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It Should Usually Be Early
Adverb Placement
Two schools of thought seem to exist on the placement of adverbs with compound verbs. One is easy: just stick it in front of the verb and be done with it. "He always has been a little slow," say, or "She frequently will disagree" or "That train habitually has run late." The other approach, subscribed to here, is that the adverb works more mellifluously after the first part of the compound verb. Usually. So it would be "He has always..." and "She will frequently..." and "That train has habitually..." But it's a rough rule, and it was followed out the window here: "As he has labored to fill his outsized war chest, the governor has, like everyone else, had to endure his share of negative publicity." Splitting "has" and "had" that way is ugly. Make it natural: "...the governor, like everyone else, has had to ..."

Think "A" ... or "E"
Affect/Effect
Mark Stevens, director of public information for the Denver Public Schools, e-mailed to ask about a fairly widespread mental block: "I could use a neat way to remember the correct use for 'affect' and 'effect.' " Here's an attempt at a mnemonic formula to help keep them separate.

"Affect," except for the specialists mentioned below, is a verb, meaning to cause change in something. "His headache affected his ability to concentrate." Verbs are words of action. So think "A" -- Affect, Action -- something is Acting on something else.

"Effect" is usually a noun, a word for a thing, in this case a result of something.

"Aspirin had the desired effect, and he aced the exam." Think "E" for End Product.

So much for the most common situations.

A less common (but useful) form of "effect" is a verb meaning to bring about or cause to happen. "She effected a revolution with her challenge to the grading system."

A nuanced (and useful) form of "affect" is a verb meaning to move, emotionally, as in "The scene affected her greatly" or "It was a profoundly affecting moment."

And in the social sciences, alas, "affect" can be a noun, meaning a feeling or emotion as shown or described by a patient. But we can leave that one to the social scientists.

Addendum, 3/9/99

Rosalind Warfield-Brown, who teaches at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia and works as a freelance editor, has a word she uses to help people get around that mental block -- VANE. That's Verb=Affect / Noun=Effect. Seems foolproof for the two basic meanings.

Getting Along
Along With
"Mr. Lott, along with Speaker Newt Gingrich, were among those who signed the letter to the F.C.C." The phrase between commas is one of those parenthetical distractions that life serves up. The subject of the sentence remains "Mr. Lott," so we have to say "was among those." The same trap opens with "as well as" and other interruptions: "The Mayor will now have an opportunity to demonstrate...that it is his management techniques, not any one person, that is responsible for the drop in crime." "Not any one person" distracted the writer (and editor) into thinking that the subject of the last clause of the sentence had become singlular, but the subject is still "techniques," so the clause should read "that are responsible...." We can avoid the traps by ignoring whatever just goes along for the ride.

Alternating Current?
Alternate/Alternative
The article said a utility "plans to freeze its electric rates for five years, and by 2003 will allow all its customers to buy power from alternate sources." The writer almost certainly wanted "alternative," meaning providing a choice among options. "Alternate" means by turns, or every other, as in "alternate Sundays." (In a narrow sense, where substitution is involved, it can be used to denote choice of a sort, as in "alternate juror" or "Alternate Route 22.")

Remembering Those Gone Before
Antecedents
Everybody knows that a pronoun needs to agree with its antecedent, the earlier noun that the pronoun stands in for. We can't, for instance, say "Democrats" and follow up with "it." But the problem is trickier in sentences like this one, which are common: "The testimony provided the strongest corroboration to date of White House claims that its office of personnel security..." The antecedent for "its" seems to be "White House," but it can't be. A pronoun's antecedent has to be a noun, and in that sentence, the executive mansion is used as an adjective, modifying "claims." To make it right, change it to "...the White House's..." Using the possessive turns "White House" back into a noun, and we're home free.

They're Not Generals
AttorneyS general
The story said a judge "at a minimum will request briefs from the Justice Department, state attorney generals and Microsoft." But when we start with one attorney general and add more, it isn't generals who increase, it's attorneys. That makes the correct plural "attorneys general." It comes out wrong pretty often, especially in speech (including that of attorneys general), and some dictionaries have knuckled under, telling us it's okay either way. It's not, any more than it is, say, with sergeants major or brothers-in-law. With all such, logic limits the choice of plurals to one.
(CJR, July/Aug. 2000)

Experts or Cops?
The Authorities
The sentence spoke of "actions which authorities charge ultimately led to Officer Guidice's death." For clarity's sake, and to preserve a nicety of the language, we ought to save "authorities" for people with great knowledge in their fields -- experts. The law-enforcement types are better described as "the authorities."

