Kirk Mahoney . com

A reader named Warren emailed the following message to me recently: “I’m still a bit confused between to go and to come. U said it’s all about movement to or away from where the speaker or hearer is, my question is how do you define who the speaker is? is that the one that is talking? What about the following example: the doctor asked me to stop COMING back. In this case who’s the speaker? the doctor or the one who is talking?”

Warren, those are excellent questions. The best answers come from rewriting your example in three different ways.

1. “The doctor told me to stop COMING back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(a) “The doctor told Ms. Jones to stop coming back to him.”

Statement (a) puts you as the listener/reader in the location of the doctor. From the perspective of the doctor, Ms. Jones is COMING back to him.

2. “The doctor told me to stop GOING back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(b) “The doctor told Ms. Jones to stop going back to him.”

Statement (b) puts you as the listener/reader in a location OTHER THAN the location of the doctor. From the perspective of someone who is NOT at the doctor’s office, Ms. Jones is GOING back to him.

So #1 and #2 are each correct, but you have to decide as the speaker/writer whether you want to put the listener/reader at the location of the doctor (#1) or at your non-doctor’s-office location (#2).

In other words, you have to decide whether you want to focus the “told me”

• on the act of the doctor (#1)
   
  -OR-
• on what the doctor is requesting from your perspective/location (#2).

But let’s change your original sentence (#1) slightly:

3. “The doctor told me that I should stop ____ back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(c) “The doctor told Ms. Jones that she should stop ___ back to him.”

Statement (c) is equivalent to “The doctor told Ms. Jones that ‘X’.”, where ‘X’ is a complete sentence on its own.

For example, ‘X’ could be “The sky is blue.” — giving us “The doctor told Ms. Jones that the sky is blue.”.

So what should we put in the “___” in #3?

Sentence #3 becomes “The doctor told me that ‘X’.”, where X = “I should stop ___ back to him.”.

Try replacing “___” in this X with “GOING” and with “COMING” to see which one is correct:

(d) “I should stop GOING back to him.”
(e) “I should stop COMING back to him.”

Given that you (the “I” in (d)) are NOT where he (the “him” in (d)) is, you have to GO back to him.

In other words, you, where you are, cannot COME back to him.

So the correct completion of statement #3 is always “The doctor told me that I should stop GOING back to him.”

I heard this last week on a conference call.

Problem:
The speaker pluralized the wrong word.

Explanation:
Someone made a comment during a conference call.

The call’s facilitator responded to the comment by saying (quote) “I have two train of thoughts on that.” (unquote).

Given that “two” modifies “train” and not “thought”, the word “train” — not the word “thought” — should have been pluralized.

This type of mistake is a common English blunder in spoken American English because avoiding it requires one to think quickly beyond the common pattern of putting the pluralizing S or E-S at the very end of a concept, which in this case is (quote) “train of thought” (unquote).

Another example of this type of mistake is pluralizing (quote) “attorney general” (unquote) by saying the incorrect phrase (quote) “attorney generals” (unquote) instead of the correct phrase (quote) “attorneys general” (unquote).

Solution:
“I have two trains of thought on that.”

I saw this last Sunday on a sign.

Problem:
A possessive apostrophe is missing.

Explanation:
I saw a magnetic sign attached to a pickup truck last Sunday.

The sign’s title was (quote) “Mobile Mikes Tile Service” (unquote), with no apostrophe anywhere, and there was contact and other information beneath the title.

Nothing on the sign implied that there was more than one person named Mike, so I assume that there is just one “Mike” who runs the business.

Oddly, although many sign makers make the mistake of inserting an apostrophe where it does not belong, this sign’s maker omitted an apostrophe where it did belong.

Solution:
“Mobile Mike’s Tile Service”

I heard this in a preview for a TV program that aired last night.

Problem:
The verb does not match the subject.

Explanation:
I was watching a preview for an upcoming episode of the “Hell’s Kitchen” television program when I heard chef Gordon Ramsay say (quote) “One of you are going home.” (unquote).

I believe that Ramsay succumbed to the common English blunder of getting distracted by the pronoun “you” right before saying a form of the verb “be”.

No matter whether the pronoun “you” is being used in its singular form or its plural form, (quote) “You are going home.” (unquote) is correct.

But “you” is not the subject of the sentence.

Instead, the subject of the sentence is the word “One”, which acts in (quote) “One of you” (unquote) as a singular noun that means a single person.

The solution comes from recognizing that singular nouns require the “is” form of the verb “be”.

Solution:
“One of you is going home.”

I saw this a week ago on a pickup truck.

Problem:
A possessive apostrophe appeared where it should not.

Explanation:
(Quote) “Drywall Finisher’s” (unquote), with an apostrophe before the letter “s”, was the title on a magnetic sign attached to the side of a pickup truck that I saw last week.

The contractor’s telephone number and some other information appeared beneath the title.

Because the APOSTROPHE-S made the word “Finisher” a possessive, I had to wonder what was being possessed.

But I was left hanging.

The apostrophe in “Finisher’s” should not have been there.

The sign maker was trying to pluralize the noun “Finisher”.

