Kirk Mahoney . com

My wife saw this in an email message.

Problem:
The writer chose a longer adverb where the simpler one would suffice.

Explanation:
The adverb “firstly” means first.

Solution:
“There were first the Amerindian people.”

I was thinking about this over the last few days, so I had to review a dictionary for the definitions of the word “one”.

A definition of “one” as a pronoun is an indefinite person of a kind understood by the context.

British English says that the pronoun “one” can replace the singular pronoun “I”, but American English extends this to replacing the singular pronoun “you” as well as the singular pronouns “he”, “she”, or “it”.

For example:

1. “Mum was acting strangely, and one should have noticed it.” can mean “Mum was acting strangely, and I should have noticed it.”
2. “It was as delicious as one would expect.” can mean “It was as delicious as you would expect.”
3. “After the husband and wife had driven the Ferrari, each said that it was as fast as one could desire.” can mean “After the husband and wife had driven the Ferrari, each said that it was as fast as he or she could desire.”

There you have it — a pronoun that can be a first-person pronoun, a second-person pronoun, or a third-person pronoun. No wonder English can be so difficult to learn as a second language!

I saw this yesterday at a website for a company named Bullion Coatings.

Problem:
“Masonary” — with two instances of the letter A — is a misspelling.

Explanation:
The website referred to “Masonary Effects”.

The intent of this phrase was to say that the company could apply an acrylic coating to concrete to create stonework-like effects, which gives us the solution — “masonry” — without the second instance of the letter A.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “masonry” — 18,000,000 matches
• “masonary” — 420,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 42.9:1, which is good, but the fact that the Web contains almost 500 thousand instances of “masonary” is bit disappointing.

Solution:
“Masonry”

Google, or any other search engine for the Web, can be a tool for examining English usage on the Web.

For example, one can use Google to get the number of Web pages containing a correctly spelled word vs. the number of Web pages containing one or more misspelled forms of that word.

One can also look for bad grammar, bad punctuation, and so on.

Several of my blog posts have included my results of these kinds of searches at Google.

To find these blog posts, simply go to the blog archives, enter “Google” (without the quotation marks) in the search box, and click the [Search] button.

However, don’t expect these Google-based comparisons of correct versus incorrect usage to remain static. As usage changes, so will the Google results.

I heard this a few times on a conference call recently.

Problem:
I do not know why two “net” adjectives are needed, and I suspect that many other people don’t know, either.

Explanation:
The speaker was explaining the effect of an action.

It has become popular in American English to say “net effect” instead of just “effect”.

I understand modifying the noun “effect” with the adjective “net”; it means something like final result.

I do not understand modifying the phrase “net effect” with yet another instance of the adjective “net”.

Given this lack of understanding — and I’m sure that I am not the only one — it doesn’t make sense to have two instances of the adjective “net” in a row, unless one is absolutely certain that everyone in the audience understands that distinction.

Solution:
“… net effect …”

I heard this at Blockbuster Video over the weekend.

Problem:
The phrase “on next Sunday” did not sound right.

Explanation:
My wife and I were renting a DVD at a local Blockbuster Video store last Saturday evening.

Blockbuster has a seven-day return policy.

I was expecting the Blockbuster sales clerk to say one of the following:

• “The DVD is due on Sunday, June 29.”
• “The DVD is due next Sunday.”

So when I heard her say, “The DVD is due on next Sunday,” I was taken aback and began to wonder why “on next Sunday” was incorrect.

Here is what I realized:

• The clerk wanted to say when the DVD was due.
• Saying when is equivalent to modifying the verb “due” with an adverb or adverbial phrase.
• “Sunday” is a noun.
• One can combine the preposition “on” with the noun “Sunday” to get an adverbial phrase that says when.
• The phrase “next Sunday” is already an adverbial phrase because it says when.
• Therefore, it is a mistake to combine the preposition “on” with the adverbial phrase “next Sunday” in an attempt to get an adverbial phrase.

