An Ounce of Prevention…

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Ben Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, copywriting, editing, grammar, humor, prevent, preventative, prevention, preventive, proofreading, proper grammar, writing

Ben Franklin, who lived to the ripe old age of 84, wore many hats – Founding Father, author, scientist, inventor, statesman. You name it, Ben tried it. We have him to thank for bifocals, the Franklin stove, and the subscription library, forerunner of our modern libraries.

In 1732, he began writing “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” which included poems and sayings, one of which – “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,”- inspires today’s tidbit:

Is it “preventive” or “preventative”? It can be a bit of a soapbox issue for some.

Merriam-Webster defines the verb “prevent” as follows:

1.  To hold or keep back

2.  To keep from happening or existing

If we toss out two examples, we have:

Sam held his arm out firmly to prevent the toddler from falling down the steps.

By stuffing the hideous shirt in the bottom of the garbage, Edna prevented Orville from leaving the house dressed like an idiot.

In both examples, the subjects prevented something from happening. The toddler is safe, and Orville can head to work, dressed in sartorial splendor. Or not.

For a while now, I’ve noticed an interloper, a sneaky almost-twin inserting itself into unsuspecting sentences. It’s preventative and I’m sure you’ve seen it, too.

At one of my previous jobs, the maintenance crew performed what their books called “preventative maintenance” on factory equipment to make sure the machines ran properly.

But what, exactly, were they preventativing from happening? Weren’t they instead preventing potential equipment meltdowns by performing routine maintenance? So wouldn’t it be preventive maintenance? I think so!

Both words have the same meaning, so does it really matter which one you use? Maybe most people don’t care; to those who do, it matters. One source I checked suggested that “preventative” is “often used in publications and websites not known for high editorial standards.”

So today’s tidbit boils down to a choice. While it may  not seem like a biggie, good grammar always wins out. I’ll leave you with a quote from Sigismund of Luxemburg, Holy Roman Emperor from 1433 – 1437. Sigismund, known more for his wars and conquests than his bookish thoughts, once uttered:

“I am the Roman Emperor, and am above grammar.”

Take that!

 

 

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Weird Word Wednesday!

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copywriting, editing, gongoozler, humor, proofreading, rubbernecker, slacker, small town, Wednesday, weird, words, writer, writing

Wow is right! We’re halfway through the week, so it’s time for another weird, week-brightening word.

Today’s word is gongoozler.

Perhaps you know one. You maybe even work with one. But first we need to back up, historically speaking, just a tad.

The word, less than a century old, came about to describe people who stood idly by, watching activity on canals. Boats, fishermen, barges, you name it, a gongoozler would spend his days hangin’ out, watching river life floooow by.

The term was broadened to mean any person who watches work swirl around them while they do nothing. In the very small town where my grandparents lived, the older, retired men of the community would gather a few times a week at a local coffee shop to play dominoes while they kvetched about their neighbors, the glacially slow pace at which their Social Security checks took to arrive, and life in general.

The monotony broke one day when a street crew arrived to redo the storm drains. Men in orange hard hats directed the pounding of jackhammers and rumbling backhoes as an entire block of Main Street was torn up for a week or two, the relentless racket making a good game of dominoes impossible. Instead the elder statesmen headed for the sidewalks, watching – and commenting, I’m sure – as new drains were installed.

My uncle dubbed this bunch the Sidewalk Superintendents, who bore a striking resemblance to the gongoozlers of old.

See where I was going with my earlier question? I’m sure you know a gongoozler – someone who has no problem watching work take place while they give no thought to helping out.

We call them slackers or rubberneckers, and either way, they’re slightly annoying. And, alas, workplaces are filled with these people. There’s no way around it, save for hiding in the bathroom all day, which becomes impractical, especially when lunchtime rolls around.

I think the women of my grandparents’ town knew how to get rid of their gongoozlers – toss them a box of dominoes and tell them there’s a hot game happening downtown!

“Feelin’ Alright, Uh Huh…”

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all right, alright, copywriting, Dave Mason, editing, grammar, humor, Joe Cocker, proofreading, proper grammar, writing

We’ve got Dave Mason to thank for today’s grammar tidbit. Mason, an English singer-songwriter of exceptional talent, has played with many well-known bands, including the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Fleetwood Mac, along with being a off-and-on member of the group Traffic.

