[this is not a sentence]

[is that a pillar in your cornerstone, or are you just happy to see me?]

2007-11-29T15:51:00.000-05:00

SENTENCE: The NPT is today more important than ever. Since its inception, this treaty has served as the cornerstone of global security and peace in the nuclear field, based on the mutually reinforcing pillars of non-proliferation, disarmament and the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

WHERE: Draft statement on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

CORRECTION: The NPT is today more important than ever. Since its inception, this treaty has served as the cornerstone of global security and peace in the nuclear field.

Vital to the Treaty's integrity and viability is the delicate balance among the three pillars of the NPT: non-proliferation, disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

CRITIQUE: The problem with this sentence is a mixed metaphor: a cornerstone rests on the ground, in the corner, so it can't be balanced on three pillars.

Fixing this sentence was actually fiendishly difficult, and I'm not entirely happy with the results. Unfortunately, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is widely accepted as the cornerstone and as having three pillars.

Worse yet, it was about a paragraph down that disarmament and non-proliferation were described as balancing on the fulcrum of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. I was expecting them to start doing circus tricks by the end of the speech!

[seize the day rate, karl]

2007-11-13T12:16:00.000-05:00

SENTENCE: Karl per dium

WHERE: Post-It note shown to me by a confused Korean colleague.

CORRECTION: Carpe diem.

CRITIQUE: I don't normally do Latin, but this sentence was just too funny to pass up.

[trod and true]

2007-11-04T09:42:00.000-05:00

SENTENCE: It's Alive! Creature Trods From Grave to the Stage

WHERE: New York Times headline.

CORRECTION: None.

CRITIQUE: This headline, sent in by a reader, has a very odd word in it: trods. Isn't trod the past tense of tread? Isn't saying trods the grammatical equivalent of saying walkeds?

Well, yes and no.

It struck me as possible that trod might be not only the past tense of tread, but also an admittedly obscure present-tense verb in its own right. So I looked it up in the OED, and sure enough, it's in there, though labeled "Obs. or dial." What does it mean? "(U.S.) To pursue a path." Returning to the headline above, it would certainly make sense to say Creature Pursues a Path from Grave to Stage.

Even more germane, perhaps, is the most recent usage reference listed in the OED: a 1909 headline from the New York Observer, "Trodding to Self-Support," about church finances. Not only is trod a word, with a suitable meaning; it also has a pedigree in New York newspaper headlines.

I hope this won't be the last time a reader sends in a tip. There's a great deal of awkward English out there just waiting to be parsed, and I can't possibly find all of it myself. But no cheating: Engrish.com is officially off limits.

[new york reviewed]

2007-10-22T14:45:00.000-04:00

This time out, we have a triple-whammy (or quadruple-whammy, depending on how you count) from the New York Review of Books.

SENTENCES: The larger question is about the Democratic Party as a whole. First, whether the campaign of the nominee and the Democratic National Committee and various state and local Democrats around the country can coordinate a response to attacks; second, whether the Democrats have yet grasped the importance of emotional appeals in political combat, a skill many Republicans have mastered.

WHERE: Tomasky, Michael. "Election Fever." The New York Review of Books 54.17 (November 8, 2007): 22.

CORRECTION: The larger question is about the Democratic Party as a whole: first, whether the campaign of the nominee and the Democratic National Committee and various state and local Democrats around the country can coordinate a response to attacks; second, whether the Democrats have yet grasped the importance of emotional appeals in political combat, a skill many Republicans have mastered.

CRITIQUE: Fragment! Fragment, fragment, fragment! You can't just put a couple of clauses out there, hang a semicolon between them, and call it a sentence. To me, the original sentence looks like something that got tried several different ways and ended up bungled in the final edit.

Even as a corrected sentence, what I've got isn't exactly a masterpiece of conceptual clarity. "The larger question" about the Democratic party is actually two question, one of which is about various groupings of Democrats rather than the party itself. Next to that doozy of a fragment, though, we'll let it go.

SENTENCES: A national popular vote would ... force candidates to campaign in states they don't much bother to campaign in now because they're either firmly red or blue .... The push it really needs is from the large states that are either reliably blue or red.

WHERE: Tomasky, Michael. "Election Fever." The New York Review of Books 54.17 (November 8, 2007): 23.

CORRECTION: A national popular vote would ... force candidates to campaign in those firmly red or blue states they don't much bother to campaign in now .... The push it really needs is from the large states that are either reliably blue or reliably red.

