Blunders to not worry about

Phil Sievers, a part-time clerk and popcorn maker at the candy counter of the Carleton Theater on Fenkell Avenue in Detroit, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

In the wake of my almost Associates Degree from Oakland University, I am having job interviews to get a job as a reporter on some newspaper because I took Journalism in high school and got a pretty high grade, and I think I would be a natural born jouranist. But not even the local free sale papers here will hire me. I am afraid I am making blunders at the interviews because they keep saying things about grammer that I really don’t get, like “upper case” and “noun.”

For instance, what are a split infinitive, and a dangling participal? I want to avoid those kinds of errors, but I don’t know what NOT to do because I don’t know what they are.

- Signed, Phil Sievers

Dear Mr. Sievers,

I don’t think you have to worry about split infinitives, because it is such an obviously stupid mistake that you’d have to be a real dope to actually do it. And, reading through your letter, no dangling participals are evident so you don’t have to worry about that either.

Incidentally, what is that probably life-shortening yet overwhelming, scrumptious-smelling oily fluid that you theater guys put on the popcorn?

- The Grammer Genious

Hard & Fast Rules

Wally Urkie, a sales associate at The Linoleum Barn in Overland Park Kansas and winner of the Employee Of The Month award for two months in a row, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Would you settle a bar argument? This has come up three weeks in a row at our mandatory Friday afternoon/evening Team Build at Chili’s, usually after the 5^th or 6^th Bud Lite.

Which is correct: “between her and I” or “between she and me”? Also, is there a hard and fast rule?

Incidentally, you're all we talk about. When somebody is quoting you, everybody else shuts up to listen.

- Signed, Wally Urkie

Dear Wally,

Technically, “between her and I” is correct, for reasons that I don’t think you would understand because it's complicated. However, “between she and me” is more commonly used because of its elegance.

All grammer rules are hard and fast rules; hard because they’re so difficult, and fast because they keep changing with lightening speed.

- The Grammer Genious

Rave

Mavis Pruitt, a concert coordinator who works in media and has been crashing at her step-brother's flat in Croydon, UK, and other random places for about seven years, writes:

 
Hey, yeah, we're organizing this rave in an abandoned mosque and the proceeds are gonna go to that thing what happened in the Middle East or Africa or whatever. We're gonna make posters but we need to know if the following things are one word or two words, so we can make the posters and whatever.

oldschool
technorave
wristbanding
breakcore

synthpunk

psytrance

scratchpervert
乱痴気パーティ

electrogrime

cybergrind

glowsticks

-Signed, Mavis

Dear Mavis,

Sorry but this one-word-or-two-words thing is SPELLING and I don’t do spelling, which is a relief for me because I don’t know what the HELL you’re talking about. But I did a little cursory research for you and if you can get on the internet I think you can find out everything you want to know on http://www.christianraves.com. It tells all about gospelrave, technolord, and holy hip hop and all the Jesus stuff that I assume you’re into.

- The Grammer Genious

"Littler" -- eeuw

Paul Le Blanc, a general surgeon practicing in Forks, Washington, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

My friend and I have been debating over how to refer to something that is smaller than another. Should we say "littler" or "more little?" "Littler" sounds like a bad punk rock band name while "more little" sounds like you have a set amount of little while something else has more of that little. Which is more correct?

-Paul Le Blanc

Dear Dr. Le Blanc,

You have raised several issues that you for sure don’t even know about.

There are three reasons why people don’t like to use the word “littler.” The first is that “little” has two syllables, and when you add an ending to a word it’s supposed to make the word longer, but in this case it doesn’t because you still end up with two syllables, so it seems like you have wasted your time.

The second reason is that to make an adjective comparative by adding “-er” it generally has to have only one syllable – like, “big-bigger” or “fat-fatter”. If it has two syllables it is very hard to add “-er” to it because it gets unwieldy and it sounds funny, and it makes you forget what it was that you were going to say in the first place. Adding a suffix to a THREE-syllable word is of course absurd and out of the question, and doing so marks the writer as a person who is only semi-literate and just doesn’t “get” English, like that hack W. Shakespeare with his anti-English monstrosities like “unworthiest,” etc.

