What is the history of books that defined our English vocabulary over the past 500 years?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been enjoying skimming through a large book which I found on the new books shelves at my friendly local public library. It is a 2024 book by Bryan A. Garner and Jack Lynch with a long title -  Hardly Harmless Drudgery: A 500-Year Pictorial History of the Lexicographic Geniuses, Sciolists, Plagiarists & Obsessives Who Defined the English Language. The list price is $65.

 

Their Introduction opens by stating:

 

“Samuel Johnson – creator of not the first English dictionary, but perhaps of the first great one – wickedly mocked his own trade when he defined lexicographer as ‘a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.’ But dictionaries are serious business, and the people who drudge away at them are anything but harmless. This book tells the stories of the most important English-language dictionaries and their makers.

 

Dictionaries are repositories of erudition, monuments to linguistic authority, and battlefields in cultural and political struggles. They have been announced with almost messianic fervor, decried as evidence of cultural collapse, and relied on in judicial decisions. They are works of almost superhuman endurance, produced by people who devote themselves to years or even decades of wearisome labor. As commodities in a fiercely competitive publishing business, they also can keep a company afloat for generations or sink it in a few years. Some also are beautiful objects, products of genuine innovations in typography and book design.”

 

Their chapters about Noah Webster and his critics were most interesting to me. Chapter 57 (page 177) is titled Noah Webster at His Most Compendious, and discusses his two-column 1806 Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. You can find a pdf of it at the Internet Archive. Chapter 62 (page 199) on Noah Webster’s Deeply Flawed Magnum Opus begins:

 

“Although Noah Webster produced his compact, one-volume Compendious Dictionary in 1806, this big two-volume work earned him the title Father of the American Dictionary. Released in November 1828, it was an important declaration of American identity, heralding the nation’s linguistic independence from Great Britain. It marked the biggest milestone in English lexicography between Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) and the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] (1928).

 

But even with a modest press run of 2,500 copies, retailing for $20 apiece, it failed to sell out over the next 13 years. The price was too high for most potential customers.

 

Webster’s achievement was remarkable in several respects. His wordlist, for instance, was much more comprehensive than that of earlier dictionaries. If we take the span of entries from la to laird, Webster provides 141 entries as compared to Johnson’s 84. Some 17% of his headwords – 12,000 of the total of 70,000 – hadn’t appeared in earlier dictionaries. He had mined the resources of American English to include such words as caucus, electioneer, parachute, revolutionize, safety-valve, skunk, tomahawk, and wampum. He developed his own system of recording pronunciations, which required him to have a new typeface cut to distinguish the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sounds of C and G.

 

Webster’s definitions, too, were generally superior to those of his predecessors. Like Johnson, he was a splitter, identifying multiple meanings of most words and breaking them out with numbered senses. His definitions were also abundantly clear. Consider the entry for mortgage. Johnson had defined it as ‘a dead pledge: a thing put into the hands of a creditor.’ For most readers, that’s wholly unenlightening. Webster provides an etymology,’Fr. mort, dead, and gage, pledge,’ and continues ‘Literally a dead pledge; the grant of an estate in fee as security for the payment of money, and on the condition that if the money shall be paid according to the contract, the grant shall be void, and the mortgage shall re-convey the estate to the mortgager’….”

 

Webster also included American spellings, as is discussed in another article in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary titled Noah Webster’s spelling wins and fails. His lack of consistency was attacked by Lyman Cobb, who is discussed in Chapter 64 (page 211) titled Lyman Cobb – Walker’s Promoter, Webster’s Tormentor. You can find Cobb’s entire 56-page pamphlet at Google Books.

 

There is a 54-minute podcast by Ron Lombard at WCNY PBS on June 12, 2024 titled Firebarn Chats, Episode 2 – The authors of “Hardly Harmless Drudgery”

 

The cartoon boy reading was adapted from here at Openclipart.

 

A definately different humorous approach to vocabulary and spelling from xkcd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The December 22, 2023 xkcd web comic claims that rather than just definitely there is a spectrum of a dozen words expressing various degrees of definiteness, as is shown above. The orthodox view in an article from Proofed on March 6, 2022 titled Spelling Tips: Definitely or Definately? instead is:

“It’s easy to misspell ‘definitely’ as ‘definately’ because the word isn’t pronounced exactly as it’s spelled. The second ‘I’ sounds like ‘uh’ when it’s spoken, so people often wrongly assume that the vowel after the ‘n’ should be an ‘a.’ After all, that’s how we spell a lot of other words with the same sound, such as immediately, accurately, and approximately.

