Corrections

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Please report any mistakes or errors. Once reported, they will promptly be listed in the "Exceptions to Common Grammar, Usage, and Spelling Rules" section of Ralph's Usage Guide.


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Copyright, 2000, 2005 

by Ralph.
All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Usage Guide

Copyright 2005 by Ralph. All rights reserved.

Na, na-na, na-na, na!

 

 

Affect, Effect
The similarity between these two words affects even doctors, lawyers, and accountants, and the effect is effective. There is, however, a simple, effective rule for dealing with the two words. If your meaning is influence and you want a verb, then use the verb influence. If, on the other hand, your meaning is influence and you need a noun, use the noun influence. Is that hard? Likewise, if you are looking for a verb meaning to bring about or to put into practice, then for the sake of Noah Webster, use to bring about or to put into practice, and stop wasting everybody's time.
     (As you can see, a little prudence in word choice can help one avoid many of the conflicts that editors and writers normally spend months developing ulcers over.) 
     Then again, if you are looking for an obscure noun used in psychology, and you do not know which of these two it is, it is sincerely hoped that you are not a doctor, in whose care people trust their lives and sanity. 

ULCERS: Effecting the plan will have the effect of affecting everyone.

EASIER: Putting the plan into practice will have the influence of influencing everyone.

ULCERS: Effecting the effect, we saw that the effect of the effect was that the effective effect effectively affects all the affects, showing their effectiveness. That's a fact, and an effective fact at that.


 

Alright All Right?
In the spring of 1817, a student at Oxford University began what has now been two centuries of stormy and sometimes bloody controversy when he wrote the phrase "Alright now" on a test paper.* The quarrel, of course, is over the one-word form (alright) of all right, which the majority of authorities say is not at all right or at all all right, all right already?
     The anti-alright camp point out that there is no need for a one-word form. The pro-alright camp reply that there is too. The anti's say, "There is not," and the pro's say, "There is, too!" Inevidibly, they become too loud and the police are called in. An officer pounds on the door and says, in a heavy Irish accent, "Alright, open this door!"—to which they all fall silent and, yes, ask "Would that be all right spelled as one word or two?" Police officers, who find it helpful to sound tough and who think it sounds tough to sound uneducated (which is usually true), answer that it is all right as one word. This invariably upsets the general public and gets the police chief fired for bad spelling on the force (a great plot for a Starsky and Hutch episode). As a result, in most municipalities, it is now illegal to say all right in any form. You are supposed to say OK instead (which unfortunately has already led to the tragic Gunfight at the OK Corral, between the OK camp, the O.K. camp, the Okay camp, the okie dokie camp, and the people of the State of Oklahoma, who claimed exclusive rights to all forms of the abbreviation).
    And this is only the stormy part of the not-alright problem. There is also the bloody part. In 1848, riots broke out across Europe over the issue, and thousands of English teachers were killed or injured in the chaos. Similar problems, at times bordering on world war, have erupted frequently since.  (It is rumored that the pro-alright camp may have mobile chemical-weapons laboratories.)
     In America in the 1960s, a youth culture developed. To spite their parents, the establishment, society, convention, people over thirty, and the makers of frozen fish sticks, young people grew their hair frighteningly long, wore torn-up clothes, and went around making victory signs and saying in loud, taunting voices, "Alright!"—with, of course, an intonation that made it clear they were thinking the one-word form.
     The horrible alright dispute, along with all the trouble it has caused over time, is made all the more tragic by the fact that the original Oxford student who tried to spell it as one word was actually trying to spell not all right now but all write now, a command in the imperative. (It was spring, after all, and students tend to blunder a lot in the spring.) 
     Had his professors known of the stupid blunder, they would have simply taken him out back and shot him. But they discovered it too late. Blood had already been shed; newspaper copy editors and English teachers were already doomed to an eternity of "Is too!" "Is not!" And if the professors had tried to spare the world and tell the truth, Oxford would have lost its standing as the center of learning in the English-speaking world, and so the professors kept quiet (the Nixon White House could have learned much from these professors). They did, all the same, take the student out back and shoot him. 
 

OLL KORRECT: "OK, turn right here and left there." "Left there?" "Right." "Oh, all right. I get it." "No, left!" "All right and no left. Right." "Left!!!"

