Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

Writin’ Wrong

First, let me say a quick thank you to my friend Sam B. for a comment on my Facebook page, on which he responded to my blog entry "Losing My Religion." He said in part, "[T]heatre is as much for the audience as it is for me. I just tell myself that when it doesn't seem worth it anymore." And somehow, that worked. My mood improved. So thanks, Sam, and I'll try to keep that in mind. Apparently even theatre isn't solely about me. Who knew, right?

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The audiobook playing in my car today was Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty, so I've been thinking about the hundreds of picayune grammar, usage, and spelling rules I've learned over the years, mostly the hard way. There's a comprehensive list of common English writing errors here for quick reference.

Let's look at mistakes I've observed far too many times on Facebook and elsewhere. What's so wrong about them? At the end I'll include a special list of errors I've made frequently over the years. Hopefully this exercise will remind me to avoid repeating them.

...Did you catch the error there? No, it wasn't the semicolon. My use of "hopefully" was, in the technical sense, incorrect. "Hopefully" is an adverb, so in my sentence, what did it modify? Was the exercise hopeful, or was I? It would've been better to write, "I hope this exercise..." Granted, you knew what I meant, which goes a long way when defending grammatical choices. After all, it seems some rules exist merely to give elitist grammarians something to argue about.

!!! One of my pet peeves is redundant use of the exclamation point. When I read the sentence, "MY ENGLISH PROFESSOR IS SUCH A JERK!!!!!!!" I'm unsure what the tone is meant to be. All-caps online indicate the writer is "yelling." We've all been online long enough to know this. And if all-caps aren't enough to convey shouting, shouldn't one exclamation point do the job? Are eight exclamation points eight times louder than one? What's the formula here? Usually such histrionics make the writer look crazy or stupid or both, not amusing as was probably intended.

?! I know there's no such punctuation. I know the "interrobang" (aka "quesclamation mark," aka the superimposed question mark and exclamation mark symbol included in a few fonts) has yet to enter common usage. I don't care. In blog entries at least, I feel free to use "?!" to convey shock and confusion--but I also know it's technically wrong.

accidently It's spelled "accidentally." Compare "coincidentally."

alot Yes, fans of "alright" did, in fact, wear down the grammar Nazis, but we old schoolers haven't surrendered the fight on this one. To "allot" means "to distribute." "A lot" means "several." "Alot" isn't a word.

athiest I notice this one a lot, as you might expect. It's spelled "atheist," because "atheism" is the opposite of "theism." Besides, one cannot be more or less "athy," so it's impossible to be the "athiest." (By the way, it's also impossible to be more or less "unique" than anything or anyone else.)

breath/breathe "Breath" is a noun, pronounced to rhyme with "death." "Breathe," on the other hand, pronounced with a long e and soft th, is a verb. One might, for example, breathe one's last breath, but not the other way round.

c'est la vie That's the correct spelling, thanks to the damn French. When English speakers attempt to spell it, they understandably assume the first word is "say." The phrase means "that's life."

could of It's "could have" or "could've." "Have" is a helping verb. "Of" is a preposition, which is why it's "good of" you to read this, not "good've."

definate Thanks to the many ways our language represents the schwa sound, it's easy to forget this should be spelled "definite."

ect. This abbreviation stands for the Latin "et cetera," so it's spelled "etc." Don't forget the period at the end.

for all intensive purposes That only sounds like the correct phrase, which is "for all intents and purposes." Of course, that's also a repetitive phrase, which most newspaper editors avoid like the plague. We can't win.

Isn't it ironic? Don't you think? Well, is it or isn't it? What the hell does "ironic" mean, anyway? The short, even glib answer is that "ironic" means "possessing irony," which would drag us into an answer so esoteric as to be useless. Instead, I'll admit most dictionaries now allow "ironic" in the sense of "contrary to expectations." So yes, if my dentist asks me to open wide and a moment later one of his molars falls out, that is, in fact, ironic. But while some dictionaries recently added the definition "coincidental" to "ironic," there's already a perfectly good word for that--so I'm hoping to at least keep "ironic" coincidences significant somehow. "A black fly in your Chardonnay" isn't surprising or even very important, it's just a bad break--for you and the fly.

it's/its As a moment's thought would almost certainly remind us, "it's" is the contraction of "it is," and "its" is a possessive. Ergo: "It's fun to say its face was gray."

lightening If you mean a display of electric bolts accompanied by thunder, then the word is spelled "lightning" with no "e." The word "lightening" means "getting lighter or brighter." It can also mean "the descent of the uterus into the pelvic cavity near the end of pregnancy," in which case it is a noun--but probably not the one you intended.

literally "My head was literally exploding" means "my head burst into tiny pieces, all of which shot away from my neck." That seems unlikely. The word "literally" literally means the opposite of what many people think it means. If something "literally" occurred, then that's exactly what happened, word for word, no exaggeration.

loose/lose The word "loose" is pronounced with an "s" as the final sound. "Lose" sounds as if it ends with a "z." It's easy to lose hope over loose standards, but meaningless the other way round. Obviously, then, people who reverse these words are losers, not "loosers."

mischievious The reason your spellchecker objects to this word is it doesn't exist. The word should be "mischievous," which has only three syllables: MIS-chiv-us.

