LANGUAGE CORNER
by Evan Jenkins

False Titles, etc.
Stringing It Out
"...Marlins Latin American scouting director Al Avila ..."
"...Democratic delegates to the convention Jim and Ann Roosevelt."
"...anti-affirmative action activist Ward Connerly's decision ... "

False titles like those are an abdication of our duty to write English sentences. They're inelegant and unnatural. But they're also easy -- don't think, just string all the adjectives and nouns in front of the name (or a common noun) and move on.

But do let's think, and honor the language, and be clear, and let the reader catch a breath in the little pauses that commas contribute. "Al Avila, the Marlins' scouting director for Latin America" is natural. ("Latin American" presumably described his scouting assignment, not his geographic origin). Also natural: "Jim and Ann Roosevelt, Democratic..." and "the decision by Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative action activist, ..." Other arrangements would work in all three cases, and we might want "...Connerly, an..." (not "the") for someone truly obscure.

A less obvious and perhaps less egregious abuse: "Democratic New York Sen. Patrick Moynihan later joined in the fray." Well, his only is "Senator." So "Senator Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat," is a solution. English.

Sometimes a side benefit of avoiding the easy road is greater precision. Al Avila may have been "Latin American," but that wasn't the point. If a company has more than one senior vice president (we should know), then "XYZ Co. senior vice president Joe Blow" is incomplete and misleading. "Joe Blow, a senior vice president of XYZ Co." is more accurate, and easier on the ear.

Where to draw the line? The closer to standard English -- as opposed to journalese -- the better. And the longer the string of polyglot modifiers, the further we get from standard. (CJR, Jan./Feb. 2000)

Addendum, Aug. 28, 2001

A real pip, from an otherwise literate journal that apparently does this kind of thing as a matter of style:

      "...says University of Southern California law professor and frequent Fox contributor Susan..."

     Why, for heaven's sake?

Farther/Further
Farther? Further? Fussy!

For some generations now (but not a great many), we’ve been told to use “farther” as an adjective or adverb when distance, literal or figurative, is involved, and “further” for the sense of “additional.” (Out of gas, the car could go no farther; she made a further observation.) With all the things writers and editors need to remember, that seems a distinction not worth bothering about.

The words emerged in Old English as comparatives not for “far” but for “fore” or “forth,” depending on which reference one consults. The experts seem to agree that “further” came first, with “farther” born as both words mutated, in Middle English, into comparatives for “far.” The two forms were used for centuries for both distance and “additional” applications; Shakespeare used both, both ways, with no recorded loss of sleep, and fine writers to this day have done the same. But great (and much-needed) codifying of the hodgepodge of English started in the eighteenth century, and by the end of the nineteenth the dictum about “farther” for one thing and “further” for another had taken hold.

The rule seems a distinction without a difference — a rule for a rule’s sake, regardless of the longer history and regardless of logic — and as such an unnecessary burden. These ears find “further” more adaptable, but either word ought to be usable for either task, if our editors will let us go that far. (CJR, November/December 2002)

Feel bad/badly
Two Ways, With Feeling
A visitor to the Web site said she and her boyfriend had differed over the phrase "I feel badly." He insisted it was the right way to describe sadness. She held that "badly," an adverb, describing how something is done, can't be used where an adjective, describing a thing or condition, is called for; it had to be "I feel bad." In fact, a hoary joke among people who hate "feel badly" is that it can only mean to suffer from an underdeveloped sense of touch. But we can have it both ways. Used to describe an emotional state, "feel badly" is widely accepted by good writers and sounds perfectly natural to these ears; an exception to a rule in an evolving language. ("Feel badly" sounds less natural, though it has some scholarly support, to describe an upset stomach.) But "feel bad" is technically unassailable, and therefore always safe.

"Feud"
Some Things Take Time
The headline reported a judicial decision that had caused an instant, angry debate. A subheading, over a story about that reaction, read, "Bitter Feud Over Ruling." That was too hasty. Some dictionaries include a definition of "feud" that fits any old quarrel, but custom has long since restricted the word to mean the kind of nastiness that goes on for a good while, sometimes for generations. (This squabble, as it turned out, was pretty much moot in a week or so, well short of even the minimalist requirements for a feud.)

Five times below, 150% less, etc.
Nowhere to Go But Up

It wasn't clear in any of these examples what the writer and editor meant, because the math they used doesn't exist.

An expert, we were told, said a proposed power plant "would use 150 times less cooling water per kilowatt that neighboring older plants." Multiplying anything by a positive number like 150 can only increase the amount we're dealing with. Maybe the expert meant the new plant would use one one-hundred-fiftieth as much water. Or maybe not.

Rates of cancer from air pollution, another article said, vary widely, with New York City "four times the national average" (okay so far) and one rural county "five times below the average." If we multiply by five we don't end up "below" anything. "One fifth of the average," maybe? Why make the reader guess?