However, if you remove the suffix ‘ly’ from those words, you’re left with the correctly spelled immediate, accurate, and approximate. But you won’t find definate in the dictionary!”

 

If you don’t proofread the title of your article, then you may look very silly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editing matters. There is an article by Chauncey Devega at Salon on June 30, 2023 now titled “Far beyond simple narcissism”: Why Donald Trump can’t simply keep quiet – even when facing prison. 

 

But originally, as shown above, the word quiet was misspelled as quite, and also can be seen by looking at the URL.  

What you write is not finished until you proofread it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Gem State Patriot News blog on June 25, 2023 there is a post by Dr. John Livingston titled City Planning is Not Settled Science. His third paragraph says:

 

“The father of modern-day urban planning was John Freidman. He is revered in departments of urban planning across our country. His modern-day humanistic philosophy was centered around ‘social justice’. They are very different from Biblical Justice or theories of Entitlement ‘Equality’. He stated before his death in 2019 that they are grounded in Eastern mysticism and Chinese Marxist economic theories.”

 

But a quick Google search reveals an article by Stan Paul at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs on June 13, 2017 titled John Friedmann, the ‘Father of Urban Planning,’ dies at 91. Dr. Livingston got both his name and year of death wrong. On November 2, 2022 I blogged about how Unwillingness to proofread runs deep. And on September 11, 2020 I blogged about Editing tips for speechwriters and other writers. And back on October 4, 2017 I blogged about how What you write is not finished until you have proofread it.

 

Also, in his next to last paragraph, Dr. Livingston said:

 

“As Milton Freidman wisely opined ‘The road to hell ( with transportation nodes, and access portals to the green belt through neighborhoods—jl.) is paved with good but misinformed intentions.’ ”

 

Again, a Google search would reveal he again had swapped the first i and e in the last name, and meant to refer to the famous economist Milton Friedman.

 

Unwillingness to proofread runs deep

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you don’t check the spelling of what you’ve written, typos will make you look very foolish. Careful proofreading is needed for articles, blog posts, and PowerPoint presentations in speeches.

 

At the Gem State Patriot News on October 23, 2022 there is an article by Dr. John Livingston titled Political Grudges Run Deep. The third sentence in his third paragraph says that:

 

“Issues about self-protection, Right to Life, CRT teaching in our schools, and parenteral rights all require an application of a Providential predicate in my opinion.”

 

But what the heck are parenteral rights? The Cambridge Dictionary defines the adjective parental as:

 

“related to parents or to being a parent”

 

And they define another medical adjective, parenteral, as:

 

“relating to food or treatment that does not come through the digestive system, for example drugs that are injected into the veins or muscles”

 

I searched in the PubMed Central database at the National Library of Medicine for the phrase “parental rights” and found 926 full-text articles – but none for the phrase “parenteral rights.” One recent article by B. Isaac Gibson in the Family Court Review for July 2022 (Volume 60, number 3, pages 590 to 601) is titled The Portion of Goods That Falleth to Me: Parental rights, children’s rights, and medical decisions after COVID-19.  

 

An election is like a fruitcake when it is stollen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 On June 19, 2022 Donald J. Trump posted the following message: 

 

 

 

“The highly partisan Unselects are trying to create a FAKE narrative, for whatever reason but only with evil intention, that ‘He (me) knew he lost the election.’ This is completely false. I felt the Election was RIGGED & STOLLEN, have from the very beginning, & have only gotten stronger in that belief with time & large amounts of additional evidence and proof. In my mind I have, & HAVE HAD, NO QUESTION, and MANY people would be willing to so attest, but the Unselects don’t want to hear them…..”

 

But he added an extra ‘l’ to stolen. That transformed a verb (past participle of steal) into a noun (a sweet yeast bread of German origin containing fruit and nuts). A minute of proofreading would have caught that silly typo. He also switched from using ‘&’ to ‘and’ at the end of his next to last sentence. And he uses UNNECESSARY CAPITALIZATION so often it is pathetic.

 

Why fruitcake? He keeps trying to explain his January 6 attempted coup. On June 13, 2022 there is an article by Brett Samuels at The Hill titled Trump releases 12-page response to Jan. 6 hearing. Another by Chris Cillizza at CNN politics on June 14, 2022 is titled The 22 wildest lines from Donald Trump’s 12(!)-page statement on the January 6 committee. 

 

The image of a stollen is cropped from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Was that data aggravated or aggregated?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I find a little gaffe that makes me laugh. At the Present Voices web site by Lee Bonvissuto there is an undated web page titled Public Speaking is Everywhere. It begins by saying that most people have trouble with impromptu speaking describing ideas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under a vertical bar chart with the interesting data shown above via a horizontal one, it says that:

 

“Data is aggravated from thousands of participants in my corporate workshops, along with my private clients.”

 

I think she meant to say aggregated rather than aggravated. The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition for aggravate is to make worse, more serious, or more severe; while the definition for aggregate instead is to collect or gather into a mass or whole. Perhaps she typed that page using Autocomplete software.

 

On March 16, 2022 I blogged about Five things you need to be a highly effective public speaker. In that post I linked to a series of 25 articles from Authority Magazine at Medium which also should have included this one by Lee Bonvissuto (although it incorrectly lists her first name as Leah).

 

A pyramid with aggravated data was assembled using animal numbers adapted from this one and similar ones found at Openclipart.

 

Joseph Gobbles and the Gazpacho Police

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you don’t proofread what you write, you can look very foolish – particularly when you bring up Nazis. Here in Boise the last sentence in the first paragraph of an article by Bob “Nugie” Neugebauer at the Gem State Patriot News on January 30, 2022 titled Will America Ever be Great Again? meant to bring up Joseph Goebbels but instead claimed:

 

“We have not seen propaganda like this since Joseph Gobbles in World War II.”

 

I commented:

 

“Learn to proofread. Joseph Gobbles is a name for a Thanksgiving turkey.”

 

Gestapo is an abbreviation for the notorious Gehime Staatpolozei (Secret State Police) of Nazi Germany. But recently U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene instead referred to gazpacho police. Annother article by Rick Rouan at USA Today on February 10, 2022 is titled ‘Gazpacho police’: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s word soup launches social media frenzy.  

 

The cartoon turkey was modified from an image at Wikimedia Commons.

   

Today’s Pearls Before Swine comic strip is on how you should pronounce some words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rat is angry (as usual) in today’s Pearls Before Swine cartoon. The dialogue is as follows

 

Goat: What’s the matter with you?

Rat: I’m angry.

Goat: Angry over what?

Rat: The fact that there’s an ‘l’ in ‘could’… do you pronounce the ‘l’? I don’t pronounce the ‘l’. No one pronounces the ‘l’.

Goat: Should I have argued?

Pig: I woud not.  

 

But the ‘l’ is NOT silent in mould.

Getting confused by homophones: queue and cue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning and also in spelling. The second meaning in the Merriam-Webster dictionary for queue (noun) is:

 

“A waiting line especially of persons or vehicles”

 

And the very different second meaning in the Merriam-Webster dictionary for cue (noun) is:

 

“A feature indicating the nature of something perceived.”

 

But an article by John Livingston in the Gem State Patriot News for November 19, 2021 titled Cue Mismatch confused them. The second sentence in his fourth paragraph says:

 

“Our balance is affected by both visual cues and auditory queues and when they misalign it causes us to be dizzy and sick.”

 

And the fourth sentence in that paragraph says:

 

“But the long and short of it is that when the queues don’t match up we get sick.”

 

By definition, a queue lines up. But then his sixth paragraph begins with:  

 

“I think people in our country are getting queues that don’t line up.”

 

Back on September 11, 2020 I blogged about Editing tips for speechwriters and other writers, and mentioned previous examples where Dr. Livingston had botched spelling.

 

The image of a relief waiting line came from here at the Library of Congress. 

 

 

 

Are we really being alloyed?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you don’t bother to carefully research the definition for a term that is outside your area of expertise, then you can look like a mixed-up fool. That’s what Dr. John Livingston did in an article (blog post) at the Gem State Patriot News on October 7, 2021 titled We’re being “alloyed.” His first paragraph says:

 

“I see the word ‘alloyed’ being used in print and the electronic and social media with increasing frequency. I have always known what the word meant in the metallurgical sense, but when referring to a privilege or a ‘right’ I had to look it up. It means according to Merriam’s ‘something added that lowers value.’ Synonyms include the words—'adulterate, befouled and corrupted’. I saw the word used both by Jason Riley and on Fox in the context of the welfare state providing ‘an unalloyed good’. I like the usage in this context. Welfare benefits are in fact an example of an ‘alloyed good’. The value of the lives that such programs are applied to in the long term are devalued and marginalized. The short-term gains—and we were always told that these programs were to provide a bridge to being self-sufficient, have been more than offset by the unintended economic consequences that are the result of incentivizing behaviors that in the end fail to benefit individuals, families, and societies at large.”