Joe Cocker

It was in this role, in 1968, that Mason penned “Feelin’ Alright,” for Traffic’s self-titled album. Joe Cocker had a hit with the song the next year, and even the Jackson 5 and Gladys Knight and the Pips got in on the action with their own versions years later.

But I’m not feelin’ very “alright” about the spelling. Nothing against Dave, or Joe, or anyone else who belted out the lyrics. It’s just that “alright” isn’t a word – it’s one of those goofy shortcuts that came about from who knows where almost a century ago.

“All right” is the proper spelling. As in:

It’s not all right that a North Carolina woman took out her frustration on a vending machine by setting it on fire. (Strange, but true.)

Millicent served cake and ice cream at her grandma’s 100th birthday party. It wasn’t all right that Grandma Beulah torched the tablecloth with her reckless behavior.

Interestingly, I tested the theory of “alright” vs. “all right” on a Microsoft Word document, deliberately using the incorrect spelling. The spell checker didn’t highlight this blooper, leaving me to wonder. Several dictionaries I consulted acknowledged that “alright” is commonly used, but that “all right” is the more formal approach.

So…things being the way they are, we can thank Dave Mason for a great song, but  for those people who insist on using “alright, I guess “We Just Disagree”!

Weird Word Wednesday!

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Abraham Lincoln, Boss Tweed, editing, election, history, humor, political, politics, proofreading, Richard Nixon, snollygoster, weird word, writing

It’s that week-brightening time again, when a new word pops up to add a little zing. This week’s Weird – and timely- Word is snollygoster.

Our  next presidential election is mere weeks away, and snollygoster refers to a dishonest politician, one especially calculating. Hmmmm….not taking sides here, but that could certainly refer to any number of semi-distinguished public servants who roam Washington, D.C.

The challenge arises in using snollygoster in a sentence, as in:

“Even though he professed to not be a crook, our 37th president was still a bit of a snollygoster, wasn’t he?”

Certainly, Nixon leads the pack of United States snollygosters, but history is rife with their shenanigans. Consider former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his infamous “bunga bunga” parties – that’s snollygosterism at its finest. Fraud, bribery, and harems of women weren’t enough for this Lothario.

Or take Boss Tweed, who controlled the Democratic Party in New York in the mid-1800s. He was gifted in political corruption, surrounding himself with lackies who helped him bilk New York of millions of dollars.

Let’s close with a word from Abe, who might have had his own snollygoster in mind when he wrote to Allen N. Ford, editor of an Illinois newspaper, in 1846:

“I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.”

Commas for Lunch…

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comma, copywriting, dysfunctional relationship, editing, humor, Little Red Riding Hood, lunch, proofreading, writing

Oh, what a difference a comma makes! In the world of punctuation, commas can be the “spoiled cousins” – they don’t take much effort to write, but ignore them and your whole sentence gets a retaliatory kick in the ankle. Use them properly, and your sentence flows much better. Ahhh….

This is the classic example of comma misplacement. The first sentence is alarming! It’s reminiscent of the children’s fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood” when the wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood and her grandma, then slogs to bed for a postprandial snooze. Not good.

The second sentence is so heartwarming. Here, we imagine the grandchildren cooking a meal for grandma, lovingly calling her to the table where they’ll enjoy it together. Much better!

Think of commas as little yield signs; they signal a slight pause in the sentence, and also set off clauses within sentences. Like this:

It didn’t take long for Harold and Mildred, reunited after a 40-year split, to start getting on each other’s nerves.

We can remove “reunited after a 40-year split” from the sentence without affecting the meaning much. We’d still have a sentence that makes sense:

It didn’t take long for Harold and Mildred to start getting on each other’s nerves.

But doesn’t that lack a little pizzazz? The clause describing their reunion goes a long way toward explaining the couple’s annoyance with one another. After 40 years apart, they still have issues!

Regardless of how things go (or don’t) for our lovely couple, commas are very helpful in explaining a portion of their dysfunctional relationship.

And, like Harold and Mildred, sentences can become dysfunctional without commas! Before sending your sentence out the door, read it out loud – if it roars to the finish line, you might need to insert a few commas to set off an explanatory phrase. Even one comma will save grandma from being devoured!

