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You are likely having the same problem right now that I have most days when I drive into town. What does “homeless newspaper” mean?!?!? This title made it into a “Grammatical Crimes Squad” entry earlier, but has now earned its own spot . . . why? Because I don’t get it.

This all started when I saw a man on the side of the road hawking newspapers. This isn’t uncommon in big cities. If you aren’t familiar with the process, it goes like this: spend change to get paper from an old vendor box (you can grab as many as you want – it’s kind of honor-system based), and grab the whole pile. Then sell the papers for less than the standard price from a prime spot on the side of the road. Make profit!

Having been in LA for a while, this was what I expected in Nashville, too. But this man wore a nice apron with a clear section on the front, into which he had slipped a printed page that read:
Homeless Paper
The Contributor
$1.00

The second two lines made perfect sense. The first was a real conundrum. It looked like this man was homeless. But that should read “Homeless [return] Paper $1.00” not “Homeless Paper.” Was the paper itself homeless? It was out on the street, hanging around with a man who looked homeless. Was it a paper for the homeless? This seemed like a not-smart way to try to earn money to me. And selling it roadside didn’t make any sense. I scratched that one off the list. Maybe the paper was about the homeless? As I wasn’t familiar with the name of the paper, I thought this was a real possibility. But really, I’d rather buy someone food than read a paper about homelessness. (Sorry, I realize that’s less-than-humanitarian of me. But it is honest.) Maybe it was by the homeless? But what kind of articles would be in it then?

To date, I have seen The Contributor out and around a lot. There are folks all over Nashville selling this paper, and they are spreading out into the surrounding towns, too. Apparently, the paper is a huge success – or at least according to what I could find online it is. The paper is run by homeless and formerly homeless folks. But I had to do research to figure that out. None of my friends knew this when I asked them. I know my friends are much more like me than not – they, too, wondered about this poor paper with no home. So maybe asking them wasn’t really the best solution. In the end, it does seem that the paper is missing sales for this lack of knowledge.

There are a few other issues hurting The Contributor. I remember the first time I saw this paper for sale and thinking “Wow, that homeless man invested a lot in that apron. Makes me think he’s not so bad off.” Yesterday, I saw a man selling it while wearing shiny red earbuds. I visually followed the (easy to see) red line to his iPod. Yes, I too have a problem buying a ‘homeless paper’ from a man with an iPod.

Though it’s rare, you can apparently make a lot of money panhandling. (I am in no way suggesting that these people are rich and you shouldn’t help!!!) But to get rich, you have to do it the right way. Anyone who has panhandled for science will tell you that you must dress the part. If your pants or shoes are too nice you won’t get anything. You can’t be too filthy either. Another boon is location, location, location. One of my friend Alex’s high school buddies had a dad who was missing a leg. He prominently displayed it next to his “Viet Nam Vet” sign at his usual spot outside a Vegas Casino. He made bank! To his credit, he didn’t lie – he was a vet, and had lost his leg due to a war injury. And he generally got chips and winnings from folks who were feeling very generous. But he wasn’t homeless. In fact, he paid cash for a nice place and put his three daughters through college by sitting outside this casino forty hours a week.

So when I saw iPod man, I kept my dollar in my own pocket. And it seems the paper is doing well enough that this is okay – they don’t really need my dollar. Maybe he’s one of the ‘formerly homeless’ which is fine, but his apron said “Homeless Paper”.

In the end, my research turns up that the paper is both about the homeless and by the homeless. A lot of the articles are about homelessness. A lot are about other good things, too.

I still won’t buy the paper, though. And I realize it’s snobby of me, but I just can’t get past it. I don’t want to buy a newspaper – a literary journal of sorts – from a group that puts a term like “Homeless Paper” on all their salespeople. What kind of writing is in there if they don’t understand that the adjective in their big advertising push is completely unclear?

Sorry folks. I’m giving my dollar to the man on the next corner who claims to have three kids and isn’t wearing his iPod today. Good luck with your paper, though.

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There are so many phrases in the English language that foreigners claim it is one of the hardest to learn. Idioms abound. And phrasal verbs make things much more complicated – it’s very different to ‘hold on’, ‘hold out’ or ‘hold up’! So it gets even better when we add phrases that don’t make any sense at all.