ALL RIGHT: After they all write all right as alright, the teacher makes them all write all right so that all the alls and all the rights were all right.

ALL WRONG: After they alright alright as alright . . .

ALRIGHT!: Kurt Vonnegut has a new volume of collected short stories out.

ALL WIGHT: Alwight, silly wabbit, hands up!

ALL RIGHT: A bunch of Republicans.

ALL LEFT: Ralph's attempt to make beef stew. Do not buy his forthcoming cookbook.


* The famous blunder was remembered in the Rolling Stones' hit song "Jumpin' Jack Flash" ("It's alllllllright now"), which sounds much better when played by the blues guitarist Johnny Winter. 



 
Anglo-Saxon vs. Latin
If you want to make text very clear and easily acceptable to the average English speaker's ear, use mainly words of Anglo-Saxon origin. Do this also if you want to continue driving a 1973 Ford Pinto and living in a trailer-park suburb of Buttonwillow, California. 
     If, on the other hand, earning big bucks, driving a nice automobile, and, possibly, buying a home in Beverly Hills are more important to you than making a piece of text—which may well be drivel anyhow—readable, then replace as many of the Anglo-Saxon words as possible with words of Latin or Old French origin. 
     Take the following phrase for example. 

ANGLO-SAXON:  The basic hope of cows to eat coconuts . . .

 

This, of course, sounds ridiculous. This is the sort of thing you get from a writer or editor who drives a 1973 Ford Pinto. However, if this is said using stuffier-sounding words, of Latin or Old French origin, that Ford Pinto might be traded in for at least a Buick:

 

STUFFILY PUT: The fundamental desire of cattle to consume Cocos nucifera fruit . . .

 

Of course, it is not always easy to come up words from extinct languages (not a lot of barroom conversations take place in Old French), and looking up the etymologies of each word is too troublesome a task (which is part of the reason why the examples above are phrases, not whole sentences; the other part of the reason is, well . . . you finish those sentences!). Therefore, you will do best simply to guess, choosing those words with more syllables, prefixes and suffixes, and snobbish-sounding tones.
     In addition, you need not restrict yourself to words of Latin and Old French origin. Words from many other languages also sound amply formal and pretentious. Slavic words, for example, can sound very official, and words from Japanese can raise the syllable count considerably. Note how official-sounding are the words pivos spaciba (beer, please). And look at how many syllables we get in the Japanese domo arigato gozaimashita—eleven, if one bothers to pronounce them all, which the Japanese do not—which means, basically, "thanks."
     Remember also, foreign words or Latin terms can be set in italics. This looks very sophisticated. 
     Another interesting device is to use both the Anglo-Saxon term and the Latin or Norman French term together. Lawyers do this all the time. Try first and foremost, full and complete, basic and fundamental, will and testament, indemnify and hold harmless, lamb and mutton, Suntory Rare and Old, cow and cattle. To have even more fun, add a third term from yet another language, say, Chinese: first, foremost, and diyi; full, complete, and wanzhengge; basic, fundamental, and jibende; cow, cattle, and niu . . .
     Then again, there are a whole lot of English speakers, particularly in the United States, who do not speak a second language (and there are some who, it could be argued, do not speak a first very well). If you are one of these, or you are certain that most of your readership is, then try making up some words. This is guaranteed to circuminsulate you in cases of mesmerization where you are phenindentally undisposated to verigitate the migloberitation of elves.
 

WRONG: The kids did not get the teacher's lesson on church history.

RIGHT: The youthful scholars failed to fully comprehend the professor's lecture on antidisestablishmentarianism. 

WRONG: I wanna buy a new suit.

RIGHT: It is my considered intention to procure recently produced and unused attire.

RIGHT: Kleptography has proved microlasms to be less than 1 milihoffer in fannability. 


