Maybe it's Time to Invest in Some Apostrophes

I seem to have developed an inexplicable fetish for the TV show Dragon's Den--you know, the one where wannabe or fledgling entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of venture capitalists who tell them that their valuations are "insane." Now that repeats are airing daily and we've got this space-age PVR recording device, it's all too easy to score along at home while watching pitches into the wee hours.

Last night I screened a couple more eps, including one that featured a "mom-preneur" who designs punk-themed clothes for toddlers, such as this t-shirt:

Punk may not be dead, but her pitch was. The Dragons withdrew their offer of one million dollars for 10% of the company when they realized she had left out the apostrophe in what is clearly supposed to be a contraction of "Punk is." Okay, not really--they just told her they didn't see the big-time potential. But if they had taken her to task on the missing punctuation, it might have served as a warning to future businesspeople who take the language into their own hands.

Like this woman in the following episode, who was trying to get funding for her line of plus-sized clothes:

There is no such word as womens. When something is attached to a confederacy of women--women's rights, women's fashions, women's unseemly tendency to gush and swoon over the "dreaminess" of Denzel Washington while their squat, pale husbands are sitting right there--the word required is the possessive, and it is the apostrophe that is essential.

Hitting Where it Hurts

Headline on an AP wire story today:

GM Cuts Unnecessary Spending After Japan Disaster

When the crisis is over they will resume regular levels of unnecessary spending.

Playing in the Margins

In a future (and a present) where books are delivered by Kindle and iPad, what is to become of those manic scribblers who like to graffiti the pages of their books with marginalia? The gabfesters at Slate podcasted about this very topic awhile back, and today I see this Atlantic piece about the (possible) demise of obsessive literary back-chat. The blogster in question, Kevin Charles Redmon (and since when do you need three names to write a blog post?), spends some time examining the merits of --and the vituperative scorn heaped upon--the Kindle's collective annotating feature, "popular highlights."

And if you don't trust the wiki of would-be English lit professors—191 of who, I see, have highlighted Franzen's thesis in Freedom, "The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage"—well, turn the feature off. 

There's that pesky who/whom problem again. This seems like a case of hyper-correction, with the author figuring that since the stripped-down sentence would read "professors who have highlighted Franzen's thesis" he is probably on solid ground to stay with the subjective who. But if we use the handy substitution test and try other subjective/objective pairings, the miscue surfaces like a tell-tale blue line on a home pregnancy test pee-stick. For although it's fine to write, "they have highlighted Franzen's thesis," you would never say "191 of they have highlighted Franzen's thesis"--unless of course you suffered from a debilitating neurological impairment. We know without a doubt that it should be the objective them--our ears tell us so. The objective case it is, then, which means whom is the pronoun of choice.

That's Just Sic

Timothy Noah is having a conniption today on Slate ---something about how the internet-phone pioneers at Skype are holding certain clients' voice mails hostage unless they pony up some coin. He quotes a disgruntled user (and an amusingly semi-literate response to the disgruntled user) before paraphrasing a conversation he had with a Skype spokeshole: 

When I spoke with O'Shaughnessy today he said that neither he, nor a Skype customer-service expert he contacted in London, nor a Skype product manager he contacted in London, had ever heard of this problem before, which makes the Skype email's pledge that "we will definitely look in to [sic.] this" ring a bit hollow. 

Noah is using the parenthetical "[sic.]" to point out, correctly, that "in to" should read "into." But he errs in throwing a period in before that closing bracket. To quote the infallible Wikipedia:

The adverb sic—meaning "intentionally so written"—first appeared in English circa 1856. It is derived from the Latin adverb sīc, which contains a long vowel and means "so," "thus," "as such," or "in such a manner."

and also...

Because sic is not an abbreviation, it is unnecessary to include a period inside the brackets after the word sic.

A Prepositionalist Incongruousness

If you read only one print excerpt of a recap of a series of blog posts on the discussions of a book club about the novel The Sentimentalists, it should be today's piece in The Vancouver Sun. In it you will find one of the panelists quoting a passage from the book that includes this sentence:

When I questioned Parada about the incongruencies between my father's stories and the documents to which I was later able to compare them to, he had little to offer by way of explanation.

You won't find the word incongruency in any major dictionary (at least I didn't) but a cursory Googling and a quick visit to Wordnik shows that it's getting a lot of lexicographical traction. I like it. In the example above, the word suggests that the differences between the father's stories and the documents are not just inconsistent, but oddly so. So rather than "incongruent inconsistencies" we get "incongruencies." Cool.

