[WT Sharpe]

I just finished reading Yes, I COULD Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk by Bill Walsh, and found this book to be very helpful, and even enjoyable. While I don't agree with everything the author says (I don't get upset when I encounter the phrase "without further ado", which he calls a "ridiculous" cliché), I find this book very informative. It's helped me quite a bit. For example, I used to be very confused about the phrase, "used to", but not anymore. Mr. Walsh has clarified it. Think you know how "Black Friday" got its name? Hint: It had nothing to do with the merchants finally making a profit after being "in the red" all year.

For someone who starts his book by telling his readers, "Language does evolve, it does sometimes defy logic, and it does depend on context. Different words can mean the same thing, and the same word can mean different things. You can almost always tell what I could care less means, and you’re not likely to call in the fire brigade if you hear about someone’s head literally exploding," you might think Bill Walsh takes a very lackadaisical attitude toward language. You'd be wrong. He's a bona fide language snob; but seems to be very nice about it.

Here are some observations from Bill Walsh. I quoted many of them, making this post quite long, so I enclosed them in spoilers:

Spoiler:

[M]aybe consistency isn’t my forte. (That’s fort, not for-TAY.)

As a musician, I like that one. Forte (pronounced "for-TAY") means "loud."

The laughs continued in the finals, when the U.S. player Abby Wambach said of her Japanese counterpart (and former teammate) Homare Sawa, “I couldn’t be prouder of Sawa than for literally putting her team on her back and carrying them to the final.”

Thru and employe and cigaret and other simplified spellings that seemed like the wave of the future didn’t last.

(Huh! I still use "thru" occasionally.)

If you loathe (hate) change, you might be loath (reluctant) to embrace new usages. Loath is a relatively uncommon word, so a lot of people understandably (but not excusably) use loathe for both meanings. Don’t be one of those people.

Why we need capitalization: Because my old navy jacket is neither an old Navy jacket nor an Old Navy jacket.

The verb contact was once a target of stickler scorn, but it passed the evolutionary test and lives peacefully today with relatively few natural enemies (unless you count the objection preserved, as if in amber, in The Elements of Style). Contrast that with the fate of impact as a verb, at least in the non-dental sense, which despite its ubiquity, despite its being used by notables from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Wink Martindale, has yet to win over the proverbial careful writers and editors.

I’m not one of those “Don’t verb nouns!” fetishists, but … imposing a toll on a road is “tolling” that road? Eww.

(For the most part, I AM one of those “Don’t verb nouns!” fetishists, but to each their own.)

The Internet, of course has ruined everything, except in those cases where it’s improved things or left things exactly the same.

The Wichita Eagle’s excellent Grammar Monkeys blog illustrates the principle with a recurring feature called Why We Need Hyphens. Some samples: Because a heavy-equipment operator is not the same as a heavy equipment operator. Because hazardous-materials training is not the same as hazardous materials training. Because 300-odd editors are not the same as 300 odd editors.

The occasional one- or two-letter exception is fine, as in iPad, but sentences and headings must begin with capital letters, and proper nouns should have a cap at the beginning, or pretty darn close. I don’t care what the Adidas logo says; the brand is not adidas. I don’t care what the Nike logo says; the brand is not NIKE. Yahoo and Guess do not get to interrupt sentences with decorative punctuation marks.

ARMED GUNMEN They’re the worst kind.

I nearly fell in love with the man when he said this:

Grown-ups would be well advised to use words such as “veggies” sparingly if at all.

His humor is apparant throughout the book:

Someone is a professor or the professor. “She is professor of English at Harvard University”? You are Tonto of Lone Ranger.

From his discussion of the whether:

Issue No. 1: Whether “whether or not” is redundant. Or not. And the answer is … it is when it is. I’ve seen self-styled sticklers ban the “or not” in all cases, ignoring the obvious folly, but it’s pretty clear that while you don’t need the “or not” in “Let’s see whether or not it rains today,” you most certainly do need it in “I’m going to ride my bike, whether or not it rains.” (Does anyone really think “I’m going to ride my bike, whether it rains” makes sense?) So delete it if you can. Don’t if you can’t.

I should mention also that Bill Walsh has a Twitter account (Bill Walsh @TheSlot):

@TheSlot I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw “whom” forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

Finally, some advice for all of us who tend to be language snobs:

I’m not a religious person, but the 12-steppers’ serenity prayer can be edited into a pretty handy pocket guide for language snobs: Correct what you can. Accept what you can’t. Be smart enough to know the difference.