The third and most important reason is that we just have no way in English to express the idea of “smaller.” Mrs. Grammer Genious makes the insightful comment that this doubtlessly explains why English-speaking people tend to be such a bunch of great huge fatties; they can’t conceive of the idea of getting smaller, because there is no word for it in English. This provides us with irrefutable proof of the Whorfian hypothesis.

- The Grammer Genious

Straightforward school sign

Delaware pilot and retail entrepreneur Wendel Heid writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Last week I was taking my children to school for their first day of the year.  As I approached the school their was a flashing sign that said, "give kids a break".  I'm confused.

-Wendel Heid

Dear Mr. Heid,

The highly trained professional educators who programmed the flashing school sign were probably trying to say that drivers should step on their cars’ breaks when they see children in the street. I don’t quite understand why that would confuse you. I'm betting very few of the other parents were confused at all.

- The Grammer Genious

Socialistic-type teachers

Courtney Murphy-Brattland, a senior at Marie Curie High School in San Luis Obisbo California, writes:

I am in California in one of the more or less effete counties, going into 12th grade AP English and I expect to get into Stanford so I am DEFINTELY not going to NOT excel, but I’m worried about my English teacher Mrs. Druding who seems to be a freethinker and not of the main-line type of thought, if you get my drift, so I don’t want her to throw me off-path from my goals. She says that this from Romio and Juliet is a sonnet but it doesn’t look like one to me, it’s all broken up.

Romeo:

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Juliet:

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Romeo:

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Juliet:

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Romeo:

Oh then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.

They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Juliet:

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Romeo:

Then move not while my prayer's effect I take.

Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.

They French-kiss; Juliet:

Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

Romeo:

Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!

Give me my sin again.

They tongue-suck really deep and long; Juliet:

You kiss by th' book.

But Mrs. Druding says that THIS thing by e. e. cummings is ALSO a sonnet!

"next to of course god america i

love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh

say can you see by the dawn's early my

country 'tis of centuries come and go

and are no more what of it we should worry

in every language even deafanddumb

thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry

by jingo by gee by gosh by gum

why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-

iful than these heroic happy dead

who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter

they did not stop to think they died instead

then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

Now does that make any sense at all? Should I try to tranfer to some other class? I am desparate and scared.

- Courtney Murphy-Brattland

Dear Courtney,

That's crazy. That teacher is SO WEIRD!! This kind of left-winger cluelessness is unfortunately quite common, ESPECIALLY in the better schools, for some reason. Yes, get out of that class if possible. It will widen your mind way out, and you'll NEVER get into Stanford.

- The Grammer Genious

Off the top of my head (Tah-daaah!)

Larry Fortensky, an assistant therapist at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage California, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

I’m having a really contentious argument with a patient. He’s real real famous but I can’t tell you who he is. What is the difference between macadam and tarmac?

- Signed, Larry Fortensky

Dear Mr. Fortensky,

Why do people keep asking me for information that they could easily get from the Internet?

But never mind, in this case I’m pretty sure I can answer your question without looking anything up. I’m pretty sure  “Tarmac” was a famous late-nineteenth-century magician and escape artist. I think they made some movie about him lately, if I’m not mistaken. And Macadam of course was the third president of the United States. No, the fourth. No, I’m pretty sure it was the third.

Anyway I didn’t mean to discourage any of you out there from asking questions, because otherwise how will you ever learn anything?

- The Grammer Genious

"Us the People", yeah right

Sloane Fowler, an 11th grade student at David Duke High School in Millsboro, Delaware, writes:

Dear Mr. Grammer Genious,

Senator-Elect Christine O’Donnell of our great state of Deleware (the first state) said after her election the other day, “Don't ever underestimate the power of we the people.”

