Month: September 2008

“phone” and “blog”

Contractions, Devolution toward Simpler

Many people do not realize that these two words originally were contractions.

The word “phone” — spelled P-H-O-N-E — originally was ‘phone — spelled APOSTROPHE-P-H-O-N-E — which is a contraction of the noun telephone, with the apostrophe signifying the omission of the first four letters (T-E-L-E).

The word “blog” — spelled B-L-O-G — originally was ‘blog — spelled APOSTROPHE-B-L-O-G — which is a contraction of the compound noun Weblog, with the apostrophe signifying the omission of the first two letters (W-E).

I believe that writing ‘phone with the initial apostrophe fell out of favor because it is simpler to omit the apostrophe than to include it. Omission of this apostrophe is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

I believe that writing ‘blog with the initial apostrophe had almost no chance of success because apostrophes are not legal characters in a uniform resource locator or URL, whereas many authors — including yours truly — like to put the word “blog” in the URLs for their Weblogs.

The result is that both “phone” and “blog” — neither of which have an initial apostrophe — have become accepted words in American English.

“How are you[,] my sister?”

Commas

My wife got the comma-less form of the question in an email message the other day.

Problem:
Inclusion or exclusion of the comma affects the meaning of the question.

Explanation:
A comma in a sentence indicates a pause, so it can change the way that someone reads a sentence and therefore the meaning of the sentence.

My wife got the question as “How are you my sister?”, which effectively asked my wife how she could be the message writer’s sister.

However, given that the message writer is not my wife’s sister and knows that she is not my wife’s sister, what she should have written was “How are you, my sister?”.

This form with the comma would have

  • let the message writer ask my wife how she was doing,
  • used a comma to indicate a pause, and
  • included “my sister” as a term of adoration or nearness.

Solution:
Include the comma to address someone as your sister and to ask her how she is doing. Exclude the comma to ask someone how she can be your sister.

“… please find the documents attached here width.”

Adverbs

I saw this in an email message yesterday.

Problem:
The two words “here width” do not form an adverbial phrase.

Explanation:
The complete sentence in the email message was “For all those who cannot access the links, please find the documents attached here width.”

The problem with the sentence is that the two words “here width” — spelled H-E-R-E-SPACE-W-I-D-T-H — together do not form an adverbial phrase.

These two words, however, do sound like the adverb “herewith” — spelled H-E-R-E-W-I-T-H — which means by means of this, or along with this, or hereby, which gives us our solution.

I wish that I could search for this two-word “here width” mistake with Google, but I got a lot of matches that were not representative of mistakes.

Solution:
“… please find the documents attached herewith.”