100th Post! Let's celebrate!

. . . with some fouled up cakes!

This one has random quote around the main message. Amber, "we will miss" you. So does that mean they won't REALLY miss her? They're just screwing around and they all hate her? Messed up.

And looks like someone took the instructions a liiiiiitle too literally on this one.

There's a bathroom on the right.

Best word to hit Merriam-Webster in years:

Mondegreen: a word or phrase that results from the mishearing of something said or sung.

You know, like 'scuse me while I kiss this guy.

Or never made it as a white man, couldn't cut it as a poor manchurian.

Or my husband's favorite:

Lucille! Lucille! She's a dead osprey. (From the dumbest song ever by Fallout Boy. Lyrics should be "This ain't a scene, it's a GD arms race." Actually, they SHOULDN'T be, because those are the crappiest lyrics of all time.)

What's your favorite mondegreen?

Nuthin sez claz like a vanytie playt.

Saw this one at the Barnes & Noble in Omaha. It's a black Chrysler 300 with GOLD accents. GOLD! As if that weren't tacky enough on its own, the owner decided to declare his (and of course it's a him) status with a misspelled license plate. Awesome.

I'd love to meet the dude who posted this.

I'm surprised "required" is correct and "access" is not. Weird.

Raving reviews

So this week I've received 2 e-mails talking about the raving reviews a movie has received. Um, isn't it supposed to be RAVE review? Raving is a word that's usually used to describe lunatics, if I'm not mistaken.

Maybe I'm just being a raving harpy. Or a rave harpy?

We can stop blogging now.

We found it. We can die happy now. Thanks GrammarBlog for providing this sublime sample. Wow. I just can't stop looking at it!

The perfect punctuation storm

Missing commas, random apostrophes, misspellings and more. All in one place. Wow. Thanks to my super cool Grandma-in-law for snagging this beauty.

For to measure the tapes.

What's aback mean anyway?

In the last 6 days, I've received 3 (count 'em . . . 3) separate e-mail communications in which people say they are "taken back" by something. It's "taken aback," guys.

And no, I don't know what aback means either. It's one of those words that doesn't really look like a word at all. Let's see what M-W has to say about this.

What, is "mahi mahi" repetitive or something?

Last night, I had a very lovely dinner at one of our city's nicer eateries. The waitress (who was super nice, for the record) was telling me the specials when I realized that I must have misunderstood her on the fish dish.

"Excuse me, what did you say the fish special was?"

"Um, it's mahi. In a ginger broth with a rice noodle . . . I mean rice noodles and bok choy."

"Oh. Mahi."

"Yeah, it's really good."

Now, my crappier instincts were telling me to say something like, "Do you mean AHI, as in tuna, or do you mean MAHI MAHI, as in mahi mahi . . . as in it's actually called mahi mahi." But no matter how judgemental and petty I get in the comfort and relative anonymity (if you define anonymity as a state in which people can't readily beat you up) of this blog, I've come to learn that it's pretty sucky to just correct nice people in public. Correcting people in private is actually helpful, if you're not a jerk about it. Sometimes it's even funny. But in public, correcting people just makes you look like a butthead.

So I ordered my mahi in ginger broth with a rice noodle and bok choy, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I tipped well. I also ordered a super decadent dessert to reward myself for not being a jerk. Yay me!

Getting judge-y about book covers

Last time I checked, "Are you ready" was a question . . . you know, like with a question mark. That's right, BOB, I'm making fun of your book. Maybe next season, you won't screw Jillian over so badly by choosing all the good players and leaving her with the whiny chicks. Maybe when that happens, I'll take it back.

Language can be a funny thing.

So I stole this from an e-mail that my dad sent today. It had me giggling pretty hard.

These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.


ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?


ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!


ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.


ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?


ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty.


ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you sh*ttin' me?


ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh.... I was gettin' laid!


ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Are you sh*ttin' me? Your Honour, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?


ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Now whose death do you suppose terminated it?


ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Guess.


ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.


ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you like to rephrase that?


ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.


ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!


ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh....are you qualified to ask that question?


ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

The dorkiness of hope.

