Month: March 2008

“This is the exact same thing.”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Common English Blunders

I saw this in a PowerPoint slide yesterday.

Problem:
The writer used an adjective where an adverb was required.

Explanation:
An adjective such as “exact” must be converted to an adverb so that it can modify another adjective.

For example, it’s incorrect to say or write “the definite green blouse”; the correct form is “the definitely green blouse”. We must convert the adjective “definite” to the adverb “definitely” to modify correctly the adjective “green” in this example.

Similarly, it’s incorrect to say or write “the exact same thing”. The correct but rarely used form is “the exactly same thing”; the correct and more commonly used form is “exactly the same thing”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “the exact same thing” — 555,000 matches
  • “the exactly same thing” — 762 matches
  • “exactly the same thing” — 527,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase incorrectly by a ratio of 1.05:1, which is not good!

Solution:
“This is exactly the same thing.”

“This is a non-smoking terminal.”

Common English Blunders

I heard a skit about this on “Prairie Home Companion” yesterday.

Problem:
This airport sign doesn’t say to readers what the writer intended to say.

Explanation:
The sign writer effectively is saying that the airport terminal does not smoke.

The sign writer wanted to say that occupants in the airport terminal may not smoke.

Although many sign readers will know what the sign writer wanted to say, the sign still is poorly written — probably for the sake of brevity and avoiding saying “You may not …” (because people don’t like to say “may” anymore).

Solution:
“You may not smoke in this terminal.”

“A Revolution-ary Way to Grow Tomatoes”

Hyphens

I saw this product headline in a Gardener’s Supply catalog that my wife received a couple of days ago.

Problem:
The hyphen absolutely does not belong in this title.

Explanation:
This simply looks stupid.

The headline writer was trying to be clever by writing a traditional word (“Revolutionary”) in an untraditional way (“Revolution-ary”).

However, there were two problems with this attempt at cleverness:

  1. The product name — Gardener’s Revolution(TM) Planter — does not appear until the end of the second sentence of the paragraph beneath the headline, a sub-headline, and a “Gardener’s Supply Exclusive” label.
  2. Given that “Gardener’s Revolution” is tagged with a trademark (“TM”) symbol, common legal opinion advises against joining part of the trademark phrase (“Revolution”) with anything else (in this case, “-ary”).

In other words, the attempt to tie the concept “Revolutionary” with the product name “Gardener’s Revolution” by putting the oddly hyphenated word “Revolution-ary” in the headline is weak, and this attempt weakens future claims of trademark protection.

Solution:
“A Revolutionary Way to Grow Tomatoes”