A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the nefarious phrase “could care less” (The popularity of “could care less” cannot be underestimated) saying it was not worth getting uptight about its use. I must have some very lenient readers because no one took umbrage at this thesis, which kind of made my exhortation at the end a little superfluous.

Here goes, anyway. There were (at least) three other silly clichéd phrases in that post that are prone to be incorrectly parsed. Let’s briefly uncover them:

• “Cannot be underestimated”. I’m surprised that no one complained at this one, especially as it’s in the title. It’s pretty much the same as the couldn’t care less/could care less switch. If I cannot underestimate something, it must be at zero, no? The better phrase would be cannot be overestimated, and it goes to the point I was making in the post: when we see several negative tokens in a row we don’t process them properly.
• “Cannot fail to miss”. Another one from the double negative stable. If you cannot fail, you must succeed. So, if you cannot fail to miss, you must succeed at missing; you must miss. A less awkward phrase would be you cannot miss and just leave the fail out altogether. Practically the only writer to get the distinction right was Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

  There is an art, [the Guide] says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [the Guide] suggests, and try it.

  The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.

  That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.

  Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

• “No one is too intelligent to avoid misinterpreting over-negated sentences”. This one just hurts my brain, it’s so packed with fruity negative goodness and, dare I say it, pomposity. Does it say what I was trying to convey? I give up: part of my brain parses it one way, and the other parses it another. I wanted to say “no one is so intelligent that they can avoid misinterpreting over-negated sentences”, but I don’t think the two are equivalent. I should just overwrite it with random 1s and 0s, throw it away, and rewrite it as “It’s easy to make mistakes when interpreting an over-negated sentence.” (Note the famous sentence “No head injury is too trivial to ignore” is of this type. Good luck with that one.)

All in all, I hope you fail to miss my general gist: for informal conversation and writing, all of this doesn’t really matter. Informality ensures impermanence. For formal writing, I’d say clarity and style above all. Avoid over-negated clichés like these.

Here we go, another grammar article full of the most awful bollocks. 20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Gets Wrong by Jon Gingerich. Go read it, I’ll wait.

I just love the snide remark of “I know some of the best authors in history have lived to see these very toadstools appear in print.” Good grief, the best authors in history knew/know what they’re doing, and if you’re going to take Shakespeare, Dickens, Orwell, or Amis to court because they used which instead of that, then you lose. And that’s the problem with the majority of this piece: it’s Gingerich’s opinion masquerading as fact and cast as commands. And, to be utterly honest, a lot of this stuff isn’t really even grammar (that is, the morphology and syntax of the language), it’s word definitions.

Armed with the OED online, the Oxford Modern English Dictionary, Chambers Dictionary to support my fisking (they’re the ones I have at hand), let’s wade into this swamp and hope we reach some dry tussocks of grass every now and then:

Who and Whom. Oh, for the love of Pete, whom is dead. Unless you are writing a Victorian novel or are a pretentious snob. For everyone else, the language has moved on and now who is pretty much used everywhere, because, quite frankly, the myriad traditional rules suck to remember and get right. Not only do they suck, but people would really look at you askance if you tried.

Which and That. The old restrictive versus relative clauses rule. Well, since Gingerich refutes his own advice with a perfectly fine counter-example, don’t worry about it too much. Geoffrey Pullum has some good advice in his article that pulls apart Strunk and White (executive summary: they lay down the rule and then break it continually throughout the book). Or should that be which?

Lay and Lie. This is a good piece of advice. And, boy, it gets difficult sometimes.

Moot. WTF? This is in the top twenty because their/they’re/there and your/you’re went out for a drink down the pub? The possessive apostrophe was out to lunch? The Oxford comma was otherwise detained?

Continual and Continuous. Utter bollocks. Just read the OED (definition 1a). There are differences (in mathematics, you talk about a continuous function, but not a continual one for example), but the assertion that continual just means “always going on, punctuated by intervals” is not true.

Envy and Jealousy. Damn these dictionaries when they say that a definition of jealous is envious. It just ruins Gingerich’s day. Lexicographers the world over must be jealous (or should that be envious?) of his success at promoting his artificial view of the language. If only reality was so clear-cut.

Nor. Gets bonus points for mentioning the nor after neither, or after either rule and how that’s too restrictive. As a whole his rule’s almost right, but you still can’t convince me to use it. Nor will I change my mind.

May and Might. Just splitting hairs, in my view. I mean to say, may implies more possibility than might? So, if the probability of some action is, what?, 50% or more then use may? 75%? Sounds incredibly like a style thing. I may use it, but I might not.

