Devolution toward Simpler

“BABY LETS MAKE LOVE.”

Apostrophes, Commas, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler

I saw this in the closed captioning on Usher’s “Make Love in this Club” video on one of my gym’s TV sets this morning.

Problems:
A comma and an apostrophe are missing.

Explanation:
First, there is a natural pause when one says someone’s name and then says the rest of the sentence. This pause should be indicated by a comma, so there should be a comma between “BABY” and “LETS” (sic).

Second, “LETS” is a contraction of “LET US”. A contraction requires an apostrophe to indicate the omission of one of more letters, so the omitted “U” in the contraction requires the apostrophe as its substitute.

Granted, closed captioning for live events will have typographical errors.

A music video, on the other hand, should have no typographical errors, given that it is not live and that producers spend small fortunes to produce them.

I searched Google for the lyrics and found them — with the same errors — here and here (among many sites).

This shows that the omissions in the closed captioning were not typographical errors; the omissions are in the original lyrics.

I believe that both of these omissions are consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to omit the comma and the apostrophe than to include them.

Solution:
“BABY, LET’S MAKE LOVE.”

“She makes more than him.”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Pronouns

I heard a caller say this yesterday on “The Dave Ramsey Show” radio program.

Problem:
The pronoun “him” should not go after “more than” in this sentence.

Explanation:
This sentence is of the form “She makes more than X.”, where ‘X’ defines some amount of money (and optionally when).

The pronoun “him” is not a suitable substitution for ‘X’ because “him” does not define some amount of money.

Suitable substitutions for ‘X’ include:

  • “$100,000”;
  • “$50,000 annually”;
  • “what he makes”.

I believe that the speaker’s use of “him” in place of “what he makes” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to say one monosyllabic pronoun than to say three words.

Solution:
“She makes more than what he makes.”

“Anticlimatic”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Nouns

I too frequently hear people say “anticlimatic” when they mean something else.

Problem:
“Anticlimatic” is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
Except for that use by those who have turned “anticlimatic” into a word applicable to climate — although it’s difficult to imagine what it means to be “anticlimatic” — this is a nonsense word.

Nearly everyone who says “anticlimatic” actually is trying to say an adjective whose meaning is expressing or pertaining to anticlimax.

“Anticlimactic” (notice the ‘c’ before the ‘tic’) — not “anticlimatic” — is the adjectival form of the noun “anticlimax” (just as “climactic” is the adjectival form of the noun “climax”).

I believe that the use of “anticlimatic” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to say “anticlimatic” than to say “anticlimactic” (which requires the speaker to emphasize the middle ‘c’).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • anticlimatic — 283,000 matches
  • anticlimactic — 401,000 matches

Assuming that the co-opting of the nonsense word “anticlimatic” by climate writers is an insignificant portion of the “anticlimatic” count, this tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 1.4:1, which is a bit pathetic.

Solution:
“Anticlimactic”