Author: Kirk

The Dreaded Double “is”

Common English Blunders, Hypercorrection, Redundancies, Verbs

A site visitor by the name of Kyle today reminded me about this common English blunder.

Problem:
Some people follow one “is” by a comma and another “is” when speaking.

Explanation:
Here is Kyle’s first example:

“What I’m trying to say is, is that I can’t remember his exact words.”

Read this example aloud, and you will recognize the pattern.

Read this example silently, though, and you will see the problem. The speaker, perhaps out of a sense of hypercorrection, has put a pause (the comma) after the first “is” and has put a second “is” after that pause — as if the listener has forgotten about the first “is” instance.

Correcting this example gives us:

“What I’m trying to say is that I can’t remember his exact words.”

Read this example, and you see that the “is” connects (or “equates”) the phrase on the left side of it to the phrase on the right side of it.

Here is reader Kyle’s second example:

“The thing is, is that I’m having a hard time remembering his exact words.”

Again, the solution is simple: replace “is, is” with “is”:

“The thing is that I’m having a hard time remembering his exact words.”

Solution:
Avoid the dreaded double “is” by replacing “… is, is …” with “… is …”.

Thanks, Kyle, for this excellent submission of what, unfortunately, is becoming yet another common English blunder!

Can’t vs. Cannot

Contractions, Devolution toward Simpler, Versus

I heard someone say “can or can’t” during an MP3-based interview this morning.

And it was only because of the context that I could be sure that the interviewee said “can’t” after the conjunction.

This got me to thinking: The popular use of “can’t” instead of “cannot” in spoken American English is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

In other words, it is simpler to say the one-syllable “can’t” than the two-syllable form.

But “can’t” can be difficult to hear (to distinguish from “can”).

Recommendation: Be nice to your audience by saying “cannot” instead of “can’t” in interviews, speeches, telephone calls, etc.

Names mean things: Carol Look

General

I started a couple of days ago to follow a ten-day online summit on meridian tapping.

Also known as Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT, meridian tapping lets you use tapping on certain acupressure points to eliminate negative beliefs and reduce emotional sensitivity to physical trauma.

The ten-day summit, called the 2010 Tapping World Summit, has several excellent speakers, including Dr. Carol Look, a tapping expert who has published several books.

One of those books is Improve Your Eyesight with EFT.

I had to smile the first time that I found this book online.

After all, the author’s surname is Look, and book is about eyesight!

Yes, indeed. Names mean things.