CRITIQUE: Oh, Mr. Tomasky! What happened here? There are a number of problems, including an ambiguity about whether it's the states or the candidates who are firmly red or blue. I'm especially struck, though, by the two misplacements of either.

Let's look at the first example. Either firmly red or blue describes a noun by saying it is in one of two conditions: on the one hand, it might be firmly red, while on the other, it might be blue. Firmly blue is not one of the possibilities.

You'll note that my correction uses reliably twice. That might look like a redundancy, but we can't go with reliably blue or red, because that would simply mean that we can rely on the states in question to elect either a Democrat or Republican rather than someone else. (Think of it this way: a traffic light is reliably red, yellow or green.) The only way to be sure the message is clear is to use reliably twice.

SENTENCES: In a world in which more and more people worked for wages, often in large companies, rather than running their own businesses or conducting independent trades, a significant part of the citizenry was plainly unable to protect themselves against losses and hardships resulting from problems in the economy at large for which they bore no individual responsibility.

WHERE: Friedman, Benjamin M. "FDR & the Depression: The Big Debate." The New York Review of Books 54.17 (November 8, 2007): 26.

CORRECTION: In a world in which more and more people worked for wages, often in large companies, rather than running their own businesses or conducting independent trades, a great many citizens were plainly unable to protect themselves against losses and hardships resulting from problems in the economy at large for which they bore no individual responsibility.

CRITIQUE: So it is not merely Michael Tomasky who's at a loss in this latest edition of The New York Review. Apparently their copy editor just snoozed through this issue.

Here Benjamin Friedman makes a pair of classic mistakes, but in sort of an unusual way.

It's quite common for people to get confused about agreement in number (making sure the subject and predicate are either both singular or both plural) when a prepositional phrase gets in the way.

Consider this example: A huge number of people are waiting in the hall. The example is incorrect because the subject of the sentence is number, which is singular, not people, which is plural. The correct way to say it is A huge number of people is waiting in the hall. (And yeah, I know that sounds a little goofy. Idiomatic speech, to sound normal, sometimes has to violate the rules for standard written English. David Foster Wallace has a great essay in Consider the Lobster that touches on this topic.)

Friedman does fine with his subject and predicate — part and was — but then blows it by using the plural pronouns themselves and they. We can see the error clearly if we remove the prepositional phrase, which leaves us with a significant part was unable to protect themselves. And that's just not right.

In my correction, I take a bit of a gamble and leave out the word significant, replacing it with the more colloquial great many. If the word had been majority or plurality — some word that had specific implications in terms of proportion or quantity — I might have worked harder to keep it in the sentence. Significant, however, in this case merely means noteworthy, which can go without saying because we're in the process of noting it. It is left to the reader to imagine what might constitute a significant part of the citizenry. Eighty percent? One hundred thousand? Five brothers from Minnesota? The sentence doesn't say, but we can assume that the idea is many.

[overflow]

2007-10-20T19:54:00.000-04:00

SENTENCE: Please do not put any papertowel in toilet

Thank you

Em management.

WHERE: Bathroom of Em' Thai Kitchen in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

CORRECTION: Please do not put paper towels in the toilet.

Thank you,
Em' Management

CRITIQUE: This handwritten sign in the bathroom of a too-hip Thai restaurant has a slew of minor grammar, usage and style problems, and I'd like to tackle those first, before we face the real problem.

So let's get to the quirks:

Papertowel should obviously be paper towels.
The word any is unnecessary, particularly when papertowel is made into a plural rather than a collective noun.
The sentence requires a period.
The last two lines should probably be turned into a letter-style greeting, and Em management is certainly not a sentence requiring a period.
Em' should be consistent about the cute, graphically bold apostrophe that they stick on their name (the bathroom doors are labeled "Em'ily" and "Em'anuel.")

Good. Fine. No big deal. To the credit of the non-native speaker who penned the message, it comes across clearly despite several small mistakes.

So what's my big problem with the sign? It's that the sign is needed in the first place! Is there anyone in the Western world who does not know that paper towels clog up toilets? I mean, I recognize that crazy weird homeless dudes in the bathroom of a Midtown Starbucks do unspeakable things to the plumbing, but that's not who I usually see patronizing the fashionable ethnic eateries of Smith Street. And even if it were, I don't think the kind of crazy weird homeless dude who would decide to take a paper sponge-bath in a restaurant that offers calamari tempura is the kind of crazy homeless dude who carefully observes handwritten instructional memoranda.

