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When it comes to mistakes in grammar, punctuation, pronunciation and all the other language-related atrocities we’ve been contemplating this week, I think Dalal Musa of Falls Church, Va., put it best: “I agree that a measure of humility is called for when correcting another’s usage,” she wrote. “That’s often when we slip on the banana peel.”
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And yet here we are again, boldly striding across the floor of the banana packing plant. Why, Dalal herself even has a favorite — er, least favorite — language mistake. It’s an expression some people use: miss not having.
It’s the sort of thing you might say to a woman whose dog has died: Do you miss not having a dog?
“No,” Dalal wrote, “but I’ll bet she misses having one.”
Jeannette McConaughey of Uxbridge, Mass., has plenty of pet language peeves, but the one that’s been raising her hackles lately is “Hit and miss.”
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“You cannot hit and miss,” Jeannette wrote. “You either hit or miss. You may swing and miss, but once you hit, the chance of missing is gone!”
Wrote Jeannette: “Just typing this makes me cringe!”
David Porter of Durango, Colo., dies inside a little every time he hears “silver bullet” used when what the person really means is “magic bullet.”
A silver bullet is used to kill werewolves — “Presumably as well as anything else it hits,” David wrote — while a magic bullet is a one-shot fix to a problem.
Wrote David: “It’s become so pervasive that online dictionaries include the alternate usage for ‘silver bullet,’ but to me that represents a capitulation brought about by weariness of making corrections, not an admission that the usage is correct. Concession due to exhaustion. If only we had a magic bullet to fix the problem.”
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Greg Winton of Bethesda, Md., is irritated by the misuse of “out of pocket.” Originally, he wrote, it meant “that I was paying my money on another’s behalf, with some implication that I might one day be reimbursed. It somehow has come to mean being unavailable or out of the office.”
Wrote Greg: “I blame the plutocrats for making ‘out of pocket’ sound cool so they never have to reimburse.”
It isn’t only expressions that prompt ire. Misused words do, too. Words such as “ecology,” which, pointed out Judith Collins of Arlington, Va., does not mean the same thing as “environment” or “ecosystem.”
“Seeing a sentence/phrase such as ‘Excessive nutrients are damaging the ecology of the Bay’ annoys me,” she wrote.
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Ecology means the study of the environment, not the environment itself.
I find it delightful that Marsha Davis Spiridigliozzi lives in Centreville, Va., because her beef involves the word “center,” or more accurately “center around.”
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Every time she hears “center around” or sees it in print, she recalls her 12th-grade English teacher at Watertown High School in New York, Mrs. Stanford, admonishing against its use.
Wrote Marsha: “Things can center, or focus, on something, but the center does not go around. It is the center!”
Daryl Domning of Silver Spring, Md., detests seeing the word “epicenter” used as a more emphatic way of saying “center.” Epicenter, he wrote, literally means “above the center.”
Wrote Daryl: “Let’s try to keep it for when we’re talking about earthquakes. And why should some centers be deemed more central than other centers, anyway?”
While we’re being central, Alan Lorish of Sterling, Va., said he was taught “close proximity” is redundant.
“But now the use of ‘close proximity’ is so frequent I assume it’s acceptable,” he wrote. “But it still bugs me.”
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Alan admits that’s probably because he once included “close proximity” in a final paper, only to see it graded down from a B to a C. And when he worked as a senior federal executive, he once tried to correct “close proximity” in a colleague’s paper. Wrote Alan: “It only became an argument.”
Lynn Jensen of Baltimore is tired of seeing the word “mentee.”
Wrote Lynn: “It’s so silly. Doctors don’t have doctees, they have patients. Professors don’t have professees, they have students. And mentors don’t have mentees, they have protégé(e)s.”
The words that drive Timothy E. Martinson to drink are “grape varietals” when referring to, say, a chardonnay or a cabernet sauvignon. For example, a wine critic might write, “This varietal is grown in California.”
“They really need to say ‘variety’ when referring to the plant,” Timothy wrote. “‘Varietal’ is an adjective referring to wine made from a single variety.”
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Timothy knows of what he speaks. He’s a viticulture expert in Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science.
And that opens a whole other can of worms: When you’re an expert on something, you probably see people getting stuff wrong all the time, including journalists. Dare I ask for contributions on this subject?
I do. If you’re someone who knows of what she or he speaks, send me what bugs you when others comment on your field. Drop a line to john.kelly@washpost.com. Put “Expert testimony” in the subject field.
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John Kelly’s Washington
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