Make Use of the Red Pen

We all have our pet peeves — in life, at work, and in language. Reading certain phrases just makes me want to shout expletives and flip off my computer screen. "Make use of" (hereafter MUO, so I don't have to keep reading it) is one of those phrases. Rrrrgh! I just HATE it. Why MUO something when you can just use it instead?

To my mind, MUO often leaves some ambiguity about exactly how you're supposed to use something. If you're shooting for ambiguity, then this usage is okay (though it can still rub me the wrong way). "If your husband talks in his sleep, make use of available pharmaceuticals." This sentence doesn't state which of the two, the husband or the wife, should take the "pharmaceuticals," or exactly what should be ingested — Valium for the wife? Cyanide pills for the husband? But then again, "use available pharmaceuticals" is nearly as ambiguous.

But that isn't usually how I find it. "MUO your office's recycling bins." is more like it. Luckily, as an editor, I can wield my mighty (virtual) red pen to obliterate two-thirds of that hated phrase.

(To be clear: There's nothing grammatically wrong with MUO. It's a matter of style. I imagine this is one of the phrases William Strunk had in mind when he warned against using passive voice in The Elements of Style.)

Corrected 9/4/08. I don't know what I was thinking. This isn't in the passive voice. Writing this in the passive voice would be much more horrible to my internal ear. Thanks, Bryn.

Today's Word: zugzwang

zugzwang: In chess, the point at which any move a player makes will damage his position is said to be "in zugzwang." It seems like this term ought to be used more often in international relations and government, though I doubt that even the best translators could come up with an Arabic translation on the fly. But you never know.

On Proper Pronunciation

After a garage sale that met with mediocre success a few weeks ago, I discovered a book that I had inherited (pre-mortem) from my now-ex-father-in-law . . . my father-out-law. It's called 20,000 Words Often Mispronounced," by WHP Phyfe, originally published in 1889, this one with a copyright date of 1937. As with many 19th-century books, this one has a verbose subtitle: "A Complete Handbook of Difficulties in English Pronunciation, Including an Unusually Large Number of Proper Names, Words and Phrases from Foreign Languages."

I'm sure Lynne Truss would be quick to point out that the inclusion of a comma after Words in the subtitle would make the meaning clearer. I, however, just wonder at what point the author's large list became "unusually large."

We read from the Preface to the New Edition that "there are a few changes from the former edition of '18,000 Words Often Mispronounce.'" (A few? I'm guessing there were at least 2,000 changes.) To continue:

These changes are prompted by the fact that the New Webster and the latest Standard dictionaries, in keeping with the pace of the constantly changing spoken tongue, have not only noted but have accepted and authorized recent popular variations in pronunciation; these variations have been added to and in many cases substituted for the old ones.

At least the compilers of this edition (Fred A. Sweet and Maud D. Williams) recognized that language changes, and accepted that fact. But they do seem to rely on that Dictionary = Language Bible mentality, as revealed by their choice of "authorization" of a variation.

The text proper begins with an explanation of the symbols and diacritics used to indicate pronunciations, divided into sections:

1. The Forty-Two Native or Common Elementary Sounds
2. The Eight Adopted or Naturalized Elementary Sounds
3. Compound or Diphthongal Sound

The symbology is pretty extensive, though probably no big deal for someone who has given any study to linguistics (which doesn't describe me). For example, on p. 258, we find the entry for diphthong:

dĭf'thŏng. Worcester and Stormonth say dĭp'thŏng. The Century gives it as an alternative pronunciation. See triphthong.

I don't want to go into a lot of specifics about pronunciations and what words are found in here (though I was surprised to see both Brobdingnagian and Houyhnhnm). What strikes me is the sheer gall and ego of an author to state that this is the proper pronunciation of a word. Alternative pronunciations are occasionally noted, but more often, the commonest mispronunciations are put down. To wit:

data. dā'tå, not dä'tå

That is, Star Trek NG had it right with Commander Data. The ä, in the pronunciation guide, is given as "the a in arm," which seems strange. The "a in at" is notated as ă, so I would expect "dă'tå" to appear as a pronunciation, either good or bad. But nope.

Has pronunciation changed that much?

There are plenty of surnames thrown in there, like Sousa (sōō'zå, not sōō'så) and Zaleszcyki (zä-lĕsh-chē'kĭ), as well as some words I've never heard before. I wonder how common words like notochord (nō'tō-kôrd) and enfilade (ĕn-fĭl-ād') were in the mid-to-late 19th century.

No Comment Necessary

If It Looks Like a Word, Smells Like a Word, and Quacks Like a Word...

Lexicographer (lexicographress? lexicographatrix?) Erin McKean has published an interesting article in The Boston Globe about what it really means to "be a word." Too often, people lump spelling, slang, and voice in with "grammar"; if they find a wordish collection of letters, a new slang term, or an odd voice that they don't like or understand, they denounce it as being ungrammatical, which is just plain wrong.

The world of words is much more wide open than grammar is. People rarely coin new punctuation (please don't send me your arguments for smileys as punctuation), or create a new part of speech (this sentence has a noun, a verb, and a predicate crickle), or cook up a new verb tense* (at least not successfully), but people create, rework, and repurpose new words all the time. That's one of the joys and beauties of the English language. 

Words are the paint; grammar is just the canvas. (And semicolons are the colors that you can never seem to mix right.)

So my thanks and congratulations to Erin McKean for her article. I hope she was paid well.

* Sometimes we could use a new verb tense, though. When the time machine is finally invented, we'll need a new tense for an action that was performed in a person's past but that doesn't actually occur until the future. I'm gonna go home and watch Back to the Future now. Great flick.

What do you call a group of editors?

Or, more specifically, a group of copy editors.

I asked this question at work and got the following possibilities:

• A stet of editors. (Okay, but it could also apply to a group of proofreaders.)
• A caret of editors.
• A query of copy editors. (I like this one best.)

Any more ideas?

What Does This Mean

Seen on a window sign at Taco Bell, in the small print at the bottom: "Made with natural fruit flavors." 

I would understand what "Made with natural fruit" means -- that there is real fruit in it. And perhaps that it was grown "naturally," and not, I don't know, cloned, or injected with a lot of growth hormones, or hatched from an eggplant. But the next sentence fragment on the sign reads, "Contains no fruit juice." So, unless it's made with dehydrated fruit, that's a no go.


Perhaps they're just trying to say that it tastes like real, natural fruit, and not like, oh, strawbananicot, or frankenberry, or dingleberry marmalade. But they don't say that it tastes like fruit. Only that it's made to taste like fruit. It may taste like rat piss, but they started with natural fruit flavors.


So what does "Made with natural fruit flavors" really mean? I guess what they're really trying to say is this: "Our fruit-flavored drink is fruit-flavored." 

A waste of ink, really.

Today's Word: lore

Just when you think you know what a word means . . .

lore: The space between a bird's eye and the upper edge of its bill or beak or between a fish's or snake's eye and its nostril.

I don't know why this particular area of an animal's face would need its own name, but there it is. It appears to have a completely different etymology than the other lore, knowledge of a particular, traditional area. It does make me wonder, though, if the famous loren ipsum actually has something to do the a deviated septum.

Today’s Word: quisquous

quisquous: Baffling or perplexing. To some the word might be self-referential. Think of the Scrabble points you could earn if you built this off of quo, is, or us (using, of course, a wildcard tile).

Overheard at a new Middle Eastern–Inuit fusion restaurant: "My, what quisquous couscous!"

Irony of the Week

What more could I add? Except, maybe, this: