Posts by Don Hauptman

I can recall when hardly anyone knew the word oxymoron. Now everyone knows it — but few people use it correctly. The word’s popularity can probably be attributed to the late comedian George Carlin, who loved language and wordplay. In one of his most memorable routines, he described phrases such as “jumbo shrimp” and “non-dairy…

Decades ago, now-defunct McCall’s magazine ran a marketing campaign that featured portraits of sexy dames, including Carly Simon and Tina Turner, along with the tongue-in-cheek caption “One of the boring housewives who reads McCall’s.” Over a period of months, the trade journal Advertising Age published numerous letters from readers, ferociously debating whether the correct word…

At a conference I attended recently, a speaker referred to “the little homunculus in the brain.” The word homunculus is Latin for “little man,” so the word little is redundant. I’ve written about redundancies several times in this column. But the error is so common that another report is probably not, er… redundant. Here are…

In my reading, I continue to spot ambiguously written sentences. Such errors can create miscues that confuse readers and force them to pause, backtrack, and reread in an effort to understand what is really meant. Consider these examples: “I stand behind no one in my enthusiasm and dedication to improving our society and especially our…

A supermarket recently opened in my neighborhood. The managers promptly posted a sign boasting “Low prices everyday.” This is a frequent error, though that doesn’t make it any less excusable. The sign should read “Low prices every day.” The adjective everyday precedes a noun, as in “The life of the medieval peasant was filled with…

Consider the following examples, found via online search: “As far as skilled labor is concerned only 9 percent stated that it was easy to find now, while 59 percent said it was difficult. Three years before 1991, the percentages were 8 and 61, respectively….” “The authors are from Harvard University, Harvard University, Harvard University, and…

It’s been a while since this column has presented a roundup of “confusables” — pairs of words that are commonly mistaken for one another. So here’s a new set, inspired, as always, by genuine media mistakes: “Many who do admit that privacy regulations restricting the use of information about consumers have costs believe they are…

Here’s another collection of errors I encountered recently in major publications: “[The scandal at Hewlett-Packard] has stunted a long search by HP’s employees for stability and pride at the patriarch of Silicon Valley companies.” A patriarch is defined literally as “a man who rules a family, clan, or tribe,” and, by extension, “the founder or…

Can you spot anything amiss in the following sentences? “The right way to look at illegal immigration is with a pragmatic eye.” “Should nurses take a pragmatic approach to hand hygiene?” “The system integrates ideas from logic programming, imperative programming, and rule-based systems in a pragmatic way.” The writers of these sentences use the word…

Consider the following sentences: “This is a vast collection of everything ranging from African musical instruments to 20th century art, and the Egyptian Temple of Dendur thrown in for good measure.” “You guys have had a lot of questions lately — about everything from unfinished high-rises and legislative votes to the Citrus Bowl and even…