the "Fattest City" in America. From Surgeon Generals to gym teachers, cooks to kids, lawmakers to legislators, these authorities shared their research, opinions and "gut feelings" on our ever-expanding girth.

During the journey, Spurlock also put his own body on the line, living on nothing but McDonald's for an entire month with three simple rules:

1) No options: he could only eat what was available over the counter (water included!)
2) No supersizing unless offered
3) No excuses: he had to eat every item on the menu at least once

What intrigued me last night, though, as I re-watched the award-winning documentary, was not Spurlock's blatant disregard for his own health in the name of journalistic enterprise. Rather, it was my immediate reaction: I want McDonald's!

It was the exact opposite of the intended effect, but I could not deny my sudden craving for either a Quarter Pounder® with Cheese or an order of Chicken McNuggets®. It made me wonder: although the documentary may have caused many a fast-food aficionado to seek healthier sustenance, how many people saw it and then ran out for a Big Mac®? To what extent does the old adage ring true, that any publicity is good publicity? Not assuming, of course, that McDonald's needs any assistance in the publicity department. I don't eat fast-food (of the McD's variety) very often, but I do enjoy it on occasion.

As a matter of fact, my stomach is beginning to rumble. McDonald's, anyone? I'm Lovin' It!

Further vs. Farther

I was walking to grab a quick lunch yesterday on a break from my internship with one of the producers when he started to tell me about the best places to eat in the area. He told me about a good Thai place, a good burrito place ("good burritos" is an oxymoron in New York City, though I take it with a grain of salt and understand "good" to be a relative term), and some good sandwich places. Then he said, "And a little bit further down 9th Avenue," and then he stopped, and added, "farther?" I smiled internally: these are the kinds of questions that make me tick.

For the record, this situation does not represent a dilemma. A dilemma is a situation or problem in which both possible options are unpleasant or uncomfortable, and one is forced to choose, essentially, the lesser of two evils. One of the most common examples of this is the Prisoner's Dilemma. When in a state of deliberation between two things that aren't necessarily bad, the correct terminology is quandary. But I digress...

Last night Suzanne and Steve took me out to eat sushi at Wasabi Lobby, which is no farther than two blocks from my apartment, to celebrate my summer internship with the CBS Evening News Investigative Unit. Before I go any further, and while I'm on the subject of Wasabi Lobby, I must add that although the sushi rolls they serve are unique and delicious, I was extremely disappointed when I noticed that the menu offered "Chiken Teriyaki." I wouldn't be me if I didn't at the very least make mention of the obvious typo. Moving on... Over quite possibly the best specialty tuna roll I've ever had, Suzi asked that I blog about further vs. farther. Since I had already encountered the question once that day, I decided I had better address it.

Quite simply, farther refers to physical distance while further refers to abstract distance or depth. In The Elements of Style, my trusty friends Strunk and White explain it this way:

Farther. Further. The two words are commonly interchanged, but there is a distinction worth observing: farther serves best as a distance word, further as a time or quantity word. You chase a ball farther than the other fellow; you pursue a subject further.

I'll close with this: though I'm much farther away from my family now that I'm in New York, I think the move was well worth it so that I could further my education. I certainly don't see myself moving back any time soon. Did I take it too far?

This Bud's For You

"This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. Our exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste, a smoothness and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price."

So reads the Budweiser manifesto. It is the often memorized, constantly recited, always recognized extended slogan, or pledge, that graces the packaging of The King of Beers. In fact, I typed it from memory. It's a bit of a phenomenon, really, that three sentences could have such far-reaching - cult-like, even - implications. I am a loyal Budweiser aficionado, and therefore thought it necessary that I post a link to some great Budweiser literature. It is a rare event that something costs nothing, but the case of this blog posting is the quintessential example of free advertising, and it's even better than what they pay for.

Without further ado, for your educational gain (and an "I told you so"), read this. It's guaranteed to make you a bit weiser.

Guilty Pleasure

Here's a little treat that I find often amusing and always educational. Every Sunday in the New York Times Sunday Magazine is a delicious and fun column from veteran William Safire called On Language. He discusses virtually all things linguistic, and I quite enjoy his tone.

