You Don’t Say

Political campaign television ads are annoying at best. Here in Los Angeles, where we have an election next week, Wendy Greuel, a member of the city council who wants to be City Controller, is running an ad that drives me crazy.

The ad presents her as a fiscal watchdog. One of her claims goes like this:

“The city gave 5.7 million dollars in loans, only now they don’t remember who they gave it to.”

Whether that claim is true or not I don’t know (although I’m skeptical since the city council would have had to approve these so-called loans). What I do know is that Ms. Greuel and her campaign staff need a refresher course in pronoun usage. It’s one thing to speak informally at a Kiwanis breakfast and flub your grammar. It’s quite another thing to script a television commercial and write in Grammar 101 flubs.

So, Ms. Greuel, here’s my campaign contribution: Hire a proofreader! A good proofer would have flagged these flubs:

Flub #1 and #2: You can’t use they (a plural pronoun) to refer to city (a singular noun). The correct pronoun to use to refer to city would be it.

Flub #3: The misuse of who, which is a subject pronoun. What’s needed here is the object pronoun whom–”they don’t remember whom….”

Better yet, here’s what you could have said:

“The City of Los Angeles can’t account for 5.7 million dollars in loans to [fill in the blank].

Point made–simply, clearly, grammatically.

Sandy H., a teacher friend, shared this bit of news today: Birmingham, England’s second largest city, has decided to formally eliminate the apostrophe from all of the city’s street signs. So St. Paul’s Square becomes St. Pauls Square. The reason? According to the city council, apostrophes are confusing and old-fashioned.

Read articles about the ban from the the Associated Press and the London Daily Mail.

After eight long years, it’s time to say goodbye to President Bush and ponder the legacy he leaves us. Forget the two wars, a trillion-dollar debt, an economy in shambles, Katrina, and an international image that’s a PR nightmare. Number 43 leaves behind a cavalcade of so-called Bushisms that ought to keep us laughing through our tears.

Let’s start with his (mis)pronunciation of the word nuclear, which he invariably mispronounced as nucular.

Then there’s his mangled pronoun usage: “You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.”

Yup, he said it, way back in 2001 during a speech in Tennessee.

Six years later, his grammar was still failing when he spoke about No Child Left Behind: “As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.”

Whether you agree or not with Bush’s immigration policy, you’ve got to love this comment he made in 2005: “Those who enter the country illegally, violate the law.” Thanks for making that clear, Mr. President.

Last June, he graced us with this classic example of a misplaced modifer: “I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office.”

Really? In the Oval Office? If those North Koreans had left the child and abducted Bush instead, they might have save the rest of us a lot of trouble.

Fortunately, the English language is more resilient than the US economy or surely after eight years of Bush’s leadership we would be suffering a linguistic recession as severe as the current economic crisis.

For more on Bushisms, check out these sites:

About.com’s Political Humor

Richard’s Grammar & Composition Blog

San Francisco Chronicle

Slate.com

BBC

One of the reasons I love my Studio City neighborhood is the access I have to transportation. An entrance to the 101 (Hollywood) Freeway is four blocks away, and I can walk to Ventura Boulevard to catch the Metro Rapid bus. Best of all, the Metro Red Line (subway) is only a 10-minute walk from my home.

Since I work in Downtown LA, riding the Metro Red Line makes a lot of sense for me. I get to read, I save money on gas, and I limit the wear and tear on my car.

Last week, while I was reducing my carbon footprint by riding Metro, I heard this announcement on the train:

As a reminder, smoking, drinking, eating, or playing loud music are not permitted aboard the train or on station platforms.

Hmm. Let me think about that. Does the annoucement mean I have a choice of which prohibited behavior to engage in–smoking, drinking, eating, or playing loud music? Surely it was not Metro’s intention to offer us a choice of behavior to refrain from. But the compound subject of the announcement I heard is constructed with the conjunction or, and or implies a choice.

I think the announcement should have said:

As a reminder, smoking, drinking, eating, and playing loud music are not permitted aboard the train or on station platforms.

That’s better; now the message is clear. I can’t do any of those things. While we’re at it, let’s ban grammatically mangled Metro announcements too.

I work on the 18th floor of a 29-story tower in downtown Los Angeles. We have regular fire drills, and recently we had an earthquake drill. During the fire drills, we evacuate five floors down. For earthquake drills, we “duck and cover.” During a real emergency, however, it may be necessary for us to evacuate the building and proceed to a designated safe area off the property.

So I was happy to notice that a “Safe Refuge Area Map” had been taped to the cabinet over the sink in the little coffee room around the corner from my cubicle. The map shows the location of the safe refuge. Now each time I get a cup of coffee, I’m reminded that if there’s a need to evacuate the building, I should proceed to a nearby parking lot.

Is it hitting below the belt to criticize good intentions, especially when the safety of others is concerned?

So let’s call this an observation rather than a criticism when I say that the term safe refuge is a redundancy.

Refuge means “shelter or protection from danger or distress” or a place that provides this shelter or protection. In other words, a safe place. By definition, a place can’t be a refuge if it’s not safe.

I wonder if the folks who produced the map had this discussion and decided to be redundant for the sake of emphasis. Or maybe they thought people might not understand what the term refuge meant, hence the descriptive safe. Perhaps they considered safe area or safe zone but decided on refuge because the term implies something more comprehensive.

I’m glad the “Safe Area Refuge Map” is taped on the cabinet in the coffee room. In the event of an evacuation, I’ll be happy to know where to go, whatever the place is called.

I don’t get much exercise during the week. Sure, there’s a treadmill in the exercise room of my condo building, but spending an hour on a treadmill is my idea of exercise hell because I get bored. So, most weekend mornings, after I have coffee and read the paper, I head out for an hour’s walk through my Studio City neighborhood. I try to focus and keep a strong, steady pace that will get my heart rate going.

Staying focused is a challenge, however, when I notice a sign like this one in front of the Sterling Salon and Spa on Ventura Boulevard:

Complementary valet parking

Complementary? With an “e?”

If the good folks at Sterling offer free valet parking to their customers, and I assume that ’s what the sign is meant to convey, then someone made a Spelling 101 mistake. When something is given free as a courtesy or favor, the correct word is complimentary, with an “i.” (Complimentary can also mean flattering, as in “After a visit to Sterling Salon, I received many complimentary comments about my hair style.”)

Complementary, with the “e,” has several different meanings, none of which mean free. A common usage of complementary is to describe things that fit together to form a whole or that fill out or complete something:

The Internet hasn’t killed the television–yet. In fact, according to a new study from Nielsen’s newly-formed TV/Internet Panel, television viewing and using the Internet are complementary activities. (from BizReport)

Come on, Sterling Salon and Spa. Keep your verbiage as well-groomed as your customers’ hair. You got it right on your Web site where you suggest we book a “complimentary consultation.” Fix that valet parking sign. Use nail polish or lipstick if necessary, but change that “e” to an “i.”

Better yet, keep things simpler–change complementary to free.

Barack Obama must have felt a flush of exhiliration when he stepped onto the stage in Chicago to give his first news conference as president-elect. His first words when he saw the roomful of reporters were “Oh, wow.” Aside from his comment about Nancy Reagan’s seances, he didn’t stumble, at least not politically.

But he did cause me to wince a couple of times when he mixed up his pronouns.

Here’s how Obama responded when he was asked about a planned meeting with President Bush:

“Well, President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I to meet with him and First Lady Laura Bush. We are gratified by the invitation.”

“Michelle and I“? Wrong. It should have been “Michelle and me.”

Quick review:

• I is a subject pronoun (Michelle and I are going to the White House).
• Me is an object pronoun (President Bush invited Michelle and me to the White House).

Obama’s mistake is all too common. People are always mixing up their pronouns, especially in spoken language. Obama never would have said “President Bush invited I to meet him….”Yet he stumbled over the compound object when he included Michelle.

Responding to the same question, Obama went on the say, “I’m sure that in addition to a tour of the White House, there is going to be a substantive conversation between myself and the president.”

“Between myself and the president”? Poor choice.

In the first place, don’t use a reflexive pronoun like myself by itself. A reflexive pronoun needs a partner in the form of a noun or other pronoun: Despite the recession, I’m going to treat myself to a new pair of shoes.