I've always been one of those people who thought that "hopefully" was misused. You know, as in "Hopefully, I'll get a promotion," or "Hopefully, these ants will stop biting me soon." I've always thought this was an improper usage . . . that these statements were essentially saying that I'd be full of hope if I got a promotion or that the ants had enough hope to eventually stop biting.

But then Merriam-Webster straightened my butt out:

Main Entry: hope·ful·ly
Pronunciation: \ˈhōp-fə-lē\
Function: adverb
Date: 1593
1 : in a hopeful manner

2 : it is hoped : I hope : we hope

Usage: In the 1960s the second sense of hopefully, which dates to the early 18th century and had been in fairly widespread use since at least the 1930s, underwent a surge in popularity. A surge of criticism followed in reaction, but the criticism took no account of the grammar of adverbs. Hopefully in its second sense is a member of a class of adverbs known as disjuncts. Disjuncts serve as a means by which the author or speaker can comment directly to the reader or hearer usually on the content of the sentence to which they are attached. Many other adverbs (as interestingly, frankly, clearly, luckily, unfortunately) are similarly used; most are so ordinary as to excite no comment or interest whatsoever. The second sense of hopefully is entirely standard.

After reading this, I realized two things:

1. I am not always right.

2. I am a dork. A huge, lame dork.

Oh here we come, a'caucusing . . .

I've been thinking this whole time that "caucus" is a noun. And it IS, in fact, a noun. But when a to-remain-undisclosed candidate uses it, there's definite verbiness to it.

"When you go to caucus . . . " (or maybe this one's still a noun, but kind of a British usage, like going to Uni.)
"Caucus for me on Tuesday . . . "
"Go caucus yourself."

OK, I made that last one up. So I checked, as us wordy types do sometimes, and it IS both a noun and an intransitive verb. Here's the verb definition:

Caucus: to meet in or hold a caucus.

So I was wrong about the verb thing. But given this definition, I don't think it's right to say "Caucus for me." Go to caucus is OK, I guess, aside from being all weird and foppish sounding. I think I'm done hearing the word caucus. More about words I'm done hearing tomorrow.

I, two, like cheescake.

Grumble, grumble, grumble. How hard is it to get this right? Prepositions don't mean also. TCBY may think they're The Country's Best Yogurt, but the signage is a little dodgy.

Medium/Media

News flash: Adding an "s" isn't the only way to pluralize something? Take the word "medium," for example. The plural is "media." It is not "mediums." Blame it on those crazy Latin people and their crazy Latin pluralization. Here's a few more examples of weirdo plurals that people should try to keep in mind when they're talking:

Datum/Data (Data is plural, not singular.)
Crisis/Crises (Not crisises.)
Index/Indices (Not indexes.)
Fungus/Fungi (Not funguses.)
Focus/Foci (Not focuses . . . even though newer dictionaries are including it. It's just because we're all getting lazy, people.)
Mouse/Mice (I shouldn't need to put that in here, but you'd be amazed.)
Shrimp/Shrimp (Not shrimpsesses . . . even though that's cuter.)

Isn't it ironic? Um, no.

There seems to be a general misunderstanding about the meaning of irony. I don't know if too many people got their definition from that lame Alanis Morrissette song or what, but over the last week, I've heard enough people misuse the word "ironic" to push me to action (or at least my version of action, which happens to be words). Here's what ironic DOESN'T mean:

• Weird - If something totally arbitrary, unrelated or out of the blue happens, it's not ironic. It's just unexpected.
• Coincidental - If you have a meeting about hot dogs later in the day and happen to run into a hot dog tycoon earlier the same day, that's not ironic. It's a happy conicidence.
• Funny - Funny is just funny.

So what is ironic? As fortune would have it, there are these modern-day devices called "dictionaries" which actually give us the meanings of words. Hard to believe, I know. I've consulted one such dictionary (or word-genie, if you will) to provide you with the legitimate definitions of irony, which I have paraphrased below:

IRONY (n)

1. Using words that literally mean one thing to express the opposite. (EX: After learning it would cost $1,900 to fix my car, my response was, "That's just awesome.")
2. An outcome of events that was the exact opposite of what was expected. (EX: All the work I put into circumventing the IRS in order to save money ACTUALLY ended up costing a fortune. Go figure!)