I think the column he wrote this past Sunday presents the perfect opportunity for me to mention him, because he devotes the piece to one word: pleasure. His column is a guilty pleasure of mine, and I encourage all who are interested to check it out each week.

E-mail Trail

My mother always told me never to write anything down that I wouldn't be comfortable with the world knowing. Considering I became a writer, this is quite difficult, especially considering that I journal quite often. I do, however, exercise the utmost caution and realize that it is necessary to keep a tight leash on any personal diaries.

Now that e-mail has perhaps become the preferred method of communication, I think it is imperative that people realize that the old adage holds true. An article in the May 14 issue of Fortune, which can be viewed online here, discusses the problematic nature of the e-mail trail. Everyone, from the highest coprporate honcho to the lowest intern on the totem pole, should beware. The article was written by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe of Fortune, whose new book Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home was reviewed in the New York Times Sunday book review. Check out the review here .

There's even a list of executives who got axed on account of their questionable e-mail practices.

Moral of the story? Don't write (type, dictate, blog, e-mail, etc.) anything you wouldn't be absolutely comfortable with the entire world knowing. Thanks, Mom!

So There.

I was asked to post a blog about there, their and they're, and I'm certainly happy to oblige. My aunt was driving along the Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas, and saw a billboard for Taco Cabana (how I miss Taco Cabana!) that read,"There Back!" It was referring to beef flautas or something, she said, but she was appalled that this glaring mistake made it to print, and in such a giant form, mind you! Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens all the time. First, take this Quiz to test your mastery of the difference.

There is perhaps the most common of the three, and is most often used as an adverb. It usually refers to being in or at a place or at a certain point in an action or speech. For example: He went there yesterday.

Their shows ownership of an object or objects by more than one person. For example: He went to their house.

They're is a contraction, and stands for they are. For example: Do you know what they're doing?

I quite like this explanation, from the website of Professor Paul Brians of Washington State University:

Many people are so spooked by apostrophes that a word like “they’re” seems to them as if it might mean almost anything. In fact, it’s always a contraction of “they are.” If you’ve written “they’re,” ask yourself whether you can substitute “they are.” If not, you’ve made a mistake. “Their” is a possessive pronoun like “her” or “our” “They eat their hotdogs with sauerkraut.” Everything else is “there.” “There goes the ball, out of the park! See it? Right there! There aren’t very many home runs like that.” “Thier” is a common misspelling, but you can avoid it by remembering that “they” and “their” begin with the same three letters. Another hint: “there” has “here” buried inside it to remind you it refers to place, while “their” has “heir” buried in it to remind you that it has to do with possession.

It seems elementary, but it's surprising how often people use there, their and they're incorrectly. So there.

Contraction Subtraction

Most are quite comfortable with simply adding an apostrophe and an s to a noun in order to form the possessive singular. It gets tricky, however, when using pronominal possessives. Pronominal possessives (that is, pronouns) do not carry apostrophes. They are: hers, theirs, yours, ours and its. Its is most commonly mispunctuated.

Sign of the Times

An article in Monday's New York Times about France's presidential elections was of particular interest to me not because of the content, but because of one word: enormousness. The article read:

The enormousness of the turnout was reflected in another statistic: By 5 p.m., 74 percent of France’s registered voters had cast their ballots — higher than the total percentage participation in the first round of the 2002 contest.

At first glance it may seem an odd choice of words, however, it is actually precise. I bring this to light because I previously blogged about the commonly misused word enormity, and I was glad to see enormousness in print. To reiterate, while it would seem as though enormousness and enormity are interchangeable because they vary only slightly (as with the synonyms audacity and audaciousness), the significance of the terms differs enormously. What follows is the definition of enormity from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:

NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. e·nor·mi·ties
1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness. 2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage. 3. Usage Problem Great size; immensity: “Beyond that, [Russia's] sheer enormity offered a defense against invaders that no European nation enjoyed” (W. Bruce Lincoln).