Some are just idioms . . . like “It’s a piece of cake” – from the idea that a piece of cake is actually easy. Martha Stewart will tell you this is so. Martha lies.

Some are from analogies that may have made sense the first time . . . “cost an arm and a leg” or “beating a dead horse”. You probably didn’t flinch, but in reality both of those are disgusting!

Some have roots way far back . . .
I have sometimes read about someone referring to their “salad days”, and though I knew this referred to their youth, I wondered how this phrase came about. Was it about courses in a meal? Was my grandfather in his dessert days? Would I still be considered soup, or had I crossed the age into main course? Or the other possibility, that “salad days” actually was some sort of a lettuce reference . . .

I started asking around. 1) because my friends are as geeky as I am. And 2) I’m a firm believer in ‘ask and so shall ye receive’. (Really, I started asking if anyone knew anyone to help with Latin translation and not three days later I found out a co-worker speaks fluent Latin. If you ask, you can eventually find anything!) So I asked about ‘salad days’. One friend’s mother had an idiom dictionary!

Turns out, it IS a lettuce reference. From Shakespeare, nonetheless! “Cleopatra: My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood.”

At least that one could be looked up. I couldn’t find “Up a creek without a paddle.” Of course, that one’s a bit stupid. You might not have thought about it, but it doesn’t matter if you are “up” a creek without a paddle. “Up” means you are going to drift “Down” and always refers to some point of reference. The real problem would be if you were “Down a creek without a paddle.” Then you’d be in real trouble.

“Can I give you a lift?” No, you can’t. You can’t give someone a verb. Unless you are going to give me a big yellow earth mover?

Something is “on the bubble.” Bubbles don’t have things on them. Even dust can make them pop.

Ever call someone a “bleeding heart”? Gross. Or better yet “have your heart set on” something? Don’t set your heart on anything! It should remain firmly attached in your chest. Have you heard of someone “Shooting off their mouth”? You people are disgusting!

Yes, you are better off if you don’t stop and think about what you say.

My personal favorite is when someone says to me “that’s a chicken and egg issue”. No, it’s not. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? For years, we have acted like this is some philosophical conundrum.

It was the egg! The Egg!
Dinosaurs were laying eggs long before chickens existed.

We need a better conundrum, people!

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

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Limited Time Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

I texted my friend the other day that “I Java free time Thursday morning.” Java – with the capital J, of course – instead of ‘have’. This was okay though, because this was in response to his text to me that he would “put a pig together for me.” His second text clarified “that was supposed to be pkg” which made a lot more sense but was a lot less interesting.

We’ve all had issues with Spell Check in the past. All in all, it’s a reasonable program. It checks whether what you typed exists, and makes an effort to correct it if there’s a nearly-there actual word that Spell check knows.

However, there are two major problems with this: First, Spell Check makes no account for typos. It doesn’t look to see that you might not have actually thought that ‘abd’ was a word, but maybe your finger just slipped to the next nearest key.

Second, (maybe in an effort to be more efficient?) cell phone Spell Check has gotten seriously aggressive, often going so far as to see three letters and post the most common things you might have meant. So, though your ‘abd’ may have been an attempt at ‘and’ your cell Spell Check might be looking forward to ‘abdomen’ – because that’s a common thing to text!

My cell not only tries for the most common word, it forces me to select the word I meant – that I actually typed! – if that’s not a word in its lexicon. So, when my sister delivered me good news via text, I responded to her with “Soot!” Even though I typed w-o-o-t-! the phone didn’t like that, and autocorrected my correct word to something my sister emailed back about and said “I thought you’d be excited.”

Just to top it off, my cell seems to be full of really uncommon ‘common’ words. One of the towns outside of Nashville is ‘Gallatin’. When I typed to a friend moving to the area “Not in Gallatin” it was changed to “Not in Gallstones”. Needless to say, she didn’t understand. I like that the phone went full out here and autocorrected something that started with a Capital letter and was likely a proper noun.

Sometimes the Spell Check has words that I didn’t know existed – and neither did Webster. After we straightened out the aforementioned issue with putting together the pig, I texted that I would be glad to ‘take it Oort his hands’. That should have been ‘out of’ – I think I saw “Oort” (with Caps!) in a hobbit book somewhere. Oh, and in my cell phone.

