Crazy for quotation marks

I've been noticing a lot of unwarranted uses of quotation marks lately. For no reason at all, people just think they can throw quotes on something to emphasize it. That's really not the purpose of the punctuation. I'm not sure where this trend "came from," but I'm not really a "huge fan" of it. Those were my joke quotes. Here are some real-world examples.

This one shows a slogan in quotes. Why? Did someone actually say these words at some point and erect this signage to document that? In that case, where's the quote's attribution? Or perhaps we're supposed to feel as if the sign is actually SAYING this to us to build a more human connection. That's probably it.

This example gives us some crappy grammar AND randomly used quotes. What, is it not REALLY a wait list? Is it really the list you put people on who are never going to be seated and you just wanted to give it an ironic name? Seriously.

Can you spell EPA?

This one was submitted by a first-time reader. She received this letter (verbatim) from the EPA.

Dear Applicant

Thank you for applying to Merit Promotion Announcement No. Reg 10-DE-2008-0010, Environmental Protection Specialist in Office of Water & Watersheds, Drinking Water Unit, Seattle, Washington.

A selection was made:

We appreciate you applying to EPA for consideration, and encourage you to apply for other EPA vacancy announcements at this web site at http://www.usajobs.gov."

Wow. That is some novel colon use if ever I saw it. And the directions to the Web read like a Sony electronics manual. Awesome. USA EPA A-OK!

First person to find all the mistakes wins . . .

much joy and self-satisfaction. This Web abomination will provide you with hours of enjoyment as you uncover countless grammar goofs, spelling biffs, and factual embellishments (LeRoy Parnell is one of the top acts in the nation? Really?). Hey, if you find all problems here, maybe she’ll write a song about your home state. Dream the dream.

Whoops.

BoingBoing has an awesome example of what can happen when you don't think through all of the ramifications of a language decision. Who would have guessed that rearranging the letters of a word would be so disastrous?

The folks over at Junior Jumble would never let this happen. The nice thing is, once you figure out the real answer, the funny gets even better.

What's with all the 50 cent words?

So far this week, my work has been called:

- Parochial
- Prosaic
- Infantile

Good words that mean bad things bruise the ego more than, "I just don't care for it," or "This isn't working for me." Nice, specific insults. Bravo, people.

Word submission

A friend submitted this word for our consideration:

OGLIFY (v) - The act of attempting to gain insight or understanding through staring.

EX: I oglified the author's photo on the dust jacket

until it became clear that he was a pretentious hack.

Oglification can be described as a kind of visual osmosis. It doesn't involve any conscious contemplation, analysis, or even appreciation of its subject. Oglifying is one way we glean enough superficial information to synthesize meaning . . . allowing us to then construct a nearly instantaneous judgment of the subject without having to do the work of actually thinking. Oglification is the visual equivalent of a sound bite. It's a way of summing up a complex issue via an over-simplified, one-dimensional impression. Accurate? Not usually. Easy? Oh my yes.

What do we think?

It makes me feel oogy.

Some words just shouldn’t be. They should not exist in any way, shape, or form. They are an affront to every sensible person. Mouthfeel is one such word. According to our good friends at Merriam-Webster:

mouthfeel \MOWTH-feel\ : the sensation created by food or drink in the mouth

I think we can all agree this word is just awful. However, I think we can also agree it should definitely find its way into our everyday lexicon -- in the incorrect context, of course. We should give things a mouthfeel. We should call meetings to get a mouthfeel of the situation. Unwieldy projects should be labeled a mouthfeel of trouble.

Or maybe not. This irresponsible neologism (I’m not even comfortable calling it a word) makes me feel kind of dirty whenever I say it.

I can haz senz uf humer?

Some of you may already know about this little Web gem. For those who don't, prepare for a delightful buffet of sweetie-pie kitty pics captioned in a unique blend of leetspeak, baby talk, and arbitrary wrongness.