USAGE NOTE: Enormity is frequently used to refer simply to the property of being great in size or extent, but many would prefer that enormousness (or a synonym such as immensity) be used for this general sense and that enormity be limited to situations that demand a negative moral judgment, as in Not until the war ended and journalists were able to enter Cambodia did the world really become aware of the enormity of Pol Pot's oppression. Fifty-nine percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of enormity as a synonym for immensity in the sentence At that point the engineers sat down to design an entirely new viaduct, apparently undaunted by the enormity of their task. This distinction between enormity and enormousness has not always existed historically, but nowadays many observe it. Writers who ignore the distinction, as in the enormity of the President's election victory or the enormity of her inheritance, may find that their words have cast unintended aspersions or evoked unexpected laughter.

In contrast, the noun enormousness is defined by Dictionary.com as "very great or abnormal size, bulk, degree, etc.; immensity; hugeness." The New York Times got it right. What an enormous relief.

Alphabet Soup & Other Resume Don'ts

Yesterday at my internship I had the exhilarating opportunity to rifle through the resumes, cover letters and clips of summer intern hopefuls. I was amazed at the quantity of budding journalists aspiring to take my place as an intern in the world of celebrity gossipdom. For the record, I am quite aware that gossipdom is not actually a word. But shouldn't it be? The huge stack of papers was daunting, but fortunately it didn't take long to weed out the good from the bad and the ugly.

I've always heard that most people would be shocked to find out how often job candidates make mistakes on their resumes and/or cover letters, but I never suspected just how common it is.

The Good

The best resumes and cover letters in the bunch were succinct and plain. If there was an objective, it was explicitly and unambiguously stated. The formatting was symmetric and aesthetically pleasing in general. Most importantly, there were no mistakes.

The Bad

The worst of the bunch were riddled with grammatical errors, misspelled words, misused words, run-on sentences and poor formatting. Some were even either addressed to the wrong person (if the e-mail address doesn't match the heading, you've got a problem) or gave all the reasons why they should be chosen for a job at the wrong publication! Here are a few highlights:

In the introductory sentence, one college co-ed proudly discussed her challenging coursework at Columiba University. I'm sorry, but did an esteemed Ivy League institution like Columbia really not introduce you to the wonderful world of spell check?

Some errors were more subtle, though equally annoying, like the girl who consistently failed to use the spacebar following punctuation. There were also misused words that spell-check wouldn't catch, though a meticulous individual certainly would. For example, one applicant praised a certain selection of the magazine. Clearly, she meant section. There were also resumes with no cover letter and cover letters with no resume. But it gets worse.

The Ugly

Get this: people actually sent headshots along with their resumes. I'm serious! I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, your Glamour Shot is not going to land you a job as a journalist. The intern coordinator giggled each time she opened an attachment that included a pixelated jpeg of what looked to be an aspiring actress. If you want to be an actress, act. Don't apply for a job that would have you writing about actresses.

Perhaps my personal favorite was the girl who matter-of-factly explained her apparent genius by talking about how smart her family thinks she is. Way to go, Mom! You really instilled some self-confidence in your daughter! She superfluously described her intelligence by saying, in far too many words, that her family is often floored by her intellectual capacity and curiosity in all things pop-culture. Here's the kicker: her subsequent sentence read, "I must say, I agree." I don't.

Bottom Line: Your resume will be thrown out, no questions asked, if it is sub-par with regard to common sense (spelling, grammar, content). Check it once. Check it twice. Getting an interview, after all, is always nice!

Get Lost

I'm not sure that there is anything that bothers me more than people who write "loose" when they mean to write "lose." I'm not sure if it is an inadvertent error or if it is a common mistake because of ignorance of the difference. Either way, here's a quick and painless lesson:

Lose rhymes with choose and refers to misplacing something or being defeated, as in a sports game. For example: Don't lose your temper.

Loose rhymes with goose and is the opposite of tight. For example: This belt is loose.

Spell check isn't going to catch this one for you, so it would behoove you to commit it to memory.

Similarly, loser refers to a person or team who lost. Looser is used in comparison to refer to something - an article of clothing, perhaps - that is less tight than something else.

Mouthing Off at the MoMa

On Fridays from 4pm-7pm, the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd St. offers free admission to guests compliments of Target. The only stipulation is that guests must agree to face long lines and crowded galleries. My Uncle was in town visiting this holiday weekend, and we decided to take advantage of the free admission and visit the MoMa.