A report on a survey of news practices said tough interviewing was "down 160% over two years." But nothing can go down more than 100 percent; once it drops that far, it's gone. That one was caught in the editing, and the final phrasing omitted numbers. But reductions, decreases and declines of more than 100 percent, which are impossible, are nonetheless reported with distressing frequency.

The confusion about percentages can extend to increases, too. We need to remember that starting with a rise of 100 percent, the numbers are a little tricky. A 100 percent increase doubles what we started with; 200 per cent triples it; 300 percent quadruples it , and so on to 1,000 percent, which is 11 (not 10) times the original number. (CJR, Jan./Feb. 2001)

Addendum, 4/16/01

Jay Jochnowitz, state editor of the Times Union in Albany, N.Y., was prompted by that discussion to get this off his chest:

"As long as you raise the issue of percents, may I put in my 2 percent about the most heinous and hackneyed offense of all: the tendency of sports figures to say their team gave (or is expected to give) 110 percent. If a journalistic oath is ever devised, it should include a special sportswriter's clause on refusing to quote coaches or gym teachers who use this."

Let it be so.

Flaunt/Flout
A Couple of 'F' Words

The word below beginning with "f" was spelled right, and that's all the editor -- your correspondent -- noticed:

"As Tom Brokaw is sufficiently savvy to know this rule, his ostensible flaunting of it ..."

To flaunt is to show (something) off -- She flaunted her new Porsche -- and it wasn't the right word or even related to the right one. To flout, on the other hand, is to violate, defy, thumb one's nose at -- He flouted the regulations daily and was never caught.

The writer, whose slip is more defensible than the editor's, obviously meant Brokaw was flouting, not flaunting, the rule in question.

"Former Native"
Going Native
The caption described a woman living in New York's suburbs as "a former native of Kosovo," but unless she was literally born again, that can't be. A "native" of someplace is someone who was born there, and the places where we're born never change. The woman was a native of Kosovo and always would be; she was a former resident. We can use "native" loosely, distinguishing, say, between natives and tourists, but the looseness has to be instantly apparent. "Former native" is illiterate and, alas, all too common. (CJR, Sept/Oct 1999)

Fortuitous
Some Things Just Happen
"He was supposed to back up Barton," the story said, "but early in camp Foels asked him to be a floater and learn all three positions. That proved fortuitous when Thomas was injured -- White stepped in and filled the hole." The clear implication is that White's learning three positions was a lucky or fortunate thing, but that isn't what "fortuitous" means. It means happening by chance. White's extra training didn't just happen; it was planned. And what happens fortuitously can turn out to be good or bad. The word used the right way can mean, for example, things stumbled upon: "Fortuitous products of poverty, such as lard-can trash receptacles and peach-basket hampers, can be the stuff that magazine layouts are made of." Happy happenstance. But the junk that's grist for the layout artist's mill might be a pain in the neck for a landscape painter, and it would still be just as fortuitous. (CJR, May/June 1997)

Addendum, 3/27/00

Afterthought: A rule of thumb would be that nothing proves, becomes, or turns out to be, fortuitous. It is fortuitous -- a matter of chance rather than planning -- the moment it happens, for good or ill.

A lovely if grim use of the word occurs in Graham Greene's The Quiet American. As a French jet with the novel's narrator aboard returns from a bombing mission in Vietnam, the pilot spots a small sampan on the river below and blows it to bits with machine-gun fire. "There had been something so shocking," Graham wrote, "in our sudden fortuitous choice of a prey -- we had just happened to be passing, one burst only was required, there was no one to return our fire, and we were gone again, adding our little quota to the world's dead." Whatever a pilot in such circumstances might have thought, the storyteller clearly didn't use "fortuitous" to mean "lucky."

Fused Participle; "off of"
Cut That Fuse
"But a bad Marino pass on the Dolphins' ensuing series led to the ball deflecting off of running back Karim Abdul-Jabbar and into the hands of linebacker Corey Widmer." But the bad pass didn't lead to the ball, which is what the sentence says, literally, and what a reader might think, momentarily. It led to the deflecting. The phrase "the ball deflecting" is what language technicians call a fused participle. We have to unfuse it, and it's easy. Make it "led to the ball's deflecting...." The possessive pulls the reader instantly to the real object of "led to." (And while in technical land, we should note that "off of" is a barbarism; drop the "of.")

Addendum, 2/12/01

A good example of the need to unfuse:

Starting out, the passage spoke of a research project "on the dangers of post-Communist Russia...," which is a very broad and slightly mystifying topic.

But the article continued, "losing control of its nuclear weapons." Only then did it become clear that the danger wasn't post-Communist Russia in its entirety, but a much more specific problem. Make it possessive -- "Russia's losing" -- and we zip straight through to the danger being researched, which starts with "losing." The reader doesn't need to stop at "Russia" and then shift gears.

 

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