Bad spelling? Check. Subject-verb disagreement? Double check. Furry purries that make even cynical affection-haters say, "Awwwww"? You know it.

Because the linguistic butchering is intentional, it doesn't bother me. It adds to the cuteness, I think, and I just don't have the heart to complain about it.

Supposedly vs. Supposably

I've spent most of my adult life thinking that people who say "supposably" instead of "supposedly" are crazy. Who knew? It's actually a word. See?

Flesh out vs. flush out

In the advertising biz, there's a lot of talk about creative concepts . . . developing them, expanding on them, and (according to some people) flushing them out.

Let's just get this straight now. You don't FLUSH out a creative concept. You FLESH it out. To flush it out would mean to scare it from concealment or to wash it out with a rush of liquid. If a concept already exists and we know what it is, there's no need to shake the bushes to make it run away. And if you try to force my concept out by dumping water on it, you could be in for some trouble. If you say you want to flush out a concept, that means you want to get rid of it.

When you first spark a creative concept, it's just a skeleton of an idea. To expand on it or further develop it, you need to beef it up, add meat . . . put some flesh on the bones. Thus, we have FLESHING OUT the concept. See, it's one of those metaphor thingies.

Make sense to everyone? Greeeeat.

Who’s ready for a teachable moment?

Yesterday, Mr. Fizgig picked up our youngest son from a birthday party at a local laser tag establishment. As he entered the building, he was greeted by a ginormous sign that read, “Guess Who’s Birthday We’re Celebrating?” Ouch.

There is an upside. The grammatical gaffe prompted a thorough discussion with our child about the difference between who’s and whose.

The charms of profanity

I was talking to a friend of mine this weekend (one who's much smarter than I am) and he put into words something I've been trying to get my mind around for ages. Whenever I try to clean up my trucker-mouth tendencies, I start feeling like I have a gag on. Here's why: profanity carries with it such intensity, it acts as more than just a word. Swearing is an act in itself, an emotional outlet. It conveys fuller meaning and more layers than normal words. A good exclamation of a bad word communicates all the anger, frustration, love, excitement you want to in ways that more clean-lipped options ever could.

Basically, when the profanity stops, I lose a level of depth to my communication. My expressions lose richness. And I can't accept that. Why would anyone voluntarily remove such a powerful portion of their vocabulary? I know there's plenty out there who aren't big profanity fans (particularly from women) . . . but I'm not much a fan of those people, so it's all even.

My turn to make up words

Enthusigasm (n): Easy to fake, hard to actually achieve. This is the pinnacle point where an idea/creative concept/production execution/client excites you so much, you can forget about infeasibility/strategic irrelevance/prohibitive cost/dysfunctional relationship dynamic to lose yourself in the moment and produce something great.

Valibation (n): The process of stimulating enthusigasm (fake or real). Continually reinforcing the greatness of your idea/creative concept/production execution/client via continual internal monologue or group pep sessions meant to manufacture excitement out of nothing.

While both might sound negative and artificial, salaried creative professionals wouldn't be able to continue producing ideas without them.

Casualties of revision.

In our line of work you edit and revise. You edit and revise a lot. Sometimes that process leads to words, beautiful words, being removed from your masterpiece. In my case, it often leads to fancy 25-cent words being lost. This post is the first in a series documenting words that have fallen by the wayside, and giving them their due.

Word: Inexorably
Context: Travel & tourism industry guide book
Cut by: Fizgig and Scholiast
Commentary:
“Inexorably” was one of those words that made you stop mid-sentence, and not in a good way. Both Fizgig and Scholiast questioned whether or not it would resonate with the target audience. In the end it was a good drop, as “inexorable” tends to have a negative connotation (a sense of inexorable doom) and “inexorably” probably wasn’t a fitting adverb for the “subtle beauty” of the Midwest landscape.

Here's Fizgig!

