Almost forty years ago, Mick Jagger sang "I can't get no satisfaction," and in almost all that time, it never bothered me. In fact, I loved the song, with Keith Richards' great, fuzzy, percussive guitar line as well as the little jokes throughout the lyrics. An all-time rock and roll classic, and one of my favorites.
Still, that double negative: "I can't get no..." Again, it's never really bothered me, although...one night about a year ago I heard the opening guitar notes to "Satisfaction" on the car radio, turned it way up in anticipation, and found myself focusing on it, on that damn double negative. I even mentioned it to a friend on the telephone, and I was told, "Look, they were doing it for effect."
Well, maybe.
Yes, I am one of those people: I see a sad, unnecessary decline in standards of English, written and spoken both, even since my own childhood. By this I mean standards of written and spoken English, and standards of editing in magazines and newspapers. I am a grammar Nazi, a punctuation fascist, a spelling and usage avenger. And I apologize for none of it, for if we are to communicate, indeed, if we are to think, then language is our only instrument. It is all we have.
This is but a blog entry, and as such is not a treatise on how to do it right, how to fix what you or I or anyone else may be doing wrong, or how to learn all of proper English in ten minutes. Nor is it a condemnation of entire classes of English speakers. My own English needs work, and my intent here is far more modest. All I'm offering is an informal list, a horror file, examples of rotten English which must, please, disappear, followed by some short items intended as amusing and helpful and, I hope, inspiring.
In no particular order, then---save that I've left the worst for last--here is Craig's More Than Top Twenty, the Horror File:
1. "Silver war" for "civil war."
2. "Supposebly" for "supposedly."
3. "For all intentional purposes" instead of "For all intents and purposes."
4. "Calvary" vs. "cavalry." The calvary won't rescue you, ever. The cavalry might, but Calvary is a location in Jerusalem, rather significant in Christian history, and has nothing to do with horses.
5. Pronouncing "nuclear," not that complicated a word, as "nucular." Ugh.
These are examples of spoken English faults, not bad English usage as such. Yet I became aware of them almost forty years ago and still hear them today. They are not just the mistakes of children: our Yale-educated, Harvard MBA president routinely says "nucular" when discussing weapons based on exploiting the physical characteristics of atomic nuclei. And he's not alone.
6. "Turn the other cheek" does not mean "reform thyself." It never did. Granted, this is not a problem of English usage, but of misinterpretation of text. Still, if we have to hear it all the time, let's force those quoting it to admit that Jesus meant "Resist not evil."
7. "An" versus "and." These are not variant spellings of the same word; they are not the same word, they do not have the same meaning, and cannot be used the same way. "An" is an indefinite article, "and" is a conjunction. Think I'm being picky? Think this doesn't happen? Here's an example, from an ad on the last page of my paperback edition of Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, and it's for the book The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z. We are told that the book is "Edited by Harry Binswanger," and, on the next line, we read, "With and Introduction by Leonard Peikoff."
That's right: "and Introduction." This from a major publisher. Isn't this the kind of mistake for which children are corrected? When I was a child, it was.
8. "Everyday" employed so as to mean "every day." Both are legitimate constructions--but they don't mean the same thing.
9. Newspaper editors, you should be ashamed: I was taught, in the Sixties, how to hyphenate a word, and I was taught that one shouldn't carry a single letter of a word by itself onto the next line. Why is it now acceptable? As Dennis Miller might say, Did I miss a meeting? It still looks just as bad, and just as ignorant. This is an arrogant lack of concern for one's readers.
10. I don't care who you are or of whom you are writing, one does not "wreck" havoc. I don't even care which alternate spelling of "havoc" you employ. The word you wanted, but didn't care to find, was "wreak." Look it up.
I owe the next few examples to my brothers in the U. S. Marine Corps...but I've observed soldiers and sailors and civilians make the same errors, so I'm not picking on the Marines.
11. Using quotation marks instead of italics to emphasize a word or phrase. Yuck.
12. "Last and final," as in "Your last and final exercise of the Marine Corps Daily Seven..." Tell me, please, since you insist on using both words: what is the difference between "last" and "final?" And if there's no difference, why are you using both?
13. Misuse of the reflexive pronoun "myself," as in "If you have any questions, ask the First Sergeant or myself." If you don't know what a reflexive pronoun is, you probably should avoid the word "myself." Note to civilians: this applies to you as well.
14. All acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms. The two terms are not synonymous, and never have been. And do not abbreviate "acronyms" as "acros...." We're in bad enough shape without that little "contribution."
15. Learn how to use an apostrophe. It's not hard.
16. Sorry, retailers, but "thankyou!" is not a word.
17. No matter who you are, your spell-checking software can't know whether you mean "from" or "form." You have to know, and you must type it correctly or fix your error. Otherwise, it's there for all to see.
Dear readers, I apologize if I sound angry, but this is all bad, very bad...and easily avoided. Easily corrected, too, for those who care. And now, the countdown to the worst:
18. This is a losing battle, and I realize it, but I'm begging you: don't use "choice," alone, as a synonym for "abortion." Sure: "a woman's right to choose." That is a valid political question. But: to choose what? Which book she'll read? Which car she'll purchase? This is a corruption of the language for political purposes, and I'm just hoping that Dante has a place for those who---but that is uncharitable.
