Farthermore

In 1997, Isuzu introduced the new tagline “Go Farther.” Last year, Ford introduced the new tagline “Go Further.”  So now I’m hopelessly confused (not that I wasn’t already). When should a copywriter use farther vs. further?

As usual, my muse, Grammar Girl, has the answer: “use 'farther' for physical distance and 'further' for metaphorical, or figurative, distance. It's easy to remember because 'farther' has the word 'far' in it, and ‘far’ obviously relates to physical distance.”

I should have been satisfied with GGirl’s explanation. But since I’m a person perversely driven to go farther, further or both whether I’m driving a Ford or an Isuzu, I couldn’t stop myself from clicking on the next Google result. At that spiffy little link, Merriam-Webster (a.k.a. m-w.com) really had its grammar jammer on:

            “Farther and further have been used more or less interchangeably throughout most of their history, but currently they are showing signs of diverging. As adverbs they continue to be used interchangeably whenever spatial, temporal, or metaphorical distance is involved. But where there is no notion of distance, further is used.”

That’s way too temporal for me, m-w.com. The farther I get away from that definition the better.

Which brings us to the issue of using the words “farthermost” and “furthermore.” Oh, please, MaliaMania,” I hear you begging, “don’t go there, spatially, metaphorically or otherwise.”

Words Gone Wild

After stuffing themselves on turkey and dressing yesterday on Thanksgiving, I bet some of your relatives headed for the couch and said they felt nauseous.

Many people think nauseous means to feel sick. It actually means to cause nausea.  So when people say they are nauseous, what they’re really saying is that they’re causing people around them to feel sick. Which, depending on your birth order or other factors, may be much more accurate in your family dynamic. But when you’re commenting on the state of your own digestive system, you should say, “I feel nauseated.”

Another commonly misused word is peruse. As I did for years, you might think peruse means to skim or glance over something. It actually means to review something carefully or in-depth. In other words, the perceived definition is actually opposite of the true definition.

Here’s one more before I go get a turkey sandwich for breakfast. Some people think bemused means amused or slightly tickled about something. What it really means is confused.

What other incidents of word confusion have you heard at your Thanksgiving table or elsewhere?

Straight Flush

The first time someone told me they wanted me to “flush” out an idea for an ad, I thought they were telling me to deposit said idea in the porcelain throne, shut the lid and tearfully wave buh-bye as it swirled toward the sanitary sewer.

It didn’t take me long to realize that they really wanted me to “flesh” out my idea, which may sound a little Dexter or Halloweenish, but at least it’s less scatological than flushing it out.  Note that I only used that $100 word here because no one will ever let me use it in an ad.

Over the years, I have amassed anecdotal evidence that indicates that between 49 and 58 percent of people in advertising use the word flush when they mean flesh, depending how much they’re into Mad Men and how many times they’ve watched The Crazy Ones.

Before I damage my current and future earning capability in the advertising industry by being an insufferable know-it-all, I will turn over the task of explaining the difference between flesh vs. flush to Merriam-Webster.

Colon-oscopy

Spoiler alert: this blog has nothing to do with your large intestine, so you can relax and stop clenching your gluteus maximus. Instead it is a brief examination of the most misunderstood and undervalued punctuation mark, the colon.

For decades, the colon was primarily used after the salutation in a business letter, for example, Dear Senator Sequestration: or Dear Representative Runamuck:

In the age of texts, many people have transformed the poor colon from respectable punctuation mark into a disturbing array of emoticons, such as :-(  or :-) or O:-) which stands for “angel: and :-# which stands for “braces.”

As a writer who uses real words, you can help return the colon to its former grandeur, just make sure you only use it after a complete sentence, never after a sentence fragment. Also keep this in mind: the information that comes after the colon should clarify or expand on the sentence that came before it. For example, Malia has two favorite ways to celebrate her birthday: hanging out in the waiting room of a geriatrician’s office in order to feel young, and throwing a party with a clown and a pony to feel even younger.

Some grammar experts suggest replacing the colon in your sentence with the word “namely” to mentally verify that you’ve used it correctly. Malia has two alternate ways to celebrate her birthday, namely, pretending she’s learning to ride a bike in order to feel young and sucking on a pacifier to feel even younger.

Now, raise your hand if you’d rather have the lining of your intestine examined with a long, flexible, tubular instrument instead of learning any more about proper use of colons.

