Common English Blunders

“… when the couple said a guy went up to them …”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I heard this on Fox26 local news yesterday morning.

Problem:
The verb “went” is inappropriate here.

Explanation:
Mixing up “came” and “went” is a common English blunder.

  • The verb “to come” implies that someone or something is approaching the speaker or writer.
  • The verb “to go” implies that someone or something is moving away from the speaker or writer.

The TV anchor on Houston’s Fox26 news was acting as a journalist who was reporting what a couple said.

In this case, the journalist indirectly quoted what the couple said.

Assuming that a journalist should not impose bad grammar on anyone, especially in an indirect quotation, we can infer that the direct quotation would be this grammatically correct form:

  • “… when,” the couple said, “a guy came up to us …”

In contrast, here is the grammatically incorrect form of a direct quotation:

  • “… when,” the couple said, “a guy went up to us …”

The reason that changing “came” to “went” would make the direct quotation grammatically incorrect is that the two people are recounting their experience at the time of the approach by “a guy”, and at the time of the approach — from their perspective of being in the location that the guy was approaching — the guy “came” to them, not “went” to them.

Converting the grammatically correct form of the direct quotation back to the indirect quotation, we get the solution.

Solution:
“… when the couple said a guy came up to them …”

“If” vs. “Whether”

Common English Blunders, Conjunctions

I saw a personal email message the other day that illustrates well the difference between “if” and “whether” — two conjunctions that are not synonyms.

Problem:
Writing the conjunction “if” in place of “whether” — even in informal writing — can confuse readers.

Explanation:
I wrote about these two conjunctions back in January, but I have since found a simple example that illustrates why “if” is dangerous as a substitute for “whether”.

The example appeared in an email message from a woman who was arranging a party:

  • “Please let me know if you’ll be coming to my party.”

Changing the order of the sentence, we get:

  • “If you’ll be coming to my party, then please let me know.”

This implies that the message writer was not asking to hear from message readers who would not be attending her party.

However, I talked to the message writer and learned that she wanted to hear from everyone who got her email message. This would ensure that she had confirmation either way — “Yes, I’ll be coming to your party.” or “No, I won’t be coming to your party.” — from each of the message recipients.

The message writer should have used “whether” instead of “if” in her sentence to ensure that she got confirmation either way (“yay” or “nay”):

  • “Please let me know whether you’ll be coming to my party.”

Solution:
Be careful with using “if” as a substitute for “whether” in whatever you write — even personal email messages. Otherwise, you might not get the results that you desire.

“Im out of Save/pay-by-mail envelopes.”

Apostrophes, Capitalization, Common English Blunders, Contractions, Devolution toward Simpler

I saw this on the back of a bank-by-mail envelope from my credit union.

Problems:
An apostrophe is missing from the contraction, and the verb used as an adjective should not be capitalized.

Explanation:
Whoever wrote what is printed on the back of the envelope was trying to use the contracted, everyday-speech form of “I am”.

Unfortunately, the contraction “Im” lacks the required apostrophe.

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

It’s simpler to write “Im” than to write “I’m” (two keystrokes vs. three keystrokes).

I also believe that the increasingly common practice of dropping required apostrophes has been influenced by people’s experience with text messaging.

  • Given the typical limit of 160 characters in a text message, every character is precious, so dropping required apostrophes seems to many like a reasonable price to pay.
  • Also, text messaging on most cellular telephones, which don’t have full QWERTY keyboards, is tedious, so dropping required apostrophes lets users of the simpler phones avoid this tedium.

The other problem is that “Save” — a verb used as an adjective to modify “envelopes” — is capitalized when it should not be.

Unnecessary capitalization has become another common English blunder.

I see this unnecessary capitalization more with nouns than with adjectives.

Maybe American English is becoming more like German, or maybe American English speakers are losing their confidence in how to capitalize and therefore randomly capitalize words that don’t require it.

Solution:
“I’m out of save/pay-by-mail envelopes.”