Ya think?........

There is now a new television commercial that features one of Hollywood's truly lovely women, Ms. Brooke Shields, in an ad for a new elixir that is used for, get this, growing fuller eyelashes. Hold on, it gets worse.

What's remarkable about the ad, aside from the obvious appeal of someone like Ms. Shields, is a line in the copy being delivered by the voice-over narrator. At one point he says: "...for inadequate or not enough eyelashes". Now....correct me if I'm wrong but aren't "inadequate" eyelashes and "not enough" eyelashes the same thing?

To be fair to Brooke I have to say that she wouldn't know what the voice-over would be....in Hollywood she would come in, do her two or three scene setups, and go. The post-production people would then take over and assemble the final product into a complete ad for the client. Ms. Shields would never know what the final ad would look or sound like.

But I'm still embarassed for her and the client who spent money to have this ad done. They should have made sure that a qualified proofreader (such as my esteemed self "truly a legend in his own mind....") reviewed the copy and caught this blatant boo-boo before it escaped onto the small screen. Oh well, I guess they'll call me next time they have have something for me to review or look over (tongue-firmly-in-cheek).

Honing, er...homing in

The title of this post says it all. This is another one of my pet peeves when it comes to our American language. When you want to sharpen a knife to the Nth degree, use a hone; when you want to describe the act of trying to zero-in on something, use home-in, or skip the confusion entirely and use the aforementioned zero-in.


Hey folks, you can put this one on your usage list along with comprise, irregardless and the others I've been ranting about. You know, if I was smart and greedy (in other words, a true capitalist) I would sell you a special three-ring binder with indexes for you to keep all your American language usage notes in!

But hey, I'm retired now and it sounds like it might actually involve something like work, so I think I'll pass....your wallets are safe for now, relax.

Another Look

I mentioned this in a previous post but it seems that the abuse of the word in question is so widespread that I feel compelled to repeat and elaborate on my earlier rant.

There is a word which, when properly used, explains itself nicely but when misused is the epitome of poor language and may even leave the listener feeling that the speaker is less than erudite (to put it politely).

This poor member of the language is regardless.

Here's a news flash people....it's fine all by itself.

When one attempts to reinforce the use of this word, to give it more emphasis or color by saying irregardless, one is really using a double negative to mean something that the basic word itself already expresses! The word irregardless tries to mean without regard (for) which the word regardless already means.

Bottom line, strike this monstrosity from your speech and end up sounding like someone of learning.

Quo Vadis English? redux

Don't you just hate it when authors try to dazzle us with fancy foreign phrases peppered into their writings that they then proceed to not translate? It's a snob thing, like....you're supposed to know dahling. Quo Vadis means "Whither Goest Thou" in the classical translation or "Yo, where you gettin' to?" in the street version. Furthermore (one word, by the way) Redux means 'revisited' so I trust you will now be able to figure out the posting title . You can pronounce it American style= ree-DUCKS or correctly as in the French= reh-DOO. Nobody in this country will bat a false eyelash either way. Face it, the vast majority would rather face root-canal than admit they don't know something.


Got a few more goodies for you, some under the category of 'Howcum"?

1. Facilitator-- this is a blatant new-age, politically correct construction that replaces the word 'teach' and all its other forms. Why? Because to have a teacher in the class is to put a person in a position of power over the other members of the class and someone's self-esteem might be crushed (I kid you not). What really bothers me is that Christians have bought into this garbage too.

2. Dump-- as in to get dumped. This is a word most often associated with garbage and in some cases, very crude references to a bodily waste function. So how is it that now no-one 'breaks up' anymore? Someone is always dumping or getting dumped. This ties in well with goodie #3---

3. Slam-- this has replaced the perfectly valid word 'insult'. Why?

4. Hit on-- Whatever happened to "asking someone for a date" or "making a pass at" or "make a play for"? Not quite up to date, eh? Now it sounds like a major act of aggression one degree removed from outright assault.

Here's the secret to these three howcums---- in all cases they're very accurate reflections of the underlying anger secular folks carry for each other in this society. Simple concepts like breaking up and being insulted are replaced by words and terms that are far more brutal than they need to be. Trouble is, the general population just accepts them and moves on. Whatever happened to that 'kinder, gentler' nation we were supposed to be getting?

Quo Vadis English?

Americans mangle the English language and, indeed, have flogged it so badly that we can truly say that we now speak and write, very poorly, something called American. I present here some of my favorite observations about the vagaries of the new mother tongue.

Take the wonderful English word 'comprise'. Things should never be comprised of. To use this word remember that parts comprise the whole, or, the whole is composed of parts. Remember, if you're going to use the word of in your sentence, you will use compose. Here are some other gems:

Trendy words that sneak into the language and replace perfectly valid words that , somehow, have just lost their allure. The newbies sound far more important, right? To wit:

*Impact- and all its cousins, especially the hideous verb form "impacted". Last I knew this was a dental problem. The very good word "effect" is still available and can be made more "impactful" (I couldn't resist) by adding modifiers to it.

*Dialogue- has basically obliterated the very good words "discuss" or "talk about".

*System- Something that performs a task. Something used to be a vacuum cleaner, now it's a "cleaning system".

*Unpack- I think the clowns that use this one (too many Christian broadcasters too, I'm sorry to say) actually mean "explain", and sometimes, "exposit".

*Campus- Any institution with more than one building now is a campus, regardless (see horrors below for more on this one) of whether or not it's even in the same location. By definition, campus facilities would be in one spot, like a collection of university buildings. Not like the company I used to work for that had buildings in many different towns. Management loved to refer to each building as a campus. The only thing they had that was campus-like was their cafeterias. It's that kind of limit-pushing that I'm kvetching about.

Here are some horrors of usage I'll bet you didn't even realize:

*Irregardless- "ain't" no such word. This is a double negative. What you want to use is regardless all by itself.

*Pedophile- this is commonly accepted as PED-oh-file, which makes it a foot problem. It should be PEED-oh-file as in pediatrics.

*Homophobe- One of my favorites! This doesn't mean anything like the world intended it, as in "one who has a fear of homos" (hey, they started it, not me-I personally have nothing against gay people). When you examine the word it breaks down this way (all from the Latin by the way): Homo-- combined form meaning same and phobe which is the combined form of phobia meaning an irrational fear or morbid dread of some thing or things. Hence a homophobe is really someone who is morbidly and/or irrationally afraid of sameness. I'm not making this up.

*Pro-active- should never, never, ever be used by anyone wishing to appear intelligent. If you do have a mental lapse and use it then please have the decency to be a rugged individualist and hyphenate it. You'll be right but everyone will think you're ignorant anyway.

*Same goes for other compound words like infrared. If it's to be pronounced as two words then it also needs the hyphen as in infra-red.

*Ditto any word with a prefix of co. Should be co-operate, co-incidence, etc. Without a hyphen cooperate sounds like something barrel makers would do to one of their creations and coincidence sounds like the hardness of the metal used to make coins.

* When I went to school in the dark ages when real English was being taught and you actually got graded on pensmanship (you thought it was penmanship--well, now it is) I learned that to make a G soft you must follow it with an E. So how does one explain Judgment? Or Ridgway (town in CO)? I'd like to buy an E, Pat. Maybe a few.

Give me time, I'll come up with some more gems in a future installment.