Wordsplash!

Order in the Court!

Word order in sentences is more important than a lot of people realize. Take a look at the headline highlighted in red below, which appears this morning on cnn.com:

When I first read the headline, I seriously thought the teens were engaging in prostitution in the courtroom. But the judge and jury are safe. The news article explains the teens were in court, accused of prostitution elsewhere. 

A simple shuffling of the words produces a more accurate headline:
Teens accused in court of prostitution.

Life in a Boneless Country

I wrote a couple of days ago about my annoyance with the commonly abused phrase, "each and every." If that expression doesn't make you scrunch your eyebrows with disdain, here's a more egregious use of the word, "each," that should. I spotted the following sign a couple of years ago during an under-cover grammar investigation at a grocery store in Tulsa, Oklahoma:

Okay, I'm not even going to explain why "by the each" is wrong, nor am I going to go off on a rant right now about spell-checking before you print a sign that thousands of customers are going to see.

What's troubling me about this sign is a lack of commas and/or hyphens. Without them, one wonders: What exactly are "boneless country style ribs?" Are they (a) country-style ribs without bones, or (b) ribs from a boneless country?

But if you think about it, the answer is clear. They must be ribs from a boneless country. There's no such thing as a "boneless rib." A rib is a type of bone.

Political Mouthwash

It's 2008, and we all know what that means. It means we have an exciting year ahead of political rhetoric, mud slinging, and CNN using their highly annoying slogan, "the best political team on television" way too many times.

Seriously, CNN, have you ever heard the advice they give students in Journalism 101: "Show, don't tell?" How about if you spend more air time showing us your self-proclaimed superiority, and less time telling us about it?

But I digress.

I'm not going to get political on this blog, unless language or writing-related topics creep into politics. But as I sit here watching the New Hampshire primary results on TV, as I sit here watching Senator John McCain give his victory speech for the Republican race, I am cringing.

I am cringing because for the last eight years, we have endured a president who repeatedly says the word, "nucular." I'm looking forward to a president who knows how to pronounce stuff. Over and over and over in the last 10 minutes, I have heard Senator McCain refer to "Warshington," and it's making me want to warsh his mouth out with soap.

Each and Every Redundancy

Here's another common phrase that makes me squirm: "each and every." As in, "I love each and every one of my toenails."

People use that phrase all the time ("each and every," not the toenails part), and I'm thinking, isn't that redundant?

Dictionary.com defines each this way: "Every one of two or more considered individually or one by one."

They define every like this: "Being one of a group or series taken collectively; each."

That is not to suggest the two words are identical. The BBC, on its Learning English website, explains the difference between the two words:

" Each indicates two or more objects or people and every indicates three or more. Each can also be used as a pronoun, but every cannot be."

Okay, so there are subtle differences, but using them together is almost always redundant. There's no difference between "I love each one of my toenails," and "I love every one of my toenails." (And to say, "I love each and every one of my toenails," is just plain creepy... but that's beside the point.)

So which is better -- "each" or "every?" I say "each." Why? Fewer words mean tighter writing. With "each," we can use one less word. You can say, "I love each of my toenails," but you can't say, "I love every of my toenails."

[Tune in Wednesday morning for the most ridiculous use ever of the word, "each."]

Tase the Cliches, Bro!

Lake Superior State University in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, has just published its annual list of words and phrases that should be banished from English because they are overused and irritating .

The list includes cliches such as "perfect storm," "It is what it is," "post-9/11," and "Don't tase me, bro."

Seattle's NPR affiliate, KUOW, used the list as a launch pad for yesterday's episode of their daily call-in program, "The Conversation." Host Ross Reynolds  invited listeners to share their least favorite expressions, as well as recent additions to their vocabulary. You can listen to the program or download the podcast on the KUOW website.