Month: May 2008

“Limited Quanities”

Devolution toward Simpler, Misspellings, Nouns

I saw this in a television advertisement for a business named Surplus Furniture.

Problem:
The noun is misspelled.

Explanation:
The misspelling is obvious: “Quanities” should have been “Quantities” in the big headline in the TV commercial.

What is not as obvious, perhaps, is why the misspelling occurred.

Not enunciating distinctly the first ‘t’ in “quantities” is common among many American speakers, so the misspelling could be due to the headline writer unconsciously spelling “quantities” in the way that he or she heard the noun dictated by the furniture-store owner.

I also believe that the misspelling is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to drop the first ‘t’ than to include it.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following spellings (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “quantities” — 50,800,000 matches
  • “quanities” — 165,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 308:1, which is a very good sign.

Solution:
“Limited Quantities”

“Blah Blah In Blah”

Common English Blunders, Prepositions

I saw a title in the format of “Blah Blah In Blah” while watching a television program last evening.

Problem:
The preposition “in” should not be capitalized.

Explanation:
Obviously, I don’t recall the “Blah” words.

What I do recall is that the preposition “in” was capitalized in the title.

This is incorrect.

The traditional rule has been that a preposition in a title should not be capitalized unless the preposition is the first or last word in the title.

Some people have refined this rule to say that it’s okay to capitalize prepositions that are five characters long or longer.

I believe that Microsoft Word and other software applications have contributed to the incorrect capitalization of prepositions in titles. Their titling rules usually capitalize each word in a title.

So I don’t recommend relying on these applications for help with proper capitalization of prepositions in titles.

Solution:
“Blah Blah in Blah”

“I’m actually going to lie them down.”

Common English Blunders, Hypercorrection, Verbs

I heard this yesterday on HGTV’s “Design on a Dime” television program.

Problem:
The verb “lie” is incorrect for this sentence.

Explanation:
The verb “lie” — when it means to be in a horizontal position — is an intransitive verb.

So one cannot “lie them down”.

“Lay” is the correct verb for this sentence.

I believe that the use of “lie” in this sentence is an example of hypercorrection. The speaker of the sentence probably knew that “lay” is used too often as an incorrect substitute for “lie”, so she chose “lie” when “lay” actually was the correct verb.

Solution:
“I’m actually going to lay them down.”