He or she instead made the sign maker’s common blunder of inserting a possessive apostrophe when pluralizing a noun.

Maybe sign makers just love to create apostrophes?

Solution:
“Drywall Finishers”

I wrote a blog post in November 2007 about “Nauseous” vs. “Nauseated”.

I recently heard an actress on a TV drama say that she felt nauseous when she should have said that she felt nauseated.

She made me think again about the two words.

And I realized something: Saying “nauseous” when one should say “nauseated” instead is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

Many Americans say “nauseous” as if it had only two syllables, as in NAW-SHUHS, instead of pronouncing all three syllables, as in NAW-ZEE-UHS.

Either way, it is simpler to say the two- or three-syllable “nauseous” than it is to say the four-syllable “nauseated”.

I overheard a conference call in which someone said this a few days ago.

Problem:
The speaker used the wrong word for the verb after “We need to” in this statement.

Explanation:
The speaker who said (quote) “We need to error on the safe side.” (unquote) was discussing a company policy with others on the conference call.

The word “error” is a noun and not a verb.

What the speaker should have used is the word “err”, which looks like “error” but is a verb that means to be mistaken or incorrect.

Perhaps the speaker simply mispronounced “err” (the verb) as “error” (the noun).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “err on the safe side” — 23,600 matches
• “error on the safe side” — 1,260 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used “err on the safe side” versus “error on the safe side” by a ratio of 18.7-to-1, which is good by not great.

Solution:
“We need to err on the side of caution.”

I got an interesting email message last Monday from one of your fellow readers of this blog.

I will refer to her simply as “Paula” because I don’t have permission to use her surname.

Paula had read “Alumnus” vs. “Alumna” vs. “Alumni” vs. “Alumnae”.

She also had seen a link named “Miss ND Alumni” at the top of the Miss North Dakota website.

Paula told me (quote) “I had just dashed off a note to the webmaster of the Miss North Dakota pageant where the menu item is Miss ND Alumni, and I listed the masculine and feminine singular and plural forms of Alumnus.” (unquote).

She thanked me for (quote) “defending correct English usage” (unquote).

Thank you, Paula, for defending correct English usage, too!

And, in case my statement in the earlier post was unclear, let me stress here that it is correct to use the masculine plural form when referring to a group of males and females.

In contrast, because the Miss North Dakota contest is only for women, “Miss ND Alumnae” — not “Miss ND Alumni” — is the correct name for the link on the Miss North Dakota website.

I have lost track of how many times I have heard this.

Problem:
The gender of the noun does not match the gender of the pronoun.

Explanation:
The noun “bimbo” comes from Italian and refers in Italian to a male child, male infant, or male baby.

As Dictionary.com explains, one of the definitions of “bimbo” in American English is (quote) “an attractive but stupid young woman, esp. one with loose morals.” (unquote).

I do not know how a masculine Italian noun became a feminine English noun that is disparaging and offensive but makes no comment on the target’s sexuality.

But, ever since I learned enough Italian to appreciate the gender pattern in masculine and feminine Italian nouns, whether singular or plural, I have been bothered by how ignorant (quote) “She is a bimbo.” (unquote) sounds.

The feminine form of “bimbo” is “bimba”, which gives us the solution.

Solution:
“She is a bimba.”

I heard this four days ago on a History Channel television program.

Problem:
I frequently hear “bring” when the speaker means “take” instead.

Explanation:
I was watching a History Channel program when I heard (quote) “Disasters … often bring people closer to God.” (unquote).

The verb “bring” in the common expression “bring people closer to God” finally caught my ear — as wrong!

You see, one should use “bring” when one is telling the listener to transport something to a location where one currently resides, or when the subject of the sentence is telling another party in the sentence to transport something to the subject’s location.

“Bring” Examples:

1. Please bring the package to me.
2. Jim, who lives in Denver, asked Mary to bring the package to him from his friend in London.

In contrast, one should use “take” when one is telling the listener to transport something to a location other than where one currently resides, or when the subject of the sentence is telling another party in the sentence to transport something to a location other than the subject’s location.

“Take” Examples:

1. Please take this package to my friend in London.
2. Jim, who today is in Houston on business, asked Mary to take the package to his friend in London.

So, if someone says (quote) “X brings Y closer to God.” (unquote), then “X” currently resides with God and is drawing or attracting “Y” to the location shared by “X” and God.

In contrast, if someone says (quote) “X takes Y closer to God.” (unquote), then the current location of “X” is different than the current location of God, and “X” is transporting “Y” to God’s location.

Some — such as insurance-company policy writers! — might argue that disasters reside exactly where God resides, in which case “bring” is the correct verb.

However, I strongly suspect that most speakers of (quote) “Disasters … often bring people closer to God.” (unquote) either assume that God resides somewhere other than where disasters reside or give no thought to it.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following expressions (with the quotation marks) and got the indicated numbers of matches:

• “bring people closer to God” — about 11,600 matches
• “take people closer to God” — exactly 6 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the incorrect vs. correct expression by a ratio of 1933-to-1, which is dreadful on a Biblical scale.

Solution:
“Disasters … often take people closer to God.”