 

A While and Awhile and A-While
Many people write to Ralph's asking the difference between a while and awhile. We find this terribly surprising. If these people cannot see the difference between these two terms (i.e., a space after the A—hello!), it is highly surprising that they are able to write in the first place, and then manage to put a piece of paper into a box bearing the label "Mailbox," as opposed to, say, "Garbage Can," "Book Return," or "Rest in Peace." 
     However, far too many of such letters have made it to us, and thus it cannot be just a case (cases) of dumb luck. Sure, some of them spelled Ralph with an F, wrote the return address backward, accidentally sealed one of their fingers inside the envelope, or abbreviated California not to CA but to COLIFLR., but the fact is, there seems to be some genuine confusion over these two terms. 
     And it is, first and foremost (see Anglo-Saxon entry), confusion that interests Ralph's Manual of Style.
     But instead of offering a bunch of drab grammar rules about the separated a being the indefinite article, thus signifying the coming of a noun, which is likely to be used after a preposition, which in this case is for . . . and the one-word form obviously being one of these closed, bastardized adverbs, which would be truly nonstandard (linguist PC speak for "stupid Neanderthal") after a preposition . . . instead of going into this, we instead offer a more ear-pleasing sort of Dr. Suess-like rule for people to memorize and refer to when they find themselves sitting up at three in the morning, pen over paper, wondering, "Should I use awhile or a while?" See below.

While a while is a while one whiles away, awhile is a way in which one whiles, but while the while which one whiles away would wear wonderfully a word like for, the one which is a way in which one whiles would be full of wonder as to where such a word would go, and thus the while which one whiles away and which would wear wonderfully a word like for is wegularly worded with such an one, whereas the one which is a way in which one whiles and which would be full of wonder as to where such a word would go, such a one would not wisely be worded this way—it would in fact thus be worded wongly, wacky wabbit.

 

     This may seem like a lengthy rhyme, but remember, the goal is not so much clarity of statement as clarity of bank statement. Give the employer a simple, clear grammar explanation and he/she is going to say "Oh, I see; thanks," and walk away whistling. On the other hand, recite this little ditty, and the employer is going to whistle, hand you a bonus for hard work and devotion, and tell you to go home and get some west. 
     Lastly, there is no convention for or common mistake of using a hyphen (a-while). But we were worried that too many people would see the one- and two-word forms in the title, and think, "Yeah, yeah, I know that," and then not read the entry. So we added the hyphen version to try to grab their attention. And if they—you, that is—are reading this last paragraph, then it worked.


 

Between vs. Among
This rule is simple. You learned it in the second grade—which is between the first and third grades and among those early grades in which you first learn that acquiring knowledge is truly a pain in the left kneecap, and that knowledge is, largely, a pile of facts that a select few keep among themselves to maintain the distance between themselves and the less-desirable portion of the population (everyone else).
     The rule is this: Between is used for two things and among is used for three or more. Except of course anywhere where breaking this rule would sound better. See the examples below.

They were the perfect loving couple: The love between them would never die.

They were the perfect love triangle: The love among them would never die.

Midway Island is roughly midway between America and Japan.

Midway Island is roughly midway among America, Japan, and the Philippines.

 

With simple rules like this, there can be little discrepancy among what ought to be, what makes sense, and what is; and the relationships between editors, writers, and publishers (whoops) will be bettered, as they will all be spared the need to argue over the various conflicts between the many various pairs of words among our speech. (This previous sentence serves as an example of just how clear writing can be if you follow simple little rules like this one.)


 

Compare with with Compare To

(if you dare to)
The rule is this: Use compare to when likening something to a summer's day and compare with for all other uses.

A: Hey, Fred! Compare thy new Buick to a summer's day!

B: Gee, Ralph, it's a good thing you didn't say compare with, or you would have really been in trouble.
 

A: Hey, Fred. Compare thee to a summer's day.

B: Yeah, Ralph, whatever you say. Don't sit so close.
 

A: Oh, Julietta! Compare thee to a summer's day.

B: Summer's the monsoon season, Ralph! Swat!

A: Ouch! That hurt.


 

Copy and Replica
A copy is not the same as a replica. This is a replica. This is a replica. Again, this is a—no, it isn't. As soon as we add again and use a lowercase t, we are no longer talking about replicas, unless perhaps it is an extremely poor replica. In any case, restrict the use of replica to those things that are exact copies, and restrict the use of copy to the back page on a credit card receipt. For all other needs, stick to whom.

A: Thee are just like a replica of a summer's day.