Though I don’t think I typed ‘out of’ entirely correctly, it’s as though I am being punished for missing a letter on that tiny little keyboard. Did you skip a key? Then we change your word to something else. Give the phone something it doesn’t know? Get your proper nouns changed to random health ailments! Miss a space bar? We switch to the Tolkien dictionary. Somewhere, that little synthetic Droid voice is laughing maniacally.

The phone gets away with the most when the word in question is at the end of whatever you were sending. Then it has a chance to change the word in that last moment as you hit send. This means your message is altered and sent to the world before you can fix it.

Recently, my father’s car started making smoke. He took it in to get it checked and found out it would only cost $800 rather than the $1800 he had originally expected and it was fixed in a day. I texted back. Guess which word was supposed to be ‘better’.

“That’s good, Dad. I’m glad your car is heterosexual.”

Grammatical Crimes Squad – And I Quote

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-quote/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – The Err of My Ways

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-adjective-2/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Qualifier Crackdown

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2009/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-qualifier/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Adjective Abuse

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2009/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-adjective/

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

Limited Time Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

It seems that quotes are a tricky thing. Or at least they are for a lot of people. Can we put a lock on the quotation mark key until folks prove they know how to use them? I mean, there’s the obvious someone-is-speaking need for those two funny apostrophes, but other than that, they are rarely used correctly.

Let’s review: Aside from direct wording of speech, there are two main uses for quotes. 1 – the need for a new term. Something was so great we made up a new term for it and we show it off with look-at-what-I-just-made-up marks. 2 – sarcasm. We mean the opposite. If we say: antibiotics are “miracle” drugs, then we expect to read about resistant bacteria and pharmacological company greed. The quotes tell us that.

Instead, the marks are used willy nilly like we never had any idea what to do with them. No, your store doesn’t have “CDs” . . . you didn’t make that term up! And it’s not sarcastic, because you have actual CDs in there. (Don’t get me started on the apostrophe often put into CDs – as though the CD owned something.)

It’s so bad that correct use of quotation marks doesn’t get the attention it deserves either. We received a notice in the mail that our kids’ school system was offering a way to pay lunch money online for a “nominal” fee. I didn’t even notice the quotes! It never occurred to me that they would be used correctly! But it was right! When I called, the school officials were shocked that the charge-per-use was so high. But the letter was right, it was “nominal” (see ‘sarcasm’ above.)

Later, the teacher forwarded an instruction letter from the new online Portal we have. (I can’t even tell you how wrong I think the term ‘portal’ is here . . .) The forward explained the system: that, as the teacher entered grades, we’d be able to see them online from home with just a simple passcode. The notice mentioned that we could see our child’s “real grades”.

What? Is “real grades” a made up term? Or are these people in cahoots with the lunch money folks and they are seriously being sarcastic, figuring none of the parents will catch it? . . . I’m concerned.

In the end, my favorite mis-use of quote marks was a sign I saw years ago (shortly after watching “Supersize Me” for the first time, but that just makes it a little bit funnier.)

McDonalds had already responded to the lawsuit and movie backlash by changing some of the menu and one of the things that got changed was the McNugget recipe. A banner hung from the side of my local McDs and it read:
Try our new all white meat “chicken” McNuggets!

Oh yes. ‘Chicken’ was the word in quotes. All I could think was, “Well, ‘Chicken’ isn’t a new term, which must mean that the author of that sign believes what’s in the McNuggets is the exact opposite of chicken.” I’m not even sure what that would be. But I have never had another McNugget. And all because of some misplaced quotation marks!

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Spill Check

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-spill/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – The Err of My Ways

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-adjective-2/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Qualifier Crackdown

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2009/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-qualifier/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Adjective Abuse

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2009/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-adjective/

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

Limited Time Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

There are two things people should know before they get involved in any project with me. 1 – I like to buck the system. Just because I can. If you want it done, just tell me it will never work. 2 – If there’s a weird way to do something, that’s how I’ll do it.

This is how I came to type the way I do. When I was in junior high, I didn’t really see the need for typing class. How fast could you really write code anyway? (I know now, stupid question.) I was told that I couldn’t look at the keys, I would never get fast enough to make the minimum times. That there was no way to memorize enough to be fast enough.