Whether and If. A simple trek to the OED disproves this one. It’s OK as a general suggestion, perhaps.

Fewer and Less. Gag. Big time. Go and read Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage on the subject. This rule is the pinnacle of picky prescriptivism.

Farther and Further. Pretty much an invalid distinction (note the author’s weaselly use of implies for instance). It seems to be a matter of style more than anything obtained from a dictionary. Oxford Modern English Dictionary says “The form farther is used especially with reference to physical distance, although further is preferred by many people even in this sense.” Note there’s no clause about “measureable” which seems to be entirely in Gingerich’s head. Go ahead, make it a distinction for your own writing, but no way is it a hard fast rule.

Since and Because. Since I’m a cad, I’ll just say this is utter and complete bollocks. I don’t even have to go to the dictionary (but I did, and Gingerich is wrong to state his restriction: since can mean because). Has he ever used a dictionary since his first children’s picture dictionary?

Disinterested and Uninterested. Yep, agreed on this one.

Anxious. Another trip to the dictionary disproves this one. Yep, the primary definition is “troubled” or “uneasy”, but an alternative definition is “full of desire”. Let’s say I am anxious that this stupid rule is never seen again.

Different Than and Different From. Oxford even gives different to as a “less formal” British alternative. I suppose this advice is fine as far as it goes: “Use from unless it sounds better to say than.”

Bring and Take. This is a problem? So bad a problem that it has to appear in a top twenty list? I must be reading the wrong stuff.

Impactful. Gingerich may hate the word (and I’m not particularly enamored of it – it reeks of self-important Madison Avenue marketing types wielding PowerPoint slidedecks), but that’s no reason to pretend that it isn’t one. Here’s Chambers’ definition: “1. Creating an impact. 2. Effective or impressive.” Not in the OED yet. In Merriam-Webster though.

Affect and Effect. I’ll allow this one since he uses “almost always” in his description. Oh damn, I used since again. I so have to effect a change in my writing.

Irony and Coincidence. I’ll allow this one too. There’s a great skit by Ed Byrne that lampoons Alanis Morisette’s song Ironic by pointing out that many of her examples of irony aren’t.

Nauseous. Oh, geezus, this one just makes me feel sick, especially after the twaddle I’ve just been through. Definition 1b in the OED is the definition Gingerich rejects as being false (earliest citation 1885; “orig US”: Americans have been wrong for 125 years!). Definition 2a is the definition he allows. Ditto for all the other dictionaries: they have both definitions. Sorry, dude, you can’t just pick and choose the definitions you like and then cast the others as a mistake. That’s just arrogant.

And then to cap it all he recommends The Elements of Style. It’s a horrible little book that doesn’t even follow its own prescriptions. Talking of which, I really commend you to read through Pullum’s essay again: it’ll open your eyes.

So, let’s see the score: six or seven are OK, out of twenty. Thirteen or fourteen are somewhere on the line from being nauseatingly picky to arrogantly wrong. Some of them might charitably be described as style suggestions, but far too often he’s quoting his opinion as fact without even checking with the dictionary.

Personally speaking, I find the usage of “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less” to be a little annoying. I’d even go further: to my ear it sounds illogical: “hey, if you could care less then you must care a bit!” Much merriment and good-natured joshing ensue, ho, ho, ho. But, to be honest, life’s too short to start a grammar war over it.

I’ve even encountered the theory (I believe it was Steven Pinker who first proposed it) that the speaker of “I could care less” is being sarcastic: “hey, I could care a bit, but, like, it’s so not worth the effort”. But then again, “I couldn’t care less” is also being sarcastic by using emphasis: whatever happened to the simple “I don’t care”? Besides which, it’s used so often in an automatic unthinking manner that it’s a little presumptuous to imagine that every usage is sarcasm (ditto the “negated” version, I suppose).

They are both idioms. They don’t have to really make sense literally: you are conveying the thought through the cliché. People don’t really hear the words, they hear the shape of the saying and get the meaning from that. You cannot fail to miss with colloquial phrases. Everyone knows them. Here’s one: “I’m head over heels in love with you”. You all know this one, it means “I’m bowled over by you”, and maybe you’ve even had it said to you. And yet you’ve never really read it. Look, when I’m standing upright, my head is over my heels. So, I’m in love with everyone I meet as I walk around the mall? Duh. (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable states that the saying used to be “heels over head” which makes a lot more sense. But the idiom changed over the years.)

