All right, my pretties…
Here we are with another installment of Diana the Grammar Goddess. Today, we’ll be discussing three common mutilations of the language I have sworn to uphold and protect.
1) A person’s interest is piqued, not peaked. Anyone who thinks otherwise should take a long walk off a high peak.
2) The phrase is a lot. Two words. You wouldn’t write alittle, would you?
3) And the most heinous and far-reaching of them all: begs the question When something begs the question, what it does is make a conclusion without even raising the question in the first place. In formal logic terms, what it is doing is “improperly taking for granted” the situation at hand. My philosophy prof. taught us to think of it as “beggars the question,” which isn’t quite correct, but got the job done. No one in my class misuses it to mean “raises the question” or “begs us to ask the question” or any of the other teeth-grating ways I’ve seen people use it recently.
March 21st, 2005 at 2:41 am
How about then vs. than. God that one grates. I’ve seen it almost daily, even from the land of the Pubbeds. Two COMPLETELY different words, separated by a single vowel. But still…
Gina the totally ungrammar goddess
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March 21st, 2005 at 9:03 am
Oh, how about ‘than’ instead of ‘from’ and ‘to’ when comes to saying ‘different’?, e.g. “My dog is different than her dog.” Nooooo! I can’t write for a half-chewed penny, but that one irritates me.
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March 21st, 2005 at 9:08 am
“The origin of ‘begs the question’ is “petitio principii” – Latin for “laying claim to a principle.” It describes an argument that is false because it relies on a conclusion that is assumed but not proven.”
http://www.yaelf.com/questions.shtml
That makes sense to me, a lot more than the other one. What can I say? I’m dense.
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March 21st, 2005 at 9:38 am
>>2) The phrase is a lot. Two words. You wouldn’t write alittle, would you?< <
Thank you SOOOOO much for saying this! Being a copyeditor for many years, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that in drafts of publications…by people who should know better! It drives me insane.
They’re also the same type of people who spell pamphlet like “pamplet.” (shudder)
= )
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March 21st, 2005 at 8:20 pm
A lot as one word makes me cry.
I can put up with a lot (*g*) but I think there should be a rule that if you can’t use certian words correctly you shouldn’t be allowed to be published.
Emily the as of yet unpublished, darn it
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March 21st, 2005 at 10:34 pm
Ouch, Maili, I think I actually *use* the than/from thing — if not in writing, at least in speech. Must go review that one.
Does anyone else get totally hung up on a particualr grammar rule for a few days at a time? I go around, ruthlessly excising that one mistake from my writing. This week, I’ve been fixated on NOT ending sentences with prepositions.
Sailor Boy is always mis/quoting… Churchill, I think, with, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put,” but it hasn’t deterred me yet.
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March 22nd, 2005 at 10:50 pm
I taught middle school – the correct spelling of a lot was a daily issue. The students all complained that it really looked better as one word…
Of course, some of those same students also told me that they liked to write their essays first and then sprinkle in the punctuation once they were done. *sigh*
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