Adverse Effect
Averse/Adverse
"Big companies are adverse to publicity -- and the bigger the company, the more adverse." Nope. "Adverse" means "negative" or "bad"; we wouldn't say the companies were "bad to publicity." The writer meant they were opposed to it, uneasy about it, and the word he wanted was "averse." A few paragraphs later, he wrote about "heavy adverse publicity," and that was just right.

Since You Asked...
"Because" and "Since"
André E. Maillho, managing editor of Gambit, an alternative weekly in New Orleans, noticed that "you, like millions of other Americans, tend to use the word 'since' to convey a causative relationship," and added, "An old editor once scolded me to differentiate between 'since' and 'because' and it's been a reflex ever since...What's your take?"

That old editor once had a fairly numerous following, but the words are usually interchangeable. A problem can arise--maybe the reason for the old editor's edict--if "since" can be read mistakenly in its time sense: "Since she called him a fool, he has stopped campaigning" is ambiguous, for example. When there's no trap of that kind, "since" means "because" and vice versa.

Among You, Me, and the Lamppost?
Between/Among
A reader was kind enough to write to applaud our sermon on "unique" ("The One and Only," CJR, March/April 1997), but he also had a complaint. On the same page of the magazine, he noted, an article said, "And their success will depend largely on cooperation -- between the media and the court and, especially, BETWEEN members of the press" (reader's emphasis added). "Since 'members' is plural," the note asked, "should it not read 'among members of the press' "? Probably not. The rule that calls for "among" when more than two things are being discussed is a rule of thumb, and a rough one at that. In any group, the members may relate to each other in a block or, as seems more likely in the reader's example, individually -- A to B, A to C, B to A, and so on. So "between members of the press" makes more sense.

"Between" was also wanted in this passage from a newspaper report: "The F.B.I.'s refusal of the White House's request was a vivid example of the tensions among the White House, the Justice Department and the F.B.I." As the article made clear, the tensions arose between the White House and the Justice Department, between the Justice Department and the F.B.I., and between the White House and the F.B.I.

And for this one, you didn't need the context to know that the writer (or, at least as likely, the editor) was following a rule of thumb out the window: "...an airline charter service that operates among Havana, the Bahamas and Mexico." Those planes obviously fly between Havana and the Bahamas, to mention only one leg of their travels. (CJR, Sept./Oct. 1997)

addendum, May 13 1998:
This time, the rule of thumb applied. The announcer said of the officials at a basketball game that they had "49 years' experience between the three." The experience was the group's, and the word had to be "among."

Between/In Between; Call/Call Up; In Line/On Line
Three Very Little Words

From the e-mail:

Linda Leonhardt, a decorative painter in Great River, N.Y., reported a domestic dispute: "My husband and I were hotly discussing ‘between and in between’ the other day, and we haven’t settled a thing." "In" is clearly unnecessary in a phrase like "in between the pages," and in most standard writing is probably best omitted. And yet — the "in" doesn’t do any real harm, and may just add a sense of specificity lacking in an unaccompanied "between" (just as "in there, up there" and so on can be more informative than a mere "there"). And unlike the single word "between," "in between" sounds natural standing on its own: the fighters charged each other, and the referee was caught in between.

When a writer said "I called up" a source, Phil Dechman, a retired editor at the Independent in Grimsby, Ontario, was reminded of a conversation at a gathering of his parents and some of their friends when he was a child. "The use of ‘up’ was denigrated," he wrote, "after which one sharpie raised his glass and offered the toast, ‘Bottoms!’ " But in "call up," Mr. Dechman suggested, the "up" is always redundant. So it is, unless we’re talking about military forces. "Call up" may fit in intentionally casual or conversational writing, though.

As Wendy Bryan, a Web specialist at the Columbia Journalism School, noted, "online" (one word) has become a noun and adjective for the Internet universe. But she was puzzled when she read about someone who "stood on line at the bank machine," and wondered, "Do I get behind those on line, or may I remain in line?" "On line" is apparently a regionalism; The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage declares: "Few besides New Yorkers speak of standing on line. Follow the usage of the rest of the English-speaking world: in line." The "on" version may be spreading, but "in" is still the unassailable choice.

