Please let me air a few more complaints and get it out of my system. Thank you – and be warned these are not all concerned with grammar; several other things annoy me, too.
A good many people seem to be confused about adding s, es or ‘s to make plurals and possessives. Here’s what I’ve learned from Strunk and White’s rules which I hope haven’t been changed or completely forgotten. Adding s or es to a noun makes it plural. Adding ‘s makes it possessive – with the exception of classical or Biblical names which end in s, such Atlas or Moses. Those names require only an apostrophe to indicate possession. The same goes for plural nouns, as in “The dresses’ skirts were all too long.” If only one dress has a too-long skirt, you would write it thus “The dress’s skirt….” Yes, a single noun, even if it ends with s still gets an apostrophe to indicate possession. All this, of course is invisible in speech and you need be concerned with it only in writing – and reading, of course, if you want to be certain of exactly what the writer meant (assuming he knew what he was doing.)
I know that language evolves through the way we use it and that some words have come to have added meanings other than their original ones. I tend to dig in my heels, though, when it comes to changing the meaning entirely. There are two specific terms that particularly annoy me. The first is “momentarily,” which has been misused to the point that we need a new word to represent its original meaning of “for a short time.” Your club president, when telling you that the speaker will be there “momentarily” is actually telling you that the speaker’s talk will be brief, not soon.
When I hear the term “breaking news” I expect to hear about some new occurrence of interest, not a repetition of a story that has been reported on several different stations several times a day for two or three days with little significant information added. The term “breaking news” is defined as a fresh occurrence, previously unreported, either happening currently or recently discovered. Significant information about a previously reported story, such as the discovery of the cause of a plane crash, or the capture of a terrorist could be considered to be breaking news, but just another eye-witness interview that adds no new information is not. Neither is an aerial shot of a burned spot in the field where the plane crashed and has since been hauled away. With so many people in this world and so many things happening everywhere, I can’t imagine that there aren’t more interesting and more meaningful things to fill up that thirty or sixty minute newscast.
I repeat my concern for those who truly depend on Closed Captioning in order to enjoy television entertainment and to stay informed of world events. So many errors in translation from sound to visual form make it confusing, erroneous and often amusing to depend on that little strip of text at the bottom of the screen, I’ve read “I was District Attorney…” rather than “Iowa’s District Attorney…” and that apparently Loras College has changed its name to “Laura’s College.”
Our nation and the world are fairly stunned and appalled at the seemingly impulsive and ill-considered remodeling of the East wing of the White House. If the garish and tasteless decorative applications to the oval office that we are shown at every opportunity is any indication of what is considered “beautiful” I fear for the decor of the new ballroom, I expect Americans will be embarrassed and the rest of the world will be amused. I am beginning to suspect that the definition of “world leader” is being changed to “whoever can come up with bigger, more expensive, more outlandish, more tasteless conspicuous consumption.”
When we hear poor grammar from professionals, we usually assume it to be proper grammar. I am particularly worried when I hear one of our most experienced and respected news anchormen report that “officers found the victim laying in the driveway.” I can’t help wondering just what the victim was laying – bricks? or eggs?