A short note about the word "which". Like the failure to "it's/its", the misuse of the word "which" is both widespread and easy to correct. It usually comes about in a sentence like this one.
The committee is considering a bill which may substantially raise sales taxes.
The use of the word "which" in this sentence is incorrect. The reason is "may substantially raise business taxes" is a restrictive clause. It modifies its subject "bill" by restricting it to mean one particular bill. If you delete the entire clause from the sentence, then you change the meaning of the word "bill". In contrast, suppose this is the next sentence in the paragraph.
The bill, which is widely unpopular in the business community, would eliminate the groceries tax exemption.
The clause "which is widely unpopular in the business community" is a descriptive clause. It describes its object, "bill", but doesn't restrict it. If the clause weren't in the sentence, the word "bill" would mean the same thing. Since it's a restrictive clause, it has to be set off from its object with a comma, or in this case, two.
There are various terms used to describe these two clauses (for example restrictive and non-restrictive) but the terminology is not as important as the usage and the "which-that" distinction. As I noted earlier, it is easy to eliminate this mistake and, in so doing, improve your written English. It's a process called "which hunting".
After you've drafted your text, search it for every occurrence of "which". Each time you find it, see if it's in a restrictive clause. Here's the test: if you take out the clause beginning with "which", would it change the meaning of the clause's subject? If not, then the clause is only descriptive, and you can -- and should -- use "which". Otherwise, you have to use "that". Also, if it's descriptive, use a comma. If it's restrictive, don't use a comma.
If you do this regularly, you should find that you're changing a lot of whiches to thats. And your readers will think your writing has improved, but they won't be able to figure out why.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Something else to be snobby about
I recently went to a fine restaurant for a Happy Hour with some other attorneys who specialize in CPS cases. Although I'd never eaten there, the place has a fine ambience and a good reputation. But I knew we were in trouble when I looked at the Happy Hour specials and noted that the Monday special was martinis for only $5.00. Ulp. And we were there on Thursday night, not Monday. Nevertheless, I decided to pass on the special that evening --1/2-price sparkling wine (which ended up meaning being charged only $6.50 for a glass of wine that normally cost $13.00, at least for two of my colleagues). So, when our cocktail waitress came to the table, I dutifully ordered a martini. Her next question, which is now commonplace, nevertheless was outrageous.
"Would you like gin or vodka?"
Excuse me?
I just ordered a MARTINI. A martini is a well-known cocktail that is made with vermouth and GIN. There is no such thing as a martini made with vodka. There is a drink that is made with vodka and vermouth. It is called a VODKA MARTINI. For all I know there are other drinks whose names indicate some alternative to gin, like a rum martini or a beer martini or a motor oil martini, but those are not MARTINIS. Why is it now necessary, when ordering a martini, to specify that one desires a drink made with the ingredients that come in, well, a martini? When I order an omelet, I don't specify that I want the chef to use hen eggs. If that seems like a bad example, how about fajitas? If your waitron requests a clarification as to whether you want beef or chicken, are you justified in reminding him that fajitas is a beef dish, as opposed to chicken fajitas, which is made with, um, chicken?
Okay, so you don't like martinis. What about a strawberry margarita? A banana daiquiri? Why don't you have to specify what kind of margarita you want when you order one of those cocktail pretenders? I believe, in Austin, the reason is that the bar usually has anywhere from 6 to 1,389 kinds of margaritas, and by the time your waiter finished reciting the varieties the bar would be closed. Nonetheless, there's no reason to make martini drinkers suffer just because there's a shorter list of drinks that sound like martini, but aren't martinis.
Why is this so important? Hell if I know.
Back to martinis. Jed Bartlett is right. "Shaken, not stirred" is a catchy phrase but a poor way to make martinis.
Oh, and when I did get my martini, it was outstanding. At $7.50, it should be.
"Would you like gin or vodka?"
Excuse me?
I just ordered a MARTINI. A martini is a well-known cocktail that is made with vermouth and GIN. There is no such thing as a martini made with vodka. There is a drink that is made with vodka and vermouth. It is called a VODKA MARTINI. For all I know there are other drinks whose names indicate some alternative to gin, like a rum martini or a beer martini or a motor oil martini, but those are not MARTINIS. Why is it now necessary, when ordering a martini, to specify that one desires a drink made with the ingredients that come in, well, a martini? When I order an omelet, I don't specify that I want the chef to use hen eggs. If that seems like a bad example, how about fajitas? If your waitron requests a clarification as to whether you want beef or chicken, are you justified in reminding him that fajitas is a beef dish, as opposed to chicken fajitas, which is made with, um, chicken?
Okay, so you don't like martinis. What about a strawberry margarita? A banana daiquiri? Why don't you have to specify what kind of margarita you want when you order one of those cocktail pretenders? I believe, in Austin, the reason is that the bar usually has anywhere from 6 to 1,389 kinds of margaritas, and by the time your waiter finished reciting the varieties the bar would be closed. Nonetheless, there's no reason to make martini drinkers suffer just because there's a shorter list of drinks that sound like martini, but aren't martinis.
Why is this so important? Hell if I know.
Back to martinis. Jed Bartlett is right. "Shaken, not stirred" is a catchy phrase but a poor way to make martinis.
Oh, and when I did get my martini, it was outstanding. At $7.50, it should be.
Friday, March 16, 2007
I'm not bitter.
A diversion from grammar.
Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day. I won't be around a computer, so I'm posting a day early. I will celebrate the day in my usual manner, by wearing red.
Don't you mean green, you say? No, red. Why on earth would someone wear red on St. Patrick's Day? You ask. Well, I'm not sure. But I will tell you what is not the reason.
It's not because the Arkansas Razorbacks, the team from my alma mater, wear red. And that on March 17, 1979, in the Midwest Regional Final in Cincinnati, Ohio, when they were playing Indiana State, Larry Bird tripped U.S. Reed on the inbounds pass on Arkansas' final possession, and that the referee called Reed for traveling rather than calling a foul on America's favorite college basketball player, and that ISU got the ball and won the game on that bad call, advancing to the Final Four, while Sidney Moncrief's collegiate career ended right there in Cincinnati.
The reason I know that's not the reason is that I've completely forgotten about that. Really. It doesn't bother me any more. I mean, that was 28 years ago. And I'm over it.
Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day. I won't be around a computer, so I'm posting a day early. I will celebrate the day in my usual manner, by wearing red.
Don't you mean green, you say? No, red. Why on earth would someone wear red on St. Patrick's Day? You ask. Well, I'm not sure. But I will tell you what is not the reason.
It's not because the Arkansas Razorbacks, the team from my alma mater, wear red. And that on March 17, 1979, in the Midwest Regional Final in Cincinnati, Ohio, when they were playing Indiana State, Larry Bird tripped U.S. Reed on the inbounds pass on Arkansas' final possession, and that the referee called Reed for traveling rather than calling a foul on America's favorite college basketball player, and that ISU got the ball and won the game on that bad call, advancing to the Final Four, while Sidney Moncrief's collegiate career ended right there in Cincinnati.
The reason I know that's not the reason is that I've completely forgotten about that. Really. It doesn't bother me any more. I mean, that was 28 years ago. And I'm over it.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Prescriptive or Descriptive
There are two types of grammarians, or so I'm told. Actually, there's only one, but I'll get to that.
Types of grammars can be labeled either descriptive or prescriptive. A descriptive grammarian is one who writes rules for the usage of a language based on how he hears it being used by the people around him. A prescriptive grammarian writes rules based on how the language should be used, whether the people around him use it that way or not. A descriptive grammarian tells us how the world is; a prescriptive grammarian tells us how it should be.
Now, you already know I'm a grammar snob, so which type of grammar do you think I prefer? Prescriptive of course. For one thing, I couldn't care less how the people around me speak English. What if they're in the third grade, or illiterate? My high school German teacher, the beloved late Marty Deweese, once told her class of her earliest introduction to German, when she babysat a toddler for some friends of hers who were living in Germany at the time. She took the toddler on a train and he pointed at various farm animals and told her the names of each of them, in German. She was very excited to know these new German words, and repeated them to her friends when they returned. But she was crestfallen to discover that the new words she learned, translated into English, became "moo-cow" and "cluck-cluck bird" and "run-dog" and so forth. Imagine a descriptive grammar based on this three-year-old's vocabulary.