B: I copy. Ten-four. But there's a little duplication among the replica and the like, there, Ralph. Agreed?

A: Ditto.

B: Whom!


 

Due to, Owing to, and Because
Due to circumstances beyond our control, it is not all right to use due to however you might wish, due to some unduly dull usage rules, which, to give credit where due, at least keeps the copy editor's bills from becoming past due. In fact, free use of due might even aggravate some people.
     The problem is this: Going back to the time of Alexander the Great, due was used solely an adjective, a trend that remained steady until the time of Ethelred the Unready, when steadiness wavered, morals faltered, civilized behavior slipped, and due to (cover your eyes, children) was occasionally uttered as the base of an adverb phrase:

HORRIFICALLY WRONG: Her library card duly expired due to the books' due date.

HONORABLY RIGHT: That her library card duly expired was due to the books' due date.

 

Fortunately, time-honored tradition held true and the free use of due to has been duly outlawed in most industrialized countries. In some southern American states, transgressions are treated as felony offenses. All the same, there are still pockets in South America where drug kingpins sit about on Sunday afternoons, taking aspirin with Coca-Cola (novelties in cocaine-producing regions) and shamelessly and maliciously use due wrongly. Example: "Clinton was impeached due to poor taste in cigars." (. . . a point on which further exploration would be in unduly poor taste.)
    Those who enforce this particular usage rule, often called due-due's or due-due heads, say that it is better to use owing to, owing to the fact that, despite owing's also being an adjective, it sounds more educated. 
    Those who argue for the free use of due, the do-dues, (a bunch of tree-hugging liberals) say that due has been so widely unduly used that it has paid its dues and is not getting due credit or due respect for its effectiveness, due to all that the due-due heads do to do it in. They ask, do you do with due all that you want to do? Or do you due to the due-dues do only what they tell you to do?
    If you have read this far, then regardless of which side of the due-due war you previously did call your own, you now understand just how silly such arguments can get, and you will now agree that it is smartest to replace all instances of due to, owing to, and because of with as a result of the fact that there was. Now the only trick is getting the people you are arguing with to read this, too.

 

Each Other and One Another
People sometimes argue with one another over the use of each other, saying that each of these two terms should only be used at one time or another. For example, some say that if you are talking about each other person in the room, you should use one another and that if you are talking about one or another person in the room, then you should use each other. Go figure.
     They are, of course, all wrong. The rule is this: Use each other for two people or things, and among for three or more:. 

The couple were in love with each other. (can't be "was")

But each of them loved one other.

This caused a lot of trouble among them.

They each wanted to see one, another, and two, each other.

If only the other could also love each of them, then they would have a love triangle who loved one another.

—Ralph
 

They are one person.

They are two alone.

They are three together.

They are for . . . each other.

—Stephan Stills; "Gold Hill"


     Of course, say the tree-huggers, some of the best of writers have ignored this rule, so none of this really matters, but everyone keeps it in the usage guides because it is yet one more bit of specialized knowledge that we editors and English teachers can use to make other people look silly.


 

Like, Which You Are Likely Using Wrong
By a traditional, conservative, "purist" viewpoint,* like should be used only as, like, you know, one of those preposition-like things, when the meaning is, like, "likeness." Likewise, it should not be used with like meaning as a conjunction and the like—not for the likes of you. This means that like with such like meaning (meaning "likeness") should be followed by a noun and not by a clause. Is this, like, confusing?
     In all likelihood, it is. It should be. A good copy editor must learn to be like a good grammarian (note previous correct use of like)—that is to say, one in the business of confusing people. That is how lawyers get rich. That is how doctors get rich. As for accountants, they get rich by confusing the lawyers and doctors they work for. As for grammarians, they seem to enjoy confusing people for no reason whatsoever. 
     Anyhow, the following examples illustrate the incorrect and correct uses of like.

GRAMMATICAL BOOBOO: Do not use like like it is a conjunction.

GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT: Use like like a conjunction.