Cracks to Fill
Between the Cracks
Alex McKale (see "Hitting Milestones"), e-mailed to say: "Another phrase I've heard misused too frequently is 'between the cracks.' The speaker generally means 'through the cracks' or 'in the cracks.' "

Quite so. It's another phrase that turns intended meaning on its head (see also "Could/Couldn't Care Less"). The writer who suggested using a creeper "to plant in between the cracks of paving stones on a terrace" obviously wasn't thinking of some aggressive plant that might punch its way through paving stones, yet it was the stones that were "in between the cracks." Something was wanted to fill the space between the stones, and therefore in the cracks.

The same logic applies in figurative use:if certain insurance policies "have often fallen between the regulatory cracks," they haven't escaped bureaucratic attention, which is what the writer had in mind. They've landed in plain view on solid ground. They would enter the void only by falling through the cracks, or into them.

Born to be Borne, or Vice Versa
Borne Out, with an "E"
It may have been just a typo, but it pops up from time to time: "Such reports seem born out by help-wanted advertising..." The correct spelling is "borne," with an "e." It's one of two past participles of "to bear," meaning (a) to give birth or (b) to carry. The one without the "e" is used for actual or figurative birth: a star is born, to a born loser; things are born of necessity or desperation; children are born out of wedlock. For everything else, including the cited form of "bear out," meaning to prove or confirm, add the "e." The star was borne by her unfortunate mother.

Addendum, July 15, 1998:
Dr. Denny Wilkins, assistant professor in St. Bonaventure University's School of Journalism and Mass Communcation, e-mailed to say he found that last sentence confusing, and that's not surprising. "Does the sentence mean," he asked, "The star was 'proven' or 'confirmed' by her unfortunate mother?" No, it means the star was carried (to birth, as it happens) by her mother, but the effort to be cute obviously led to unfortunate misunderstanding.

Addendum, April 7, 1999:
This was just exactly wrong: "But the brunt of the evening's jokes were born by the President and the other major impeachment figures..." Our word has nothing to do with birth; it has to do with carrying (a burden). The choice had to be "borne." (And, incidentally, the little verb should have been "was." All the jokes weren't borne by the president, only the brunt of them, so "jokes" can't take command of the sentence.)

Addendum, Dec. 19, 2000:
And finally -- Some people, the article said, "harbor anti-Semitic attitudes borne of years of conflict." The writer and editor didn't want that "e"; those attitudes were born of -- they arose from, were given birth to by -- those years of conflict. (The immortal H.W. Fowler's analogous citation was "The melancholy born of solitude.")

Putting Two Together
Both
The word "both" takes two elements and makes them one. With that in mind, this: "Both of the candidates tried to link their opponent to the perceived weaknesses of their parties." Their opponent? The two of them, together, have an opponent? Not what the writer meant; he meant, "Each of the candidates tried to link his opponent to the perceived weakness of his party." (Or, for absolute clarity, "...the opponent's party.")

Addendum, July 15, 1998:
One news article had it both ways. Near the beginning, "Both sides remain far apart in those discussions" was wrong; the two, together, weren't far apart from something else. Near the end, "But the lawyers said the two sides were still far apart on several fronts" got it right.

Cardinal Rules
Cardinal/Ordinal Numbers
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)

Don't Call Collect
"Collective"
"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"?

The Whole and the Parts
Comprise
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)

It's About Caring
Could/Couldn't Care Less
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)

Give Us An A! Give Us An... On!
Criterion/Criteria; Phenomenon/Phenomena
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."

Memoirs Don't Write
Danglers
This construction, called a dangler, is as common as the flowers that bloom in the spring: "A first-time author at age 66, McCourt's memoir has topped best-seller lists and won critical acclaim." What that says, literally, is that the memoir is a first-time author. That's because the first clause describes the subject of the second, and the subject is "memoir." (The possessive "McCourt's" functions as an adjective here, not a noun.) The sentence needs to be reworked. Maybe "McCourt, a first-time author at age 56, finds his memoir atop..." Or "McCourt, etc., has written a memoir that..." However we work it out, we can't make the opus its own writer.

It Takes Ten, Roughly
"Decimate"
The word "decimate" literally means to reduce by a tenth, from the legendary Roman practice of killing every tenth man in a mutinous or otherwise dicey military outfit on the ground that at all costs, discipline must be maintained. The word has come to mean to destroy, put out of action or seriously damage a large part of a body of people or things -- "the U.S. fleet had been decimated at Pearl Harbor" works, as does "the tree-chomping beetles that decimated Greenpoint, Brooklyn, two years ago." But it seemed a real stretch when the eloquent elder statesman said the scandal of our times had "decimated" the president's family, which numbered three. How, then, account for the review that said a performance let a play's audience walk "right into the mind of its decimated hero"? Applying "decimate" to an individual person or thing is more than a stretch. It makes meaningless a word with a clear and honorable pedigree. (CJR, May/June 1999)

But Who Offered?
Declined to comment
"Committee Democrats," the article reported, "declined comment until they could discuss Mr. Hyde's plan." A frequent goof, "declined comment" in this case says somebody asked, "Hey, Democrats, want some comment?" and the Democrats replied, "No thanks." Make it, as generations of news folk have been taught, "declined to comment."

No Taking Sides
Democratic, adj.
"Some of the Democrat ferment is positioning for the 2000 election," the analytical story said, and that was partisan (no doubt inadvertently so). "Democrat" as an adjective is relatively recent Republican coinage, designed to head off any subconscious inference that the opposition is truly "democratic." But that word is part of the party's official name, and using the shorter form -- which even some Democratic politicians do in error on occasion -- endorses a political position, however inadvertently.

"While I appreciate that you recognize the difference between the printed and spoken word," he e-mailed, "I hope and pray that you will admonish sportscasters who use 'differential' when the word 'difference' would seem to suffice for describing the score of a sporting event."

Suffice it does. And "differential" indeed has a drumbeat quality in sports broadcasts -- one of those awful things some of us do when we want to sound fancy. But the abuse of "differential" is not new, or limited to one medium.

Many decades ago, the inimitable H. W. Fowler discussed the legitimate use of the word, as noun and adjective, not to mean "difference" but to denote something based on a difference -- differential rates of pay, for instance, varying by the skills required for a job. (Some of us remember the night differential -- extra remuneration to compensate for the inconvenience of working when most of one's colleagues were resting from their labors.)

"But then," Fowler wrote, "the rot sets in. Differentials ...is increasingly used, under the influence of LOVE OF THE LONG WORD, as an imposing synonym for differences of all sorts...Perhaps the rot might be stopped if everyone were to bear in mind that Ophelia did not say You must bear your rue with a differential, nor did Wordsworth write But she is in her grave, and O the differential to me."

Heavenly. And when the Knicks lead the Spurs 101-99, that's not a two-point differential. It's just a difference.

 

Possessed, but only Once
Double Possessive
"His best glove work," the sports story said, "is equal to that of Ozzie Smith's." Nah. We don't need two possessives. "That of" is a possessive, and so is "Smith's." Make it "equal to that of Ozzie Smith" or "equal to Ozzie Smith's."

Making Due
Due To
One synonym for "due" is "attributable," and that was the rough idea the writer had in mind in this sentence: "The last such blip occurred in 1990 due to fears that the Gulf War would cut oil supplies." But we wouldn't say the "blip occurred attributable to fears," would we? The writer wanted "because of" or "as a result of." With "due to," some form of the verb "to be," or verbs that function like it, is usually needed. "The power failure was due to a lightning strike" would be okay. So would, "Their exhaustion seemed due to the humidity rather than the heat." Or, for fans of the polysyllabic, attributable to it.

To Each His Other
Each other/one another
Ronnie Matthew, a sub-editor at The Times of India living in Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat, e-mailed this: "What's the difference, in usage, between 'each other' and 'one another'? Is 'each other' used in the case of two people and 'one another' in the case of more than two?"

Yes and no. The rule is clearly arbitrary -- examine the words and it's hard to see why any distinction is made between the phrases. Designating "each other" for two and "one another" for more than two was the brainstorm of an obscure grammarian in the late 18th century; the phrases had been used interchangeably for centuries before, and have been since, by writers from Samuel Johnson to Noah Webster to E.L. Doctorow. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, the source for that history, says the rule was "cut out of the whole cloth" and "there is no sin in its violation." The venerable H.W. Fowler declared that "the differentiation is neither of present utility nor based on historical usage," and the 1990's reworking of his Modern English Usage concludes that belief in the rule "is untenable."