If you were paying attention just a moment ago, then you know where this is going. I did it. I memorized entire paragraphs verbatim, then looked at my fingers while typing. I passed my test, and my happiness at this success lasted until I actually had to type something. (I do also realize that this is a total waste of a really cool skill.)

I later learned as a writer that I could at least get into a groove where my subconscious could take over. But this really pissed me off. Clearly my subconscious could type, why couldn’t I? When I put all the pieces together, I realized that even my subconscious can’t type. I merely had motor patterns for various common words or phrases. If something was uncommon, I was back to looking at the keys.

This led to one of my editor’s favorite things to mock me for: the duck. I was doing a writing piece about a civil war battle I had studied. There are dead soldiers all over the field, and there’s a duck waddling up to the reader. That’s not how it was supposed to go . . . It was ‘the approaching dusk’ . . . but apparently I have no motor pattern for ‘dusk’ and once spell check was done with it, there was a duck in the middle of the Civil War.

After a big technical writing piece left me with wrist issues, I studied up and learned about an alternate keyboard: the Dvorak. I’m a convert! The standard Qwerty board is designed to slow the typist down – so that you don’t get the keys tangled. Yes, it’s from back in the day when keys struck inked ribbon thus leaving a mark on *gasp* paper! But Qwerty is the design we all know. Dvorak designed a better board (all the typing speed records are on Dvorak boards!) So, as an adult, I learned to touch-type this layout.

Immediately, my wrists felt better. Well, my whole being felt better . . . I could finally touch-type. But like so many things with a great upside, this one has downsides, too. Your keyboard keys can fly a long way across the room when you pop them off. And do not pop keys off your laptop! – markers and stickers only! Sure, you can buy a real Dvorak keyboard, but I can only find one . . . on eBay. So I can’t try it out first. And no one else uses Dvorak – even though it’s stored in basically every computer (under “Language”, go figure).

Also, because the common letters are grouped (for example, all the vowels are under left hand home spots) when you make a typo, you often make a real word . . . for example if I try to type “whole” I often get one space off and make “whale” which spell check won’t catch. The other option (of course!) Is that I type “whore” – always a good thing to have in a memo to co-workers.

I did finally meet someone else who uses a Dvorak board. And I can always tell what part of the work document he typed. I found the word “Uneful” in one document. It should have been ‘useful’ but as the N and S are right next to each other it was an easy error. When I asked about it he said, “Dvorak typos are the bust”. Yeah, well, Clone but no cigar.

So here I am again, having come full circle with my typing. I can touch type now (a very useful skill for a writer) but I’m still bucking the system. Oh well, one of the other great upsides to having a keyboard that no one recognizes is that no one touches my stuff!

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Spill Check

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-spill/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – And I Quote

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-quote/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Qualifier Crackdown

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2009/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-qualifier/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Adjective Abuse

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2009/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-adjective/

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

Limited Time Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

Check out my radio interview on A Book and a Chat here:
A Book and a Chat – AJ Scudiere

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

Limited Time Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Check out my radio interview on Back Story:

Back Story – 7-3-10

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

Limited Time Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible.com for $7.49/month!

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Different writers work different ways. I know, that’s not really news to anyone. One of my favorite quotes about writing (and I’m sure I’ve mangled it a bit) is the following: ‘I write it once to get the idea down, I write it again to make sure it says what I meant for it to say, I write it a third time to make it sound brilliant, then I go back a fourth time to make it sound like I just wrote it that way the first time.’ Sadly, I have no idea who to attribute that to. (If you know, let me know!)

I love that quote partly because it is so different from my method. Some writers are fast and some are slow, there’s the wordy and the terse, the action driven and the thoughtful character oriented. Some writers are disciplined, some just write when the spirit moves them. I was of the latter and am moving more toward the former. But then there are those times when I am a bit of both.

Those times hit when the end of the story approaches. I don’t map every little detail of the story when I start. I often don’t map anything at all – even for a novel. But as I approach the end, I see exactly how all the little pieces fit together – all the ties to the little loose ends and how to tuck them in so it isn’t too obvious. And that’s when the fever strikes.