Second, don’t use myself in place of I or me. There’s nothing immodest about correctly using the pronouns I and me.  But there’s nothing modest–in fact, there’s something peculiar–about using myself as a substitute for I or me.

And remember mom’s admonishment to put the other person first? In this case, that would have been the right thing to do. Obama should have said, “…there’s going to be a substantive conversation between the president and me.”

A phone conversation with my cousin Susan in Tucson presented this challenge: Is it correct to use couple (to mean two or a few) by itself as an adjective or must it be used with of. In other words, which is correct–a couple drinks or a couple of drinks?

Good question, Susan.

Here’s the answer: It’s up to you. Depending on the situation, you can go either way.

I first checked my Merriam-Websters’ Collegiate (11th Edition), which has a separate entry for couple as an adjective, along with a usage note. According to M-W, using couple by itself as an adjective is “common in speech and writing that is not meant to be formal or elevated.” We can take that to mean that in casual, informal circumstances, there’s nothing wrong with saying or writing a couple drinks.

Three other sources I checked offer different advice. Bryan Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, and The Associated Press Stylebook all agree that couple as an adjective without of is poor usage. The Times and AP might be taking that stand because newspaper writing could be considered a more formal type of writing.

The next time I get to Tucson, Susan, let’s grab a couple drinks and talk about it.

In my job as adult literacy adviser for the Los Angeles Unified School District, I read a variety of articles that appear in academic journals and on educational Web sites. Last week I was reading an article about reading assessment that was posted on www.sedl.org (the Web site of the Southwest Educational Developmental Laboratory).

I was amazed to come across this egregious error:

Linguistic knowledge is more than the sum of it’s parts….

It’s? With an apostrophe? Forget linguistic knowledge, let’s talk pronoun knowledge.

It’s is a contraction of it is (It’s time for supper) or it has (It’s been a long time). Its–no apostrophe–is the possessive pronoun (worth its weight in gold). The two words are never interchangeable.

This is a very common mistake and seems to occur mostly when it’s is used as a possessive. Here’s another example I saw a few years ago in the newsletter of a professional organization (I have files full of this stuff!):

The California School of Notary Public seeks to offer it’s notary public course at adult school campuses throughout the state.

And this, from a promotional flyer distributed by the teacher’s union:

UTLA has chosen Telincs Communications as it’s exclusive Internet service provider.

Why does this mistake pop up so frequently? Part of the problem may be that the words sound exactly alike–they’re homophones. The only difference in the spelling of the two words is the apostrophe. Not only that, we’re accustomed to using an apostrophe to indicate possession–the baby’s toy, the cat’s meow.

Misusing it’s and its should be a crime, punishable by 100 lashes with an apostrophe!

In this scary economic climate, I love the idea of receiving a cash-back certificate in the mail. So I was very pleased to receive one from Citibank as part of a credit card protection promotion I had agreed to try out. Citibank will send me up to $15 if I follow some small-print instructions, including this one:

Your mailing envelope must be postmarked by March 31, 2009 and addressed to Redemption Center, Department 111974, P.O. Box 52900, Phoenix, AZ 85072.

There are five commas in that sentence, and the good news is they are all correct. So what’s the problem? There aren’t enough commas. I want to add one more–after the year in the date March 31, 2009.

Conventional comma wisdom calls for a comma before and after the year in a date embedded in text.: Your envelope must be postmarked by March 31, 2009, and addressed to….

Omitting the comma after the year is a common mistake. Here’s part of an email message that was in my inbox this at work this week:

On the evening of Wednesday, October 15, 2008 your voice mailbox will be moved to a new server in order to provide improved service and support.

Can we agree that “on the evening of” is probably too elegant for an email message about a server change? Good. Let’s get to the heart of the matter: the missing comma after the date.

Not a fatal mistake, but in the USA, where the month-day-year style of dates is most commonly used, commas are used both before and after the year. Don’t believe me? Check out the The Chicago Manual of Style, The New York Times Manual of Style and The Gregg Reference Manual.

You won’t be wrong with the comma, but you could cause confusion without it: On October 7, 2008 stocks crashed.