Common English Blunders

“They’ll reciprocate back for you.”

Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Self-negation, Verbs

I heard someone say this in an interview the other day.

Problem:
The adverb “back” in “reciprocate back” is redundant.

Explanation:
I heard an Internet-marketing guru make the statement “They’ll reciprocate back for you.” in an audio file recorded as part of an interview series sponsored by Brad Callen, the maker of Keyword Elite.

The verb “reciprocate” when used without an object usually means to make a return, so the meaning of “reciprocate back” would be to make a return back.

Because the “re” in “return” means back, one could argue that someone who “reciprocates back” would never make a return (e.g., for something given).

For fun, I searched Google for the expression “reciprocate back” (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about 7,920 matches, which is relatively low.

I continue to believe that the growing tendency, at least in American English, to add the adverb “back” after many “re” verbs reflects a growing ignorance about the meanings of the roots of English words.

Solution:
“They’ll reciprocate for you.”

“where we’re at”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Prepositions

I hear this a lot, often from supposedly educated people.

Problem:
The preposition should not appear in this expression.

Explanation:
The full sentence goes something along the lines of “Let’s see where we’re at in this project.”

Whoever says or writes “where we’re at” is making the common English blunder of applying “where at” — a mistaken way to use “where” — to a location (physical or virtual).

I believe that this expression when spoken is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say “where we’re at” than to say “where we are”.

Try saying each expression. You will hear and feel what I mean. The words “we’re” and “at” blur together in speech to become a one-and-a-half-syllable “whurrat”. In contrast, the words “we” and “are” must be spoken distinctly.

Given a choice, most speakers will choose 1.5 syllables over two syllables almost any day, especially in informal speech.

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:

  • “where we are” — 17,400,000 matches
  • “where we’re at” — 479,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “where we are” versus the incorrect “where we’re at” by a ratio of 36.3-to-1, which is good but not wonderful, especially considering nearly half of a million instances of the incorrect expression.

Solution:
“where we are”

“You need to do a little bit more reading on it.”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Prepositions, Verbs

I heard a gardening expert say this today.

Problems:
1. The speaker misused the pronoun “on”.
2. The speaker misused the verb “need”.

Explanation:
I was listening this morning to a talk-radio program about gardening.

A caller asked the host about a topic.

The host responded with “You need to do a little bit more reading on it.”

The phrase “read on” is correct in sentences such as these:

  • “I read on the website that he is divorced.”
  • “I read on the subway the entire booklet.”
  • “I read on the electrical panel that it was rated for only 120 volts.”

But “read on” is incorrect in a sentence such as “I read on the topic.”

Such a sentence requires the preposition “about”, not the preposition “on”.

The pronoun “it” in the statement made by the host to the caller referred to a topic.

So “reading on it” is incorrect, and the host should have used “reading about it” instead.

I believe that the use of “on” in place of “about” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to say or write the one-syllable, two-letter “on” than it is to say or write the two-syllable, five-letter “about”.

The second problem was that the talk-show host used the verb “need” where another verb was required.

There are very few actions that humans need to take because there are very few things that humans need.

The verb “should” is the correction for “need to do” in the statement.

The avoidance of “should” in favor of “need to” in American English has become a common blunder.

My impression is that this blunder originated in the popular psychology of the 1960s, when the focus was on needs and when many started to say the catch-phrase “Don’t should on me!”

Solution:
“You should do a little bit more reading about it.”