Not so cool, however, is the doubling down on prepositions in the phrase "to which I was later able to compare them to," which will hereafter be referred to simply as "The Paul McCartney Error."

Still Better than the Jell-O and Preparation H

This just in...my wife, the wily and parsimonious Kim, has poked her head in to say that she's off to the market to, and I quote: "Pick up some cat food and broccoli for dinner."

This is why we need commas in speech as well as writing.

Piers Review

In the latest Vanity Fair, master baiter James Wolcott delivers a sustained beating to the credibility of Piers Morgan, CNN's comically over-hyped replacement for Larry "the Crypt Keeper" King. Wolcott blames Morgan himself for the flow of  P.R. balloon juice that preceded the Brit's debut, in a passage that ends:

Morgan also reveled in Twitter slap-fights, boasting that he would mop the floor with doubters and detractors such as John Schiumo, the 24-hour cable news channel NY1’s prime-time news host, whom he warned, “You’re like Stephen Baldwin and Vinny Pastore—they thought they were big shots in NY too until I wiped them in Celeb Apprentice.” Yes, those were quite a pair of titans he toppled.

That last sentence contains a fairly common grammatical misstep. Baldwin and Pastore may constitute two (ironic) titans, but the word "pair" is (ironically) singular, and that's the word that governs the verb choice. So the sentence should read: "Yes, that was quite a pair of titans..."

For Better or Wurse

It is with a heavy heart that I present today's befouling of the language, as it comes from my daughter's weekly spelling quiz.

What pains me is that she had the presence of mind to realize she had left out the vowel in Number 9, but then she doubled back and inserted the wrong one. It fell to me, as a loving and involved father, to carefully explain to her that she had brought ineradicable shame on the family, and that from now on I would have to burn her hand with a cigarette for each error she made.

This is almost as bad as the time our two-year-old, Sam, used the word "sententious" when he clearly meant "tendentious." And no, I couldn't just chalk it up to a slip of the tongue; it was in a written communication. 

Damn kids today.

The Not-So-Secret Service

The latest issue of The Atlantic features an "unprecedented access" look into the Secret Service that, frankly, offers little in the way of revelation or insight--although it was fun to read that the New York office keeps a stash of disguises and fake grass for undercover operations. Presumably that's where they keep the ACME-brand rocket skates, too.

The piece centers around security coordination for the United Nations General Assembly meeting in 2010, and early on we get a glimpse into Iranian president Mahmoud Multisyllable's security detail:

During his stay, the Iranian president was ensconced in the smallish, 20-floor Hilton Manhattan East. The hotel remained open to regular guests, and tourists wandered freely through the lobby. No demonstrators were outside when I visited (a somewhat surprising absence, given that the day’s newspapers had disclosed the location of the hotel), but a couple dozen plainclothes police officers were stationed around the building just in case.

Just to be picky here, the newspapers didn't disclose the location of the hotel--Google Maps, or for that matter, the local Yellow Pages, will give you that. What the papers had disclosed was the location of Captain Windbreaker at said hotel.

And Then I Go and Spoil it All by Saying Something Stupid...

It might be churlish of me to say so, but while reading How to Write a Sentence...And How to Read One by the critic and columnist Stanley Fish, I can't help thinking that the book, as pleasantly pedantic as it is, might be more engaging if its sentences were written by someone more boisterously creative than Stanley Fish. It's a good book. I like it. But if it were written by, say, Martin Amis or, in an alternate universe, David Foster Wallace, I would probably love it. But there is no point blaming a book for its author.

I can, however, blame the author for this passage, where he compares "bad" sentences that create good effects to bad cover songs that produce ironic pleasure:

There's an NPR program called  The Annoying Music Show, and when the remastered set of Beatles albums came out in 2009, an episode was built around it. The cuts played included Tiny Tim singing "Hey Jude" and Telly (Kojak) Savalas singing "Something in the Way She Walks." These performances were truly bad and they were truly good.

The line, as George Harrison wrote it, is, of course, "Something in the way she moves." And the song, for that matter, is titled, simply, "Something".

I tried to find YouTube evidence of this cover song atrocity but came up dry. But in searching, I did come across this half-forgotten Telly Savalas sketch on the old Carol Burnett show. Cheesy, but still funny, if you ask me.

