LANGUAGE
CORNER
by
Evan Jenkins
Cardinal/Ordinal
Numbers
Cardinal Rules
A Little League team's players, the article said, "picked
up their third World Series victory in as many days." There's
an extremely common error there. As many as what? As many
as third? No, obviously. "Third" is an ordinal number, denoting
the position of something in a sequence. "As many as" needs
to refer to a quantity, not a position, and that requires
a cardinal number -- here, "three." If the sentence had said
"picked up three World Series victories in as many days,"
that would have been fine. (But for all that, "as many as"
smacks a little of elegant variation. What's wrong with "their
third World Series victory in three days"?) (CJR, Nov./Dec.
1998)
Cardinal/Ordinal
Numbers
Don't Call Collect
"As we ponder this, as we shake our collective heads,..."
the commentator intoned. Well, if it's collective, it's a
single thing, "our collective head." Sounds clunky either
way, though, as phrases using "collective" often do. What's
wrong with "As we shake our heads"?
Comprise
The Whole and the Parts
The story spoke of "the 30 companies whose stocks comprise
the Dow Jones industrial average." It's the other way around.
The average comprises the stocks, because the whole comprises
the parts. So the stocks make up (or constitute or compose)
the average. "Comprise" comes through French from the Latin
"comprehendere," which also gave us the English word "comprehend,"
which is synonymous in one of its meanings -- embrace, encompass
-- with "comprise." And "comprise" is a near-synonym for "include,"
except that it means to include everything. If "include" wouldn't
make sense -- those stocks don't include the Dow --
we can't use "comprise." And while we're at it, that's also
why we can't use "is comprised of." Would we say "is included
of"? Doesn't make sense. (CJR, July-Aug. 1997)
Could/Couldn't
Care Less
It's About Caring
The article said the lawyer representing a murder victim's
family made it clear that the family wasn't interested in
cooperating with the media horde, "that the family could care
less about exclusives." But if those people could care
less, they do care some, and that's not what
the writer meant. The phrase has to be negative: "could not
care less." That means the family cares so little -- presumably
not at all -- that it can't reduce the caring any further.
A quick Nexis search suggests that we bat about .500 on this
one, which would be great if baseball were our game.
(CJR, Jan./Feb. 1998)
Criterion/Criteria;
Phenomenon/Phenomena
Give Us An A! Give Us An... On!
But don't mix them up, as in "The main criteria is youth,
which leaves him out." The singular of the Greek/English word
is "criterion," which was needed here because only one thing
-- youth -- was being considered. If experience, say, were
added to the mix, "criteria" would be in order. It's plural,
and may it always be. And while in Greece, consider this:
"The Asian market is a new phenomena...." Well, there's only
one market in that passage, so it's singular, so it's "phenomenon."
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