19. When you mean "freedom" or "liberty," use one of those words. "Democracy" does not mean either of the above, and is no replacement for either one.
20. If the only time you'll ever use "copious" is to say that someone took copious notes or consumed copious amounts of alchohol, then please spare us, and eschew the word. Similarly, if you mean "amusing," don't use "ironic." Take my word for this: it's an easy way to stay out of trouble.
Of course, I've saved the worst for last, and we have a tie, as I couldn't decide which was the most offensive. I still can't.
WORST OF THE WORST CANDIDATE A: "You" when you meant "your." I blame, again, software spell-checkers, because "you" is a real word, as is "your." The problem is, your software can't know which you mean, and if you can't tell, or don't know, or simply don't catch it, then there you are, ignorant to the world, and for all to see. But, ultimately, I blame you, not your software, and for making the rest of us read it, you deserve a damn good floggingcensure.
WORST OF THE WORST CANDIDATE B: I don't care where you've seen it, I don't care at all. "Alright" is not a word. Not, not, not a word. You want, and your readers want, "all right." Period.
Most of us can't read the Pearl Poet: his dialect of English hasn't survived, so for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight we must turn to a translation. The dialect of Chaucer, however, did survive, and thus we can read not only Chaucer himself (with some difficulty, granted) but those after him who wrote in his English: Spenser and Shakespeare and Milton and Marlowe, for example, and the King James Bible and The Book of Common Prayer. And we should. And we can write that English, too: Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov and Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand--Europeans all--mastered English and wrote in it professionally (in fact, only von Mises wrote professionally in his native language). We cannot demand genius of all who speak or commit words to paper. Still, native speakers of English should at least aspire to employ the language without mangling it, and the Horror File above shows mangling galore.
Just after World War II, George Orwell wrote two insightful essays on using English, and I recommend both of them: "The Prevention of Literature" is available here, and the slightly later, and better known, "Politics and the English Language," is available here. At the end of the latter essay, Orwell offered a few prescriptions:
i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Finally, I did mention amusing, so I offer you the other George: George Carlin. In "Offensive Language," his hilarious sendup of garbage English, he announces: "This is the language you will not be hearing tonight....You will not hear me say 'bottom line,' 'game plan,' 'role model,' scenario,' or 'hopefully.' I will not 'kick back,' 'mellow out,' or be 'on a roll.'...I will not say 'concept' when I mean 'idea.' I will not say 'impacted' when I mean 'affected.' "
But it's not just the bureaucrats: New Age or "cute" language comes in for its share of abuse as well: "I will not 'share' anything with you....I will not 'relate' to you, and you will not 'identify' with me....I will give you no 'input,' and I will expect no 'feedback.'... and we definitely will not spend any 'quality time.'...and if you're one of those people who 'needs a little space,' please...go the fuck outside!"
Posted by Craig Ceely at August 4, 2003 12:53 AMSome words have been used improperly so frequently and for so long that no one other than English professors even know that it is wrong. For example, until I read this post I had no idea that "alright" was not a real word. I thought that it was correct to use "alright" to mean "okay" and "all right" to mean "all correct."
To follow Orwell's rules were followed strictly it would make writing extremely boring. I also see nothing wrong with many of the words you complain about in your last two paragraphs.
The worst spoken language mistake I have ever heard: My sister-in-law always says "pasketti" when she means "spaghetti." When I first heard her say it I thought she was just doing it for the kids but she always pronounces it that way.
Posted by: Lynn S at August 4, 2003 01:57 PMSorry, sloppy editing - very embarrassing in a language post. :-) Second paragraph should say:
To follow Orwell's rules strictly would make writing extremely boring. I know... that doesn't sound much better. Not all of us are English professors. Cut people some slack.
Lynn,
Even Orwell didn't intend for all of his rules to be followed strictly--observe the last item on his list.
And there's plenty of slack in English. I'm arguing that there are standards as well, and they shouldn't be tossed out just because some people are lazy (not that I'm including you in that category).
Posted by: Craig at August 4, 2003 05:48 PMExcuse me, but what do you mean by "writing professionally"? Does it apply to anyone who writes fiction and has it published? If yes, then Nabokov did write professionally in his mother tongue (Russian; although he might have been bilingual from the start). In fact, he produced some of the best Russian novels of the 20th century.
Posted by: Alex(ei) at August 6, 2003 09:53 AMMy pet peave is folks who, in their desire to appear superior, impose latinate rules on English. After all, you see, Latin is a superior language, right? My particular bete noire is the hideous "of which" construction that pedants use to cram a preposition into the middle of a sentance, when its rightful place is at the end!
Posted by: Tom Smedley at August 12, 2003 06:59 AMOne of my pet peeves is people who can't spell peeves. Another one is people (usually the educated or the wannabes) who insist on saying things like "to John and I," eschewing the proper object pronoun me in prepositional phrases. Even some of my English teacher colleagues do this! Another pet peeve is people who use infer when they mean imply (again, primarily an educated person's error). The character of Goren (portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio) corrected the person he was interrogating regarding this usage error on a recent episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent.