Unless the point actually is silent...

When I was active in a Toastmasters Club, I would sketch notes whenever I got ideas for possible speech topics. Today I ran across one such document, entitled, “Things People Say Wrong.” It lists a dozen or so words and phrases that are often used incorrectly. I didn't give a  speech about it, but I never pass up an opportunity to complain about the way people talk. Here are a few I jotted down:

“[Some sound] rose to a crescendo.” Wrong. Crescendo means gradually getting louder – the crescendo is the rising, not the resulting final decibel level.

“A myriad of things.” In correct usage, myriad is an adjective, not a noun, and fundamentally (and etymologically) it means “countless,” and you wouldn’t say, “a countless of things,” would you? No, just myriad things is all you need to say.

“Different than.” No, it should be different from, because different is the adjectival form of the verb to differ, and you don’t say, “They differ than each other,” do you? No, you say, “They differ from each other;” therefore, you should say one thing is different from another.

“The reason he fell is because he was drunk.”  No. Reasons are not because. Either, “The reason he fell is that he was drunk,” or “He fell because he was drunk,” but  never, the reason is because.  Reasons are not because of anything. Reasons just are.

The best way to learn correct usage and meanings of words and phrases (not to mention learning new ones) is to read a great deal of well-written prose. I think people do not do anywhere near enough of that these days.

I know a fellow who habitually says, “It’s a mute point.”  I know that if he saw the word moot in print and noted it spelling, he wouldn’t think it rhymed with cute. On the other hand, he’s the same guy who said, “I am anxious to bring this project to frutation."

Maybe people should read a lot of well-written prose with a dictionary at their elbow.

To Diss Service is a Disservice

I saw this morning in the New York Times’ feature “On This Day” that today is the birthday of Robert Service (1874-1958), whom they identified as “Canadian verse writer.”

Verse writer? Not poet? I remember reading some Robert Service in school, and it appeared to be poetry to me.

The word verse has many definitions, but in all of the references I consulted, the definition that was at or near the top was something like “a series of metrical feet forming one line of poetry.” Well, whatever you call what Service wrote, it was longer than one line, so that can’t be it.

Looking further, however, I found a few sources that included a definition of verse as “metrical writing distinguished from poetry because of its inferior quality” and which “lacks depth or artistic merit.” I also found a couple critical discussions that stated Service’s work was considered doggerel by the literary elite.

Obviously, whoever puts together the list of birthday people for the New York Times thinks so too. I did a little more checking and found that the Times even called Rod McKuen a “poet” on his birthday, and if ever there was verse that lacks depth and artistic merit, it’s the junk he writes.

Somebody definitely needs to call attention to the poetic prejudices of the New York Times.

Look Out, Weight Watchers

I have just heard about the Paleo Diet, although it appears to have been around for a few years. It is the invention of some dude named Loren Cordain, who has a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from the University of Utah. The idea is to eat what the people (at least the nearly human ones) ate during the Paleolithic Era, a.k.a. the Stone Age. This was when our human-like ancestors began developing stone tools but before they started cultivating crops. So, on this diet you basically eat only what a hunter-gatherer was able to hunt down and/or gather up.

And what would that be?  Well, you get to have lean meats, poultry, fish, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs, and "healthful" oils (olive, nut). Didn't sound too bad to me until I came to the list of forbidden foods. As soon as I saw I could have absolutely no dairy, no grains and no salt, I said forget it.

Tree bark without salt is simply not palatable.

Hidden in plain sight, as you might say

I made peanut butter cookies yesterday that are excruciatingly yummy and just like my mother used to make. That should come as no surprise since it's her recipe, although, according to the notation on her recipe card, she got it from a bag of Gold Medal flour.

My mother believed it was necessary to have something sweet on hand at all times, for dessert after supper, to have with coffee if somebody dropped in, or just to have when the demands of a sweet tooth could no longer be resisted. To that end, she baked something every couple days -- pies, cakes, coffee cakes, quick breads, and, of course, cookies. In order to maintain acceptable levels of on-hand cookies, she often hid them to keep us kids (and Dad) from gobbling them all up.

My brother and I sometimes made a game of finding the hidden cookies and taking one each (that we knew she'd never miss). One afternoon when she had gone out to the store, we decided to find the cookies we knew she had baked that morning. We looked in all the usual places and came up empty. We broadened our search, looking into every cupboard, every drawer, even the bread box. Nothing.

When she came home, we complained of being absolutely starved and in need of a snack, and she said, "Well, why don't you have a couple cookies?" and we said, "Okay, but where are they?" and she said, "In the cookie jar, of course."

Oh.

WARNING: YOU MIGHT BE STUPID

We had to buy a new toaster recently. Whilst waiting for the browned bread to pop out of it this morning, I happened to see that there were words on it, actually stamped into the metal top: WARNING - HOT SURFACE.

Really? The top of a toaster gets hot? Who knew?

The warning is repeated in French and Spanish, so obviously it's not just English speakers who need to be enlightened.

Plans for the Future

I should like to say that I really do feel bad when my postings on this here blog thing are as sparse as they have been lately. This has recently been due in part to our being out of town a lot, but even when I am home sitting at my computer, there are times when I just can’t think of anything to write about. I considered calling it quits altogether, but my most loyal reader (that would be my wife) convinced me that infrequent postings were better than none.

Then in my travels around the Internet this morning, I came across "Elizabeth Kauwell’s Blog" in which the titular blogger has posted a handful of term papers she wrote in high school (specifically for Mr. Weinberg's fourth-hour English class).

Why didn't I ever think of that? I have every term paper I ever wrote in my ten years of college, and even one or two from high school. I'm sitting on a veritable treasure trove of blog postings.

Since all the old papers were typewritten, I'll have to scan them and then do some serious formatting, especially for those with illustrations, but once they're ready, all I have to do when I come down with a case of blogger’s block is pop one in.

I cannot guarantee all of them are going to appeal to the general reader, but anybody who is game for an in-depth analysis of the first movement of Anton Webern’s String Trio, Op. 20, is in for a real treat.

On the Rocks

We got lucky during the recent ice storm that knocked out power for half a million people in the U.S. and Canada. We were in Indiana where it just rained, and the power was out only about 12 hours at our house, according to our neighbor.

I heard on the radio this morning that there are still over 3,000 homes and businesses in this area that are still in the dark, eight days later.  They also said that Lansing's Board of Water and Light has announced that those customers still without power should check out the "Outage Street List" on their website (lbwl.com) and add their address if it's not already listed.

One presumes this is after they carry their computer, tablet or smart phone to a place where they can plug it in and turn it on.