My English teacher Mr. Gumm says she should of said “of us the people” because of some preposicion, or something like that. Is he right? I think he is a liberal.

- Yours truly, Sloane Fowler

Dear Sloane,

Hasn’t your so-called teacher ever read the Declaration of Independance? The words “We The People” are written right up there at the top, in big letters. So, first of all, why are they hiring people in our schools that have never even read the Declaration of Independance? And second of all, anybody that thinks “us the people” sounds like good English shouldn’t be teaching anything, let alone English. I am appalled.

- The Grammer Genious

Illogic

Dr. Deepak Chaturvedi, adjunct professor of horticultural sciences at Florida State University, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

At my university I am leading research in the field of enzyme inhibition of the fungus Venturia inaequalis spilocaea in citrus and apple root stock. The anamorphs are remarkably dichotomous between the two plant types, and I have written three learned treatises on the topic, all of which have been mysteriously rejected by the Proceedings of the American Society of Horticultural Science, this country’s journal of record.

No reasons are given for the rejections, except to say that my “overall intent is impossible.” I cannot understand this, and suspect that there must be some underlying linguistic or cultural aspect to the issue of which I am unaware (I am from India), and I hope that you might cast some light on this issue.

- Yours, Dr. Deepak Chaturvedi

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear Dr. Chaturvedi,

Than you for enclosing copies of your treatises, all of which I read closely and enjoyed immensely, especially “Overwintering of the anamorph of Venturia inaequalis in orange and apple buds, and the viability of conidia as affected by discontinuous wetting.” I read them all while relaxing at the beach.

The reason for all of those rejections is simple: You are attempting to compare apples and oranges. In English-speaking countries, that cannot be done, because it is illogical.

- The Grammer Genious

Unclear question

Earl Bannister, a part-time delivery person for CVS Pharmacy in Chesterfield Township MI, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

I’m curious about something. Maybe I should give you a running start to my question, to give you some context so you’ll understand it.

I was making deliveries on my bike on Thursday and my head itched so I tried to scratch it through one of those slits on top of the bike helmet and my finger got stuck in the hole. I wanted to stop and try to get it out but the bike’s left handbrake is broken so I tried to reach the right handbrake across with my left hand and the bike went down very hard on the pavement separating my shoulder and breaking my finger.

The COBRA insurance I have from when I got laid off from GM paid for the shoulder operation but not for the finger because COBRA doesn’t cover digits. And even though I was full of surgery stitches and anesthetic, COBRA wouldn’t let me stay in the hospital but instead took me to their contract recovery motel the Chesterfield Inn, which was not very nice because it smelled like Lysol and had plastic mattress covers under the sheet that crackled and the place was full of strange people that yelled all night.

A nurse was sposed to come every day to help change my bandage but she didn’t come until Saturday and she was drunk so she couldn’t do much. Nobody came on Sunday but on Monday this very nice prostitute named Tiffany was working the motel and when she got to my room it was obvious I was in no condition to party but she re-did my bandage for me very nicely and then she went out and got us some ramen noodles and we ate them and watched “Storm Stories” on the Weather Channel which is her favorite program.

I’m out of the motel now but I think I have an infection. Ok, so anyway here is my question. Tiffany says “feb-ROO-ary,” but I say “feb-YOO-ary. Which is right?

- Earl Bannister

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear Earl,

First of all, if there was a Wawa anywhere near you she should of got you guys some of their mac and cheese, because it is AWESOME!

Second of all, I’m not quite following your thread. What exactly is the question? Which is right about WHAT?

- The Grammer Genious

PetSmart

Kyle Schultz, a 2008 graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in Sports Communication who is currently the assistant manager of a strip-mall hobby shop in Laurel and lives in his parents’ basement in Savage, MD, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

There is this pet store chain called “PetSmart.” How is that word supposed to be read? Does it mean “pet smart,” like, if your domestic animal is intelligent you should come to that store? Hey, what the hell does the intelligence of the ANIMAL have to do with it? Or maybe it means “pets mart,” like, a mart for pets. And what’s “PretzeLand”? Also, what’s a “mart?”