That’s when I write furiously. The trash doesn’t go out. I don’t eat much, and my family realizes that I’m not really there. If they ask me a question they get waved away with muttered phrases about ‘killing this guy’ or ‘ending the world’. There’s actually a three-way sign on my office door that I can change to indicate whether I’ll answer questions. They are color coded, green, yellow and red, and the red states that there had better be a fire or a lot of blood before you even knock.

Endgame is a time when the air crackles, and I sometimes can’t feel sensation from my elbows down. I sleep sporadically, often when I realize it’s four a.m. and I have to be up at seven to get my kids on the bus. If I’m not at my computer and even sometimes when I am, I have a scrap of paper that gets scribbled on. It’s usually titled something like ‘things that must not be forgotten’. There are neat, marching lines of reasonably neat script until about halfway down the page, at which point the writing starts to resemble Sanskrit more than English. After that, it begins to climb up the edges of the paper. Arrows go everywhere, to point out what weaves where.

Later, at those moments when I stop and eat a bite of something and check my notes, make sure I didn’t forget anything pertinent, I find that even I can’t decipher some of it. If I can make out a few words, then I’m good. I really only need enough to jog my memory – thank goodness. You’d think I’d learn to write it better the first time, as the torn half legal sheet with my current scribblings looks like a random mess of illegible half-thoughts. Well, it doesn’t just look like that, it IS that.

As things have changed for me – mainly, the first book got published and I travel a good bit for promotions and cons – I have been getting interrupted in the middle of the endgame. I am at a con right now! ConGlomeration, to be precise. And having a blast. But there’s an endgame in need of me right now, too. Katharine is making some serious decisions, and she is awaiting the ramifications. Alas, she won’t know any more until Monday, which will be the earliest I can get back to her.

I promise as soon as I get home, the standard issue green sign (Come in – I’m happy to answer questions) will be changed right over to red. Though I’m thinking of getting a black sign.

“ENDGAME –
Yes, you can watch whatever you want on TV.
Sure, you can eat what you found in the pantry.
The fire extinguisher is in the kitchen behind the bread machine.
For all else, dial 911”

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

For some reason, people have forgotten what a qualifier does. And because of this these words have been tossed about like seals in a shark pool.

In case you were unaware, a qualifier lessens a meaning. For example: Sylvia can be a redhead or (qualified) sortof a redhead. In the second instance we know that Sylvia’s hair might be disputed as ‘red’.

I’d also like to point out that Word gives that nasty red underline to ‘kindof’ and ‘sortof’ as these aren’t real words. And I know that some of you may be cringing at the very use of them. But I’m okay with new words. I like words, legit or not. I am a firm believer that if you don’t know of a word for the situation, you should use existing words to cobble a new one together. But you don’t abuse the grammar. The rules are what allow us to know what’s going on. A smart man is quite different from a smarting one.

My little brother once said that bad milk had a foresmell. You know this, that very faint odor that tells you something is wrong with the milk (even though you often ignore it and take that first, sputtering sip anyway.) There’s no word for ‘an indicative odor that prefaces a fermented food’. ‘Foresmell’ follows the rules using a common word and a known prefix. I think we should adopt it and kudos to my brother for making it up.

So while we can accept ‘kindof’ and ‘sortof’ into the lexicon, the real issue is all the over-qualification folks are doing today. I had to break my friend Alex of a perennial favorite: kinda sorta. This one shames me as an English speaker for so many reasons. ‘Kind of’ and ‘Sort of’ are slang to begin with, though enough folks use them to give them meaning. But while I can clearly abide writing each of them as one word, dropping that last letter is cheap and lazy. (And that goes for any last-letter dropping. “Darlin’” is one of the worst! If you are fond enough of someone to use this term, don’t they deserve the ‘g’???)

Stacking two qualifiers is ridiculous. He kinda sorta doesn’t like ice cream. Really? By the time you get to the end of that one, I’m gone. I’ve never met anyone who needed even a single qualifier to tell about their preference for ice cream. You either like it or you don’t. But two such words? Is that like a double negative? I declare it so. The next time someone tells you they kinda sorta don’t like something, give them an extra serving!

