Adjectives

“Power Washing: Commerical and Res.”

Adjectives

I saw this on a hand-written “bandit” sign this morning.

Problem:
The misspelling is quite obvious, I hope!

Explanation:
A “bandit” sign is what the City of Houston calls any sign placed illegally in a public right-of-way, such as at a street corner.

The misspelling of the word “commercial” — as C-O-M-M-E-R-I-C-A-L — on a sign that read “Power Washing Commerical and Res.” was very obvious.

The sign was one of many hand-written signs that I had seen around Houston in the past week for the same power-washing company, which apparently offers its services to both residential and commercial customers.

What gave me pause, though, was that this was not a typographic error.

Granted, people can easily misspell words when hand-writing them, too.

But this particular error (Would you call it a “hand-o” instead of a “typo”?) caught my eye because it immediately looked wrong.

This makes me wonder whether the sign writer was simply guessing at the proper order of the letters, knowing that there were both an “i” and a “c” in the middle of the adjective “Commercial”.

Such will be the fate of anyone who is not taught phonetics, in my opinion.

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

  • “commercial” — 672,000,000 matches
  • “commerical” — 5,450,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spelling versus the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 123-to-1, which is excellent, although my enthusiasm is dampened by the nearly 5.5 million misspellings.

Solution:
“Power Washing: Commercial and Res.”

“Women are still not paid equal to men.”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler

My wife heard this two days ago on NPR.

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

Explanation:
National Public Radio on March 12 aired a report in which my wife heard someone say, “Women are still not paid equal to men.”

As is true for “naked” verbs, the passive-voice construction “are still not paid” may be modified by an adverb but may never be modified by an adjective.

The word “equal” is an adjective, not an adverb.

Many adjectives — including “equal” — can be converted into adverbs by adding the “ly” suffix.

I believe that the omission of the “ly” suffix from what should be the adverbial forms of adjectives is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to omit the “ly” suffix, which adds two more letters and an extra syllable, than to include it.

Solution:
“Women are still not paid equally to men.”

“inverse” vs. “converse”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Versus

I heard someone say “inversely” yesterday to introduce a contrary opinion to what he first stated.

Problem:
The adverbs “inversely” and “conversely” are not synonyms, just as the adjectives “inverse” and “converse” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
When I heard someone yesterday state one opinion and then introduce an opposing opinion with the adverb “inversely”, I thought that it sounded odd.

I was expecting him to say “conversely” instead of “inversely”, so I decided to learn more about the adjectives “inverse” and “converse”.

This adjective “inverse” dates back to around 1610 from a Latin verb that means to turn inside out or upside down.

So an example of valid use of the adjective “inverse” is “The inverse form of the fraction 3/4 is the fraction 4/3.”

The adjective “converse” dates back to the second half of the 1300s from a Latin verb that means to turn around.

So an example of a valid use of the adjective “converse” is “The converse perspective to ‘The glass is half-full.’ is ‘The glass is half-empty.'”

It may help to look at the words “inverse” and “converse” when they are used as nouns in mathematics.

Given the statement “if p, then q”:

  • “if not p, then not q” is the inverse;
  • “if q, then p” is the converse.

Notice how the inverse “turns inside out” the original statement and how the converse “turns around” the original statement.

Solution:
Use the adjective “inverse” to label something that is upside down or inside out. Use the adjective “converse” to label something that is contrary or turned around.