I first visited the museum in December, and was quite pleasantly surprised by their collection. Not only do they offer temporary exhibitions and permanent installations of modern art, but also a wide selection of the work of Pablo Picasso (my personal favorite). Pictured at right is one of Picasso's most famous paintings, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

I was not, however, impressed by the descriptions that accompanied many of the paintings. First of all, I am suspicious of descriptions that purport to reflect the artist's own sentiments. I find it hard to believe that artists analyze the thematic significance of wide brush strokes, for example, during the creation process. But what annoys me even more than the supposed credibility of the descriptions is the language used to craft them. Take, for example, exhibit A, which is the description that accompanies this painting, italics mine:

The result of months of preparation and revision, this painting revolutionized the art world when first seen in Picasso's studio. Its monumental size underscored the shocking incoherence resulting from the outright sabotage of conventional representation. Picasso drew on sources as diverse as Iberian sculpture, African tribal masks, and El Greco's painting to make this startling composition. In the preparatory studies, the figure at left was a sailor entering a brothel. Picasso, wanting no anecdotal detail to interfere with the sheer impact of the work, decided to eliminate it in the final painting. The only remaining allusion to the brothel lies in the title: Avignon was a street in Barcelona famed for its brothel.

Alluding to a recent hilarious piece in Esquire (definitely worth a look), the highlighted sentence needs to have its car keys taken away. What I mean is that the sentence is unreadable and superfluous for the sake of superfluousness. All it's really saying is that the painting is really big, which emphasized how different it was for its time.

When I saw Salvador Dalí's famous work, The Persistence of Memory, I was surprised by how small it is. Having studied Spanish and Latin American art both in high school and college, I had only seen this piece in books, and therefore expected it to be much larger than it actually is. The description that accompanies this piece is as follows, once again, italics mine:

Dalí rendered his fantastic visions with meticulous verisimilitude, giving the representations of dreams a tangible and credible appearance. In what he called "hand painted dream photographs," hard objects become inexplicably limp, time bends, and metal attracts ants like rotting flesh. The monstrous creature draped across the painting's center resembles the artist's own face in profile; its long eyelashes seem insectlike or even sexual, as does what may or may not be a tongue oozing from its nose like a fat snail.

Upon reading this seemingly forced bit of explanatory prose, my Uncle asked me, "What is 'verisimilitude?'" His response, I'm quite confident, is shared by many museum patrons. Verisimilitude is not a word that often works its way into daily conversation, and using it to describe Dalí's phantasmagoric work (another little-used word...look it up, it's a fun one) makes the description inaccessible to the average person.

"It means simliar to the truth, I think," I replied after pondering the term. In fact, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines it this way:

NOUN: 1. The quality of appearing to be true or real. 2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.

There you have it.

We continued our perusal of the fifth floor galleries and came upon a lovely painting by Claude Monet entitled Agapanthus. I was curious to know what the title meant, and guessed aloud that it must be the type of flower in the painting. I've already admitted to being a nerd, so it should come as no surprise that I am the type of person that always looks up the things that I don't readily know. So, when I got home, I looked up "agapanthus," and found it to be the Latin genus name for the African lily, or lily of the Nile. The term comes from the combination of the Greek terms agape, or love, and anthos, or flower.

What, then, is the lesson in all of this? Bring a good dictionary the next time you decide to visit a museum. You might just learn a few things!

Artificially Sugarcoated Sweetener

An article in The New York Times today discusses a lawsuit brought against the makers of Splenda, the artificial sweetener that commands 62% market share, by the makers of Equal, which once dominated the category.

The lawsuit concerns one carefully crafted phrase: "Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar." So boasts Splenda's tagline, though Equal insists that the claim is misleading and untrue. Merisant is the maker of Equal, while McNeil Nutritionals is the company behind Splenda. The article asserts:

It is unusual for a dispute over advertising claims to go to a jury trial. The case centers on Splenda’s tagline “Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar” — a claim that Equal mocks as an “urban myth” on its Web site.

While both sides are expected to present phalanxes of neurobiologists and chemists as expert witnesses, the dispute hinges on the role of language in creating and defining the product.