Death Be Not Proud

I've just retrieved the latest issue of MacLean's from the mailbox, which means I've just engaged in my weekly morbid ritual of flipping to the back page first to get right to the obituary profile of this week's unfortunate soul. First, I note the dates at the top and make the quick narcissistic calculation that Roz Chast so deftly captured in this cartoon:

Then, my eye shoots down to the last paragraph for the satisfyingly depressing details surrounding the circumstances of death. This week's profile ends thusly:

Last year, Peter survived a double-bypass surgery, and quickly recovered, eager to enjoy the summer. On Dec. 31, he retired. By mid-January, he and Lydia set off on another big adventure: a three-month road trip through the U.S., from California to Florida, which they had been planning for months. Four days in, on Jan. 19, 2011, they stopped on a Washington state highway so Peter could take a photo of a farmhouse. The sun was in his eyes, and he didn't see the truck that hit him. He was 66.

Damn. You spend decades building a life and this is how it ends--you stop for a bucolic Ansel Adams moment and end up a road pizza with a Peterbilt logo tattooed on your stunned face.

Anyway, I summoned the Google gods and found that the fully-capitalized designation, "Washington State," is indeed the preferred way to go here (although some cautioned against it if it could be confused with the university of that name). After all, we're talking about a highway in Washington State, not a state highway in what could be Washington, D.C.

As for why he was going from California to Florida by way of Washington State--alas, that's something we'll never get to ask poor Peter.

Greenhouse Blueberries, or Blue Berries in a Green House?

Want to know which organic foods are worth the extra shekels? Then you need to check out this iVillage slideshow, where you will find the following counsel on the advisability of buying blue-ribbon berries:

I only buy berries when they’re in season and sold at the farmer's market or at my local retailer. And I don’t do it to cut green house gases! I buy them in season, because they are much cheaper and so much better tasting.

Sound advice. Except that the difference between a "green house" and a "greenhouse" is worth bearing in mind, as we are reminded in this classic clip--which, coincidentally, is about berries:

The Dumb-Downed Theory of Hyphenation

According to the Hollywood Reporter (hey, I just happened to hit on it through a series of links; I don't have to explain myself to you) the word on the Beverly Hills street is that they're going to make a major motion picture adaption of Stephen King's post-apocalyptic epic, The Stand. I haven't read the novel, but I'm led to believe it is a post-apocalyptic epic worthy of major motion picture adaption. And apparently this isn't the first time the tale has been bound for the screen:

George Romero and Warners separately tried in vain to launch a movie adaptation in the 1980s, and a tone-downed version was produced as a six-hour miniseries by ABC in 1994. 

I'm sorry--a what version? Sure, you can make a case that a hyphenated compound should be treated as a single word for the purposes of past-tensifying--a "mutton-chopped" Civil War general, for instance--but "tone-downed" is an offense to the ear; it sounds like something a child who has been deprived of a Baby Einstein upbringing would say. "Toned-down version" would be the way to go. For that matter, I think you can even forgo the hyphen in this case and opt for the simple, austere "toned down version."

Say That Again

I've added Charles Pierce's Idiot America to the bedtime reading rotation, because nothing is more conducive to restful slumber than having one's sputtering indignation aroused. As the inflammatory title suggests, it's about idiots--snake-oil-selling charlatans, conspiracy theorist nutjobs, young earth creationists, talk radio gasbags, Sarah Palin--and how they have infiltrated mainstream culture.

Pierce (you may remember him from such NPR panel shows as Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me) builds his thesis on what he calls the "Three Great Premises" of Idiot America, which are helpfully outlined on the back cover and referenced repeatedly throughout the book:

Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.

Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.

Succinctly aphoristic, no doubt about that. But perhaps a trifle repetitive. The second premise, for instance talks about fact in the first sentence and truth in the second--but aren't all facts truthful, by virtue of their very factness? Still, it has a nice balance and cadence. The final premise, however, is really just a restatement of the previous sentence with slightly different flavoring.

It seems Pierce himself gets tangled up in the interchangeability of these ideas on Page 161, where he develops his "America as library" metaphor:

Idiot America is a strange, disordered place. Everything is on the wrong shelves. The truth of something is defined by how many people will attest to it, and facts are determined by those people's fervency.

If we go by the wording of the second great premise, the truth and the facts are transposed here. No matter, really, because it reads just as well this way. Which means that the two thoughts contained in the premise are pretty much describing a distinction without a difference. Again, no big crime and the premise as written has a pleasing musicality. I just expected the lyrics of the refrain to be consistent throughout the song.

The End of the "All You Can Byte" Buffet?

Folks in Canadian cyberland are all atwitter (get it?) about the new CRTC regulations that will allow internet providers to charge a premium to large-bandwith internet users. I know I'm supposed to have a strong opinion on this, but the fact is I can't decide whether to fall in with the "equality of access" egalitarians or the "you gets what you pay for" (or "you pays for what you gets") capitalists.

But I do know I have an opinion on this sentence from a CP story on the brouhaha:

An opposition MP will address the rising cost of accessing rich online data like live sportscasts and movies at a town hall meeting...

The problem here is the separation of town hall and politician. As it stands, the sentence seems to suggest that the topic under discussion is the accessing of sportscasts and movies at town hall meetings. "An opposition MP will address at a town hall meeting..." or, even better, "At a town hall meeting, an opposition MP will address..." would clear up the confusion.

It may not seem like a big deal in this example, but sometimes separations like this can result in unintentionally risible effects. Take, for example, this similar sentence from a U.S. news report:

The congressman stayed after the town meeting and discussed the high cost of living with several women.

Pilfered Puck Leads to Possessive Puzzle

According to a brief Vancouver Sun filler piece this morning, Philadelphia Flyer defenceman/big meanie Chris Pronger has put a bee in the bonnet of Chicago Black Hawk fans. He scooped up the puck at the end of Game 2 during last year's Stanley Cup finals and he won't give it back. Why the Game 2 puck means so much to Hawk fans (a local restaurant is offering $50,000 for its safe repatriation to Chi-town) is not explained. In any case, Pronger is unmoved, saying:

"It's tucked away somewhere. It'll wind up on eBay at some point. All proceeds will go to the person who buys its charity."

This is a real noodle-scratcher of a conundrum because I don't think there is a clear right answer for how to render that quotation. If Pronger had said, "All proceeds will go to the charity of the person who buys it" things would be simple. But he didn't, so we have to work with what he did say.

As all people who have uncrossed eyes and eat with utensils know, it's is a contraction and its is the possessive, so at first glance that its would seem to be properly deployed; we're talking about the charity of the person who buys it, so we need a possessive. But I would plead extenuating circumstances and argue that "the person who buys its charity" is confusing, because it sounds like the person is buying the charity of "it" ("it" presumably being the puck) instead of buying the puck.

I would further argue that "the person who buys it" is acting as one semantical unit here, like a name, and so we are justified in treating it like a name and tacking an 's at the end to indicate possessiveness. So that would give us something like "All proceeds will go to the-person-who-buys-it's charity." Better, perhaps, but now there is the chance the it's can be misconstrued as a contraction. Let's try this: "All proceeds will go to 'the person who buys it' 's charity." My god, that's hideous.

No, it seems that in grammar, as in hockey, sometimes there just isn't an elegant play to be made. Sometimes you just have to dump it in off the boards and hope for the best.

Surely You Can't be Serious

An AP headline this headline this morning reads:

Fumes at L.A. plant leave 1 dead, 2 serious

Fumes that can either kill you or turn you into Sean Penn? Weird.

"Bad news, Mrs. Lincoln. There is a new complication."

I extracted a salmon-colored special bulletin from Abby's backpack today, warning us that there may be a case of pertussis, or whooping cough, at the school. In it, we are rather alarmingly advised that:

Petrussis can cause complications such as pneumonia, convulsions, brain damage or even death.

Now I'm no doctor, but somehow I imagine that when you are dead your condition ceases to be complicated.

Let Me Just Say This About That

Is there anything more inane and banal than the chatter of TV newspuppets desperately trying to fill time during wall-to-wall coverage of a breaking story? (Favorite line from CNN yesterday: "It's usually a pretty a bad thing to get shot in the head, is it not?")

Yes, there is: the inevitable released "statements" of politicians who want to remind us that they are strongly opposed to bad things and that they are not afraid to tell us in the gassiest verbiage possible. Let's parse this example, from Senator Diane Feinsten, although you could do this with just about any of the statements that were being dispensed yesterday in the aftermath of the massacre in Arizona--they're all pretty much interchangeable:

My heart sank when I heard the news of the tragedy in Tucson [at least she didn't say she was "shocked and saddened]. My thoughts and prayers are with Representative Giffords and her family, the family of Judge Roll and all the other victims and their loved ones. ["Thoughts and prayers" always come as package in these statements--they are the very currency of concern.] Representative Giffords is a beacon of courage and hope [Hope is often exemplified in beacons. And you seldom see a "beacon of disappointment] in our nation right now. She bravely pursued her duties as a member of Congress, despite having been the target of vitriolic political rhetoric in the past. [Who in your game hasn't been? And the phrase "vitriolic political rhetoric" manages to be both noxiously trendy and tediously shopworn.]

