The once and future successor

The big news around Austin these days is the announcement that Will Muschamp, the defensive coordinator for the University of Texas Longhorns who would make a great head coach anywhere from Clemson to Tennessee to Washington, has been named by the UT Athletic Department as the man who will replace Mack Brown. Not that that is happening anytime soon; Brown, who's won one national championship and will probably win some more during the eight years he has left on his contract, is not retiring early (or being asked to do so). Brown wanted to make the move to add stability at the defensive coordinator position, and shore up defensive recruiting. I don't know if that's worth paying someone $900,000 a year, but Brown does.

Anyway, back to grammar. The headline to this story on yesterday's online version of the Austin American-Statesman was "Muschamp named Brown's future successor". This begs the question whether there was once a past successor to Brown, which in turn makes one wonder (or makes me wonder, anyway) whether there will be any future predecessors named any time soon. I guess it made some editor at the A A-S wonder as well; the word "future" has been dropped from the new link today.

Ensuring against ineffective word choices

Recently, I sent an email reminding to several of my chess-playing friends -- nerdish mostly, but occasionally snobby too -- that the day of the email was the last day to register to vote in time for the upcoming election, and that even though "it probably won't effect the presidential race" there were several important down-ballot races that needed their votes. (And if you live in Travis County or the Third Appellate District, this is one of the most important ones.) One of my nerdy, snobby, chess-playing friends promptly replied "Yes, but will it affect the presidential race?" I was so dense that particular evening that it took another email from another nerdy, snobby, chess-playing friend (albeit one who pays attention to local judicial races -- thanks, Pete!) before I realized that I was being dissed, properly, for using "effect" when I meant "affect". I didn't choose one consciously over the other, but it wasn't a typo; it was sloppy editing (a synonym in this instance for "no editing"), which is just as bad.

Although the word "effect", as used above, isn't grammatically incorrect, it wasn't what I intended to say, and it rendered the sentence nonsensical, so it was -- what's the word I'm looking for -- wrong. Briefly, "affect" means to influence, to change, or to bring about an effect. "Effect" means to result (in). (I've summarized the definitions from Fowler's Modern English Usage (2d. Ed.) so you won't know I'm plagiarizing them.) It's clear that a vote by one person in Travis County is not likely either to affect, or to effect, the outcome of the Presidential election. It's much more likely that a vote will affect local races.

That's true wherever you live. Vote.

My nerdy, snobby chess-playing friends got me thinking about words with different meanings but virtually identical spellings. Two of these words that I was obsessed with in law school were "ensure" and "insure". I regret that Fowler's article about spelling words beginning with "en-" and "in-" misleads the reader into thinking that the two words above are but spelling variants for the same thing; they are not. "Ensure" has a more general sense of preventing some bad thing from happening; if that doesn't work, "insure" has a more limited sense of making the bad thing good again, usually by paying money to repair damages. "Ensure" comes before
"insure" in the dictionary, and in life: you take steps to ensure a contingency doesn't occur; you insure yourself so that, if the contigency does occur, you will be protected or made whole.

While I was in law school, one of the candidates for the Student Bar Association used the word "ensure", correctly, in her platform statement. The effect of her usage was to affect my vote.

Thank God for Sardi's

Last month, I went to New York City to visit my brother and, perhaps more urgently, see a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. By "Yankee Stadium", of course, I mean the real Stadium, in use since 1923 (when the Yankees defeated the Red Sox in the opening game) until now, and not the Yankee Stadium that was built next door. Since the Yankees are moving to their new stadium next year, my goal of sitting in the first base side bleachers in the house that Ruth built took on a new sense of urgency this year, but I was able to cajole my mother (who mastered spelling "baseball" for this trip) and brother (a transplanted Manhattanite; he required less cajoling) to attend the opening game of the last Red Sox series, played on August 26. Other bloggers have probably wondered out loud whether Alex Rodriguez would have hit a grand slam in the bottom of the seventh, rather than a weak double-play ball, if his annual salary was $29 million a year instead of only 28, but I did some other things while in town, including a classic "to-do" item: having a martini at Sardi's.

Sardi's is one of those bars with a reputation that it does or does not deserve depending on whom you ask. It's right in the theater district, and I think there was an era when you had time to get a cocktail there during intermission if your theater was close enough. I'm sure they have a full range of cocktails prepared by an expert bartender (the night we went, it was Jeremy) but I could only consider one libation while at Sardi's, and that is a martini. Living in Austin, a mixologist's backwater if (if) cultured in other ways, I have grown accustomed, when ordering martinis, to being asked whether I want gin or vodka. So I held my breath when I asked Jeremy for a Coke, a beer, and a martini. His inspired response: "Coming right up, sir!" Beautiful. We found a table near the wall full of caricatures from the bar's heyday, and I went back to the bar to get the drinks and some cheese and crackers. Jeremy then asked "What kind of gin would you like?" Of course, he had Tanqueray, which he then proceeded to stir -- stir! -- in a shaker of vermouth and ice before straining into a chilled glass with two olives.

Oh, what a beautiful martini. The Yankee game would have beat that for the best night I'd ever had in New York, but only if they'd beaten the Red Sox.

Once Upon Dickson

This has nothing to do with grammar (well, unless you count one poorly crafted sentence in the blurb at the link). There's a new book about Dickson Street, which is to Fayetteville, Arkansas as Sixth Street is to Austin (or Westheimer is to Houston, sort of). You may notice a name that suggests a family connection.

Now go buy it.

Fed Up Some More

This afternoon, I was sitting in the lobby of a criminal attorney friend of mine. Being a civil lawyer, I arrived promptly at 4:00 p.m. Being a criminal attorney, he was late. So, to pass my valuable time (or his non-valuable time, or lacking-value time), I found an old Consumer Reports magazine and read an article about the high cost of health care. One of the persons interviewed in the article, a small-business owner, complained "Because of the high cost of health insurance, I can't give my employees hourly raises."

Well, sorry, but I don't know how long you're going to stay in business in the first place, if you give your employees a raise every hour. Maybe you should give them one BIG raise every day, or better yet every month; that way, you could spend more time on, you know, business. Or editing your sentences.

Fed Up

As I've said before, there used to be a great newspaper in New York. It was called the "New York Times". I have no idea what the hell happened to it.

From today's obituary for the late Paul Scofield (an actor whose reputation towered over Olivier, Gielgud, and Richardson in their prime):

He received his secondary education at Varndean School in nearby Brighton and, at 13, made his debut as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” on the school stage. “I had to wear an embarrassing blond wig,” he said. “But it was a turning point, because thenceforward there was nothing else I wanted to do.”

One might get the impression, from the context of this quote, that Scofield decided not to take any more roles after his fiasco as Juliet. One would be wrong, of course, since Scofield illuminated the screens and stage for decades after his teenage debut. I don't know who to blame this ambiguity on; I suppose I should blame Mr. Scofield, but I'm generally not one to speak ill of the dead.

So it's the Times's fault.

And there's more.

Important Announcement Regarding Serial Commas

In a break with the Associated Press, Punctuation Man has endorsed serial commas.

Yay.

The idiosyncrasies of idiosyncracies

Yesterday's usage tip of the day from Bryan Garner has to do with the correct spelling of the word idiosyncrasy, meaning a characteristic peculiar to an individual or group. Unfortunately, the word is commonly confused with the word idiosyncracy, which means, by way of example, the Bush administration.

Stolen from another grammar snob.