HOWEVER: Although a needless complication, the supposed rule is prescribed as style -- the sometimes arbitrary dicta that publications issue in the service of consistency -- by such broadly influential outfits as The Associated Press and The New York Times. So while logic may not sanctify it, safety may. (CJR, May/June 2000)

Elegant, Shmelegant
Elegant Variation
An article mentioned "a letter that Tripp wrote Newsweek back in August after the Willey story first appeared," and continued, "In her missive, Tripp . . ." Another, after mentioning a "letter to the editor" in one paragraph, continued, "His missive inspired a second letter to the editor . . ." Still another reported on " . . . a pointed, important May 8 letter to Dombeck. The missive also was signed . . ."

"Missive," meaning a communication, is often a stilted word. It has its uses (usually humorous) but none of our examples qualifies; each simply substitutes the word for the innocuous "letter."

And that is the writing crime of (shudder!) elegant variation — straining conspicuously to avoid totally inoffensive repetition. A classic cliché example is "wet, white stuff" to avoid "snow." Less shopworn, but no less offensive, was the caption that mentioned "beef sandwiches" and followed up with "savory treats."

In his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, the great H.W. Fowler declared of elegant variation, "There are few literary faults so widely prevalent, and this book will not have been written in vain if the present article should heal any sufferer of his infirmity." Here's to our good health. (CJR, Sept./Oct. 98)

The Big and the Bad
Enormity
"There's an undercurrent of awkwardness in the room," the reporter wrote, "for the imminent enormity of the alternative-medicine industry will not just be demographic but also financial." Using "enormity" that way -- to denote only great size - is like using "fortuitous" to mean "lucky" ("Fortuitous," below; CJR, May/June 1997). In both cases, we're in danger of losing a nice precision. "Enormity" should be reserved for things that are both huge and evil or outrageous, as in "their attempt to convey the enormity of the Holocaust." To denote sheer size, "enormousness," though enormous enough itself, is available. So are immensity, vastness and, uh, sheer size, among other words and phrases. (CJR, Nov/Dec 1997)

Stringing It Out
False Titles, etc.
"...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 title 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 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? Fussy!
Farther/Further

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)

Two Ways, With Feeling
Feel bad/badly
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.

Some Things Take Time
"Feud"
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.)

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

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.

A Couple of 'F' Words
Flaunt/Flout

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.

Going Native
"Former 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)

Some Things Just Happen
Fortuitous
"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."

Cut That Fuse
Fused Participle; "Off of"
"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.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare, Act II
Gild/Paint the Lily
Like "honored in the breach," the original phrase whence cometh this common error is usable just the way himself wrote it: "If you want to gild the lily, you could add herbs or minced garlic to the cheese layer" (emphasis added; the phrase in italics is the problem). In King John, some of the nobles are discussing His Majesty's plans to have himself crowned a second time. To do so, says one, would be "wasteful and ridiculous excess," as it would be "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily..." So our example is off on two counts: It seems to mean adding a finishing touch or a flourish, but Shakespeare meant going overboard. And it abuses the original, lovely phrasing. Let's face it, the guy had a touch.

It Takes Two
Graffito/Graffiti
Or more. This was fun, but it wasn't quite right: "Graffiti is illegal -- but it's a beautiful crime." When only one piece of amateur artwork adorns an otherwise bare wall, there's a nice, useful word for it: "graffito." The word in our example -- used as a singular, as it so commonly is -- is the plural.

addendum, 2/18/99

Some challenging e-mail about that item came from Dennis Moran, assistant business editor of the Prague Post. "English borrows copiously if incompletely," he wrote, noting such Associated Press style preferences as "referendums" and "stadiums" (not the Latin plurals "referenda" and "stadia"). Amen to those, and to "curriculums," rather than the pompous "curricula" still widely favored in academic circles.

"In the court of common usage," Mr. Moran went on, "it seems to me that 'graffiti' won out long ago as both singular and plural. Actually, it seems to me that in English it's an uncountable noun, like 'grass.' The word refers to the phenomenon, and doesn't count scrawlings."

