Common English Blunders

“We have to error on the side of caution.”

Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Nouns, Verbs

I heard U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) say this yesterday on Fox News Channel.

Problem:
The Congressman used the wrong word for the verb in this popular expression.

Explanation:
The word “error” is a noun and not a verb.

What the Congressman should have used is the word “err”, which looks like “error” but is a verb that means to be mistaken or incorrect.

Perhaps the Congressman simply mispronounced “err” (the verb) as “error” (the noun).

Wondering whether this could be more than a pronunciation problem, I searched Google — with the quotation marks included in the search box — for “error on the side of caution” and “err on the side of caution” and got about 20,200 and 441,000 matches, respectively. That tells me that Web authors have written the expression correctly by a ratio of 21.8:1, which is very good.

Still, over 20,000 matches for “error on the side of caution” indicates a substantial number of confused writers!

Solution:
“We have to err on the side of caution.”

“Valentimes Day” or “Valentime’s Day”

Apostrophes, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Mispronunciations, Possessives

I often hear this, although I certainly can’t hear the possessive apostrophe.

Problem:
These are mispronunciations of a popular February holiday, and one is missing the required possessive apostrophe.

Explanation:
The person whose day is celebrated on February 14 is St. Valentine.

So the proper name of the holiday is “St. Valentine’s Day” or more simply “Valentine’s Day” — not “Valentimes Day” or “Valentime’s Day” or even “Valentines Day”.

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

  • “Valentimes Day” — 18,800 matches
  • “Valentime’s Day” — 7,570 matches
  • “Valentines Day” — 1,560,000 matches
  • “Valentine’s Day” — 10,800,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase correctly by a ratio of 6.8:1, which is not good!

I believe that the use of “Valentimes” or “Valentime’s” instead of “Valentine’s” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It is simpler to pronounce the “m” sound in “Valentimes” or “Valentime’s” than to pronounce the “n” sound in “Valentines” or “Valentine’s”.

I believe that the omission of the possessive apostrophe in the otherwise-correct “Valentines Day” is also consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It is simpler to omit the apostrophe than to include it, and this holiday is only one of many examples in which writers omit required possessive apostrophes.

Solution:
“Valentine’s Day”

“Supremist”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Mispronunciations, Nouns

I heard the president of Morehouse College say this on C-SPAN yesterday at Tavis Smiley’s “State of the Black Union 2008” conference in New Orleans.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation of the correct word.

Explanation:
Although it’s true that one dictionary — Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English — contains this word, one has to realize that dictionaries not only are sources of what’s correct but also are references to incorrect forms.

For fun, I searched Google for “supremist” and “supremacist” (the correct word) and got about 84,700 and 1,280,000 matches, respectively. That tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly by a ratio of 15.1:1, which is good, but not excellent.

I believe that the use of “supremist” instead of “supremacist” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. The incorrect word has three syllables to the correct word’s four syllables, and it is simpler to pronounce the “ist” sound than to pronounce the “acist” sound.

Solution:
“Supremacist”