- Signed, Kyle Schultz

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Kyle,

I called the PetSmart company, and it turns out they payed a gajillion dollars to a big ad agency for a name that was “both ambigous and clever,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. They wouldn’t give a straight answer to your question. In fact, the woman on the phone seemed to be anoyed and was talking down to me. Not that I care, because I never go there anymore anyway since they keep being out of the exact kind of cat litter that I have a coupon for.

I don’t know what a “mart” is, so it couldn’t be that.

- The Grammer Genious

Foriegn Spelling

Charles Foster Kane IV, former senator and current editor and publisher of the powerful daily newspaper New York Inquirer, writes:

My dear Grammer Genious,

I am resorting to your blog because it has been recommended to me by some very respected academic acquaintances in the Department of Rhetoric at Columbia University.

Here is my issue. The Islamic names and terms currently in the news are driving the copy editors and proofreaders of our newspaper crazy. How should we spell Mohammed, or Muhammad, or Mahomet, etc etc.? Is it to be Shiite, or Shite, or Shi’ite (they all sound vaguely vulgar, n’est pas?), and what in the world is a Sufi and a Wahhabi and a Mujahed and a Taliban and a Sunni, etc. etc.? It is monumentally confusing. I thought that we had put paid to this whole Arabic spelling issue when my grandfather helped the CIA to perform a secret lobotomy on Moammar Qadhafi back in ’89.

Please help us – we are at the end of our tether up here in the lofty, gleaming Inquirer Tower on Columbus Circle.

- Signed, Charles Foster Kane IV

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear Senator Kane,

Hey, I TOLD everybody not to ask me about speling! But I can adress your problem anyway. 

Mr. Kane, patriotic Americans don’t care about all that Arabic stuff. In fact, they don’t even want to hear about it, unless we’re, like, kicking their asses or something. So just leave it all out. You’ll sell more papers.

Glad to help.

While I’ve got you here, my Aunt Gladys that lives on 186^th near Metcalf in Queens says her paper has been late every day for almost two weeks now.  You got a new guy on the route, or something?

- The Grammer Genious

3D

Glen Urquhart, a former Hotte Shoppes grill chef who retired to Burke VA, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

I was watching the Weather Channel and they said “Here is a 3D image of Hurricane Earl.” Now, I don’t have a 3D television, but I could see the picture of the hurricane anyway. So, if I can see 3D pictures on a regular TV, why should I buy a 3D TV? What does 3D mean, anyway?

- Glen Urquhart

Dear Glen,

Was it The Weather Channel’s Hurricane Expert Bryan Norcross that said the hurricane picture was in 3D? Because if it was Bryan Norcross that said it was in 3D, then it WAS. Did you ask your wife if SHE bought a new 3D TV and forgot to tell you? Maybe that was why you could see the 3D picture of the hurricane.

3D just means that the picture looks really cool and sometimes scary.

- The Grammer Genious

Abbess

George Bailey III, Chief Enforcing Officer in the Foreclosures Division of the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan Association in Bedford Falls PA, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

What is an abbess?

-Signed, George Bailey III

+++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Mr. Bailey,

That’s easy. An abbess is the wife of an abbott.

-The Grammer Genious

PS. Hey, unless you meant to say “abcess.” Is that what you meant? Because that would be something different.

Kilometers

Ms. Stormi McIlhenny, a physical trainer and masseuse at the Final Honeymoon Resort & Spa in Boca Mojada FL, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Would you settle a bar argument? My best friend Brandi and me are going to Mexico next month, where they have kilometers, and Brandi bets me that the word kilometer should be pronounced KILL-ometer, with the accent at the beginning. She said she heard that on the olympics. She says it’s what Bob Kosta says. I say it should be kil-LAH-meter, the same as like in speedometer and odometer. KILL-ometer sounds like counting dead victims or something. Whose right? A bottle of TGI Friday’s Mudslide On the Rocks is riding on this, so be a cool guy and say I’m right! :-)

- Stormi

Dear Ms. Stormi,

Sorry, but your friend Brandi is right. Speedometers and odometers are devices, not units of measure like centimeters and millimeters – and KILL-ometers.