Outside of archeological and other scholarly writing, where the singular was uniformly distinguished from the plural, the word is a relatively recent arrival in English, dating only from the 1960's. And while the plural (with or without a plural verb) is more common -- as are the multiple scrawlings it defines -- the singular, when appropriate, still has defenders among writers and experts on usage. And, when appropriate, it's a nicety worth preserving. Also a sweet kind of word, as Mr. Moran suggested in a subsequent note.

"Actually, I'd love it if people used the word 'graffito,' " he wrote, "I guess because I Iove Italian words ... But I never hear it, so it seems to me doomed." It isn't if writers and editors decide it isn't; we can still use it when one bit of writing is all we're talking about. And it would be a shame if we could no longer say, should the occasion arise, "A lone grafitto graced the chapel wall."

He, She, and Changing Times
He or She, etc.
Dale Brayden, a software engineer in Vancouver, Wash., sent a thoughtful message after reading "There's No 'They' There" (see "Singular noun, plural pronoun"). The item criticized the common but deplorable use of plural pronouns for singular nouns, in this case "they" for "bond firm." The solution -- use "it," not "they" -- was obvious, but it ducked a tougher question.

"Years ago," Mr. Brayden e-mailed, "I would have written, for example, 'no person should feel any pressure simply because he was called by the City Budget Director.' " But "he," the default pronoun for generations of us, is inarguably sexist.

Granting that, Mr. Brayden had no sympathy for the faddish coinage "s/he," which happily has not seemed to catch on. And simply alternating "she" with "he," willy-nilly and regardless of context, is conspicuous and distracting. The gender-neutral "one," as in "One should not feel ... because one was called ..." has "a tendency to proliferate," Mr. Brayden observed, and "sounds awfully upper-crusty and stilted." It certainly does.

What to do? In contexts that are clearly male or clearly female, the appropriate pronoun is, uh, appropriate, and we needn't strain to avoid it. Elsewhere, a broad answer is to rework the sentence; a narrow example of reworking is to use plurals -- "people should not feel pressure ... because they were called..." Mr. Brayden said he saw "he or she" often and found it "awkward and inelegant," but it's a legitimate last resort. Maybe, if we can avoid drumbeat repetition, it will come to seem as natural as "he."

Addendum, 12/6/99
Reporting on a poll, this passage avoided the "he or she" problem at a price: "...Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton (neither has officially announced candidacy) are in a statistical dead heat." The absence of pronouns before "candidacy" -- two would have been required -- was conspicuous. Maybe "a candidacy" would have seemed more natural. Or duck the issue with "neither has officially decided to run." Or maybe even "neither has officially announced his or her candidacy." Unlike the generic "he or she" situations that crop up so frequently, this was a case of a real him and a real her.

Watch Out for the Rocks!
Hitting Milestones
Alex McKale, a research and development manager at Hewlett-Packard, heard the phrase "hit a milestone" not long ago and thought it odd. "Wouldn't hitting a milestone damage the vehicle," he asked by e-mail, "and thereby hinder further progress?" Well, yes. A metaphor should work literally as well as figuratively, and hitting real stones isn't a positive experience. Holding that thought, we'd expect to find the athlete in this headline in the trainer's room, at least: "Veteran Defenseman Bodger Hits Milestone." And this poor little guy had a real run of bad luck: "Calvin, 11 months old, has been hitting developmental milestones."

A quick Nexis search found some variation of "hit a milestone" used more than 1,000 times in less than a year. That may not be worth losing sleep over, but why risk the risible? We're better off letting people and things reach milestones or pass milestones, not run into them. (CJR, Jan/Feb 1999)

Brush Up Your Shakespeare, Act I
Honored in the Breach
Here, as often happens with this allusion, the great man's meaning is turned around: "Perhaps it is a saving grace of Russian politics these days that laws and orders are honored more in the breach than in the observance." What the writer meant was that the laws and orders were broken more often than they were obeyed. But Hamlet, who said it first, meant something else. When he described his stepfather's boozy carryings-on as a custom "more honored in the breach than the observance," he meant it was a bad custom, more honored when violated than when followed. Not the same thing, and the pretty phrase is usable in its original sense.

