Author: Gary McCarty

Apostrophes Gone Wild

No Comments

If you want to set up your own blog, I certainly recommend using WordPress as the content management system on your own hosted domain.  However, there is a glitch in WordPress that I’m hoping I’ve detected the source of (never end a sentence with a preposition, right?).  To wit, because of something in PHP (the sourcing code) called Magic Quotes, apostrophes appear with slashes after them, such as “Dave\s,” or something like that, so this post is purely a test to see if turning off Magic Quotes cures this problem.  (Believe me, I spent a couple of hours doing Web searches trying to figure this out, so I’m praying for results here.)

Let’s try:  Dave’s, Judy’s, Mack’s.  How about single quotes:  “He said he was ‘completely unprepared’.”

We’ll all know in a minute, or maybe not because it may just be certain browsers where this occurs, in which case I’ll have to wait to hear from my reader in Taipei.

Categories: Grammar Sucks

Classical Freudian Slip?

No Comments

I didn’t see the original article, only the retraction and correction that appeared later, but a Jan. 7 story in the Orange County Register evidently said that 18th Century British politician William Wilberforce, a staunch opponent of slave trade, helped usher in a period of prurience.  Oops, what they really meant was “prudishness,” as the retraction noted.

Whatever happened to copy editors, city editors and proofreaders?  Probably most of them got their jobs eliminated.  Back in the days when I toiled for a daily newspaper, at least two and often four people checked your story before it went to press.  They were fairly prudish too.  Prurience reigned over at Playboy and Hustler magazines.  Now why didn’t I work for them?

Categories: Grammar Sucks

The British Are Coming!

No Comments

So rode and spoke Paul Revere. 

Now every media outlet in the U.S. is blaring a new refrain of this as David Beckham, British soccer phenom, and wife Posh Spice, British rock phenom, are relocating to the states so Beckham can play soccer for the Los Angeles Galaxy.

Soon the definitive British accent of the two will hit the airwaves to promote soccer, shoes, clothes, Pepsi, Coke, you name it, but the prospect is so huge that no newspaper, radio, or TV outlet in the land did anything but trumpet it as the biggest news of the day, next to the “surge” of troops in Iraq.

I’m not sure what will come of this American English-wise, but it will be fun to find out.

Let’s just hope the guy can still play soccer so this phenomenon-in-the-making doesn’t appear stillborn.

Categories: Grammar Sucks

Newspapers Get Pinched by Web

No Comments

First television, then the Web–newspapers are feeling the heat advertising-wise.

As a journalist who started his career in newspapers and is evidently ending it on the Web, I understand the progression, but it’ll be a sad day when just a few newspapers are left to help shape our culture.

Read More

Categories: Grammar Sucks

Notwords and Pidgin English

No Comments

I guess some would call “Pidgin” English “Pigeon” English, just as some would call Welsh “Rarebit” Welsh “Rabbit,” but that’s okay.

My experience with Pidgin English dates to the 1970s and several months I spent in Hawaii editing a publication on the fly.  Here’s what happened to our happy little band of writers and editors by the time we headed home.  We got used to saying, “Did you eat?” at lunchtime to try to hook up with someone for a bite to eat.  By the time we left, the sentence had become a single Pidgin word, “Jeet?”

That may actually be beyond Pidgin English, which nonetheless contains many Notwords within its lexicon.  Still, I never said Notwords couldn’t have charm.

Categories: Grammar Sucks