Adjectives

“It can be cast in an heroic way.”

Adjectives, Hypercorrection

I heard this yesterday on NPR.

Problem:
The indefinite article is incorrect.

Explanation:
I was listening yesterday to an interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition” about Barack Obama’s pending presidential inauguration when I heard, “It can be cast in an heroic way.”

The problem with this sentence is that the “h” in the adjective “heroic” is never silent.

So just as one should not say or write “an helpful man”, one should not say or write “an heroic way”.

I believe that the tendency among some speakers of American English to use the indefinite article “an” in front of the adjective “heroic” is a form of hypercorrection — as if to say, “If ‘a’ is correct, then ‘an’ must be more correct.”

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:

  • ” a heroic” — 1,330,000 matches
  • ” an heroic” — 184,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct ” a heroic” versus the incorrect ” an heroic” by a ratio of 22.6-to-1, which is good but not great.

Solution:
“It can be cast in a heroic way.”

“Childrens Protective Service”

Adjectives, Apostrophes, Devolution toward Simpler, Misspellings, Possessives

I saw this yesterday in an email message.

Problem:
An apostrophe is missing.

Explanations:
The email message was talking about social-work efforts, and “Childrens Protective Service” — with “Childrens” spelled C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N — was the title of one of the sections in the message.

I believe that the absence of a required possessive apostrophe in “Childrens” can be attributable to:

  • A typographical error;
  • Ignorance about possessive apostrophes.

Given how often I see the apostrophe-free “Mens” and “Womens” in department stores, I doubt that “A typographical error” applies to this situation.

That leaves us with “Ignorance about possessive apostrophes”.

I believe that this ignorance is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis.

It is simpler to write possessive words without apostrophes than to write them with apostrophes.

Solution:
“Children’s Protective Service”

“shuddered windows”

Adjectives, Mispronunciations, Misspellings

I occasionally see or hear this phrase.

Problem:
The word “shuddered” is incorrect here.

Explanation:
I see or hear the phrase as part of a full sentence such as “The shuddered windows protected the glass from the hurricane.”

The intransitive verb “shudder” — with two “d”s and from which the word “shuddered” is derived — means to tremble or shake convulsively, as from cold, fear, or horror.

So the past participle “shuddered” cannot be used as an adjective to modify “windows” for two reasons:

  1. The verb “shudder” is intransitive and therefore its past participle cannot be used as an adjective.
  2. Even if “shuddered” could be used as an adjective, it would make no sense to use it to modify the noun “windows”.

The solution comes from realizing that Americans often mispronounce “t”s (as in “tango”) as “d”s (as in “David”).

So the word “shudder” — with two “d”s — is a typical mispronunciation, at least by Americans, of the word “shutter” — with two “t”s.

And given that the transitive verb “shutter” means to close with shutters, we have the solution.

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:

  • “shuttered windows” — with two middle “t”s as in “tango” — 98,800 matches
  • “shuddered windows” — with two middle “d”s as in “David” — 97,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the meaningful “shuttered windows” versus the meaningless “shuddered windows” by a ratio of 1.01-to-1, which is absolutely dreadful.

Solution:
“shuttered windows”