Category: Language Matters
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Spare Not the ‘Scare’ ‘Quotation’ Marks
Here is part of a sentence I encountered in an article on mid-life suicide: "When Liz Strand’s 53-year-old friend killed herself two years ago in California, her house was underwater and needed repairs, she had a painful ankle that was exacerbated by being overweight . . ." But if one's house were underwater, one could…
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Contractions
My rule on contractions: though permissible in informal writing such as blogging, they ought to be avoided or used sparingly in formal writing. I came across the following sentence in a well-written piece in a serious publication. "Heroic" would have pleased Ranke, who'd died nine years earlier. The contraction distracted me, so much so that…
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Ted Honderich is One Quirky Writer
I am reading Ted Honderich, On Consciousness (Edinburgh UP, 2004) and trying to get a handle on just what his theory of consciousness as existence amounts to. An awkward and quirky writer, he doesn't make things easy on the reader, and doesn't seem to realize that in this very fast brave new world of ours…
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A Slip of the Tongue and a Bit about Me and Mary Jane
One morning recently I was talking with a thirtysomething woman about Obamacare. "If you like your period, you can keep your period" came out of my mouth. I was intending, "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period." Thanks to Obama, the period is one punctuation mark that will never be the…
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What’s in a Name? ‘Schwarzenegger’ and ‘Heidegger’
Here is an old Powerblogs post. It is reposted in my conviction that we must catalog and never forget the absurdities of the race-baiting Left. ……….. A while back, some fool from the Left coast — a Democrat party hack if memory serves — suggested that the name ‘Schwarzenegger’ was racist because of the ‘negger’…
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Is ‘Obamacare’ a Derogatory Word?
Some object to the popular 'Obamacare' label given that the official title of the law is 'Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act' or, as commonly truncated, 'Affordable Care Act.' But there is a good reason to favor the popular moniker: it is descriptive where the other two labels are evaluative, expressing as they do a…
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Is Liberalism on the Wrong Side of History?
John Hawkins argues that it is in a recent Townhall piece. I agree with everything he says, except the title. It suffices to argue that liberalism is wrong. It is irrelevant whether it is on the right or wrong side of history. Allow me to explain. The phrase "on the wrong side of history" is…
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Word of the Day: Depauperate
I stumbled across this word on p. 539 of the heaviest, fattest, stompingest tome in my library, Richard Routley's Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond (Ridgeview, 1980). The thing is 1,035 pages long. I could kill a cat with it, and you hope I won't. A mere $500 for an Amazon used copy. One copy available…
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Fiction and Alienans Adjectives
David Brightly comments: As you use them, the terms 'fictional', 'intentional', 'possible', 'incomplete', and others like 'past' have a distinctive effect on the concept terms they qualify. Ordinary adjectives have the effect of narrowing the extension of the concept term they qualify: the red balls are a subset of the balls, the female prime ministers…
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Pelosi’s Orwellian Mendacity: A STFU Moment
This from Nancy Pelosi's website (emphasis added): The Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2010, ensures that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and significantly reduces long-term health care costs. This historic legislation, in the league of Social Security and Medicare, will lead to healthier lives, while providing…
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On Misusing the Word ‘Lie’
Keith Burgess-Jackson rightly criticizes Rush Limbaugh for using . . . the terms "calculated lie," "purposeful lie," "intentional lie," and "knowing lie" (while referring to Barack Obama's claim that Americans could, if they so chose, keep their insurance policy and their doctor). Calculation, purpose, intention, and knowledge are built into the concept of a lie,…
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Exaggeration
Not content to say what is true, people exaggerate thereby turning the true into the false. This post analyzes a particular type of exaggeration which is illustrated by something Dennis Prager said on his radio show one morning: "Happiness is a moral obligation, not a psychological state." Since I agree that we have a moral…
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‘Each Other’ versus ‘One Another’
There are still a lot of posts from the old Powerblogs site that have yet to be uploaded here. What follows is one that even I find pedantic. And I'm a pedant! Can 'each other' and 'one another' be used interchangeably by good writers, or is there some distinction we need to observe? Compare 'less'…
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On the Label ‘Obamacare’
Some object to the popular 'Obamacare' label given that the official title of the law is 'Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act' or, as commonly truncated, 'Affordable Care Act.' But there is a good reason to favor the popular moniker: it is descriptive where the other two labels are evaluative, expressing as they do a…