Posts by Don Hauptman
The Language Perfectionist: Fragmentation Grenades
Our grade-school teachers instructed us to write complete sentences – “complete” meaning that every sentence is supposed to contain a subject and a predicate. They admonished us to avoid incomplete sentences or “sentence fragments,”.
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: Reject Redundancies
A common type of misuse is redundancy, also known as tautology or pleonasm. Here are some examples, drawn from print and online sources:
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: More Confusables
Here’s another roundup of look-alike and sound-alike words I frequently see confused:
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: Don’t Mix Your Metaphors
A mixed metaphor is a combination of figures of speech that creates an incongruous or absurd image. The results are often amusing, although the humor is usually unintentional.
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: A Misuse That Can Land You in Big Trouble
As in the above examples, the word notoriety is sometimes used as if it means fame. In fact, it means fame for the wrong reasons, such as criminality or other bad behavior.
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: Don’t Take this “Chance”
The word fortuitous is regularly misused. Because of its similarity to fortunate, people assume that it means the same thing.
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: “Is That a Pun in Your Pocket, or…?”
April Fool’s Day is the ideal occasion to celebrate the pun. In fact, for many years, an annual dinner in Chicago on this date attracted punsters from across the nation.
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: A Comprise Winner
Among the many misused words in the English language, one of the most common is surely comprise.
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: What’s Wrong With Dictionaries?
“Let’s look it up in the dictionary.” – When people disagree about language, someone is bound to utter this sentence, as if it will settle everything. But the solution is not always so easy. Here’s why.
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: A Roundup of “Confusables.”
It’s easy to mistake one word for another, especially when they look or sound similar. Here are five pairs that are often confused and misused.
Read More