Common English Blunders

“Powerful plant base cleaner”

Common English Blunders, Hyphens, Verbs

I saw this in a television commercial for Arm & Hammer “Essentials” cleaner.

Problems:
1. One of the words should be in past-participle form.
2. A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
The advertising copywriter was promoting the environmentally friendly and non-harsh nature of the cleaner.

So the copywriter was trying to say that the cleaner was derived from or based on plants.

This gives us the solution to the first problem: The writer should have used the past participle “based” — spelled B-A-S-E-D — instead of the word “base” — spelled B-A-S-E.

Also, the copywriter was modifying the noun “cleaner” with two words in a compound fashion.

This gives us the solution to the second problem: The writer should have put a hyphen instead of a space after the word “plant”.

Both of these problems — not recognizing the need for a past participle nor the need for a hyphen — are, unfortunately, common English blunders.

Solution:
“Powerful plant-based cleaner”

“I don’t think they’ll be adverse to …”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders

I heard this yesterday in a conference call.

Problem:
The speaker used the wrong adjective.

Explanation:
The speaker was trying to say that he believed that “they” would not be against something.

The primary definition of the adjective “adverse” is antagonistic or unfavorable in effect or purpose, as in “adverse comments”.

It is a common English blunder to confuse the adjective “adverse” with the adjective “averse”, which lacks the letter “d” and means having a strong feeling of antipathy or opposition, as in “averse to kissing in public”.

In other words, “averse” relates to feelings or emotions and is what the speaker should have used.

Solution:
“I don’t think they’ll be averse to …”

“advised of”

Common English Blunders, Prepositions, Verbs

I saw this combination this morning.

Problem:
The preposition “of” should not follow the verb “advised”.

Explanation:
When used as an intransitive verb, “advise” means to offer advice.

This morning I saw a sentence such as “He was advised of the situation.”

If we were to apply the definition of the intransitive verb “advise” to the sentence, we would get “He was offered advice of the situation.”

That would literally mean “He was offered the situation’s advice.”, but the situation itself has no advice.

Instead, the writer of the sentence was trying to say “He was told about the situation.”

This gives us the solution, which is that the intransitive verb “advised” should be followed by the preposition “about” instead of the preposition “of”.

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

  • “advised of” — 7,480,000 matches
  • “advised about” — 136,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the incorrect vs. correct preposition by a ratio of 55-to-1, which is absolutely dreadful.

Solution:
“advised about”