But wait, there's more! There's also:

1. Literary irony: A technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated (Like in The Sixth Sense. Or the media's story of M. Night Shamylalalala . . . they keep indicating that he's a genius when what's actually happening is that he's a one-trick pony. That trick just happens to be literary irony.)
2. Dramatic irony: Irony that is inherent in speeches or a situation of a drama and is understood by the audience but not grasped by the characters in the play (Like on Three's Company when Jack and Janet think there's extra rent money hidden in the couch, but the AUDIENCE knows that Chrissy has just had the couch replaced, thereby unwittingly losing the rent money! Oh no, Chrissy!)
3. Socratic irony: Profession of ignorance and of willingness to learn as one interrogates another on the meaning of a term. ("Oh really? So you could have caught the problem in the engine sooner? How fascinating! Say, I'm really interested to know what it was precisely that kept you from identifying this problem BEFORE it evolved into $1,900 headache for me? I just want to learn . . . ")

Consider this entry my due diligence. Next time someone misuses "irony" in my presence, I now consider myself fully within my rights to call him out on it.

Apostrophe isn"t sufficient?

Here's a gem that's right down the street from the VERBOSITEE offices. I pass it every morning, and each day it makes my face go crinkly and my pre-work optimism fall to ruins.

Maybe the proprietor just didn't think an apostrophe was good enough. Maybe he wanted double the punctuation power. The sign has been there for a LOOOONG time, reminding us that the education crisis is in no way a new battle.

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.

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.

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.

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:

Agreeance

Whaaaaaa? Someone just said he was in agreeance with me. Not a word! See? That entry clearly says BASTARDIZATION. As in if you use it, you're kind of a bastard.

Barking up the wrong flag pole

Nothing tickles me quite like a cliche blunder does. You'll often hear them from people who think they're pretty savvy. But these witty metaphormers typically lack critical thinking skills and assemble their utterances based only on the sounds of past cliches without regard to the meaning of the parts. And without the mental accuity required to understand the meaning behind oft-used metaphors, the result is strings of uncoordinated words, sloppily sutured together to produce mistakes that are as entertaining as they are indicative of the speaker's internal head-mess. Let's have a look at some particularly charming goofs:

Let's throw it against the wall and see what shakes out. In an interesting reversal, we don't give a crap about what sticks to the wall. We're want the solutions that fall off when we shake the wall. Fascinating.

He's not the sharpest bulb in the box. That's probably good, because sharp bulbs could be dangerous.

It's time to read between the writing on the wall. This one is actually pretty efficient. There's writing on the wall that should be obvious to us, and now we need to read between it to discern the less obvious meaning. Though I don't know how to read between writing...

We'll come out smelling like a rose by any other name. And that would be sweet, right? Can't we just smell like a normal rose that's called a rose? Like calling a spade a spade? Or calling it like we see it? You know, it takes a rose to know a rose.

She needs to air the skeletons in her closet. Yeah, because if skeletons don't get enough air, they may start acting up and urinating in inappropriate places.

The cat is out of the bag and coming home to roost. That's the good thing about cats . . . they always know their way home, even when they've been kept in a bag for extended periods.

There's a squwa brewing. Ewww.

It's hot enough to fry something. Hmmm . . . I can fry things anytime I want because I have a stove. Do they not have stoves where you come from?

Let's get this party rolling down the road. Oooh! RV party!

Those are the only ones I can remember for now. I'll keep collecting, though.

This year, I resolve:

To fix the most off-putting linguistic faux pas in my verbal communication. I am ashamed to admit, I use "alls". As in, "Alls you need to do is turn up the stove."

I know. Egregious.

I'm not sure if it is my Midwestern upbringing, shoddy public education, or simple laziness, but I need to fix it. It bothers me. It makes me feel inadequate, as though I'm missing several teeth and wearing a feed-corn hat (no offense intended, some of my dearest relatives wear feed-corn hats).

