• Home
  • About
    • Copyright, Rules, & Terms
  • IPA
  • Links
  • Contact

Crutchfield's Orthoglossary

~ Notes & Comment on Language, Spoken & Written

Crutchfield's Orthoglossary

Tag Archives: number

Number again, again

25 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by J. D. Crutchfield in Grammar

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

number

From an e-mail exchange in big business, concerning a guarantor:

There are net worth/liquidity requirements that have to be met and providing financials for this entity fall into complying with the loan documents.

Here, the number of the verb to fall is controlled, not by the nearest noun, entity, but by the next one over, financials.  What goes through people’s heads when they write or speak sentences like this?  Will English eventually drop grammatical number altogether?  It’s a mystery to me.

Number again

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by J. D. Crutchfield in Grammar

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

number

I’ve complained here before, several times, about people’s giving a verb the number of the nearest noun, rather than that of the noun that’s performing the action.  Usually, it’s a plural verb that ought to be singular, but today I came across a singular verb that ought to be plural, so I thought I’d mention it here:

As you may have seen, there are some ‘one time affects’ from a large cash infusion that is very hard to explain.

The writer misspells effects, which is not unusual, and seems to consider a large cash infusion very hard to explain.  She or he (I know which, but I’m not telling you) is in fact referring to those one-time effects, which he or she should have said, “are very hard to explain;” but “infusion” got in the way, and compelled her or him to use the number of that, instead of the number of the things that were hard to explain.  Why don’t people think about what they write?

Another Strange Plural

05 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by J. D. Crutchfield in Grammar, Newsflashes, Syntax

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

conjunctions, number, Scientific American

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But sometimes what makes you stronger can kill you, at least when it comes to blood clotting. Because the stickiness that allow platelets to heal your wounds also raises your risk of heart attack.

Karen Hopkin, “Birds Show Price Humans Pay for Good Clotting”, “The Sciences 60-Second Science” (podcast), Scientific American, 3 November 2003: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/birds-show-price-humans-pay-for-goo-11-11-03/

What noun is governing the number of “allow” in this quotation?  Is the writer misled by the the -s in stickiness, or the plural platelets?  Either way, it should be “allows”, because the (singular) noun stickiness is doing the allowing.

I sometimes begin a sentence here with a conjunction, such as but or and, which I was taught not to do (and I wouldn’t do it in formal writing, but this is a blog).  But I don’t think I ever follow one of those sentences with another that begins with because.  Because beginning two sentences in a row with conjunctions is too much.  Well, it’s a podcast, after all.

Another Undead Metaphor!

13 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by J. D. Crutchfield in Grammar, Modern Memos, Undead Metaphors, Usage & Style

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

idioms, number

Maybe two!  Internal e-mail from a major pharmaceutical company, December 2017, transmitting news reports on the company’s recent clinical trials:

Overall, a very positive feedback, recognizing the innovation generated at [our Company]. Still, the white elephant in the room are the biosimilars, but the continued innovation generated by us is also recognized by the market in helping us to balance the outlook during this time period.

The metaphor, white elephant, has been killed and revivified as a variant of the metaphor, elephant in the room.  I don’t think either metaphor expresses what the writer is trying to say, if anything.  A white elephant is a precious but useless gift which is burdensome to keep but can’t be discarded for fear of offending the giver.  The elephant in the room is the obvious thing that’s making everybody uncomfortable, but which nobody wants to talk about.  All the writer seems to have in mind is “the important thing not mentioned in these news articles”, which neither metaphor expresses.

There’s also a number problem, of course.

Not to mention “during this time period”.

More on Number Agreement

13 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by J. D. Crutchfield in Grammar

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

CNN, number

How about this one:

But the authors highlight that their study account for people who may have changed their drinking habits and relied on data from people reporting their own drinking habits.

Meera Senthilingam, “Even one drink a day could be shortening your life expectancy”, CNN, 13 April 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/13/health/too-much-alcohol-drinking-limits-shorter-life-expectancy/index.html

What noun is governing number in the verb “account” here?  Authors?  People?