In the South, we have “might could”. Yup, you might could make it to the semifinals of the Qualifier Crackdown with this one. Ack! I know a bunch of you out there right now should put your fingers to your foreheads, where you might could feel the knot you get just above your nose when you are sortof making that face.

In the end, we need qualifiers. In many cases, something doesn’t quite make the grade and we need way to say so. We also need a way to be nice. “I kindof don’t like it” is the acceptable alternative to “Wow, that’s fugly!” And the person we said it to can walk away with hurt feelings, but maybe without being openly insulted.

Unfortunately, qualifiers have spread like a virus, needlessly getting sloughed off on person after person until their use is rampant. We have to wash our hands of this plague so that future generations don’t think it’s fine to needlessly qualify things.

If we undertake this eradication now, we might possibly defeat it sooner than we may think. Yes, I bet you we probably could!

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Spill Check

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-spill/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – And I Quote

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-quote/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – The Err of My Ways

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-adjective-2/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Adjective Abuse

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2009/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-adjective/

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

There’s a serious crime out there. And it goes unpunished every day. In fact, to many people it’s invisible, but for those who see it, it makes us cringe and wish we could put a stop to the horror. I’m talking about Adjective Abuse.

I’m not talking about the kind of misdemeanor that results from the slightly off adjective. Though that’s often a bad thing, we can all live through “the grisly trees” or “a Curacao sky”. In fact, from the right author we just might call it poetic.

Adjective Abuse occurs when the word either changes the meaning to something you know wasn’t the intent or obscures the idea to the point of bad advertising.

Here’s the most recent one I encountered . . . Perhaps you have seen one of the wand-waving, rune-gathering games that are popping up throughout the nation these days. The one we played this week involved “The Ancient Book of Wisdom”. Um, right. The pages were printed on paper commonly referred to in business as ‘slicks’. It was folded in the middle and stapled. And a fresh clean copy was handed to each participant. There was nothing ancient about this book. (In fact, even the term ‘book’ is a misnomer, it was really nothing more than a pamphlet.) I’m pretty sure they intended this thing to be “The Book of Ancient Wisdom.” Though, since the company is quite new, I doubt there’s anything ancient about it, wisdom included. Though I guess they don’t really care about accuracy if you consider the way they are making money hand over fist – some of it mine!

It’s not just the odd place where this pops up. I know English teachers everywhere feel they are fighting an uphill battle, and the truth is: they are. Poor word choice is everywhere. Why would anyone want to do things right when wrong is so acceptable? I could fill a book rather than just an entry here, but I’ll refrain and keep it limited.

Another good one was at a convention where I was sitting in a booth selling my books. Some of the good folks coming by were quite excellent, while others asked questions along the line of: “So what you are saying is that the markings on the pages are ‘words’ and they tell a ‘story’?” Thus, it was no surprise that the glossy brochure had advertised a “fun, family-filled weekend”. I guess they were right. There were families there. But it seems they really meant a ‘fun-filled, family weekend’ or a ‘family-fun filled weekend’. In the end I am still hard pressed to figure out how to stuff a weekend with people instead of activities . . .

Most of my personal favorites come on food. These companies may not be using poor phrasing so much out of bad form, but in an effort to obscure ingredients. The FDA is really strict about names, Kraft cannot change their mac’n’cheese to “Cheese and macaroni” because there isn’t enough cheese in the product to carry that name first. While this practice has led to a handful of alternate spellings (we said there was cheeeez in it, not actual cheese!) my favorite word is ‘chocolatey’. The addition of the ‘y’ makes it an adjective and excuses the company from inserting any actual chocolate into the product. (I’m not sure how many folks must agree that a food tastes ‘chocolatey’ in order to get this moniker . . . . but maybe we don’t care if there’s actual chocolate as long as the combination of chemicals we are eating tastes a lot like cocoa. )

Still, Charleston Chew candy bars take this one step further.
“Chewy flavored nougat with a chocolatey coating”

Mmmmm, fun-filled tastiness.

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Spill Check

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-spill/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – And I Quote

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-quote/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – The Err of My Ways

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2010/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-adjective-2/

Grammatical Crimes Squad – Qualifier Crackdown

http://www.ajscudiere.com/blog/2009/10/grammatical-crimes-squad-qualifier/

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