This senseless violence [as opposed to the sensible kind] has no place in a free society [thanks for telling us]. She and the other victims were engaged in the very essence of democracy, an elected representative meeting face-to-face with her constituents.

I have seen firsthand the effects of assassination ["let's talk about me"], and there is no place for this kind of violence in our political discourse [Once again, if you're wondering if there is a place for "this kind" of violence, the answer is no]. It must be universally condemned [condemnation is perhaps the strongest word a politician can use and it's usually only deployed against killers and countries we're about to go to war against]. We do not yet know the gunman’s motivations, but I am convinced that we must reject extremism and violent rhetoric. 

That last sentence is downright confusing, because it could be taken to mean that we must reject extremism and violent rhetoric as the gunman's motivations. Which is pretty much the opposite of what she means, I'm sure.

What the heck, let's look at a few more.  I've italicized the high notes. Feel free to sing along.

From President Obama:

We do not yet have all the answers. What we do know is that such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society. I ask all Americans to join me and Michelle in keeping Representative Giffords, the victims of this tragedy, and their families in our prayers.

From Speaker Boehner:

The thoughts and prayers of the House and the nation are with Congressman Giffords and her family.  We're also praying for the families of Judge Roll, and all of those who were taken from us yesterday so senselessly. An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serves...Such acts of violence have no place in our society. 

From Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts:

Today’s news of the shooting of my colleague Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, members of her staff and her constituents is shocking and horrifying, and my deepest condolences go out to the families of those who lost their lives today in such a senseless and tragic event...Gabby was doing today what she loved best and what all of us in Congress consider a great responsibility and a true honor - to meet with and listen to our constituents. My thoughts and prayers are with her and her family, and with all of those wounded today in the hopes for a full and speedy recovery.

And what about John McCain?

U.S. Senator John McCain issued a statement condemning the shooting attack of Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabriella Giffords, Judge John Roll and several others.

“I’m deeply saddened and shocked [he's confused--he means "shocked and saddened] at the tragedy that has taken place in my home state of Arizona. The shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and the deaths of other individuals is a terrible tragedy and one that has shocked me and our nation,’ Mr. McCain said in a statement...

The Arizona Republican also noted that he is “deeply saddened” to hear of Mr. Roll’s death. The Arizona Republican termed the incident a "senseless act of violence."

Mr. McCain noted that his thoughts and his prayers are with the Giffords and Roll family. 

 Of course he did. We expect nothing less.

Apostrofeeble

The arts and culture blog Jewcy has posted its list of the ten best podcasts of 2010. The only reason I know this (I admit I've never heard of Jewcy before) is because the Slate Culture Gabfest linked to the list on their Facebook page. I really enjoy the Gabfest--it's my favorite listening while making curry chicken casserole--so I checked out the link, and at the top of the list...well, what a coincidence:

1. Slate Culture Gabfest

Three articulate and seasoned writers from Slate’s roster discuss news stories, TV/films, and books with enough wit to keep it entertaining, while holding back enough on the pretension just enough to keep it palatable.  At the end of every episode, each host, “endorses” a cultural artifact about which they are enthusiastic, be it a book about a TV series, article, or perhaps, an apple pie.  Whether or not you read Slate, The Gabfest hosts make for great company during your walk to work and Dana Steven’s tastes in film and TV tend to be right on the money.  The Slate Culture Gabfest is the perfect podcast for the modern discerning culture-phile.

Always nice to have one's tastes validated by an arbitrary list. The problem here is that the name of Slate's astute and insightful film critic, the one with the winsome podcast charm, is Dana Stevens. And that means the possessive should be Dana Stevens' or Dana Stevens's, depending on which faction of the language police nerdocracy you wish to annoy.

Another apostrophe violation occurs in the blurb for the third entry on the list:

The New Yorker Fiction Podcast gives contemporary fiction writers the opportunity to read some of their favorite short stories that have been published in The New Yorker and then discuss them with the magazines fiction editor.

 I'm sure said editor, Deborah Treisman, would recoil at the missing apostrophe in "magazines." She is, after all, a valuable possession of The New Yorker.

And while we're on the subject of possessives, let's not forget how to apostrophize a plural possessive, as demonstrated by this tweet today from the reliably goofy Andy Borowitz:

"Twilight" sweeps Virgins' Choice Awards