The difference between the three-year-old and some Americans is one of degree, not kind. So much has been written about the death of the semi-colon that I don't know why we still put one on computer keyboards, although it's probably useful to software engineers. I've already spoken about the transformation (read "degradation") of the word "loan" from a noun to a verb. Maybe that's a subtle point, but what about more widespread and egregious language abuses? There are large numbers of native English speakers in this country who would not see or hear a problem with the sentence "I seen him yesterday". Or "we was down at the store". A descriptive grammarian, writing a new textbook on sentence structure based on these sentences, would have no need for a chapter on noun-verb agreement. Now, she might argue that each speaker's meaning is perfectly clear. And, in fact, the speakers would be communicating. For example, someone who says "I seen him yesterday" has told me that he saw him yesterday. He's also told me that he's a hick. Usage does more than forward data to the listener; it conveys the education and sophistication of the speaker.
Of course, maybe part of the problem is we live in a time and society where education is no longer valued. When movable print was invented, the educated class (i.e., the clergy) worried that anyone could publish a book. The English language managed to survive that crisis (or, I should say, German did, but you get the point.) The invention of the typewriter was accompanied by a similar alarm, but language weathered the storm. Similarly, the electric typewriter, the word processor, the personal computer, and the laser printer made it easier for people with less and less education to produce documents with higher and higher visual appeal, even though they might be riddled with errors. But now we have blogs, and webpages, and people who either don't care about their atrocious spelling, grammar, usage, punctuation, or style, or don't realize how badly they write. "Descriptive" grammarians are of no use when it comes to correcting this backslide. Instead, in two decades the ideas of proper case, helping verbs, subject-verb agreement, and others will only be of interest to historians.
But not if the real grammarians have anything to say about it.
Types of grammars can be labeled either descriptive or prescriptive. A descriptive grammarian is one who writes rules for the usage of a language based on how he hears it being used by the people around him. A prescriptive grammarian writes rules based on how the language should be used, whether the people around him use it that way or not. A descriptive grammarian tells us how the world is; a prescriptive grammarian tells us how it should be.
Now, you already know I'm a grammar snob, so which type of grammar do you think I prefer? Prescriptive of course. For one thing, I couldn't care less how the people around me speak English. What if they're in the third grade, or illiterate? My high school German teacher, the beloved late Marty Deweese, once told her class of her earliest introduction to German, when she babysat a toddler for some friends of hers who were living in Germany at the time. She took the toddler on a train and he pointed at various farm animals and told her the names of each of them, in German. She was very excited to know these new German words, and repeated them to her friends when they returned. But she was crestfallen to discover that the new words she learned, translated into English, became "moo-cow" and "cluck-cluck bird" and "run-dog" and so forth. Imagine a descriptive grammar based on this three-year-old's vocabulary.
The difference between the three-year-old and some Americans is one of degree, not kind. So much has been written about the death of the semi-colon that I don't know why we still put one on computer keyboards, although it's probably useful to software engineers. I've already spoken about the transformation (read "degradation") of the word "loan" from a noun to a verb. Maybe that's a subtle point, but what about more widespread and egregious language abuses? There are large numbers of native English speakers in this country who would not see or hear a problem with the sentence "I seen him yesterday". Or "we was down at the store". A descriptive grammarian, writing a new textbook on sentence structure based on these sentences, would have no need for a chapter on noun-verb agreement. Now, she might argue that each speaker's meaning is perfectly clear. And, in fact, the speakers would be communicating. For example, someone who says "I seen him yesterday" has told me that he saw him yesterday. He's also told me that he's a hick. Usage does more than forward data to the listener; it conveys the education and sophistication of the speaker.
Of course, maybe part of the problem is we live in a time and society where education is no longer valued. When movable print was invented, the educated class (i.e., the clergy) worried that anyone could publish a book. The English language managed to survive that crisis (or, I should say, German did, but you get the point.) The invention of the typewriter was accompanied by a similar alarm, but language weathered the storm. Similarly, the electric typewriter, the word processor, the personal computer, and the laser printer made it easier for people with less and less education to produce documents with higher and higher visual appeal, even though they might be riddled with errors. But now we have blogs, and webpages, and people who either don't care about their atrocious spelling, grammar, usage, punctuation, or style, or don't realize how badly they write. "Descriptive" grammarians are of no use when it comes to correcting this backslide. Instead, in two decades the ideas of proper case, helping verbs, subject-verb agreement, and others will only be of interest to historians.
But not if the real grammarians have anything to say about it.
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