Bad spelling costs money!

I just refer to the article on this link.

Spell checkers

I don't use a spellchecker. I've been drilled in spelling and grammar, and it's not a bad thing. I was taught three foreign languages (one of them I'm typing in right now), and you can't properly learn a language if you don't know the basics. Spelling is so fundamental, in my mind, that (typing errosr aside) you shouldn't need a spellchecker. Pedantic? Me?? OK, use a spellchecker if you're not certain. And to weed out those typos. But for crying out loud, please use a passive one. I'm allergic to active spellcheckers, that change words for you, without you having to allow it or not. I came across this horrendous example in an article on the STV website - STV is the Scottish commercial television channel - about Scots cyclists who were in the Joplin tornado. Describing the scene, the article quotes:

The storm sirens whaled out. We had to sprint and get ourselves to the van and head to the storm shelter. It was terrifying; the sirens filled me with fear.

Well, I should not joke about such a devastating event as the Joplin tornado, where over 100 people died. But I am pouring scorn over the text editor on STV.tv, who did not spot that particular banana-skin. He will end up wailing about whales until the end of his days...

Diffuse or defuse

That is a headline from a regional paper in the north of Scotland last Monday. So we diffuse bombs - but do we defuse light? Looks like someone didn't check his spellchecker!

Can you read any more?

Or can't you read anymore?

This is a word that was formerly acceptable only as its split form, any more; however, it is now generally acceptable to use the combined form. It joins other such combinations as anyone, anything, anytime, anyway, and anywhere. However, there is an important distinction in which the separate form should be used. If referring to matters of quantity, the phrase should be two words. If one is full after a meal, the proper term would be, "I can't eat any more." If one is physically unable to eat, the phrase would be, "I can't eat anymore." The former refers to quantity, with the word "food" implied after "more," and "more" used as an adjective. In the latter, "anymore" is an adverb modifying the verb "eat."

Just to add a little confusion, anymore can have a regional meaning, specifically in the Midwest. I used it in speaking the other day and thoroughly confused the person I was speaking with. I can't remember the exact topic of the conversation, but a good example would be, "In Indiana, if you want to buy alcohol, it doesn't matter how old you look. You have to show your license anymore." In this case, it means "at the present time" or "nowadays." When I used it with my friend, they were very perplexed by what seemed to be a contradictory statement. They thought it would have made sense to have a negative in there: "You can't buy alcohol anymore unless you show your license." In that case, it would be using anymore as an adverb modifying buy. My usage was intended to show a time frame.

One of my sources says that such a usage "puzzles readers from other regions." I can testify to the truth of that! Other references state that it is not proper form in writing. As I thought about it, I don't believe it's anything that I use in writing. If I utilize that form, it is generally when speaking, which is when most colloquialisms and regional idioms are prone to "popping out."

Does anyone else here use anymore in that way? I know I'm not the only one. Here is a bevy of bathing beauties to prove it.

I rest my case.

Plurals

Today is Glorious Twelfth, which sees the opening of the grouse shooting season here in the United Kingdom. So, if someone has a good aim, what do you say? How many grouse did you bag? Well, there are a few different plurals for nouns ending in -ouse.

House - houses
Blouse - blouses
Mouse - mice
Louse - lice
Grouse - grouse

It is one of my fave jokes to ask "how many hice in this street are afflicted with mice... "

Ad"DRESS"ing a Question

I've been trying to come up with an idea for this blog, and Donna at JUST ME gave me one. She was writing of memories of watching her mother "dress" a chicken and, as a passing thought, wondered why taking the guts out of a chicken was known as "dressing". Well, let's just see, shall we?

First of all, I was rather surprised to see how many definitions there are for the word "dress." As a verb, there are around fifteen, as a noun there are four, and as an adjective there are two. There are also at least three ways to use the word as a phrasal verb, and one use of it as an idiom, according to one dictionary.

In our query here, we are dealing with the word "dress" as a verb, meaning "to clean for cooking or sale", as one would do a chicken, a deer, a turkey. (A closely related usage would be the verb definition meaning "to garnish".)

The word "dress" is so common to our everyday language that it is interesting to realize that it hasn't always referred to an article of attire. My OED gives the earliest recorded use of the word "dress" as 14th century. There are three definitions from that century. One, the obsolete one, is "make or put straight or right". The second -- now get this -- is "prepare, treat (later, in a specific way)". So when we say we are dressing a joint of beef, or field dressing a deer, or dressing a chicken, we are using the oldest recorded definition of the word "dress".

Interesting, eh?

And in case you're wondering, the third meaning from the 14th century is "array, equip, attire". From the 18th century we have "line up (troops)", and from the 17th century we get the meaning "personal attire" from William Shakespeare.

The earliest noun sense of the word was "speech, talk", and comes from the 15th century. That sense comes from a verb sense (Latin dirigere), meaning "to direct" (addressing or directing words to other people).

Numbers and amounts

This morning, I was listening to the news on Radio Scotland, and in particular an item about potholes. Reporting from the side of a pothole in Perthshire, the journalist was talking about the amount of potholes. This is a very relevant topic, following the hardest winter since 1962/63, with snow on the ground for nearly 3 months in some parts of the Highlands. I remarked to a friend that talking about amounts of potholes is grammatically incorrect. You talk about numbers of potholes. Because you can count them. Of course, I would not expect anyone to go on a drive of all the roads in Highland Scotland and tot up the number of time their suspension gets wrecked. However, what could be a relevant statistic is the amount of tar required to fill in all those potholes. Or the number of men needed to put in all that tar.

You can talk about one tonne of tar needed to repair a stretch of road. That's an amount, you can weigh it or measure it; you describe it with a unit (e.g. of length, weight etc). You can't talk about one tar, unless you are watching a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.

You can talk about one lorry, needed to carry all that tar, because you can count the number of vehicles. Talking about an amount of lorries does not make sense.