With words if it smells wrong, it probably is
Recently I did a little rant in this space about cell phones, their excessive use in public and how over-geegawed they’ve become. Some of you agreed with me and others suggested I join the 21st century or maybe get a life.
And so I press on. There’s something else that’s been bothering me which again compels me to don my self-appointed arbiter-of-all-things-proper hat and take on (drum roll) word usage and its subset, spelling.
Yes, yes, I know – pinched-nose old school marm about to crack knuckles with a ruler. To set the record straight, I’ve never taught school, but I have made a living using words, and I don’t always abide by all the rules myself. Like with sentence fragments.
To be sure, the rules do change, and should. Splitting infinitives is now pretty much OK; so is ending a sentence with a preposition. Sometimes we had to turn ourselves inside out to obey the grammar laws, thereby creating awkward communication. Winston Churchill, when chastised about his placement of prepositions, called it tedious nonsense “up with which I will not put.”
I love the manufacture and emergence of most new words. We’ve got blog, spam, edamame and avatar – all fine words that are explicit and do what they need to do, which is to define or express a unique something or other.
And I especially love that section at the back of the Atlantic magazine in which readers request words or phrases to describe some phenomena from modern life. I so related to the query for a description of the person who feels compelled to rearrange dishes in a dishwasher loaded by someone else. The suggestions that came in were great – for example, “dishorderly conduct” and “hi ho silverware, it’s the load arranger.” I mean, who couldn’t love that?
But once we’ve gotten and agree on the words and phrases and changes, let’s use ’em right, please.
Pet peeve: use of the objective word when the subjective one is required, as in “me and my friends are going out to dinner.” No, no, no! “My friends and I are going out to dinner.”
That sounds stuffy, you say. No, that sounds right – because it is. I know plenty of well educated people who get it wrong. I’m sorry guys, but it just sounds ignorant.
Major pet peeve: less and fewer. Generally, fewer refers to individual things and less deals with things as an aggregate. I see and hear it wrong in TV commercials all the time, as in “less calories.” No, it’s fewer calories because we’re talking about individual things, calories. Less money is correct (it’s a total amount), but so is fewer dollars (individual items).
It’s not that confusing. It’s like the sniff test – if it smells bad, it’s bad. Use your ears. If it sounds wrong, it probably is. Trouble is, we’ve become so desensitized that a lot of us are hearing impaired.
And, of course, there’s that spelling thing, where it’s nowhere more abused than in the spelling of our children’s names. No, I don’t object to nonmainstream names. Name your child whatever you want, but please spell it in an intuitive way. Cutsie isn’t that cute, really.
There’s a practical reason for this, too. I once asked my mother why they put an “f” in my first name rather than a “ph” and was told that’s how it was done in the country of my father’s birth, Germany. Although, she said she should have taken the hint when at the hospital where I was born, the first copy of my birth certificate came back with my name misspelled, and she corrected it.
As someone whose first name has been misspelled on the first issuance of every document in my life – high school graduation certificate, marriage license, etc. – I recommend simplicity. If you name your daughter Susan, please don’t spell it Soozin or even transform Cheyenne into Shyanne. That’s no way to turn her into an individual. It will turn her into an individual who will be forever correcting documents.
So why the big grumpiness over all this? Words matter, as does how we use them. Sure, evolution of language is normal, but we have standards (read: rules) for a reason – and not just to keep the anal-retentive grammar police happy, though that is a plus.
The rules are to ensure that communication is crisp and clear and understood, that our linguistic evolution points forward and that we’re striving to get smarter every day – not dumber.
There, I feel better now. Curmudgeons rock!