Solution:
“The DVD is due next Sunday.”

I saw the news yesterday that comedian George Carlin died Sunday evening.

Carlin’s death made me question why he was and is one of my all-time favorite comedians.

The answer is the communication lessons that I learned from Carlin.

Lesson Number 1: Be willing to question everything, especially when it comes to language.

Carlin’s legendary ability to play with the English language was, and continues to be, an inspiration to me.

For example, one of his popular jokes was: Why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?

The more easily that one can question this or that about language, the better that one becomes at communication, in my opinion.

Lesson Number 2: Profanity is punctuation only when used in moderation.

Carlin was famous for “the seven words” that still cannot be said today on broadcast television.

But, if you looked more deeply into it, you know that Carlin saw profanity as punctuation for expressing one’s passion about something.

Those comedians who take profanity overboard in their acts don’t seem to understand this lesson.

Excessive profanity in a comedian’s performance is analogous to ending sentences with lots of exclamation marks!!!!!

In other words, profanity used excessively distracts from one’s message, and profanity tends to get duller with overuse.

Lesson Number 3: One can find humor in anything.

This has to be one of the best lessons for a happy life.

For helping one to find humor in anything, I highly recommend George Carlin’s book Brain Droppings.

Carlin excelled at turning language inside out, upside down, and backward. Finding humor in anything requires that ability.

So my prescription for a happy life would include honing one’s ability to play with language.

I heard this the other day, and I hear this type of construction a lot.

Problem:
The word “couple” is not an adjective.

Explanation:
The word “couple” is a noun, not an adjective.

In particular, “couple” is a group noun, just as “flock” and “gaggle” and “colony” are group nouns.

Just as you should not say “a gaggle geese”, you should not say “a couple callers”.

The solution is illustrated in these examples:

• “a gaggle of geese”;
• “a flock of seagulls”;
• “a colony of ants”.

That is, the solution requires the preposition “of” between the group noun and what the group noun is collecting, if you will.

I believe that the dropping of the preposition “of” in “a couple callers” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to not say or write the preposition “of” than to include it.

Solution:
“… a couple of callers …”

I heard this on Fox News Channel a couple of days ago.

Problem:
The preposition “out” is unnecessary here.

Explanation:
I frequently see and hear “separate out” in sentences such as these three:

• “This will separate out the men from the boys.”
• “Can you you separate out the results from the two groups?”
• “Economists can separate out the values of buildings.”

Here is yet another perfectly understandable verb — “separate” — that has become seen by many speakers and writers of American English as requiring the preposition “out” after it. It doesn’t!

Look at the same three example sentences with “out” removed:

• “This will separate the men from the boys.”
• “Can you you separate the results from the two groups?”
• “Economists can separate the values of buildings.”

We do not lose any clarity by removing “out” from each of the original sentences, Instead, we gain clarity because the listeners or readers are not wondering why “out” was added.

Solution:
“… separate [something] …”

I heard this on Fox News Channel yesterday.

Problem:
The verb “breach” requires an object.

Explanation:
The word “breach” — spelled with an E and an A — is both a noun and a verb.

Its meaning as a verb is to make an opening in.

In other words, the verb “breach” is a transitive verb — a verb that takes a direct object.

Examples of transitive verbs include “open” and “hit”.

The expression that I heard on television yesterday used “breached” as if it were an intransitive verb — a verb that does not require or cannot take a direct object.

Examples of intransitive verbs include “sleep” and “rain”.

“Breach” is a transitive verb. “The water breached the levee.” is a grammatically correct example.

I believe that the grammatically incorrect expression “… when one of the levees breached” comes from speakers who hear the grammatically correct, passive-voice expression “… when one of the levees was breached” but do not notice the “was” in such a passive-voice expression.

As a result, these speakers — and writers — drop the “was” and get an active-voice but grammatically incorrect expression.

Solution:
“… when one of the levees was breached.”