It’s All Well and Good Until Someone Loses an Eye…

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editing, grammar, humor, proofreading, words, writing

Who hasn’t experienced this at least once in the halcyon days of their youth? Within a nanosecond of the screen door’s slam, someone’s mother would yell from the back porch:

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye!”

That admonition probably didn’t stop the neighbor boys, wearing their football helmets as fencing masks and using sharpened sticks as sabres, from jabbing at each other, but at least it made the mother feel better.

I admit my title isn’t spot-on, but it serves the purpose for the topic I wanted to cover today:

Well vs. Good

What’s the basic difference?

Good is an adjective, which means it modifies nouns (persons, places, things or ideas).

“Otto thinks he’s a good listener, but all he does is stare at the TV,” Betty huffed.

“What a good idea,” Maynard said of Hector’s plan to blow up the treehouse.

In these examples, the listener and the plan are nouns; therefore, the adjective good is used to modify them.

Well is an adverb. It modifies verbs (action words), adjectives (words that describe) and other adverbs (words that answer the questions when, where, how or to what extent).

Did Margaret do well at the International Ironing Competition?

Simon speaks Lithuanian well.

Both of those examples talk about the action of doing something; therefore, well is used.

But how do you respond when someone asks “How are you today?”

If you’re not referring to your health, but to the fact that you’re bursting with love and good cheer, go ahead and say “I’m good, thanks!” to the person.

If you’re feeling dragged out and just plain miserable, you’re talking about your health, so you’d say:

“Not well, thanks.”

Remember…”good” describes a noun, while “well” describes an adverb, so keep practicing and you’ll do well.

Weird Word Wednesday!

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president john adams, strange word, weird word

It’s Weird Word Wednesday! Today’s strange word comes courtesy of our second president, John Adams, who served from 1797 – 1801. I’m reading John Adams: Party of One by James Grant, a great book about our slightly hypochondriacal, fastidious second leader.

In the book, Grant is discussing a legal case that Adams wrangled with in the late 1760s in Boston. On page 77, Adams is lamenting his misfortune with the court, the officers of the Crown, the cause, and “even with the tyrannical Bell that dongled me out of my House every Morning.”

Dongled! In today’s world, dictionary.com defines dongle as “a hardware device attached to a computer without which a particular software program will not run.”

Certainly our sometimes curmudgeonly second leader wouldn’t recognize his dongling bell as having anything to do with a computer – I’m sure he could have benefited by having a computer to help with his complex legal cases, but alas, all he got was a “tyrannical Bell.” Poor guy!

Insure vs. Ensure vs. the Aliens

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ensure, fashion, ferdinand marcos, humor, imelda marcos, insure, shoes, writing

So…what’s the difference between “insure” and “ensure”?  I got a request to cover this conundrum, so here we go.

It’s basically a matter of money. Yes, cold, hard cash does the trick here.

“Insure” means to protect against loss, most commonly by way of an insurance policy. Like this:

When Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos fled the Philippines in 1986, it was rumored that Imelda left behind over 1000 pairs of shoes, almost 900 purses and 71 pairs of sunglasses. Alas, Imelda had none of her possessions insured against this type of misfortune.

What a fashion setback! We don’t have to stick with personal possessions to insure something – although we normally think of health or vacation insurance, people have also insured themselves against alien abductions. Really.

Moving on, “ensure” lacks the direct monetary connection – it’s more of a guarantee. So if your grandma is expecting 20 for Thanksgiving dinner, she might make six pumpkin pies to ensure that she has enough for everyone.

Granny also might want to take out an insurance policy just in case those aliens show up for the big gig…

 

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

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contraction, proper grammar

Here and there, this one pops up. It’s not a biggie, but it has the potential to drag down the impact of your writing just a notch.

My headline isn’t talking about regret – instead, it’s a play on the misuse of a contraction. Like this:

I would have gone to the store with my brother, but I slept too late.

If we use the common contraction for “would have,” it becomes:

I would’ve gone to the store with my brother, but I slept too late.

Several times, I’ve seen people write it like this:

I would of bought the red sweater, but they didn’t have it in my size.

Ahhhhh!!! There is no “would of,” “could of” or “should of” in proper grammar – it’s just another shortcut that burrowed its way into our lexicon and shows up now and then.

Just remember – if you’re going to write out the contraction for any of the above sticklers, add “have” instead of “of.”

Would have…could have…should have…

Do this and you won’t have any grammatical regrets!