nauseous This never used to mean "queasy," though some dictionaries now wave the white flag. The word you probably want is "nauseated." In standard usage, "nauseous" means "causing nausea," not suffering from it.

noone It's two words: "no one."

review/revue The former is a critique; the latter is a show comprised of short acts. I can review a revue but not the other way round.

segway Capitalized, it's one of those weird upright scooters. Otherwise, the word you need is the oddly spelled "segue."

thankyou It's two words: "thank you."

to/too/two I think most people realize "to" is the preposition, "too" is the adverb, and "two" is the number after one, but it still seems lazy not to notice and correct all those typos. "I insisted two would be too many times to see Transformers 2."

tounge It's spelled "tongue," which is why it doesn't rhyme with "lounge."

weiner It's from the German town of Wien, which is why it's spelled "wiener." As for the diminutive so popular on grade school playgrounds, "weenie" is preferred, "wienie" is acceptable, and "weinie" is wrong.

ya'll As the word is a folksy contraction of the equally folksy "you all," it should be spelled "y'all."

your/you're You're (you are) out of your (belonging to you) mind if you forget which is which.

Now, here are some I tend to miss:

capital/capitol I have to look this up nearly every time, which is often. See, I live in Olympia, the capital of Washington, where I often see the Capitol Building on my way to Capital Playhouse or Olympia Film Society's Capitol Theater (see below). The Westfield Capital Shopping Mall is on Olympia's west side. Geez, Louise. See, "capital" with an "a" refers to a city, while "capitol" with an "o" refers to a building. Complicating matters is the fact that "capitol" usually has a "capital" C. See, "capital" with an "a" is the adjectival spelling, as in "capital punishment." But don't think the noun "capital" meaning "money" should be spelled with an "o," because that would be too easy. You can see why this word pair has become a frequent thorn in my side.

closed-minded Boy, that seems right to me. It just isn't. The correct spelling is "close-minded," similar to "close-mouthed."

could care less If I could care less, then I must care a fair amount. What I mean is, "I couldn't care less"--in which case, I care the least I possibly could, which is not at all.

exact replica There's no such thing as an inexact replica. "Replica" means "exact copy," including the size. A scale model is not a replica. It's a model.

spaces after a period Back in olden days (the 1980s) when people learned how to type on a clunky single-tasking machine called a typewriter, they were taught to hit the space bar twice after a sentence. Apparently computers running Microsoft Word are smart enough to leave the proper distance without having been forced to do so. Therefore, editors now prefer one space only after each period. To be honest, I ignore this new rule, which obliges my copy editor at the Volcano to make the change for me. I'm obnoxious that way; but you know what they say about old dogs, right?

Spiderman I spelled Spidey's name this way on a play poster once, and I've never quite recovered from the embarrassment I felt a month later when I learned Marvel hyphenates the names of its costumed heroes. Thus it's "Superman" at DC, but "Spider-Man" in the empire of Stan Lee--except "Iron-Man" is actually "Iron Man." Oy vey.

thankfully This one presents the same problem as "hopefully," with the added complication that I'm an agnostic, so I never really mean to thank anyone. If I'm "thankful for small favors," for example, who exactly am I thanking? I should probably say I'm glad I have a roof over my head, not that I'm thankful for it. After all, I'm the one who paid the damn rent.

theater/theatre Each is acceptable. For clarity, though, I've made a personal decision to write "theater" when I mean the building, and "theatre" when I mean the art form. I have yet to convince any other person this is as wonderfully terrific a solution as I consider it to be, which explains why my editors at the Volcano use "theater" for everything.

'til If you've read Lightfall, you know I used "'til" as an abbreviation for "until" throughout. I've seen it used that way countless times before, and by highly respected writers. So imagine my shock and humiliation when one of my favorite writers, Bill Bryson, wrote (in Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words, p. 205), "until, till, 'til, 'till. The first two are legitimate and interchangeable. The second two are wrong and, indeed, illiterate." Illiterate?! Holy crap!!! Is Bryson right? Well, yes and no. Believe it or not, "till" actually predates "until" by something like four hundred years. There's no reason to use "'til," because "till" was already the proper word. I've been convinced to change my ways over the last year, but again, old habits die hard so you'll probably still catch me writing the unnecessary abbreviation from time to time.

Incidentally...

Notice I spelled the phrase "four hundred" in words, not digits, a few sentences ago. That's another example of my personal writing style, and it gets me in trouble. When I started writing for the Volcano, I had no idea the style rules of the Associated Press mandate using digits rather than spelling out any number higher than nine. "Four hundred" is correct according to the Chicago Manual of Style, but only because it spells out round numbers. Even the CMS now puts dates in the standard American order ("October 14" rather than "14 October"). I'm still wrapping my head around all these number-and-date rules, so my newspaper writing includes frequent infractions.

unquote To please the purists, I often say "end quote," but guess what? "Unquote" has been around for a century, so most dictionaries now allow it in English speech: quote, unquote.

weather forecast calls for rain Does it? Or does it, rather, "predict" rain? Unless the meteorologist is known for his or her rain dance, he or she probably isn't "calling for" inclement weather.

Carv's Thinky Blog: now with extra infotainment! What are your most frequent usage errors?