Opportunity for Revenge

In 2012 when I started writing my MaliaMania grammar blog, I promised not to be insufferable about word usage. I've failed miserably. I've often been pedantic. And smug. And sarcastic. And I've used way too many big words.

If I've offended, revolted or mystified you along the way, it's your turn to get revenge. 

I have a new book out. The good news is that it's not about grammar. It's about a new kind of sibling rivalry among baby boomers. I wrote it with my sister, who's a doctor and not a writer. (Yeah, she stepped right in it when she agreed to write a book with a grammar nerd and has regretted her poor judgement ever since).

Here's how you can get revenge. Read our book "Sisterly Shove" and comment on this blog about any grammer mistakes or typos you find. Or if you're really ambitious, write an Amazon review of the book. Consider these options:

1) BEST CHOICE!!! Buy our book "Sisterly Shove” at this Amazon.com link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980807027?ref_=pe_870760_150889320  

2) Spend your money at Starbucks instead and just read the "Look inside" sample pages from the book at the same link above.  

3) Easy way out! Re-read this blog, find any mistakes and comment on them (OR) go to the website SisterlyShove.com and say mean things about it.

Thanks so much to all of the 5,406 of you who have read my blog (not that I'm counting, of course) and bantered about words with me. You're the best!

Reviling Grammar Nerds

The truth came out last July, but it’s taken me eight months to wrap my head around the news. People like me are almost as despised as DUI checkpoints. “DUI checkpoints” rank first on haterdater.com’s list of things people in North Carolina hate most. Grammar nerds (a less offensive term than the one they used) came in second.

In a way, I am proud that I am No. 2 on any kind of list. I wasn’t even second in my kindergarten graduating class (I was robbed).

Still…how can grammar nerds like me be so reviled? Probably because we use words like reviled.

Another reason to hate us: Because we roll our eyes if a text-generation coworker meets someone on haterdater and says, “Her and I went to the brewery.” Take the pronouns apart, dude! “I went to the brewery.” “She went to the brewery,” so “She and I went to the brewery” is grammatically and maybe even grammarically correct. Obvi…

Haterdater promises to help you “meet someone who hates the same stuff.” Sounds like the perfect site for single grammar nerds looking for #lovethroughhate. Maybe there’s a chance that married grammar nerds can get a pass on this one. https://bit.ly/2GyBvUx

Gender Bender

I read that The Chicago Manual of Style has a “Glossary of Problematic Words and Phrases” at paragraph 5.220. Since I could easily be called a problematic person depending on what’s stuck in my craw on a given day, I fully empathize with words that were probably labeled problematic by a kindergarten teacher with an overcrowded classroom and too few winks on their favorite online dating site.

Notice how I cleverly segued into one of today’s top problematic words in that last sentence: the dreaded “singular they/their.” In the old days, in addition to striking through the reference to “online dating sites,” which didn’t exist yet, that sentence would have used the singular she/her, as in “her favorite online dating site,” right? The sentence had no plural noun and grade school teachers were most often women, so there was little reason for a pronoun debate in a mid-century writer’s overcrowded brain. Now that gender identity issues have evolved to a level even a 1970s bra-burner could never have imagined, pronoun parsing is trickier than ever.

Yesterday I read on mentalfloss.com that the Washington Post Style Guide has been amended to accept the “singular they” because it’s “the only sensible solution to English’s lack of a gender-neutral, third-person singular personal pronoun.” As one commenter pithily noted, “Language is plastic. We must also bend.”

I was almost convinced to reach for my trusty mental floss and swipe the pronoun plaque from my brain, when I thought about PVC pipe, which is made of plastic and doesn’t bend. Then I get a confetti-infused Facebook notification that reads, “It’s John’s Smith’s birthday today. Wish them well.” Can’t some programming “genius” write some code so Facebook realizes that John Smith’s profile picture looks like a he and tell me to wish “him” well? Or is that the tiny T-Rex part of my brain doing the thinking?

One thing’s for sure. Now that I’ll have this dilemma stuck in my craw for the rest of the day, Malia will be a problematic word for anyone who crosses my path. Anybody got any better thoughts on gender-neutral pronouns for the conflicted writer?

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.