Those Wild and Crazy Hyphens
Hyphens

Stacy Moore, managing editor of the Hi-Desert Star in Yucca Valley, Calif., e-mailed to ask about hyphenation, a topic that could fill a book (now there’s a chilling thought). She and a writer at the paper differed over whether to hyphenate "big city," "beach front," and "ice cold" as compound adjectives in front of nouns. Ms. Moore concluded, "I say hyphenate ’em all."

Agreed.

The classic reason for using hyphens with compounds is to avoid ambiguity. The hyphen links two or more words instantly for the reader’s rapidly moving eye. "Big-city" is a perfect example. A "big city man" is a large man from a city. A "big-city man" is a man from a large city, and the hyphen is mandatory to pull the two words together to make one modifier. "Forty-odd employees" would be silly without the hyphen. So would "small-business man" (which requires splitting "businessman" in two).

Beyond that, "big-city" just wants a hyphen because convention calls for it. And, even though they’re not likely to be misunderstood when they’re hyphen-free, that’s also true of "beach-front" (also reasonable as one word, noun and adjective) and "ice-cold."

Or so it says here. Some decisions about hyphens, especially decisions about what convention requires, are open to argument. And the same compounds will appear hyphenated in one good publication and naked in another. Style, not right or wrong, determines which ones go which way.

Some editors, including this one after many a year, like hyphens better than others do. But we of the pro-hyphen school would do well remember a Churchillian pearl: "One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided whenever possible." (CJR, Sept./Oct. 2002)

FURTHERMORE:

In the second paragraph above, the phrase "rapidly moving" combines an adverb and an adjective to form one modifier describing "eye." Yet the compound takes no hyphen. That’s because the adverbial ending "ly" is almost universally considered to perform the bridging function that a hyphen would otherwise take care of.

"Very" also needs no hyphen to link it to an adjective, by common consent — "very popular singer." It’s just an adverb modifying an adjective. So, usually, are "most," "more," "least," "less" and other such words used in phrases like most beloved teacher, least likely outcome, less complex solution.

That last was published with a hyphen, and there’s no reason for one. Nor was there in "the nation’s most-populous state" or "several more-famous plays," also hyphenated in print. (An exception with "most": the FBI’s Most-Wanted List. It’s not a list that is somehow most wanted, it’s "most" and "wanted" linked to make one adjective describing "list." It needs a clarifying hyphen.)

In deciding whether to use a hyphen, it may be useful — and, of course, it may be maddening — to remember that printed lines can break in funny places. Look how these broke:
1. "…. he was the longest"
2. " …just months removed from the end of Juan Antonio Samaranch’s dictatorship of arrogance and secrecy, along came a figure"
3."…said one of the deportees, Sor Vann, 34, a heavy"
4. "many officials recall how Mr. Bush’s father seemed ill"

This is how those passages continued:
1. "serving of the chief rabbis in Europe"
2. "skating scandal at the Winter Games"
3. "equipment operator"
4. "attuned to economic conditions"

The guidelines for clarity or convention or both seem to require hyphens after all of those end-of-line words; their placement just compounds the problem when the hyphens are omitted. (The same guidelines surely called for a hyphen in the phrase "infectious disease expert," which was a tad risible without one, and "obstruction of justice laws," which was just a tad tough to read.)

The subject is far from exhausted, but the writer isn’t. A closing thought from John Benbow, once editor of the stylebook of the Oxford University Press, quoted in the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage by William Morris and Mary Morris: "If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad." Are we there yet?

Addendum, 12/02/02

The last word on this subject in this space goes to John Kilkenny of Melbourne, Australia, an amateur grammarian, who waded through that "lucubration" (as he called it, not kindly but justifiably) and begged to differ with one example. The phrase "several more-famous plays," he e-mailed, needs that hyphen to say that the plays are more famous than the one being discussed. With no hyphen, it means several additional plays that, like this one, were famous. The hyphen seems unusually unlovely in such a phrase, but without rewording, it's defensible unless the context is totally clear.

Whaddya Mean, 'If Not'?
"If Not"

In the passages below, and in thousands like them, the little phrase "if not" is inescapably sloppy, and it can be unfair.

"...at worst, he bullied his opponents and impugned their integrity, if not their patriotism."

"Off and on for two decades, Dr. Lee's behavior was curious, if not criminal."

"If not" in both cases achieves the rarefied status of perfect ambiguity.

