“… when one of the levees breached.”

Common English Blunders, Passive Voice, Verbs

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.”

“Forth-Sixth Grade Curriculum”

Adjectives, Misspellings

My wife saw this title yesterday on a manual from ChildBuilders.

Problems:
1. The first adjective is misspelled.
2. The range is written incorrectly.
3. Everything before “Curriculum” should be hyphenated.

Explanation:
ChildBuilders is an admirable non-profit organization aimed at preventing mental-health problems in children.

So this title on the cover of a printed manual aimed at teachers and school administrators is especially embarrassing.

First, “Forth” (spelled without a “u”) should be “Fourth” (spelled with a “u”) — as in fourth grade.

Second, a range of ordinal numbers should be written with the preposition “to” in the middle — as in first to third or as in seventh to ninth.

Third, when a range is used to modify a noun (for example, “Grade”) that in turn modifies another noun (for example, “Curriculum”), everything before the final noun should be hyphenated.

The solution comes from these three corrections.

Solution:
“Fourth-to-Sixth-Grade Curriculum”

“Anecdote” vs. “Antidote”

Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Nouns, Versus

I sometimes hear people mispronounce one of these words as if it were equivalent to the other word.

Problem:
These two nouns are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The noun “anecdote” means a short account of an incident as an unpublished narrative.

The noun “antidote” means a medicine for counteracting a poison.

Those who confuse these two nouns probably are distracted by the fact that both nouns have “dote” — D-O-T-E — in them, the fact that both nouns start with A-N, and the fact that both nouns are eight letters long.

The noun “antidote” is constructed from the prefix “anti-“, which means against, and “dote”, whose origin essentially means given. In other words, the roots of “antidote” when assembled mean given against.

The noun “anecdote” is constructed from the prefix “an-“, which means not, and “ecdote”. The “ecdote” part of “anecdote” is a combination of “ec”, which means out, and “dote”, whose origin, as just noted, means given.

So the “ecdote” part of “anecdote” essentially means published. In other words, the roots of “anecdote” when assembled mean not published.

Solution:
Use “anecdote” when referring to a spoken story; use “antidote” when referring to a remedy for poison.