“The phrase ‘made from sugar’ may seem simple enough, but it has spawned an epic battle among the parties over proper diction and syntax,” the judge overseeing the case, Gene E. K. Pratter, wrote in an opinion last month.

“For example, McNeil claims that ‘made from sugar’ clearly excludes the interpretation that Splenda is sugar, or that Splenda is made with sugar,” she continued. “Made with sugar would mean that sugar is an ingredient listed on the package. Drawing upon an often effective rhetorical device, McNeil asks the question, how could a consumer interpret a product that is ‘made from sugar’ and ‘tastes like sugar’ as actually being sugar?”

I come from an advertising background, and I worked in marketing before I enrolled in graduate school. My instincts tell me that in general, one should be cautious of claims made by advertisers because though they are often technically true, it is often the case that they are misleading. Advertising is a mecca for hyperbole and superfluous fluff, and consumers are bombarded with more claims than even the most astute subconscious has time to register. That said, it is important for the public to understand how language can be used strategically to convey a problematic message. The article continues:

In papers that were filed with the court and sealed — but were then cited by the judge in her opinion last month — McNeil acknowledged that “unaltered sugar/sucrose is not an ingredient in Splenda.” Rebecca Tushnet, a professor of advertising law at Georgetown University who has followed the case, said: “The key issue is, what can you say about your product that’s made in a lab and its relationship to nature? How much can you suggest that it’s natural, whether because the components were found in nature, or your body processes it as natural?”

Merisant argues that it is chemistry, not sugar, that generates Splenda’s sweetness. “At the end of the day, they say Splenda is ‘made from sugar,’ ” said Merisant’s lead outside lawyer, Gregory LoCascio of Kirkland & Ellis. “People think it’s sugar without the calories, or skim sugar, or magic sugar, and it’s not. It’s artificial sweetener.”

McNeil’s outside lawyers referred all calls to a McNeil spokeswoman, Julie Keenan, who provided a statement saying that Splenda “is made from pure cane sugar by a patented process that makes three atomic changes to the sugar (sucrose) molecule.”

“The resulting sweetener, called sucralose, retains the sweet taste of sugar,” she said.

Equal, also known as aspartame, also does not have an iota of sugar in it. It is composed of two amino acids and a methyl ester group. But Equal promotes itself as an artificial sweetener and tones down the references to sugar in its marketing, saying only that it “has sweet, clean taste, like sugar.”

If anything can be gleaned from this story, it is that consumers should be cautious of claims made by advertisers. After all, advertisers are attempting to generate sales, bottom line. But this is not new. What is unique about this case is that brings to light how language can be used to create ambiguous messages. Be wary, therefore, of the claims advertisers make. They don't call it "sweet-talk" for nothin'.

Unfazed by "Nonplussed"

Sometimes people use "big" words because they want to sound smart in certain situations (interviews, first dates, speeches, debates). Sometimes people use "big" words because they are smart. There are also people who just happen to know a lot of words, perhaps because they are accomplished linguists, they have studied Latin or another foreign language, they are well-read, or they studied extensively for the SAT, GRE, etc.

And then there are people who use "big" words incorrectly. There's nothing wrong with a wide vocabulary, however, it is imperative that you know the exact meaning of a word before you attempt to adopt it into your repertoire. It is much more reputable to use a simple word to convey the correct meaning than to use the wrong word because you think it sounds cool. Oh, and the thesaurus cannot be trusted solely for synonyms. Sometimes thesauri include as synonyms words that have slightly different meanings, and this can cause problems for those that rely heavily on the thesaurus to advance their vocabulary. The problems with the thesaurus could be the subject of another blog altogether...

For now I'd like to clear up the definition of a word that is more often misused than it is used correctly. The word of the day is nonplussed.

Nonplussed is commonly misused in place of "unfazed" (slang), "unimpressed," "not jaded," "indifferent" or "unaffected." Perhaps this is because the word sounds like it should mean not plussed, assuming that plussed meant something along the lines of "affected." However, in this case nonplussed is not the converse of plussed. Plussed is not even a word. (Transponster?)

Nonplussed means "perplexed." It comes from the Latin phrase meaning "no more, no further." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines nonplus this way:

SYLLABICATION: non·plus
TRANSITIVE VERB: To put at a loss as to what to think, say, or do; bewilder.
NOUN: A state of perplexity, confusion, or bewilderment.

