Archive for January, 2008
A lot of people get confused about where and how to use the colon.
For instance, some people will place a colon after a verb to introduce things that follow, as in: "The four reasons are: greed, anger, stupidty and laziness."
However, here’s a tidy little rule to remember: Never use a colon after a verb, but do use it after a noun.
Let me rewrite the above example to show you what I mean: "The four reasons are the following: greed, anger, stupidity and laziness."
Here, even though the colon is used correctly, you now have a wordiness and awkwardiness problem.
Solution: Just take the colon out of the first sentence.
(Also, I just contradicted myself by saying never use a colon after a verb when that’s exactly what you have to use to introduce a quotation of more than one sentence. Example: He said: "Blah. Blah." Oops! Anyway, don’t use it after are or include and other verbs that are introducing a series of nouns or thoughts within a sentence.)
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I never knew there was an American Dialect Society (do they use there for their?), nor did I know anyone went around dubbing words of the year.
However, the American Dialect Society just proclaimed subprime its Word of the Year.
(Subprime, of course, refers to real estate loans made to people who really can’t afford them. Witness the recent mess in the mortgage lending world and the subsequent rollicking effect on the stock market.)
The Society says the chosen words "do not have to be brand-new [my note: hyphen incorrect and not needed], but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year."
(What about surge?)
Previous winners: To be plutoed (2006), Truthiness (2005), Red/blue/purple states (2004), Metrosexual (2003), 9-11 or 9/11 (2001) and Chad (2000).
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I’ve added two subdomains to my site, both of which are self-updating. In other words, as new videos are posted out in cyberspace, the script controlling my sites will automatically update the content.
One site looks at English lessons, and it’s found at EnglishVids.GrammarSucks.com.
The other takes a look at the foibles and follies of taking English lessons as a foreigner, and it’s found at ESLVideos.GrammarSucks.com.
Enjoy!
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In describing one of the contestants (I think it was Wolfgang Puck) on Iron Chef America, Alton Brown said the chef was always "reinventing new ingredients."
Anything wrong with that expression?
A couple of things are off here.
For one, you can’t reinvent something that’s new; you can only invent something that’s new. For another, you can’t invent food ingredients unless you cross-pollinate or cross-breed or somehing like that, which is not what Brown meant. You can certainly discover new ingredients, maybe, if no one else has discovered them yet.
What Brown meant, however, was that Puck was always "creating new dishes" or "inventing new recipes."
See how easily it is to misuse English.
Now, that being said, I’m probably the only person in the universe who perked up his ears (no mean feat) when he heard "reinventing new ingredients." I’m sure it just went sailing merrily by the bulk of the viewers.
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I received this file via e-mail from a list to which I belong. I reluctantly read it, but it turns out that A New YOU Year is full of great advance to help you advance yourself in 2008.
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