Did the writer mean that the subject in the first passage actually stopped short of attacking his opponents' patriotism? Did the second writer mean Dr. Lee's behavior was probably not criminal? Distinct possibilities, but the terse yet flabby "if not" doesn't get the reader there.

Or, perhaps more likely in these examples (and more commonly), "if not" could mean the writers wanted to imply guilt without quite coming out with the charge. That's dirty pool. Whatever meaning is intended, saying it directly -- and providing supporting evidence later -- is the responsible way to go.

A third distinct possibility, a cousin of the second, is that a writer doesn't have a clue, but just wants to slip in the possibility of something ugly. That's both sloppy and unfair. (CJR, May/June 2001)

Think 'M' Before 'N'

Imply/Infer
To imply is to suggest, hint, get an idea across — deliberately or by accident — without saying or writing it in so many words. Politician A might not quite say Politician B was a crook, but he certainly might try to make his audience think so.

It would be up to the audience to infer. That means to read or listen to something and deduce, or guess, what is meant. Inferring is a thought process. The confusion between the words is a lot more common than it should be, and almost always involves “infer”:

• A government official issued an apology for “inferring that a 14-year-old girl might have instigated a sexual relationship with a clergyman.” What he inferred didn’t matter; what he apologized for was putting the thought into words — implying it.

• A writer discoursing on a denizen of the deep — the horseshoe leatherjacket, no less — declared, “As the name infers, this fish has a horseshoe-shaped pattern on the side of its tough thick skin.” A name can’t think, so it can’t infer; it implies.

A stab at mnemonics: Someone iMplies, then someone else iNfers — “m” before “n.” Or, the sPeaker imPlies. Or, the listener or reader INfers, as in INgests, as in takes IN … or maybe… (CJR May/June 2002)

Important ? Well, Interesting
Important/Importantly
Steve Parrott, associate director for university relations at the University of Iowa, e-mailed to ask, "Please consider a few words on 'more important / more importantly.' "

Okay. Mr. Parrott had in mind sentences or clauses that begin with one of those phrases, like "Most importantly, the charges are tied directly to the original topic Mr. Starr was supposed to investigate." The short answer is that either form of the word is acceptable in such cases. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994) has a lengthy and interesting (really) discussion of the longstanding argument (really) over important vs. importantly, and concludes that "both are defensible grammatically and both are in respectable use."

The tilt here, and it's slight, is toward "importantly" or other adverbs, rather than adjectives. The adverb seems stronger, somehow, because it can stand alone at the start of a sentence or clause -- without "more" or "most" or any other modifier -- and the adjective can't. Try it. Drop the "most" from the example quoted above; the sentence still works. Then, with "most" gone, drop the "ly" from "importantly"; the sentence no longer works. Small potatoes, though. (And in passages that start with modifiers ending in "ly" -- "equally" comes to mind -- avoiding an echo by using "important" seems to make sense.)

People Need People
Individuals/People/Person
The article attributed new developments in a banking scandal to "individuals who have direct knowledge of the investigation." Why "individuals"? Why not "people"? The answer is that bureaucratese is infectious. At times it's necessary to distinguish beween individuals and groups, so "individual," singular and plural, has its uses as a noun. Otherwise, such solid old English words as "man," "woman" and "people" are just fine. (And "people" is almost always preferable to the stilted "persons," except on signs about restaurant occupancy, where the bureaucrats rule.) (CJR, Nov/Dec 1999)

Relevant, as in Middle East
Irrelevant (not irrevelant)

There's an old name for the lands just east of the Mediterranean --"Levant" -- that can avoid some trouble with a couple of much more commonly used words.

One article applauded a "very strong, revelant message to the people." Another deplored the "devilishly clever labels on a collection of random, irrevelant scenes."

Typos both, maybe, and an easy slip to make. But a database search suggests that a widespread switching of middle syllables -- "vel" replacing "lev" -- is going on out there. That strong message, if the writer was right, was "relevant." Those scenes, by contrast, were "irrelevant."

To avoid the misspellings, it may help to think of "relate," to which "relevant" is, as it were, related. But that will carry us only as far as the "l" in the correct spellings (a critical place to reach, though). So "levant," with the appropriate prefix, may be the best mnemonic. And there are extra showoff points for working "Levant" into conversation.