Common English Blunders

“Battery” vs. “Cell”

Common English Blunders, Nouns, Versus

I thought of these two nouns recently when I had to refill a flashlight.

Problem:
One of these in everyday speech is often misidentified as the other in discussions related to electricity.

Explanation:
In electrical terms,

  • a “battery” is an electrically connected combination of two or more “cells”;
  • a “cell” is something that converts chemical energy into electrical energy, usually via an electrolyte and two substances with different conductivities.

A “cell” typically has an electromotive force of about 1.5 volts.

In contrast, a “battery” has an electromotive force that equals 1.5 volts times the number of cells in the battery.

For example, the PP3 battery, which is commonly called a “9-volt battery” and truly is a “battery”, has an electromotive force of 9 volts because it comprises six “cells” within its case.

As another example, if you put four “D” cells in a flashlight, you have a six-volt battery in the flashlight.

In other words, although many dictionaries indicate that one of the definitions of “battery” is “cell”,

  • this refers to everyday speech,
  • this is not the primary definition, and
  • this is technically incorrect.

Solution:
When it comes to electricity, use “cell” for the “AA”, “AAA”, “C”, and “D” units that can be bought in stores, and use “battery” to refer to a connected set of these units or to refer to the 9-volt, “PP3” unit popularly used in smoke detectors, alarm clocks, etc.

“Any Occassion Top”

Common English Blunders, Hyphens, Misspellings, Nouns

I saw this last evening on television.

Problems:
1. A word is misspelled.
2. A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
Fashion designer Tim Gunn has a program on the Bravo television channel called “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style”.

I saw in the episode last evening on this program a list of what he calls his “10 Essential Elements”; one of the elements was listed as “Any Occassion Top” — with no hyphen and with a second “s” in the second word.

Spelling the noun “Occasion” with a second “s” is a common English blunder.

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:

  • “occasion” — spelled correctly as O-C-C-A-S-I-O-N — 218,000,000 matches
  • “occassion” — spelled incorrectly as O-C-C-A-S-S-I-O-N — 3,340,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the correct spelling over the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 65.3-to-1, which is very good but not excellent, given the more than three million incorrect spellings.

Correctly spelling the noun “Occasion” fixes only the first problem. When an adjective plus a noun modify another noun, the adjective and first noun must be joined with a hyphen to form the modifier of the second noun.

So the adjective “Any” plus the first noun “Occasion” must be joined with a hyphen to form the modifier of the second noun “Top”.

Solution:
“Any-Occasion Top”

Beginning a sentence with “And” or “But”

Commas, Common English Blunders, Conjunctions, Hypercorrection

I learned yesterday that I have incorrectly begun sentences for years with “And” or “But” — but not in the way that some readers might expect.

Question:
Should a comma follow a coordinating conjunction that begins a sentence?

Explanation:
The coordinating conjunctions in English are “for”, “and”, “nor”, “but”, “or”, “yet”, and “so”, a mnemonic for which is FANBOYS.

Some teachers instruct their students that a coordinating conjunction should never begin a sentence, but this is incorrect instruction.

In contrast, I was (incorrectly) taught relatively early that a comma should immediately follow one of these coordinating conjunctions when the conjunction begins a sentence.

For example, I was taught that the comma belongs after “And” in “And, he was happy with the results.”

Similarly, I was taught that the comma belongs after “So” in “So, you should see a doctor immediately.”

As a result, for years I have put commas immediately after the coordinating conjunctions that began my sentences.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I read on several websites yesterday that a comma should not be put immediately after a sentence-opening coordinating conjunction unless that conjunction is followed by an interrupter in a sentence such as “But, given the circumstances, you should not travel tomorrow.”

Here are some of those websites:

I do not know why I was taught to put a comma after a coordinating conjunction that begins any sentence.

But my guess is that it could be due to hypercorrection on the part of my teacher(s), as if to say “We should not begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. However, if we do, then we should follow the coordinating conjunction with a comma, just as we put a comma after a conjunctive adverb — such as “However” — at the beginning of a sentence.”

Having learned this lesson, which I should have learned a long time ago, I searched all of my old blog posts for the error of putting a comma immediately after a coordinating conjunction at the start of an interrupter-less sentence.

“So” was the coordinating conjunction with which I made this error the most often. (Learning truly never ends!)

I believe that I corrected most of my errors, but it certainly is possible that some remain. If you find one, then please contact me.

Answer:
If an interrupter immediately follows the coordinating conjunction at the beginning of a sentence, then put a comma after the conjunction. Otherwise, do not put a comma after the (FANBOYS) conjunction.