Corporate Circumlocution

Yeah, I know. Seeing the word “circumlocution” probably made you want to run away from my blog like it was chasing you with a butcher knife in the opening scene of a crime show. I only used that highfalutin’ word because I saw it in this other nerdy-cool blog. I won’t tell you what other nerdy-cool blog until you suffer through reading mine.

Circumlocution is using a slew of words when one will do. I’ve done it before, and probably will again. But if I do, I expect one of you to call me on it in order to afford me an opportunity to utilize a different approach in the event that someone has a requirement for writing in the near future.

Whew. I should have ended that sentence after “will call me on it.” At the very least, I should have written it like so: But if I do, I expect one of you to call me on it, so I’ll consider a different approach next time.

Circumlocution shows up most often in corporate, legal and academic writing. I give the lawyers a break because (a) they have to put up with a lot of lawyer jokes (b) starting a war of words with a corporate legal department never ends well. For the rest of you, heads up. Even if you’re not a writer, everybody writes something from time to time. The six rules below will help you choose words that get to the point in business letters and emails.

-Never use utilize. Use “use.”

-In a timely manner? Think “quickly” or “promptly.”

-Aforementioned, thusly, and “that being said?” Don’t even go there.

-With the exception of?  Use except.

-Carry on a conversation? Talk.

-At this point in time? Would “now” work instead? Or you can at least drop “in time.”

You’ll find other good examples of circumlocution and a fun graphic in this article in PR Daily.

What other cumbersome or convoluted phrases do you often see in business letters? 

Passive Aggressive

A professor once told me in a moment of frustration, brought on by reading too many English 101 papers, that freshman “don’t know their passive from a hole in the ground.”

I can still see her scrawling across the paper she was grading, “For clarity in your writing, focus on using active voice instead of passive.” When the student got the paper back, he probably took one look and went out for a beer. After all, the whole passive/active thing is hard to wrap your head around when you have no fermented barley and hops in your bloodstream.

Because I was young and impressionable, I latched onto the professor’s outrage and developed a tendency to be passive aggressive. By that I mean I get a little aggressive when someone changes my copy from active voice to passive voice.

This is active voice: Malia adores her husband Steve.

This is passive voice: Steve is adored by Malia.

Malia is the actor or agent in this sentence, the person/subject doing the action, so the initial emphasis should be on her. Steve is the object or recipient of Malia’s action, so to speak. Hubba, Hubba

This is even worse passive voice: Steve is adored. It’s worse because it begs the question by whom?

This is still passive voice: Steve is adored by many women.

This is active voice: Many women adore Steve. It also begs a question, but not one related to grammar: Does Malia know and is she OK with it?

If, unlike me, you are a big fan of passive voice, you might have a future in the Oval Office. Wikipedia says the passive phrase “Mistakes were made” was used by* Ulysses S. Grant in 1876, by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and by Bill Clinton in 1997, inspiring the labels “past exonerative tense” and “past evasive tense.” Clearly, using the passive voice comes in handy for acknowledging error, but deflecting responsibility for having made a mistake.

As American journalist Sidney J. Harris was once quoted as saying, "We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice--that is, until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'"


Whew, that's some heady stuff. Is it time for a beer yet?

*"Used by," as used here, is also passive.

Who's That

It seems to be a trend that has reared its ugly head on Fox News and NPR alike, so it can’t be blamed on America’s great political divide. I don’t know where it came from or whether the cat dragged it in, but I do know that hearing this particular verbal faux pas is as grating to me as a knife being handle-dragged, blade down and screeching through a metal sharpener.

I’m talking about the propensity of reporters and pundits these days to use “that” when I think they should use “who.” I’ve always believed you should use who when you refer to people and that when you refer to objects. Just the other day, I heard someone on a network who shall remain nameless casually say this: “The people that are responsible for this are never around to accept blame.” Horrors. Referring to people as “that” and not “who” seems to relegate them to having the humanity of a cold, damp concrete wall.

But as it usually happens, just when I find another reason to preen and glow over being so indisputably right, someone comes along to broom-slap me off my pedestal. Today that someone was my idol Grammar Girl. She quotes this from the American Heritage Dictionary:

            “It is entirely acceptable to write either the man that wanted to talk to you, or the man who   wanted to talk to you.”

Apparently, even Chaucer flagrantly (at least in my book) used "that" when referring to people. But even though I may stand corrected, that doesn’t mean I still won’t secretly smile whenever someone uses “who” the way I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh.