Conjunctions

“It’s third ten on the forty.”

Conjunctions, Devolution toward Simpler, Prepositions

Huh?!

Reader Brian P. wrote to me yesterday with “It’s third ten on the forty.” as an example of a statement that he heard recently while watching an NFL football game on television.

The statement meant “It’s third down and ten yards to go on the forty-yard line.”

I believe that what bothered Brian the most was the omission of the conjunction “and” between the word “third” and the word “ten” in the statement.

In other words, I believe that Brian would have preferred to hear “It’s third and ten on the forty.” at the very least.

I believe that the omission of the conjunction “and” in the sentence is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit the conjunction than to include it.

Brian’s impression is that the omission is a broadcasting-school gimmick:

Dropping one[-]syllable words (many prepositions, plus articles, “and”, “if”, “as”, “is”, “are”, “have” and others) is the latest broadcast[ing-]school gimmick, and to my ear the most grating (with constant use of “actually” and “as well” running place and show).

If that is what broadcasting schools are teaching these days, then that is very discouraging.

On a brighter note: Happy New Year!

“in this day in age”

Conjunctions, Mispronunciations, Prepositions

This is a bastardization of a phrase.

Problem:
The second “in” is incorrect in this phrase.

Explanation:
The conjunction “and” is often mispronounced by Americans as if it were the preposition “in”.

The correct phrase is “in this day and age” — with the conjunction “and” between the word “day” and the word “age” — because one can write “in this day” or “in this age”.

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:

  • “in this day and age” — with the conjunction “and” — 3,030,000 matches
  • “in this day in age” — with the preposition “in” — 113,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “in this day and age” versus the incorrect “in this day in age” by a ratio of 26.8-to-1, which is very good.

Solution:
“in this day and age”

“by in large”

Common English Blunders, Conjunctions

This is a bastardization of a nautical phrase.

Problem:
The word “in” is incorrect in this phrase.

Explanation:
The Phrase Finder has a complete explanation of the correct phrase, which is “by and large”, not “by in large”.

Here are the highlights from that superb explanation of “by and large”.

Regarding “large”: The wind is said to be “large” when it is blowing behind a ship’s travel direction.

For example, if you want to sail to the east and the wind is coming out of the west, then “large” is the correct label for the wind.

Regarding “by”: In contrast, to be “by the wind” is to be facing into the wind.

Although many non-sailors see this as a sailing disadvantage, the physics of sailing show that it is advantageous to sail into the wind.

So being able to sail “by and large” means being able to sail not only downwind (the “large” part) but also into the wind (the “up” part).

This explains why the phrase means on the whole.

And one can understand how “by in large” resulted from a lack of understanding about this nautical phrase and a misinterpretation, upon hearing it, of the conjunction “and” as the preposition “in”.

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:

  • “by and large” — with the conjunction “and” — 5,090,000 matches
  • “by in large” — with the preposition “in” — 44,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct “by and large” versus the incorrect “by in large” by a ratio of 115-to-1, which is excellent.

Solution:
“by and large”