In essence, it’s part of a problem with how our poor monkey brains deal with negation (or even over-negation) in sentences, especially in conversation. Sometimes it seems there’s just not enough time for the brain to process the complicated grammar, craft a sentence, and get the mouth to say it; or even the other way around: to hear and parse what someone else is saying to you. No one is too intelligent to avoid misinterpreting over-negated sentences. We just cancel out some of the (explicit/implicit) negation and somehow hear what the other was trying to say, even if the sentence literally meant the opposite. Heck, I know de Morgan’s Laws and yet I still have problems writing complex conditional expressions with not operators. I have to stop and really think about what I’m trying to say.

So, before you all jump over me for condoning “could care less”, maybe you should reread what I wrote.

We’ve just returned from our annual outing to Orlando so that my wife could run the Walt Disney World Marathon. (Before you ask: 4:04:16, which is her best time for a while.) When you arrive at the airport, you have to take the train from the gates to the terminal. It’s always made me laugh when the recorded announcement, in a very Walt Disney World voice, says “This train will be departing momentarily” and I feel like quipping “when’s it going to continue?” It’s the way I tell ’em.

You see, in England momentarily generally means for a moment, briefly. Yet, in the US, it also has a meaning of in a moment, soon, despite the British sense being still accepted. You are supposed to work out the interpretation from the context, and I guess it’s only middle-aged Englishmen in Orlando that find it weird.

Note also I said weird. It’s subjective, not objective. I am certainly not being a grammar nazi here and saying the American version is wrong in any sense. The context for the word is more than the immediate sentence, it’s also social and regional. I must say I hate (with a passion) those people who jump all over such constructions and categorically say A is right and B is wrong, whatever the A and B are. Another example for another time is less than and fewer than.

Turning to the Oxford English Dictionary, as one should at these times, we see that the “American” usage is documented as option 4 for momentarily. The earliest citation is from 140 years ago:

1869 A. J. Evans Vashti xi. 149 Robert is bringing her home as carefully as possible, and you may expect them momentarily.

The British sense is option 1, and dates from even earlier:

1655 Ld. Orrery Parthenissa IV. ii. vi. 540 The offended God, who to make those Centinels sleepe eternally, that would not momentarily, sends down Mercury.

There are even two other definitions, as you might have surmised: at the moment, instantly, and then at every moment, moment by moment. Both of these definitions are tagged “Rare”. An example citation of the second rare definition is by Charlotte Brontë:

1847 C. Brontë Jane Eyre II. i. 1 During the early part of the morning, I momentarily expected his coming.

So, whenever I arrive in Orlando, I am momentarily disconcerted by the announcement, but the real meaning momentarily asserts itself and I find myself worrying about the luggage making it to the carousel.

Every now and then, I get one of those – ahem – marketing emails offering me a place in some seminar that promises to teach me good business writing. I love reading them to try and find not so obvious grammar errors (Grammar Nazi, moi?) and thereby vindicate my belief that such workshops are pretty worthless. Invariably, one of the bullet points of things you’d learn by attending the session is how to write numbers in text. “Learn one simple rule,” the email goes, “and never get it wrong again.” Or something along those lines.

It’s not a grammar issue but a style issue. And when it’s a style issue I reach for The Chicago Manual of Style. It is a marvelous tome full of good advice for writers.

I have the 15th edition (I haven’t sprung for the just-released 16th yet) and the relevant section is chapter 9, Numbers. Section 9.6 is probably the rule alluded to by the email:

An alternative rule. Many publications […] follow the simple rule of spelling out only single-digit numbers and using numerals for all others.

Sensibly, it goes on to say that this rule should be used with flexibility to avoid such disasters as “one of the 12 jurors would not budge.”

However, this is just the alternative rule. Chicago has a general rule, appearing in section 9.3, which seems eminently sensible to me. In general text, spell the following in words:

• whole numbers from one to one hundred (“ninety-nine red balloons”),
• round numbers, that is, hundreds, thousands, millions (“a picture is worth a thousand words”), and
• any number that starts a sentence.

Every other number should be written with numerals. Pretty simple, eh?

With regard to the second option, Chicago suggests that mixing numerals and words with large numbers is acceptable (“1.1 trillion dollars”, “a population of 55 million”, and so on).

Regarding the third option above, note that if the sentence looks awkward when spelling out the number (“Six hundred and sixty six was the number of the beast.”) then you should recast the sentence to avoid the clumsiness (“The number of the beast was 666.”).

It also makes the reasonable suggestion that above all you should be consistent without losing flexibility. The rules are not cast in stone. Notice that above, for example, I talked about Chapter 9 and not chapter nine, mainly because that’s how the book names its chapters. Ditto “15th edition” and not “fifteenth edition”: the former is how it’s referred to on the cover.

There you go, I just saved you that part of the seminar fee. You’re welcome.