Isn't she lovely? This is Fizgig attempting to shoot herself with a company award. Looks like it's been a rough day . . .

Y'all agree?

I'm not from the south. Not even close. But I still think "y'all" is just about the perfect pronoun. Yes, I know it's redneck-y slang that should drive me bonkers, but you have to admit that it has its charms. It's a nice, gender non-specific word that lets you address everyone respectfully. Old people (and some women) don't like, "Hey, guys." Most adults don't like it when I say, "What's up, kids?" And I sound like a jerk when I say, "Hi, people." They know they're people. I don't need to remind them.

No one is offended by, "How y'all doing?" Nor should they be. "Y'all" makes people smile a little everytime they hear it. It's utterly unobjectionable. So I'm going to start using it from now on all the time.

Jeesh, they've even named a magazine after it.

See y'all later.

Why am I so disagreeable?

Over the past several days, I have heard myself speak in such a deplorable manner, I’ve decided to go public in hopes that doing so might help me change my ways. The issue: subjects in inverted sentences. Put the verb at the beginning of the sentence, and for some reason, subject/verb agreement goes out the window.

There’s clothes in the dryer.
Here’s the sandwiches you ordered.
There’s too many people in the meeting.

I certainly don’t write this way, so why talk like this? Number one reason…laziness. It’s so much easier to use contractions when speaking. And since I can’t say “There’re too many people in the meeting,” I make a simple, yet erroneous, modification.

The second reason I believe this happens…I hear this type of grammar all around me every day. But still, that’s no reason for me to sound like a cretin. Perhaps when Scaramouch discovers a way to stop his habit of saying “alls,” I can use that same technique to squelch my own idiotic inclination.

The VERBOSITEE crew

Here we are . . .

That's me with my screaming monkey.

And this is Scaramouch, with his two most prized possessions.

This lovely lady is Scholiast, the queen of all editors.

And here's the Pink Lady, Oniomaniac. Smart, sassy, and highly caffeinated.



But now you ask: Where's Fizgig? She'll be up tomorrow. We're saving the best for last.

You know, that novel you're working on?

This is going out to all the writers who aren't doing any writing. Waiting for inspiriation to strike? Hmmm? Maybe a few richer life experiences to enhance the characters? Maybe?



Oh Stewie, I hope my first born is just like you.

Just-because-I-add-hypens-does-that-make-this-all-one-word? Hmm?

OK, so the OED recently updated the p-q section and added several new words. Many were useful . . . particularly the Q words (we Scrabblers are always looking for new Q words). But under the Ps, this was listed:

put-up-or-shut-up (adj.)

Really? A word? An adjective even? Can't it just stay a phrase? I often use phrases as adjectives (blue-eyeshadow-wearing, hair-perming, meth-cooking, minivan-driving housewife) and, of course, these descriptors should be hyphenated. But though the hyphens make them words for the purpose of my description, does it make them appropriate for inclusion in the OED? I've had a few put-up-or-shut-up moments in my life, but I still don't think hyphenating a cliche makes it an OED-worthy word (even "OED-worthy" isn't OED-worthy). I totally get the made-up compound modifier thing. I'm an active participant in the practice. But do we have to put all of them in the dictionary?

Bite your tongue

The 2008 Banned Words List is out. I completely agree with most of the choices. The inclusion of "It is what it is" on the list annoyed me somewhat because my dad has been saying that since the dawn of time (or at least since the dawn of me). He also frequently used "whatever" WAAAAAY before Alicia Silverstone did in Clueless. He even had a shirt that said "whatever" back in the 70s.

I guess it just frosts me when something you've done for a long time becomes so trendy that it ends up on the banned words list. Then you're not allowed to say it anymore either! It's probably happened to you, too. Oh you don't think so? Check the archives.

En vague . . . and such as.

While there are those who have mastered the art of talking without saying anything, this gal isn't one of them. Here's a lovely illustration of the aforementioned education crisis. We can thank the south for this one: