Author: Kirk

“… good number to reach you back at?”

Prepositions

I heard this yesterday from a customer-service agent.

Problems:
1. The question ended on a preposition.
2. The word “back” is a poor substitute for what the agent should have said.

Explanation:
The full question was “Is this a good number to reach you back at?”

The agent wanted to confirm that the telephone number that she had would be a valid number to call in the event of getting disconnected during the current call.

Removing the preposition “at” from the end of the question requires rewording “to reach you … at?” as “at which to reach you …?”; that solves the first problem.

The second problem comes from laziness on the part of the agent. This is obvious when one realizes that “back” was a substitute for “in the event that we get disconnected”. This gives us the solution to the second problem.

Solution:
“… good number at which to reach you in the event that we get disconnected?”

“… as seemless as possible.”

Adjectives, Misspellings

I saw this in an email message from a new supervisor of a department of employees.

Problem:
The word “seemless” is nonsensical.

Explanation:
The supervisor sent a “Good Morning!” email message to the employees in an existing department to which he had just been assigned.

He was trying to tell them that the transition from the previous supervisor to him would be smooth — that effectively it would have no seams.

That gives us the solution.

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

  • “seamless” — 33,700,000 matches
  • “seemless” — 771,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors favor “seamless” over “seemless” by a ratio of 43.7:1 — good, but not great, especially given the nearly one million matches for the misspelled word.

Solution:
“… as seamless as possible.”

“Congradulations!”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Imperatives

My wife saw this on a banner in a grocery store years ago, and I have seen this increasingly often over the years.

Problem:
There is no such (properly spelled) word.

Explanation:
When my wife told a manager in the grocery store that the word on the banner was misspelled and even showed him where it was misspelled, the manager insisted, “No, it isn’t!”

Also, the manager did not suggest to my wife that it was a play on words — as in “ConGRADulations, GRADUATES!”

Instead, the manager argued that this was a properly spelled word.

I believe that spelling “congratulations” as “congradulations” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

Because it’s simpler to say the ‘d’ in “congradulations” than to say the first ‘t’ in “congratulations”, many American English speakers mispronounce and hear it this way and subsequently believe that the ‘d’ belongs where the ‘t’ should go.

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

  • “congratulations” — 74,300,000 matches
  • “congradulations” — 1,360,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors favor “congratulations” over “congradulations” by a ratio of 54.6:1 — good, but not great, especially given the more than one million matches for the misspelled word, and even assuming that some of the instances of “congradulations” were a play on words.

Solution:
“Congratulations!”