My current game plan is to stop my sentence whenever I catch myself committing the offense, and then restart the sentence focusing on the correction. Does anyone have any other recommendations or ideas on how to reign victorious over this annoying verbal tic?

A question that needs answered.

We VERBOSITEE folks are based in Nebraska. I am not a Nebraska native, but have noticed one interesting linguistic trend that I've never seen anywhere else. Here are some examples:

This lightbulb needs changed.

Your bedroom needs cleaned.

Can you edit this letter? I think it needs looked at.

I have a new project that needs worked on.

It just snowed, so the driveway needs scooped.*

So what gives? Normally, when using need+verb, one would use "to be" (needs to be cleaned) or an -ing verb (needs cleaning). This phenomenon is pervasive here and it kind of bothers me . . . mainly because I have no idea where it came from or why people do it. Anyone have any insight into this regional peculiarity?

*Notice the OTHER freaky Nebraska verbal quirk: scoop. We scoop the driveway when it snows, instead of clearing or shoveling it.

Happy New Year's . . . let's butcher some punctuation!

Now that the "Happy Holiday's" and "Seasons Greetings" have finally (and mercifully) passed us by, I thought I'd move on to some more punctuation blunders that remind us why the public education crisis is, in fact, a crisis. Indeed, the year's final holiday will bring us a classic screwup:

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S!

Why the apostrophe after "new year"? Why the "s"? They're really not necessary. The apostrophe s is appropriate when talking about "New Year's Eve" or "New Year's Day." Both of these days are proper nouns in which the eve or day respectively belongs to the new year, thereby warranting an apostrophe to indicate the possessive status. When you're just talking about the new year, just say "new year." Happy new year. Not a proper noun. Not possessive. Not needing an apostrophe. If you have any more questions about this, you should probably find a new blog to read. But if you're still confused, you're probably not much of a reader, huh?

Way of the Apple

We found these beauties at the same shopping center within about 100 feet of each other.

There was this apple, and it had a way. This store decided to commemorate the way of this apple on its door.

This time, a bunch of apples got together and invented a way of their own. The way belonged to all the apples. The developer of the shopping center decided to commemorate their way by putting it on this sign.

The city built a street and decided it was cool enough to be more than an ordinary street . . . it's a way. The way belongs to the city. And the city has strong feelings about apples in general, so it named the way after them. Apples are a tasty fruit, so they deserve to have a way named after them.

Your salad is smart and pretty.

Homophones are funny things. And those who don't get them are even funnier. Take "Complement" vs. "Compliment" . . . they sound the same, right? Well if you're reading this right now, it means you're literate. And as a literate being, you understand that these are two different words.

COMPLIMENT
n. an expression of esteem, respect, affection, or admiration; especially : an admiring remark.
v. to express such a remark.

COMPLEMENT
n. something that fills up, completes, or makes perfect.
v. to be complementary.

OK, Mr./Ms. Literate Human, it's pretty easy to see the difference, I think. But there are plenty of geniuses out there who don't even know that the "e" version exists. What makes it really funny is that if you're seeing the "i" version where the "e" version belongs, chances are you're looking at some snooty menu or spa brochure, where the author is trying to sound extra classy.

A savory parmesan crisp compliments your salad. Oh it does? Does it think my salad has a nice personality, or does it appreciate my salad's sense of style? Perhaps the parmesan crisp just respects my salad for its candor when confronting uncomfortable issues. Either way, my salad is very flattered.

Enjoy this deep cleansing facial, complimented by an alpha-hydroxy peel.
Peel: "Hey, facial."
Facial: "Oh, hi."
Peel: "I just wanted to say . . . um, I think you're really special."
Facial: "Wow, thanks."
Peel: "Yeah, I just think you're, like, wicked good at your job."
Facial: "Heh, heh. That's really nice, Peel."
Peel: "Um, sure. You're also smokin' hot."
Facial: "OK, I'm gonna go now."

All swanky restaurant owners and spendy spa proprietors please take note: The word you're looking for is "complement." Please start using it lest you look like an ass.