I'm always a little surprised when an establishment that goes to great trouble over every detail of the decor — the sign above the bathroom sink at Em' says "Em'ployees must wash hands," with the "Em'" in the restaurant's stylish font — plasters up a hand-scrawled plaint about power-towel-bombing the toilet. The obvious explanation is that these signs go up after all the decorating is done — that they're put up after some idiot plugs up the toilet and floods the bathroom, which means that some idiot is going to every restaurant in New York and doing exactly that.

That idiot should stop it. It's disgusting. And the signs look lousy.

[political soup]

2007-06-19T16:55:00.000-04:00

SENTENCE: Tomorrow, with a single stroke of his cruel veto pen, President Bush will dash the hopes of millions of Americans seeking cures through the miracle of stem cell research.

WHERE: Mass email from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

CORRECTION: Tomorrow, with one cruel stroke of his veto pen, President Bush will dash the hopes of millions of Americans seeking cures through the promise of stem cell research.

CRITIQUE: Okay, so this one isn't about grammar, but about egregiously silly rhetoric.

I'm fine with the idea that an inanimate object can be invested with metaphoric intentionality. Where would the whole fantasy genre be without "cruel sword"? And I will admit that Dubya has used his veto power exclusively for idiotic reasons that smack of callousness. But somehow I have a hard time with "cruel veto pen." First of all, it's not like Bush does all his vetoing with the same evil pen. Secondly, while a sword is an essential player in the cruelty it inflicts, the role of the veto pen seems to me somehow smaller — less vorpal, perhaps? — and I think the focus of the cruelty really ought to be on the signer, not his poor, abused Bic.

Next, I'd rather not see the word "miracle" anywhere in the rhetoric of those who think scientific research should go ahead despite the supposed objections of someone's God. Furthermore, considering that stem cell research hasn't cured anything yet, "miracle" seems like a strong word. Pelosi's side is supposed to be against faith-based healing.

Pelosi's odd sentence is a good reminder that you can make all your grammar line up just fine and still say silly things.

[but they do wear cute uniformlies]

2007-06-06T15:43:00.000-04:00

SENTENCE: First-Class Mail Package rates apply to Large Envelopes that are rigid, nonrectangular, or not uniformly.

WHERE: United States Postal Service Postage Rate Calculator online.

CORRECTION: First-Class Mail Ppackage rates apply to Llarge Eenvelopes that are rigid, nonrectangular, or not uniformly shaped(?).

GRAMMAR: The United States Postal Service has long had a reputation as a refuge for the incompetent, sociopathic and psychotic, and the sentence above does nothing to change that image.

Let's start with the capitalization, which I can at least wrap my head around. I will give the Postal Service the right to declare First-Class Mail a proper noun — one could consider it something like a product name — but Large Envelope? I'm sorry, Postal Service, but you just don't get to own that phrase. Not in my world. And you guys agree with me (on a page that explains that large envelopes "exceed any one of the maximum dimensions of a letter," but fails to mention what those dimensions might be). And I don't see any reason to capitalize package either.

So that's the capitalization. As for ending a sentence with uniformly, well, I'm assuming something important got cut off. Either that, or they apply special rates to packages that do not have uniformle characteristics. As for what's been cut off, it's hard to guess. Like so much else about the Postal Service, this message remains cryptic, leaving just enough doubt in the mind of the customer that she is left wondering whether it's somehow her own fault when her mail goes undelivered.

I love it: plausible deniability from the Postal Service!

[articles, definitely]

2007-06-05T09:19:00.000-04:00

SENTENCE: This is NAME WITHHELD, calling from Korean Mission.

WHERE: Overheard in the next office.

CORRECTION: This is NAME WITHHELD, calling from the Korean Mission.

GRAMMAR: Ah, articles! Is there any part of speech more vexing for non-native speakers whose native languages don't use them? Prepositions, maybe — try explaining why we get in an airplane but on a bus — but prepositions at least have the decency to be vexing to native speakers as well. (Are you waiting for a friend who's on line, or on a friend who's in line?) With articles, any native speaker knows what goes where, but just try explaining why.

A good rule is that you need the if both parties know which one you mean — the post office, the beach — or if there is only one around — the sun, the United Nations.

In this case, both of these factors are true of the noun Korean Mission, but it's particularly the latter factor that counts: there's only one South Korean Mission to the UN, and both parties know the phrase Korean Mission is an abbreviation of that longer term. As such, a definite article is needed.

BONUS: Why is it a definite article is needed rather than the definite article is needed in the preceding sentence? You could probably go either way, but which you choose depends on how many definite articles you think there are. In this case, I'm counting each instance of the as another definite article, so a specifies that definite article is one of many. But you could just as easily count definite article as a singular categorical noun, in which case it would take the because there's only one around. (We're not like those profligate Spaniards, with their varieties of singular and plural articles in various genders!)

[apyment]

2007-06-01T13:34:00.000-04:00

SENTENCE: ATTENTION BENEFICIARY: YOUR APYMENT IS READY

WHERE: Subject line of a spam email.

CORRECTION: ATTENTION BENEFICIARY: YOUR ~~APY~~ PAYMENT IS READY

GRAMMAR: Look, if you're gonna spam me with fake banking messages, at least have the decency to spell the subject line right. I mean, APYMENT? That's not like spelling it CIALI$ to get past the spam filters. APYMENT is just dumb. It's a waste of bandwidth even from the perspective of the spammer, and that's saying something.

What happened to all those spams I was getting with extended quotes from conspiracy literature? Or was that the spammer guy they caught? I miss you, creative spam!

[a typographical typo]

2007-05-31T22:32:00.001-04:00

This is the pedestal of the statue of Horace Greeley in Greeley Square, that patch of ground just downtown from Macy's and west of K-town that has the pay toilets. In this case, Greeley is memorialized as the first president of the New York Typographical Society, and herein lies the irony. Can you spot the typo?

Granted, even when you click through to the larger image, it's blurry. So here's the text retyped for your editorial perusal:

THIS STATUE OF THE FIRST PRESIDENT
NEW YORK TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION NO 6
WAS PRESENTED TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK BY
HORACE GREELEY•POST NO 577 G.A.R.
NEW YORK TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION NO. 6 AND
BROOKLYN TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION NO. 98

See it yet?

Mysteriously, the first to two instances of the abbreviation NO lack periods, while the second two instances take them. How weird is that? And you can't even argue that different unions had different usages, because NEW YORK TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION NO 6/NO. 6 is the same friggin' union!

Let's just hope some typographical union thugs worked that engraver over but good.

[we treat customers with gold]

2007-05-31T22:06:00.000-04:00

SENTENCES: You are the prince and princesses. We treat customers with gold.

WHERE: At the car wash used by one of the authors of I Hate Duane Reade: Service from Hell (and nice non-capitalization of your preposition, by the way).

CORRECTION: You are ~~the~~ princes and princessess. We treat our customers ~~with~~ like gold.

GRAMMAR: This one took a little creative correction because the meaning of the original is somewhat vague. After all, the first sentence is not grammatically incorrect, in and of itself. If the author wishes to indicate that the addressee, singular or plural, is both the one and only prince and a group of princesses, then the sentence is in fact perfect. (A more realistic example: The priest and congregants entered the church.)

However, I think it's safe to say that the car wash management does not really believe that each individual who reads that sign is both the one and only prince and a bevy of princesses. It's a metaphor, obviously, and meant to indicate to all customers that they will be given the royal treatment. As such, it's necessary to create an agreement in number, either plural or singular, and I opted for the plural. Once you've got that, there's no longer a need for the definite article, so we can toss the like so much Rainex down the drain. I can see how these mistakes got made — the is a perennial doozy for non-native speakers, and both prince and princess, with their S-sound endings, raise confusing questions about whether they're singular or plural.

The second sentence is easier to deal with. Treating customers with gold means using gold to do something to the customers, and it has an unfortunate medical connotation that I would not welcome even at a car wash that considers me the heir to a throne. (We treat customers' cars with wax would be more appropriate.) Instead, I assume they mean that they treat their customers as one would treat gold: with respect for their great value. It is a fine sentiment once rendered correctly. And I threw in our before customers because it improves the flow, and anyway I doubt the car wash guys treat, say, all Duane Reade customers (to choose an establishment at random) like gold. Clearly this is about their customers, who are special — little baby kings and queens, in fact.

[maintain]

2007-05-31T15:47:00.000-04:00

SENTENCE: Please maintain the COFFEE AREA neat and clean!

WHERE: My office kitchenette.

CORRECTION: Please ~~maintain~~ keep the COFFEE AREA neat and clean!

GRAMMAR: This one is purely based on usage. There is no logical reason why keep can be followed by an object with adjectives and maintain can't, but there it is.

[welcome]

2007-05-31T15:44:00.001-04:00

Ever see a sentence that just doesn't cut the mustard? Something somewhere that is just grammatically or syntactically funky (old socks funky, not Mothership Connection funky)? Send me an email at josh@palaverist.org and I'll see if I can parse it.

In the meantime, I'll be collecting particularly egregious or confounding bits of grammatical weirdness and putting them up here for your amusement. Or for my amusement. Something like that.