Some more commonly used synonyms are: puzzled, confused, and baffled.

Hopefully this word will no longer leave you nonplussed.

Affect vs. Effect

I am a spell-check supporter. I think it is ludicrous that even a self-proclaimed stellar speller (I do appreciate a good rhyme) would opt not to utilize this tool when writing anything from academic essays to friendly e-mails. If you don't have spell-check enabled on your e-mail client, kindly enable it now. I will not stand for "definately" (the visual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard) any longer, and neither should you, your boss, your mom, or anyone else. But I digress...

The problem is that many people lean on spell-check as a crutch, and therefore are less careful in checking their document for grammatical correctness. Spell-check catches misspelled words, but not misused words. Just because the word exists as it is spelled does not mean it is spelled correctly for the intended meaning. Carelessness, in this sense, makes my blood boil. I am reminded of the "Friends" episode in which Ross, after having read the letter that Rachel wrote to him, screamed in a fit of rage, "Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E means YOU ARE. Y-O-U-R means YOUR!"

To that same end, a friend recently suggested that I explain the difference between affect and effect. I am happy to oblige. This pair of homophones (the words sound the same but have different meanings) often concerns even self-proclaimed language lovers; the confusion stems from the haziness surrounding the way the difference is taught. Let's break it down.

Affect is most often used in the verb form. It means to influence. For example: The weather affected the turn-out at the picnic. The word affect in this sentence could be replaced with influenced and the sentence would mean the same thing.

Affect in the noun form is quite uncommon, and often misused. It is a psychological term referring to emotion or feeling. For the purposes of everyday conversation, it is best to avoid using affect as a noun.

Effect is most often used in the noun form, as a product of a cause. It means result. For example: The effects of the merger were groundbreaking.

Effect in the verb form is also quite common, though quite often misused. It means to cause. For example: She will effect a change in the organization.

A basic rule of thumb is to first determine which part of speech you are aiming to use. How something affects you may have many effects on your situation.

Does is affect you? (This sentence passed spell-check with flying colors)

How's that for effect?

RE: Irresponsibility

Regardless of what you think you've been taught, irregardless is not, in fact, a word. Go ahead, look it up. Not there? It's because it isn't a word. As if double negatives weren't frustrating enough, this little thorn in conversation's side is excruciatingly piercing, and at the very least idiomatically awkward to even the untrained ear (I hope). It sticks out like a sore thumb (enter supposably), and, like the previously mentioned phrase, "I could care less," is increasingly being used so that I fear it might sneak its way into slang. The "ir" is unneccessary. Spread the word.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines regardless this way:

ADVERB: In spite of everything; anyway: continues to work regardless.
ADJECTIVE: Heedless; unmindful.
re·gardless·ly —ADVERB
re·gardless·ness —NOUN

The problem with the non-word irregardless is that it is inherently redundant. It is a single-word double negative, if such a thing even exists. My trusty friends Strunk and White explain it this way:

Irregardless. Should be regardless. The error results from failure to see the negative in -less and from a desire to get it in as a prefix, suggested by such words as irregular, irresponsible, and, perhaps especially, irrespective.

While we're on the subject, let's move on to regard. In regard to is correct. In regards to is incorrect. You may, however, use the plural following as: As regards.

Regards,

Tracy

How Many Words Do You Know?

I think that Sacha Baron Cohen is a brilliant comedian. Many people find him disgustingly offensive, especially after the runaway box-office smash Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and still others just think his bizarre antics aren't funny. Borat was an equal-opportunity-offender, criticizing Americans from all different walks of life. Personally, I found the satirical film offensive and hilarious. Two thumbs up.

Sacha Baron Cohen first gained fame as alter-ego Ali G, and I think his earlier interviews on Da Ali G Show are among his best work. If you aren't familiar with his stuff (and aren't easily offended), definitely check it out.

Because it is Friday I thought I'd lighten up a bit with some comic relief. Below is Ali G interviewing Dr. Noam Chomsky, distinguished professor of linguistics, on language. I'd personally like to know whether Dr. Chomsky was in on the joke, though it's quite hilarious either way. Enjoy!