Lavengro

Semicolons

I am rather fond of semicolons; it is no surprise then that I welcome this leader in today's Guardian.

New York has been celebrating the semicolon; a development as welcome as it is unexpected. According to the New York Times, an announcement about the disposal of newspapers, posted on the city's subway, which was to have read: "Please put it in a trash can, that's good news for everyone" was amended by some scholarly hand in the marketing department to insert a semicolon in place of its comma. Congratulations have followed, and rightly; it is usually seen as bad practice to join two sentences together with a mere comma, that is something only the semi-literate do. "In literature and journalism, not to mention in advertising", the New York Times reports, "the semicolon has been largely jettisoned as a pretentious anachronism." Not, however, in the Guardian, whose most famous editor was unusually fond of the creatures. The speech in which he declared that comment was free but fact sacred is peppered with them, as in: "It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair." That is how the semicolon ought to be used - as a kind of necessary staging post on the way to the end of the sentence; or as the great authority Fowler put it, to indicate "a discontinuity of grammatical construction greater than that indicated by a comma but less than that indicated by a full stop". This is, of course, dangerous territory; where pedants are on the prowl. Even the best intentioned will sometimes blunder; but as Alexander Pope impeccably said: "To err is human; to forgive, divine."

It is a great pity that the same 'scholarly hand' that was in operation in New York was not there when this poster appeared on the London Underground.

Going on (adverbs and prepositions)

I was taught at school that on to should never be written as one word. I do not now accept that my English master was absolutely right, though the situation is not as simple as it might seem. The analogy of into, which usually is one word, is quite strong, which probably explains this from the BBC:

Mr Darling said it was better for the government to hold onto Northern Rock until market conditions improve and its value increases.

What is the problem? It is this:

If I say:

a) I drove onto the beach

I am saying that I was driving my car on the land and I continued driving it, without stopping, until it was on the beach. If, however, I say:

b) I drove on to the beach

I am saying that I continued driving after a certain point until I reached the beach (on in a phrasal verb has the idea of continuing the activity). Whether or not my car and I actually ended up on the beach is not stated clearly.

There is a difference in intonation between a) and b), and in b) there is a lengthening of the on, possibly a different pronunciation of the to (/u/ in a) and schwa in b)), and maybe a slight pause between on and to. This is because in a) onto is a simple preposition while in b) it is a compound proposition, i.e. a combination of adverb and preposition. The test for this is that the sentence:

b1) I drove on

is a complete sentence though it omits the destination to which I drove. The person who wrote the BBC report clearly had no internal sense of the sound of the words that he/she was writing.

If the government holds on to Northern Rock, it is holding on (adverb). If the sentence is extended to include an object, the preposition to appears to connect the adverb and the object, thus forming a compound preposition. So in this case, as in many cases, on to must be written as two words.

I mentioned above that into is usually written as one word. For example:

c) I went into the bank

is acceptable. But the adverb and preposition are separated in

d) I went in to cash a cheque

e) I went in, to the manager’s office in fact

The infinitive in d) is a clear situation; *I went into cash a cheque is clearly absurd and one hopes that the BBC would not write: *The government will hold onto resolve the situation. Example e) is valid as speech; its comma indicates the difference in intonation and the pause between preposition and adverb that I mentioned above, and the pronunciation difference (/u/ and schwa) may also be heard. Finally,

f) I went into the manager’s office

is perfectly normal and acceptable, being similar to c).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A separate point is that the sequence of tenses requires past tenses in the above quotation:

Mr Darling said it was better for the government to hold on to Northern Rock until market conditions improved and its value increased.

Neologisms

A kind friend has sent me this. I can't find a link to the Washington Post site for it.

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words.

The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners:

1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

3. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

4. Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.

8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

9. Karmageddon (n): its like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

10 Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.

12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

16. Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an asshole

Linguistic inclusion and the clergy

I have no problems with inclusive language or with the use of they forms with a singular reference as a way of avoiding the he/she problem (the OED records this usage from the sixteenth century). But I do think that a little sensitivity is called for – as always – in sentence construction. So, when the Revd Dr Mike Bossingham writes in a letter to the Independent (my emphasis):

Sir: As a clergyman I have some concern about David Cameron's comments about parents with sharp elbows and places at faith schools.

One concern some of my colleagues have is the response of such parents when a clergy person refuses to perjure themselves when presented with an application form to sign. At the Faithworkers Branch of Unite annual general meeting some of my colleagues have reported stories of the retaliatory attacks in such circumstances.

the clash between the singular subject and the plural reflexive pronoun is stunning. I really do feel that it would have been more felicitous had he written:

… when a cleric refuses to commit perjury when presented with …

I don’t recall ever seeing cleric used as a neutral word for a member of the clergy, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. The COED defines it as 'a priest or religious leader'. And that in turn leads on to the question of why Anglican clerics don’t simply call themselves priests. After all that is what they, unlike Dissenting ministers, are.

I do wonder sometimes whether people do this sort of thing deliberately to demonstrate to the world their politically correct credentials as people who know what terminology should be used – though the Reverend Doctor refers to himself as a clergyman. On the other hand, this could just be the typically (and subconscious) British style of giving pragmatism the ascendancy over aestheticism.

BBC English

The BBC reports:

BBC royal correspondant Peter Hunt said it was unusual for a senior royal to so freely enter the diplomatic and political arena.

What really astounds me about this sort of thing is that they don't use spell-checkers -- not to mention that correspondent, of all things, is a word that one might just expect the Beeb to know how to spell!

As for the split infinitive, I am not a purist. But there are many occasions when elegance of style precludes them, and this is one such case I feel. There is no real reason why the adverb should not go in its natural place at the end:

... for a senior royal to enter the diplomatic and political arena so freely