Posts by Don Hauptman
The Language Perfectionist: “Say What?!” Funny Misunderstandings
A mondegreen is a phrase that has been misheard and thus misunderstood, usually with humorous results. Here’s an example: A TV commercial claiming that a car was carved from “a single block of steel” was heard by a viewer as “a single glockenspiel.” Another example: A 2008 news story about newly released Nixon-era tape recordings…
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: Redundancies Redux
A year ago, I devoted a column to the topic of redundant expressions. This error continues to be widespread, as the following examples, recently culled from the media, demonstrate: “I have come to realize that the seeming constancy of the harbor symbolized a false myth about nature.” (The phrase false myth is not as common…
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: Unusual Plurals
Headline: “Thirteen state attorney generals threaten lawsuit over Nebraska’s health care deal.” The phrase attorney generals isn’t wrong. But it’s not standard English. The approved form is attorneys general. This is one of several compounds in which the adjective follows rather than precedes the noun, and where the plural is formed by adding -s to…
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: A Metaphor to Avoid
Consider these passages, found via online search: “Is it any wonder that there are so many problems in America today when there is such contradictory, schizophrenic behavior in our society?” “Any vote would take place in a state where attitudes toward marijuana border on the schizophrenic.”
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: More Bloopers and Snappy Comebacks
Here’s another batch of amusing mistakes gleaned from the media, each followed by a mischievous retort. If you’ve ever committed an embarrassing linguistic error, it may be comforting to know that even professional journalists and their editors can be guilty of blunders and howlers. Warning: In some instances, you may have to read the passage…
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: Are You Intrigued?
While reading the business pages of a newspaper recently, this lead caught my attention: “Next Jump may well be the most intriguing Internet business that you’ve never heard of….” No, I don’t follow high-tech stocks for investment purposes. What, er… intrigued me about this sentence was the word intriguing. Is it correct?
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: What’s Due and Proper
I found the following sentences online. Can you spot what’s wrong with them? “NYC’s ‘Sidewalk Santas’ sidelined due to economy.” “When is school closed due to weather?” “[Basketball’s Utah] Jazz star Deron Williams had to leave his team on a road trip to return to Salt Lake City due to a family illness.”
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: The Confusables are Back!
It’s time once again to clarify common confusions among similar words. All of the following examples appeared in major newspapers or online articles. “The census counts military personal and federal employees living abroad, but no other citizens.” Of course, the word wanted here is not personal but personnel. “Cannon 2 of the Code of Conduct…
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: “The Cry of the Awk”
When editing the work of others, I frequently find myself imagining a mythical bird: the awk. In my fantasy, the creature would alert the writer of an awkward sentence with a terrifying cry: “Awk!”
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: The Cohort Retort
From a U.S. Department of Justice news release: “The following morning, when the first employee of the day entered the bank, Smith and his cohort, armed with handguns, confronted the employee and demanded money contained in the bank’s vault.”
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: Lie Down When You Read This One
What’s wrong with this sentence? “How pleasant to lie prone on one’s back on the cool grass, and gaze upward through the shady green canopy of boughs….” The word prone means lying on one’s stomach, face down. Thus, “prone on one’s back” is a physical impossibility, even for a contortionist! Here’s how to distinguish among…
Read MoreThe Language Perfectionist: Always Avoid Ambiguity
Some problems with the written word don’t qualify as formal mistakes but rather are issues of style and expression. That doesn’t make them any less serious. One of these problems is the sentence so poorly worded that it’s ambiguous and confusing. It forces the reader to stop and wonder: What is the writer trying to…
Read More