Common English Blunders

“Pre-planning”

Common English Blunders, Redundancies

I heard this today on television.

Problem:
This is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
The “pre” in “pre-planning” is redundant, just as the “back” in “reply back” is redundant.

To plan something is to do think about something before it occurs.

The “pre” prefix also means before.

It makes no sense to think about something before before.

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

  • “planning” — 51,700,000 matches
  • “pre-planning” — 890,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have avoided this “pre-” redundancy by a ratio of 58.1:1, which is okay but not very good, especially in light of nearly one million(!) “pre-planning” matches.

Solution:
“Planning”

“Blah Blah In Blah”

Common English Blunders, Prepositions

I saw a title in the format of “Blah Blah In Blah” while watching a television program last evening.

Problem:
The preposition “in” should not be capitalized.

Explanation:
Obviously, I don’t recall the “Blah” words.

What I do recall is that the preposition “in” was capitalized in the title.

This is incorrect.

The traditional rule has been that a preposition in a title should not be capitalized unless the preposition is the first or last word in the title.

Some people have refined this rule to say that it’s okay to capitalize prepositions that are five characters long or longer.

I believe that Microsoft Word and other software applications have contributed to the incorrect capitalization of prepositions in titles. Their titling rules usually capitalize each word in a title.

So I don’t recommend relying on these applications for help with proper capitalization of prepositions in titles.

Solution:
“Blah Blah in Blah”

“I’m actually going to lie them down.”

Common English Blunders, Hypercorrection, Verbs

I heard this yesterday on HGTV’s “Design on a Dime” television program.

Problem:
The verb “lie” is incorrect for this sentence.

Explanation:
The verb “lie” — when it means to be in a horizontal position — is an intransitive verb.

So one cannot “lie them down”.

“Lay” is the correct verb for this sentence.

I believe that the use of “lie” in this sentence is an example of hypercorrection. The speaker of the sentence probably knew that “lay” is used too often as an incorrect substitute for “lie”, so she chose “lie” when “lay” actually was the correct verb.

Solution:
“I’m actually going to lay them down.”