 

With further investigation, though, one will see that like has been used wrongly like in the first example above, as, like, a conjunction, since, like, the time of Shakespeare (American Heritage Dictionary, second edition) and possibly Chaucer (American Heritage Dictionary, third edition), which is, like, a likable argument among the pro-conjunction like. (We predict that by the time of AH7, the conjunction use of like will have been traced back to, like, Moses: "Thou shalt not, like, covet thy neighbor's sheep like it was . . .")
     See the following authentic example from Shakespeare's time:
 

A: Like, hey! Compare thee to, like, a summer's day.

 

B: Come, come, you paraquito, that be not the proper usage.

 

A: Oh, gee, right, my Lady. Uh, thou lookest like a summer's day?

 

B: Fool! An ox hath not such a deal of dung as thy brain is tossed with. That be not a clause.

 

A: Oh. Well, ah, like, thou lookest like a summer's day has dawned upon the world for the first time, shedding rays of brilliant light through the green morning's dew -covered trees, awakening every creature that crawleth.

 

B: Ooooohhhhh . . . Thou sayeth well and it holds well, too. Like, oooh . . .

 

But let's face it. No one wants to talk like these two, even if they do get to break sternly enforced grammar rules, or even if an ox has not such a deal of dung as their brains are tossed with. So be smart:

           
Say no to like as a conjunction. 
 

* The traditional, conservative, "purist" viewpoint and the ban against like as a conjunction began with the puritanical views of aging grammarians and librarians who felt that only love was sufficient for conjunction. Like was acceptable as a preposition (like, "Hey, feel like goin' to my place?"), but never for an actual conjunction.
     These purists were, and their descendants still are, working toward a total ban on conjunctions. Think about it. The word has sex written all over it!
Conjunction, clearly related to conjugal, is formed from con, meaning 'together, possibly fraudulently,' junct, meaning 'join'but in a very nasty-sounding wayand tion, which, considering the first two parts, must cause the end product to mean something unimaginably immoral! Put it this way: Another related word, conjugation, is defined as 'the act of being conjugated,' which must certainly be illegal in most states. So be prudent and prude. If you are an editor, delete all conjunctions you come across, before they spread, and if you are a teacher, get your students to watch TV instead worrying over such things, lest they wind up spending their idle time reading things like this (when they could be watching reality TV), or, worse, writing it.


 

Pluperfect
Two years ago, the American Society of Editors and Grammar Freaks (ASEGF, pronounced ass-ee-giff) voted pluperfect the coolest word in their trade lexicon. It is obviously a very cool word, for no one, except grammar freaks and (some) editors, knows what it means. And even those who do, have absolutely no occasion when they must use the word. They will instead use past perfect tense, etc. But they still throw it out from time to time, because, face it, it sounds really cool. It sounds like all those Latin terms that lawyers and diplomats use. And it might even attract groupies (editorees?).

 

A: Quid pro quo.

 

B: Well, pluperfect to you.

 

A: Au bout de son latin!

 

B: Pluperfect, pluperfect, pluperfect!

 

RMS suggests that editors use this word as often as possible, even when it is not called for. No one knows its meaning, anyhow, and the editor who uses it frequently will sound highly educated. More important, he or she might be able to charge more. 
     Also, if using the word orally, RMS suggests mispronouncing it, putting the stress on the first instead of the second syllable. This throws people off even farther. And if using the word in writing, italicize it. It is not actually a foreign word, but few people are likely to realize this, and foreign words in italics look exceptionally sophisticated.
 

SPOKEN: "This work makes good use of the pluperfect."

WRITTEN: Note: You would be well advised to pursue further reliance on the pluperfect, and in the future I will be charging you forty dollars per hour.


 

The Serial Comma
If you want to cause strife at a rival publication, sneak up to the doorway of its editing pool or office and yell out, "Serial comma!" 
     This is the editing equivalent of walking into a joint meeting of the American Feminist Association and the American Southern Evangelist Society and yelling, "Roe versus Wade!"
     In either case, it would be prudent to escape hastily afterward.
     The history of the serial comma is this: In the early part of the twentieth century, there was a series of mysterious and grisly murders around the United States. All of the victims were prominent American journalists, and they

all . . . well, it was just too gruesome to write about. 

     Hanged by a typewriter ribbon, run through the press, wrapped in rolls of newsprint . . . it was all too horrible to imagine.

