Gotcha Journalism
A September post on the New York Times’ small business blog ran with this title: Eagle-eyed readers, however, noticed that the URL said, “Social Media Is Easier Than You Think.” Which is correct? “Social media are…,” or Social media is…?” There are two linguistic schools of thought on such matters. One would say that the [...]
Banishing the Buzz
Unsuck It, a new buzzword dictionary making some buzz on the Internet, claims to “unsuck” pretentious business jargon into normal English. The online lexicon contains some apt entries of inflated buzzwords that indeed need to have hot air sucked out. For example, a team player is translated as “helpful employee,” a go-forward plan is just [...]
Twitter Translated
Although The Awkward Adverb doesn’t have a Twitter account, we haven’t missed the buzz about the social networking platform. We recently happened upon a blog posting that gives advice about how to use Twitter strategically. Among the writer’s recommendations, she posts several sample Twitter messages. Here’s one: RT @kellyecrane Great idea: PR consultants, let’s use [...]
This Sentence Ends With
When an editor mangled Winston Churchill’s text to adhere to the well-known rule, Never end a sentence with a preposition, Churchill supposedly scrawled on the proof, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” Even if this anecdote isn’t true (and several variations on Churchill’s purported reply are floating around), [...]
Healthcare Hot Air
As the United States battles over healthcare reform, all insured citizens can certainly agree on one point: They have no have idea what their policies say. Here is an excerpt from an actual policy: “The plan covering the patient as a dependent child of a person whose date of birth occurs earlier in the calendar [...]
Mean Dregs and Spam
A nonessential but always present aspect of spam is its usage mistakes. Spammers do occasionally include intentional misspellings in order to skirt around e-mail filters that flag certain keywords, but most of the mistakes spammers make are not strategic, and this explanation cannot excuse the atrocious grammar. Mostly, spam is horribly written because it comes [...]
A Whole Nother Nother
“It’s a whole nother thing.” The sentence rolls off the tongue easily, and it’s commonly heard in English along with variants such as “a whole nother level” or “a whole nother ball of wax.” Despite the ubiquity of these expressions, “nother” isn’t really a word. The speaker is splitting up “another” by dropping “whole” in [...]
Get Back Inside the Box
Whenever people claim to “think outside the box,” they’re obviously thinking inside the box. The phrase refers to original thinking, but it has become a cliché, and clichés by their very nature represent the opposite of original thinking. Most likely, the phrase came from this little brain teaser: Take a square grid of nine dots. [...]
Exclamation Explanation
OK, we’ll watch our step on this wet floor, but please, lay off the exclamation points. The overuse of exclamation points is nothing new. This punctuation mark certainly has its place in written English, but it proves most effective when used sparingly. Add too much excitement or emphasis with exclamation points, and eventually nothing is [...]
Got People?
As confusing tax forms flutter about The Awkward Adverb‘s office, our eyes glaze over and our minds wander over to H&R Block’s cloying slogan, “You got people.” I got people? Who talks that way? Tom Hanks’ and Meg Ryan’s computers told them “You’ve got mail,” not “You got mail.” We suppose the tagline is meant [...]
