Month: December 2007

“10 lucky employees and there one guest have …”

Common English Blunders, Nouns, Possessives, Pronouns

I saw this in an email message.

Problems:
1. Numbers that begin sentences should be written as words.
2. The word “there” is not a possessive pronoun.
3. It’s unclear whether the ten employees have one guest each or have a total of exactly one guest.

Explanation:
1. Some say that numbers less than 100 should be written as words, whereas others say that numbers less than ten should be written as words. Ignoring this controversy as well as the liberties taken by advertisers and headline writers, it is widely accepted that a number that begins a sentence should be written as a word.

2. The word “there” is not a possessive pronoun. As homonyms or homophones, “there” and “their” and “they’re” are too frequently misused. The guest belonging to or possessed by the employee(s) (see #3) takes the possessive pronoun “their” — not “there” or (even worse!) “they’re”.

3. Based on the first two explanations, we can rewrite this sentence introduction as “Ten lucky employees and their one guest have …”, but confusion remains! We don’t know whether each employee has a guest or the ten employees as a group have one guest. The remainder of the sentence was “… the opportunity to go on the floor and greet the [basketball] players as they go out on the court during half time.” Assuming that each lucky employee gets to have his or her own guest, we get the solution.

Solution:
“Ten lucky employees and one guest per lucky employee have …”

“We can setup a meeting.”

Common English Blunders, Nouns, Verbs

I saw this in an email message.

Problem:
Other than the auxiliary verb “can”, there is no verb in this (non-)sentence.

Explanation:
The word “setup” is a noun and means the way in which something is planned or arranged.

The writer of the email message should have used the verb phrase “set up” instead of the noun “setup”.

The verb phrase “set up” in the context of what was intended by the writer means arrange or establish.

In other words, “setup” and “set up” are not synonyms!

Solution:
“We can set up a meeting.”

“Cohort”

Nouns

Use of this word spans several disciplines.

Problem:
“Cohort” has multiple meanings.

Explanation:
Demographers, epidemiologists, and market researchers use the noun “cohort” to mean a group of individuals with a common statistical factor (e.g., age).

Historians use “cohort” to refer to an infantry company in a Roman legion.

However, the two most common uses of “cohort” are a group of people and an individual associate.

Talk about contradictory definitions!

So “cohort” is both a singular noun and a plural noun.

Solution:
Be careful with how you use the noun “cohort”; otherwise, your readers may misunderstand you or may challenge how you use it.