It’s true that a lot of people say kil-LAH-meters, but those people are just making a wry joke, like when people say “accent on the wrong syl-LAH-ble.” They’re just having a little fun with the word, is all. But it’s surprising how many people (like you) are so naïve or thick that they can’t recognize a joke when they hear it.

Now, take a wad of massage-oily dollar bills out of your fake Gucci bag and go buy Brandi that bottle of TGI Friday’s Mudslide On the Rocks. (Eeuw)

-The Grammer Genious

Excapees

Mr. Elvis Sweeney, a pegboard display engineer at the Family Dollar Store in Clopton Alabama on Route 10 next to the Dainty Digits Nail Salon, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

How come they call the people that excape from prison “excapees”? If their the ones that excaped, then their the excapERS, aren’t they? The ones that got excaped FROM are the excapees. The GUARDS would be the excapees. I mean, am I right?

- Signed, Elvis Sweeney

++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Mr. Sweeney,

Hey I never thought of that.

- The Grammer Genious

Űber-Analyzation

Herr Florian Strümpfenstopfer, a klieglight technician and make-up artist in the TV studio of the German network Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten Deutschlands in Frankfurt Germany, writes:

Dear Respected Doktor Grammer Genious,

Thank you sorely for your needful Website, it is wunderbar. It will help me to stuty your beautiful englisch Language.

Now I try to understand Englisch version words to our famous beloved German folksong “Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein amerikanische Strudel.” I think that in your Language you are calling this song “Bye Bye Miss American Pie.”

Anyvays, in Englisch words version comes this:

I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck

With a pink carnation and a pickup truck…

Is words is not in original jolly German wersion (Ich war jung und ahnungslosen, mit Rucksack und Lederhosen). Is not in Spirit of jolly original German folktune, no?

Tell me please what means this “broncin’ buck”? Is “broncin’” is present partiziple of verb “To bronc,” but not finds itself in my Dictionary. Is passiv pluperfect of verb in Indicativ mood, perhaps?

I am happy I find someone understands dese things.

-Yours, Florian Strümpfenstopfer

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear Herr Whatever-your-name-is,

I don’t want to seem insensitive or lacking in commitment to diversity and all that stuff, but frankly I don’t know what the HELL you’re talking about. Why all this analyzation and fancy Greeky words? Just open your mouth and let regular normal English come out of it, as it naturally does. That works fine for me, and everybody I know.

Incidentally, don’t you feel guilty about the war and all? Just curious.

-The Grammer Genious

Can Vegetables

Mr. Goober Prettyman, manager of the Food Clown supermarket on Route 24 in Sussex County Deleware, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,

Thank you for your much needed Blog. It's about time we had a place to ask our grammer questions. I'm going to ask my Henlopen Acres neighbor Joanne to tell her worshipful, clinging nephew Matt Drudge to slashdot you.

Here's my question. One of the aisle markers in our grocery store says "Can Vegetables" and another says "Bottle Water." Our new Russian stockboy Akim says it should say "Canned Vegetables" and "Bottled Water." Is he right? I mean, their in cans, so why not "Can Vegetables"? He's getting fired in October anyway, so I don't really care if he's right or not.

Signed, Goober

----------------------
Dear Goob (may I call you Goob?),

Tell me, do you say "iced cream", and "iced tea"? Do you say "skimmed milk", "caked mix", and "jacked cheese"? Of course you don't! So then, "can vegetables" is not only logical, but it's the only proper way to say it. Besides, what would some Russian kid know about it? Russians can't even say "the" in their own language!

Also, it's none of my business, but since he has such a tenous graps of English, why are you waiting until October? Also, "Akim" sounds like an Arabic name to me.

The Grammer Genious