Number and Amount

16 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by J. D. Crutchfield in Diction, Grammar, Newsflashes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

amount, New York Times, number, paid praters

I just remembered something else that copy-editors do at newspapers:  they write cutlines, that is, the captions to pictures.  (In newspaper jargon, a picture is a cut.)  Here’s one from the New York Times:

Two images of the same cuttlefish, taken fewer than two seconds apart, showing how quickly it can change color.

The copy-editor (or whoever wrote that cutline, the Times having abolished its copy desk) is to be commended for trying to get the distinction between less and fewer right, but this time she or he failed.

We use less to express amount and fewer to express number.  The important concept in this cutline is not the number of seconds involved, but the amount of time.

Writing and Thinking

16 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by J. D. Crutchfield in Grammar, How We Say It, O Tempora! O Mores!

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

agreement, CNN, gerunds, number, paid praters

Dear Reader, maybe you think I’m too hard on our paid praters, the people who make their living by generating verbiage for mass-consumption.  Maybe I am.  After all, they have a twenty-four-hour news cycle to contend with.  They must churn out the words in a constant stream, and they don’t have time to worry about things like grammar and style.

Well, in my opinion, if they don’t have time to write well, they shouldn’t be writing.  Bad writing is a product of sloppy thinking, and it spreads sloppy thinking.  People who read or hear bad writing naturally pick it up and imitate it when they speak or write.  They quit thinking about what they’re saying or writing, and content themselves with saying approximately what they mean to say.

An easy example, which we encounter almost every day, is misplaced number agreement:

The trouble with these airplanes are that they’re too noisy.

(I’m not quoting anybody here, but I’m sure you can find any number of real examples.)  I have the impression that people nowadays get this kind of thing wrong at least as often as they get it right.  The verb is given the number of the nearest noun (“airplanes are”), even if that noun isn’t the agent of the verb (“the trouble . . . are”).

Here’s a more elaborate example by a paid prater:

According to the magazine, McDougal, a Republican, was at first reluctant to speak about her alleged affair during the presidential campaign, fearing that Trump supporters might accuse her of fabricating her account or harming her or her family.

Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/politics/donald-trump-karen-mcdougal-national-enquirer/index.html.

As written, the sentence declares that

  1. McDougal was afraid
  2. McDougal was afraid that Trump supporters might accuse her
  3. McDougal was afraid that Trump supporters might accuse her of fabricating her account
  4. McDougal was afraid that Trump supporters might accuse her of harming her
  5. McDougal was afraid that Trump supporters might accuse her of harming her family.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that that is not what the reporter meant to declare.  I think that what she meant to declare was

  1. McDougal was afraid
  2. McDougal was afraid that Trump supporters might accuse her of fabricating her account
  3. McDougal was afraid that Trump supporters might harm her
  4. McDougal was afraid that Trump supporters might harm her family.

Does it matter that that’s not what she wrote?  You tell me, Dear Reader—but if your answer is “No,” please make an argument to support it.

Archives

  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • December 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • October 2013

Enter your email address to follow this web log and receive notice of new posts by e-mail.

Join 11 other followers

Tags

activator actuator announcements augmentation disease BBC Beowulf Britspeak button case CNN cock collapse cricket dead metaphor Dictionary.com discharger double-talk effect epicenter escapement Etymonline.com grammar Guardian gun-lock idioms igniter ignition switch impact impact effect implode J. R. R. Tolkien John McCain legalese lever like lock Merriam-Webster metaphor Modern Memos monger mood New York Times number officialese on-switch Open Salon paid praters pallet pawl political double-talk politics pronunciation Razia Iqbal release Salon.com Scientific American short-lived snap solecism starter subjunctive switch synonyms tarred with the same brush Thesaurus trip tripper Tucker Bounds usage vampire site verbs Washington Post whom Wikipedia word inflation

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy