Every so often I browse through a little pile of the notes that collect on my desk, in pockets, on sticky pads, the refrigerator door and my bedside table. Some get mixed in with grocery lists or the pile of letters I’ve been meaning to answer and bills I forgot to pay. Some are little gems of ideas for future columns; others make no sense after all this time, and I puzzle over my reasons for bothering to write them down. A small number of them make it into complete columns of thoughts and opinions that I share with you. Others seem to remain as minor irritants without enough dimension to fill this space but keep nagging at me to bring them into the light for your consideration. Some are, more or less, continuations of topics I’ve written about before. Some don’t seem broad enough to hold your attention for seven hundred or so words. Others are relatively uninteresting but still clamoring for their few minutes of fame.
The limitations of space in any publication make writers keenly aware of excess verbiage; redundancies jump out at me in the speech and writings of others. Some of the more irritating are free gift, future generations to come, new development, breaking news, former history, general consensus, consensus of opinion, or worse yet – general consensus of opinion. Bear in mind that the word “consensus” is defined as “a general opinion.”
Non-sentences where the subject is unclear. (i.e., ‘As a musician dealing with diabetes, finger sticks can be a real challenge.’) This is easily remedied by inserting, ‘I know that’ after ‘diabetes.’ Misplaced adjectives and adverbs, as in, ‘You can only get this exclusive offer here.’ The word ‘only’ refers to the place the offer is available, not to the action of getting it. This can be fixed by moving it to the end of the sentence, or by recasting the sentence to read, ‘This is the only place you can get this exclusive offer.’
Businesses that try to save money or make their television ads more personal by using friends, relatives and employees rather than professionals to act in their commercials would do better to pay for real actors. Most amateurs, when delivering a memorized speech, rattle it off without convincing pauses or emphasis and tend to adopt uncomfortable and unconvincing postures and facial expressions, all resulting in a contradictory sense of insincerity. No matter how cute their own young children or grandchildren may be, those shrill, piping little voices and poor diction make the messages impossible to understand. There are child actors available who have learned to speak well enough to be clearly understood.
I am frequently annoyed by the misuse of the word “preventative” as an adjective. When properly used, the word is a noun and refers to something that serves to prevent a specific outcome. A flu shot is a preventative; getting one is a preventive measure. Please note the difference between the two words. “Preventative” is a noun and names a thing. “Preventive” is an adjective and describes a thing.
I’ve always been mystified by the word “ways” as in, “Let’s go up there a ways and see if the road is too muddy.” If ‘ways’ refers to a distance, then it seems logical to think of it as singular rather than plural, so why add the ‘s’? If you want to emphasize the greatness of the distance, then make it specific, as in ‘two miles’ or ‘a very long way.’ I come across this anomaly frequently in fiction, newspapers and magazine articles, and feel it is, at best, colloquial, if not sub-standard, and might be acceptable as dialogue. However, I can’t understand how it has managed to survive in publications as anything beyond quoted speech.
The name of this column is, after all, Food for Thought – so maybe you’ll have found a morsel or two that fed your imagination and turned into something worth consideration.