Month: January 2008

“The following tests will be ran.”

Passive Voice, Tenses, Verbs

I saw this in a technical presentation. (Ouch!)

Problem:
The wrong verb form is used in this sentence.

Explanation:
The Purdue University Online Writing Lab has an examples page about verb tenses and voices. A thorough discussion of English verbs appears at Wikipedia.

The sentence that I saw in the presentation was meant to be in the simple future tense and in passive voice.

We can confirm that the correct verb form is “run” — not “ran” — for this sentence by consulting Wikipedia’s set of conjugation tables for the English language’s model regular verbs and for some of its most common irregular verbs.

Another handy tool for several thousand English verbs is the verb-conjugations tool that is located here. The “Scientific Psychic” (SP) website where this tool is located is a bit quirky, but the tool seems to work well. You might like the Verbix tool instead; although it’s much pickier than the SP tool about input, its output is more thorough than SP’s output.

Here is an unorthodox but still fairly reliable method to determine which of “will be ran” or “will be run” is the correct form: search Google separately for each of “will be ran” and “will be run” with the quotation marks included in each search; the one with the dominant number of hits or matches is very likely the correct form (unless the language has fallen apart on the Web!).

For example, I just searched Google for “will be ran” and got about 31,400 matches; I searched for “will be run” and got about 568,000 matches. The 18:1 dominance of “will be run” over “will be ran” is a very good indicator that “will be run” is the correct form.

Unfortunately, this method also can depress you. Finding 31,400 matches for “will be ran” is depressing, especially when the top matches are from governmental entitities such as the State of Michigan, the University of Idaho, a high school in Iowa, a school district in North Carolina, and a commission of fire protection in Kentucky. That’s the price that you pay for an unorthodox method, I suppose.

If seeing Google return 31,400 matches for “will be ran” raises your fear for the future of our country’s literacy, then I recommend that you consider making a donation to First Book, about which I have written an article.

Solution:
“The following tests will be run.”

“They created me a business-objects ID.”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Prepositions

I heard this during a conference call.

Problem:
The preposition “for” is missing from this sentence.

Explanation:
This statement looks as odd as it sounded.

I believe that one source of the problem is that the speaker put herself first in the statement. If she had moved herself to the end of the sentence, then she would have gotten “They created a business-objects ID me.” — clearly wrong!

It’s clear that what is missing in the re-statement is the preposition “for”. In other words, “They created a business-objects ID for me.” is one of the solutions to the problem.

I believe that the absence of “for” in the statement also supports my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It’s simpler to say “created me” than to say “created for me”.

Putting the reference to the speaker first while retaining the needed preposition “for” gives us the other solution to the problem.

Solutions:
“They created a business-objects ID for me.”
or
“They created for me a business-objects ID.”

“Die” vs. “Pass Away” vs. “Pass”

Devolution toward Simpler, Euphemisms, Verbs, Versus

I thought again the other day about these death verbs after hearing a woman on an HGTV television program say that her cat had “passed away.”

Problem:
Although synonymous, “die” and “pass away” and “pass” don’t have the same impact, and the latter two can confuse readers or listeners.

Explanation:
Avoiding euphemisms sometimes requires courage.

One could argue that “pass away” has a religious origin as a euphemism for “die” and therefore that “pass away” is a valid substitute.

However, it is worthwhile to know that clinical social workers are taught that their clients who use “pass away” often have a harder time with working through the death of a loved one than those clients who use the plain-spoken verb “die”.

Can a dog or cat “pass away”, given the religious origin of the phrase? I doubt it, but maybe I am confused about the religious origin.

Or maybe the woman who said that her cat “passed away” simply was more comfortable with this than saying that her cat “died” — what she really meant but maybe did not have the courage to face.

It is worthwhile to know, too, that “pass away” is not commonly used throughout the entire world of English speakers. The verb “die” does not have this problem.

You can confuse even more people when you say “pass” instead of “pass away”.

For example, “He passed last night.” will invite curious stares from some listeners. “He passed what?” they will ask. “Passed gas? Passed a kidney stone? Came by your home?”

I believe that the use of “pass” as a death verb has two origins:

  1. It’s essentially a euphemism of a euphemism, letting the speaker or writer take two steps away from saying or writing “die” (the dreaded ‘D’ word!).
  2. It is simpler to say “pass” than to say “pass away”; this is further proof of my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

Solution:
Use “die” wherever possible. Use “pass away” in religious contexts, if you know that your readers or listeners understand this euphemism. Do not use “pass” as a substitute for “pass away”; you will confuse many people!