     Anyway, the New York City police finally caught the murderer as he was prowling the offices of the New York Dates late one night, sniffing typewriters, wrapping himself in typewriter ribbons, and giggling wildly. The murderer was one Quincy Fester Hollingsworth, a native of Boise, Idaho.
     After hours of interrogation under questionable conditions—the police were said to have taunted the suspect with stamp-pad ink—Hollingsworth confessed to a total of twenty-six murders in fourteen states. 
     What was the motive for these grisly murders? As psychiatrists later learned, it was an omitted comma in a newspaper article.
     The article, part of a series entitled "Amazing People" in the daily newspaper the Idaho Statesperson, began, "In bringing you more interesting facts from wildly different people for next week's column, our reporter interviewed Quincy Fester Hollingsworth, a Satanist and a cross-dresser. Be sure to catch our series next week." 
     Unfortunately for Hollingsworth, Boise in the 1920s was not the cultural and entertainment capital of the Untied States, and everybody, and I mean everybody, spent their Sunday afternoons reading things like the series "Amazing People." And everybody read about the upcoming interview, and, of course, learned that Quincy Fester Hollingsworth was a Satanic transvestite. 
     In reality, the reporter had interviewed not one wildly different person, but three, one of whom was wildly different because he was a Satin worshiper, one of whom was wildly different because he preferred silk nightgowns to jeans and a T-shirt, and one of whom was wildly different because he had a rather peculiar name. (In Boise of the 1920s, one often had to stretch the definition of different to interview three wildly different people in one week.)
     Again unfortunately for Hollingsworth, no one would learn this until the following Sunday, but by then, it would be too late.
     During the week that followed the ill-edited article, Hollingsworth was supposed to get a promotion, get married, and be awarded a membership to an exclusive local country club. However, on seeing the article, his fiancée broke off their marriage plans, his boss fired him, and the country club gave the open membership slot to a door-to-door storm-drain salesman.
     In addition, Hollingsworth was evicted from his apartment, spurned by his friends, excommunicated from his church (especially brutal considering he was a Unitarian), replaced on his bowling team, eighty-sixed at his local speakeasy, beat up by local thugs, expelled from the Sons and Daughters of the Potato Pioneers, refused service in restaurants, refused credit at his neighborhood grocer, offered credit at a nearby women's fashion boutique, and proposed to by a neighbor named Herbert.
     When the actual interview was published that next Sunday, all these people who had spurned Hollingsworth had a very good laugh. However, Hollingsworth had already gone berserk, and was already stalking the Boise journalist who had written the offending article.
     And for the next six months, journalists throughout the land lived in terror, as one by one, anti-serial comma advocates turned up disfigured, dismembered, disemboweled, disjointed, displaced, disturbed, disintegrated, dislodged, disordered, and generally disgusted, disenchanted, and disgruntled (quite an unsung prefix, dis- is).
     In reporting the series of murders, newspapers around the country took to calling them the "serial murders" and Hollingsworth the "serial murderer."
     When he was caught and the press learned of the motive behind the killings—a missing comma—they began referring to the missing comma as "the serial comma." Thus did the comma get its name. 
     And to this day, debate over whether or not to use this comma continues. There is probably no other Quincy Fester Hollingsworth walking around out there, but there are, no doubt, others who have been harmed by the omission of such a comma, and who are lurking in the shadows outside of newspaper buildings, and waiting . . . 
     RMS does not suggest, however, that those who are opposed to the serial comma should weaken under such threat and drop their opposition to the controversial mark. 
     As for those of us here at Ralph's, we certainly would never break under any pressure other than that from the search for clarity, quality editing . . ., and of course security. 


 

Whom
The who-whom question (or is it whom-who?) is possibly the most brilliant idea copy editors, grammarians, and English teachers have ever promoted. It has done more to elevate them in social and economic status, toward that of the doctor, the lawyer, and the accountant, than anything since the dangling participle. 
     The brilliance appears right at the start: Any dictionary or grammar and usage book that approaches the subject will begin with something along these lines: "The distinction between who and whom is actually quite simple." It will then drone and dribble on about objective and subjective cases smeared with nominative overtones and generally end on a note to the effect that even the best of writers cannot get their whos and whoms right all the time—leaving only one logical solution, that of sending the work to a professional copy editor. 
     The fact is, the majority of people get confused the moment they begin thinking about the distinction, an enigma that stumped even Albert Einstein:

Einstein: "E equals MC squared, who . . . or is it whom . . .

The world never did learn the second half of his famous equation. It is said that, being stumped over the choice of pronouns, he became depressed, left the room, and spent the rest of the day trying to disprove quantum physics. 
     But of course, it is so elementary a rule—one mastered by small schoolchildren in England, or so we are told—that no self-respecting editor would ever let on that he or she was also confused. It is far better just to raise an eyebrow, smile knowingly, and say, "Tsk, tsk!"
     Meanwhile, doctors, lawyers, and accountants continue to rip their hair out as they try to decide which pronoun to use, their countless years of schooling and student-loan debt offering no help whatsoever.
     The question, of course, goes all the way back to Shakespeare, with the Bard's famous quote:

For whom the bell tolls . . .

And to help perpetuate the whom-who distinction (and in the process elevate editors in social status) Ralph's Manual of Style offers the following rules for the use of who and whom.
     First, randomly replace approximately 40 percent of all instances of who with whom. Try to make most of the replacements in the middle of declarative sentences and at the beginning of interrogative sentences. And try not to let anyone see you doing it. 
     Second, randomly replace around 10 percent of all whoever's with whomever's. If asked what the rule behind this is, reply: "Whomever would ask such a question is not for whom to argue." If you receive a blank stare from this, repeat the rule, this time in Latin, and then inform the person that any further explanation will have to go on your bill.
     For further assistance, RMS has added the following etymology of who and whom.

 

The Etymology of Whom
According to the famous legend, it so happened that the Angles said who and the Saxons said whom. When the Angles landed on the southeastern shores of Britain to "colonize" (loot, pillage, etc.) the wild land, another invading army (the Saxons) was the last thing they expected to find. It complicated things to no end. 
     The massive Angle army, having assembled on one end of the beach, and the massive Saxon army, having assembled on the other, slowly approached each other for their historic meeting.
     When the two armies were no more than fifteen yards apart, they stopped and stared at each other meanly—tensions high, teeth gritted. The Angles glared at the Saxons, fingering their swords. The Saxons glared at the Angles, fingering their axes. 
     The Angle leader stepped forward and demanded: "Who, may I ask, are you?"
     To this, the Saxons fell to the ground en mass, laughing so hard that their sides hurt. After they had collected themselves and stood, they smiled knowingly and looked down their noses at their Angle foes and replied stuffily, "Whom!"
     This of course resulted in the Slaughter of Wessex, in which 80 percent of the Saxon invaders were wiped out, their grammarians among them.
 

As for the origin of the who-whom distinction in English, scholars believe that its roots are in the ancient proto-Indo-European tongue, which one night was burned by a hot chicken leg at a barbecue and, injured, started getting in the speaker's way, forcing her to close her lips some of the time when she made the ooo sound, thus creating the word whom from who.
     Her ancient Indo-European friends and colleagues took this as an omen and made her their priestess, and soon an entire religion evolved around the two words. (The ancient Indo-Europeans were not terribly bright.) In time, they wrote a detailed philosophy based on the pair of words. (The Chinese would rewrite this under the name of yin and yang.
     One day, however, a terrible calamity befell the ancient Indo-Europeans, and they packed their bags and went their separate directions. The who-whom believers went to north-central Europe, but many of the groups assimilated with local populations or gave up their old religions to worship trees, which required no pronouns whatsoever. 
     Before long, only one people who still followed the old religion was left: the Saxons. In the Early Middle Ages, as Christianity began to spread out across the continent, the who-whom believers were forced to flee in order to practice their religion freely. Since Massachusetts had not yet been discovered, they had to settle for Brighton.
     And on that very tragic Saturday morning on a beach in Wessex, the morning of the Slaughter of Wessex, the last of the grammarians who knew the ancient and mysterious distinction between who and whom—knowledge which, some said, could bring eternal life—died horrible deaths and took their secret with them to the grave.
     A few hours after the battle, the hungry and tired Angles and Saxons discovered Britain's wonderful pubs, and over pints and darts, they decided that their foes of the morning were not so bad after all. Later, when the pubs started closing down because of silly laws regulating drinking hours, the two groups found a common cause and joined forces to conquer much of island in little more than an evening.
     It was not until two nights later—when the new friends decided to create a new language in a single generation, one that would within a millennium go on to rule the world, or at least piss off the French—that the tragic loss of some very important grammar rules was discovered. (The decision to create a new language also set the stage for the Second Slaughter of Wessex, which began over the question of whether the new language would be called Anglo-Saxon or Saxo-Angle, but that is another story.)
     (A little-known third group, the Jutes, who also wanted in on the action, landed on the southern shores of Britain at about the same time. This group, however, being particularly "barbarian" [Neanderthal], thought the only difference between who and whom was how many pints you had drunk before attempting to pronounce something so difficult, and as a result, they were not even invited to the Second Slaughter of Wessex.)
     Despite the loss of the original grammatical and spiritual distinctions between the pronouns, they continued to cause problems. Frequently, when an Angle let out a who, some Saxon would inevitably lose control of his manners and blurt out whom, whom, whom!—but not be able to explain why.
     The corrected but furious Angle would then, typically, whip out his sword and slice the offending Saxon into bacon. In no time at all, the Saxon half of the population was becoming frighteningly small—or thin, which is to say, thinly sliced—and if this had continued, the new language might well have become known as Danish.
     Clearly, a solution was needed.
     And so it was, one morning, that the Angles' wisest man and the Saxons' wisest woman set out into the mountains leading three horses loaded with gin, to find some way to settle the question. Wise as they were, and noticing their different sexes and the load of gin, they put off the terrible problems before them and wasted two weeks on a bear rug in front of the fireplace, but two weeks later, hungover and tired of each other's breath (there was neither toothpaste nor mouthwash in those days), they began to seek a solution. 
     And what they found was indeed a Solomon solution. They decided that both words were proper and they relegated each to particular uses. They then sat down over shots of gin and, laughing hysterically, competed to see who could come up with the most ridiculous rules governing the use of the words.
     As they predicted, once the new grammar rules were introduced to the general population, all enthusiasm for whom was immediately lost, by Angle and Saxon alike. 
 

Interest in the word whom was not revived until the Norman Conquest, in the eleventh century, when the Anglo-Saxons began looking for ways to annoy the French-speaking Normans. 
     History records that over time, Britain's new rulers eventually assimilated and the ethnic distinction between Norman and Anglo-Saxon was largely lost. In actuality, most of the Normans returned to France within a decade because they could not get the hang of the local language, which caused people to laugh at them when they were trying to make friends in the inns and pubs. "Excuse I," a dim-witted Norman would say with a nasal french accent. "Hasn't me knoweth yous from some-where afore? Hey, you am a Libra, ain't you? Yous' place nor me's?" To this, the bar-full of Anglo-Saxons would begin wildly laughing and taunting the unsuspecting Norman, who had been as good as set up, because the Anglo-Saxons had developed many of these grammar rules (Subject-object case? . . . Pah-lease! What nonsense!) for the express purpose of making the Normans angry. 
     From that time forward, the distinction between who and whom was seen as the cornerstone of English grammar (who [whom?] says grammar can't have a conerstone?). It gained further distinction (pun or especially good word choice?) in modern times when it again became fashionable to use complicated grammar in English (even importing inappropriate bits from Latin), in order to piss off the French, who were demanding that their language be the international tongue. (The British were especially unhappy with this, since nonnative speakers of French had to burn their tongues on chicken bones to pronounce many of the words.)
     So the next time someone exclaims, "Who the hell are you?" smile knowingly at that person, look down your nose, and say, "Not who, you Neanderthal! It's as if!"
 

To be continued . . .

 

Copyright 2005, by Ralph.

 

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Topics

Affect, Effect

Alright All Right?

Anglo-Saxon vs. Latin

A While and Awhile and A-While

Between vs. Among

Compare with with Compare To

Copy and Replica

Copy and Replica

Due to, Owing to, and Because

Each Other and One Another

Like, Which You Are Likely Using Wrong

Pluperfect

The Serial Comma

Whom

The Etymology of Whom