Author: Patricia Nelson

My pet peeve for today, class, it the phrase “glossary of terms.”

A glossary is always of terms, so adding “of terms” is unnecessary (read “redundant”). You may, however, use “terms” if you include a limiting adjective. You might say “glossary of unnecessary terms,” for instance.

I like the strip Pajama Diaries. Once a month, though, Terri Libenson makes me cringe with her once-a-month series of that title. Here’s the latest:

If you care to see the whole series, here’s a link to them all. I think.

And “glossary” all by itself is just fine. Harrumpf.

PS: Did you notice that I repeated myself in that sentence just ahead of the comic? I don’t normally do that (it’s redundant), but it was a good chance to use the phrase “once a month” both as a compound adjective, and not.

 

 

Seems everybody is gloomy and pessimistic about the state of our culture. I first ran into this poem more than 50 years ago. (I suppose I ought to add a verse of my own, eh?) I ran into a couple variations of it; I think it dates to the early 1900’s. Okay, I thought about it. The first two lines are mine. (My grandad was president of the National Livestock Exchange.)

My granddad, with his livestock hogs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad, viewing earth’s worn cogs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in his house of logs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in the Flemish bogs.
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in his old skin togs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
So here’s one thing I have to state –
Those dogs have had a good long wait!

So don’t give up!

Many people write perfectly grammatical sentences that aren’t very good. Unnecessary words, modifiers out of place, that sort of thing. Here’s a (ahem) good example. Look at the item about the pencil:

Believe it or Not has long been a favorite of mine, and I don’t often find solecisms in it. This sentence has two!

Here’s the sentence:

The metal sleeve on a pencil, which holds the eraser, is called the ferrule

• First, the comma before “which” is correct. But the remark is not an aside! They should have written “the metal sleeve on a pencil that holds the eraser…”
• Also, they got things in the wrong order. The pencil engineering is more accurate if you say “The metal sleeve that holds the eraser on a pencil…”

Smoother, now, isn’t it?

Well, according to Perry Bible Fellowship, the Orca thinks not…

Unless the cartoonist is suggesting that reality is more important than spelling. On closer examination I see the Orca got the whole group of penguins, not just the lecturer. Hmm.

Two comics about spelling in one day! How can I resist???

By the way, don’t trust your spell checker a whole lot.

English has a type of word called  a coordinating conjunction. Coordinating conjunctions go between two parts of a sentence, and they imply that the two parts are more or less equivalent, at least grammatically. You know coordinating conjunctions as “and” and “but.”

“But” is interesting because it connects the two things and implies some kind of opposition between the two things. For example,

I am sick, but I don’t think I’m contagious.

We think of contagiousness as going with sickness, so the sentence uses “but” to contradict this usual circumstance.

If I may digress a bit, I attended a sales class once in which the instructor said to avoid using but, because it’s negative.

It’s a fine encyclopedia, but it’s inexpensive.

should be

It’s a fine encyclopedia, and it’s inexpensive.

Hmm. Try getting rid of some buts and see how it feels. (It feels funny, but/and interesting.)

And that leads to my intended object lesson for this post, compliments of Curtis, which hinges on the kid ignoring the implied contradiction between corniness and the feeling of love in his dad’s statement, which definitely needs the but.

The lesson: Pay attention to your buts.

I see this goof often enough that I think we’re going to lose this battle, (but if you write anything the least bit expository (you know—when you explain something (which this blog is about, after all))) you should use the correct word, regardless of what everybody else does. (Okay, I could have written a less convoluted sentence there, but I thought it would be fun to nest a couple parentheses.)

Anyway, the bad word is nauseous. At least it is when you mean nauseated.

The rule: nauseous means you (or something) makes people want to throw up. Nauseated means you (or someone) feels like throwing up.

Don’t be nauseous to us who know better! We don’t like to feel nauseated!

 

The most common type of persons who make this mistake are ones who want to be formal, but don’t know how to do it right, so they do it wrong, and end up being pretentious instead of formal.

Don’t write “as per”!!! It’s wrong! It’s a pretentiousism. Harrumpf.

Here’s the comic. Comics are a good place for this poor grammar, and it fits rather well into this guy’s persona.

He had so many ways to say this correctly: according to, in line with, as we traditionally do, as usual; even just end the sentence after “Thanksgiving.”

 

 

‘Nuff said. It’s the holidays.

Barney and Clyde for Dec 23.

I am kind of a party pooper, so I googled “derivation of curmudgeon.” Here’s what I got:

curmudgeon. 1570s, of unknown origin; the suggestion, based on a misreading of a garbled note from Johnson, that it is from French coeur mechant “evil heart” is not taken seriously; the first syllable may be cur “dog.”

You can pretty easily find grammar posts that tell you to use “whom” when your instinct tells you to use “who.” These mainly contain dire warnings about direct objects and objects of prepositions.

Well, sometimes the word in question isn’t an object, it’s a subject! Take a look at this Hi and Lois, last panel:

Does that sixth grade English teacher in you tell you it should be “whom”? I hope not, because “who” is correct!

Let’s analyze the sentence. First, look at the verbs:

• think (okay, “do think,” but you can ignore the “do.” “Do” just makes it emphatic.)
• asked
• to fill
• gets

Wow! Four verbs! Not bad for a sentence in a comic. Now, figure out which words are the subjects of those verbs:

• you think
• ? asked
• me to fill (subjects of infinitives are in the objective case. See an earlier post.)
• he gets

The only possible candidate is who, so don’t be afraid to use “who” when it’s a subject.