Two Related Lessons

I mentioned this solecism before, but comics about two versions of it appeared on the same day, so I thought I’d do a little combining. The first is Understanding Chaos. The comic is funny because it uses the word for measuring when they are counting. It’s fewer Gyms, guys.

And the next comic, Soup to Nutz, is also funny because he uses the word for measuring when he’s counting. It’s number of legs, kid.

Aaand a third one! Mother Goose & Grimm. It’s FEWER wrinkles!

Sigh. I wish the comics was the only place I ever saw this goof.

How to Tell a Noun from a Verb

Nouns are one word, verbs are two words. —What???

Here’s what I mean. It’s part of a headline to an info security article.

Breaches don’t actually happen at the speed of light: Security firm CrowdStrike has determined that the average time to breakout is less than two hours.

What’s “breakout”? Here’s a definition, using “breakout” as an adjective (okay, a noun used attributively, but that’s another lesson):

The breakout time is the time that it takes for an attacker to escape the initial beachhead machine that they were able to compromise.

Here the word is a verb:

How long does it take to break out of the system?

Seeing that article reminded me that the habit of making nouns out of separable verbs is common in English. A common example of getting this wrong is misusing the words “login” and “log in.”:

Verb: Enter your password to log in. (NOT Enter your password to login.)
Noun: Your login succeeded.

Here’s another:

Turnover in low-paying jobs tends to be high.
How often do you turn over in bed?

So remember, if you’re doing something, use two words.

Yes, English has other ways of relating verbs and nouns, but I’ll save that for later.

Some Good Advice

This article is about work as an illustrator, but it could just as well be about writing, any writing that has a deadline. Term paper, article, blog post, something your boss asks for, anything. I read the whole article and didn’t find anything grammatically remarkable (except, perhaps, the lack of errors), so I can’t even make that kind of comment as an excuse to post a link. Here’s the link. Go read the article.

The Creative Life 101: Never Late than Better

The gist is that you should let people on your team know as soon as you do that you might not meet the deadline. But go read it. If I find a related comic before this post posts (I’m writing this about a month ahead of posting date), I’ll include it. But if you do anything on a deadline, read the article.

A Speech Lesson

This isn’t about writing, but it’s still a good thing to know. Here’s the rule:

Drop the pitch of your voice when you stop saying something, even if what you’re saying is a question. You come across as stronger and more poised.

Gray Matters shows how not to do it:

PS—I found someone who already knows this:

Three in a Row? No!

English doesn’t allow three of the same letters in a row. So Dagwood is wrong here. See the first panel:

But apostrophe-s is how you make a possessive, isn’t it? Yes, if the word you’re making possessive doesn’t already end in s. If it already ends in s, then all you need is the apostrophe. So it should be “boss’.” You still pronounce it “bosses.”

Okay, English has an exception to the no-three rule: onomatopoeic words. You can write hmmm and zoooom and buzzzz and noooo! and yasss? And so on.

A Little Tech Writing Advice

This Lunar Baboon comic is a set of instructions. Instructions are common in technical writing.

Look at the second panel. He numbered the instruction. That’s good. But…

He used the future tense! The context of instructions is customary behavior, and for customary behavior, use the present tense, even if it hasn’t happened yet. Instructions should also be in the imperative, so he really should have said, “First, get a wand.” (The first panel describes a single event, so the future is okay here.)

The rest is good, but I have a quibble. In the next-to-last panel he should have said, “…someone who enjoys…” but that’s for another lesson.

Comprise Again

People get “comprise” correct so seldom, I have to post examples of getting it right whenever I see them.

Dubbed “Cabin by the Sea”, the single bedroom home is built around a central living cube, which not only comprises a kitchen, study and bathroom suites, but also separates the home into its separate quarters.

Remember, “comprise” goes from the whole to its parts, “compose” goes from the parts to their whole.

PS—I just ran into a post on Google+ where the writer used “comprise” correctly—twice! Here it is:

Comprising around 7500 coins and 1200 pieces of bullion, it is the largest known Viking hoard from Western Europe. … The hoard comprises a mixture of coins, ingots and hacksilver, mainly from Viking ruled parts of England with some from the Continent and the Islamic world too.

The post is about a museum exhibit in England. …the extensive Cuerdale Viking Hoard, ‘Vikings: Rediscover The Legend’ Exhibition, The Riverside Arts Centre Museum, Nottingham, 6.1.18.

Some Light Reading

Think you could you change this using “reed,” “leed,” “red,” and “led”?

Thank you, Soup to Nutz, for the diversion.

(Yes, “leed” is a word (so is “lede”). Look it up.)

PS—Another blogger whom I read regularly recently commented on this strip, too. He takes a rather different approach to the funnies than I do, but still… Here’s the link to the correct Comic Strip of the Day.

Singular or Plural Verb?

The two regular readers of this humble site probably recall that I studied Greek in my youth. When I saw the first panel of this strip, I thought of something that had not occurred to me in all these years. Was the verb plural to go with wages, or is it singular to go with death? So I rushed to the original of the passage quotes on that sign, Romans 6:23. Then I read the rest of the comic, to discover that the comic was about that very topic! Here’s the comic, Barney & Clyde:Okay, here’s what I found out: In Greek and many other languages, it’s okay to leave out the verb “to be” in any of its many forms, and that’s what Paul of Tarsus did here. Basically, he wrote, “The wages of sin—death!” I’d be curious to know what he would have written if he had included the verb, but since it’s perfectly idiomatic to leave “is” and “are” out, I’ll bet he didn’t even consider including it. I’ll add, since we’re talking about Greek grammar, “sin” is singular, and there’s a rule in Greek and Latin called attraction, where a word picks up a form from the word that precedes it, regardless of the precise grammar. So maybe that’s why the translators felt comfortable using the singular verb in English, to go with the singular “sin.” And, as the comic suggests, “wages” is a collective noun, so you can treat it as a singular.

It’s a good punchy way to get the message across, though, isn’t it?

An Error I Mentioned Before

I mentioned this error before, so here’s a grim reminder not to make it. Perry Bible Fellowship is a rather grim comic anyway, even if it is funny to those of us with a grim mind set.

The error is made by both the students and the, um, professor, and the error is promulgated by lots of stuffy English teachers, so it’s fairly common.

That “preposition” at the end of the sentence isn’t a preposition. It’s an adverb! It’s part of a separable verb, of which English has many. (Or I might say, “…which English has many of.”)

Those words, which can also be used as prepositions in other contexts, are perfectly correct at the end of a sentence when they’re part of the verb. It brings to mind the apocryphal Winston Churchill quote, said when someone correct his English, “Impertinence, young man, is something up with which I will not put.”