 

He didn’t really know what alloyed meant in a metallurgical sense. (I definitely know since I am a retired metallurgist). Perhaps he looked it up in an older Merriam Webster dictionary, like the 2004 new edition, that only has the following two brief following definitions for alloy:

 

“[1] a substance composed of metals melted together; [2] an admixture that lessens value.”

 

If he had looked for the noun at the Merriam-Webster web site he would instead have found THREE definitions - where the first metallurgical one inspired the third other he liked:

 

“[1] the degree of mixture with base metals: Fineness.

 

 [2] a substance composed of two or more metals or of a metal and a nonmetal intimately united usually by being fused together and dissolving in each other when molten.

 

 [3] an admixture that lessens value or an impairing alien element.”

 

My copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (College Edition 1962) has more detailed descriptions. They include two different metallurgical senses, beginning with a negative one for precious metals (which is the basis for lowering value), and a neutral, general one for mixtures of any metals:

 

“Noun: 1] the relative purity of gold or silver. 2] a metal that is a mixture of two or more metals or of a metal and something else. 3] a less valuable metal mixed with a more valuable one, often to give hardness, hence 4] something that lowers the value or goodness of another thing when mixed with it. Verb: 1] to make (a metal) less valuable by mixing it with a cheaper metal. 2] to mix (metals). 3] to debase by adding something inferior.”

 

How about the web site for the Oxford English Dictionary? It has the following definitions for alloyed (as an adjective) and again begins with one for precious metals:

 

“{1} Senses relating to metals:

[1] Of a precious metal: mixed with a less valuable metal in order to lower its standard or quality without this being apparent, or to improve its durability; (specifically) debased in this way.

 

[2] Of a metal: combined with another metal or (less commonly) a non-metallic element so as to form an alloy.

 

{2} Figurative uses.

[3] Of a quality, feeling, experience, etc.: containing a base or undesirable element; mixed, adulterated.”   

 

Wikipedia has a good article on Fineness, which explains it as follows:

 

“The fineness of a precious metal object (coin, bar, jewelry, etc.) represents the weight of fine metal therein, in proportion to the total weight which includes alloying base metals and any impurities. Alloy metals are added to increase hardness and durability of coins and jewelry, alter colors, decrease the cost per weight, or avoid the cost of high-purity refinement. For example, copper is added to the precious metal silver to make a more durable alloy for use in coins, housewares and jewelry. Coin silver, which was used for making silver coins in the past, contains 90% silver and 10% copper, by mass….”

 

Fineness for gold is described by karats (aka carats), where pure gold is 24 karat. 18 karat is 75% gold. 14 karat gold, used for jewelry, is harder and more durable, nominally 58–1/3% gold.   

 

Dr. Livingston’s third paragraph begins with another mixed-up claim that:

 

“Since twenty years after its’ founding the modern day Democratic Party has been the party of racism, Jim Crow, grinding segregation—and not just in the Southern states but places like Shaker Heights, Upper Arlington, Bethesda, Beacon Hill Back Bay, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mayr.”

 

Republicans had switched racist places with the Democrats after the civil rights bill passed in the 1960s, which is described in the Wikipedia page on the modern Southern strategy by the Republican party.

 

His fourth paragraph misspells RINO as the animal RHINO, as I have described previously in another blog post on August 9, 2021 titled Is that a RHINO or a RINO?

 

The image of pouring aluminum came from the Library of Congress.

 

 

 

 

Can you trust a blog post where two books it discusses have their authors incorrectly named?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course not! It only would take a few minutes to proofread, and check those references at Wikipedia, WorldCat or Amazon. Not doing so indicates a troubling lack of attention to detail (a willingness to instead trust your fallible memory).

 

At the Gem State Patriot News on October 1, 2021 there is an article (blog post) by Dr. John Livingston titled Why We Are Divided and who is To Blame? He claims that:

 

“Almost 20 years ago Hans Rosling and his wife Olga wrote and published the book FACTFULNESS. In the book they describe 10 reasons that people are either misled by others, or how they mislead themselves.”

 

The late Dr. Rosling’s wife was Agneta. His two co-authors for that 2018 book were his son Ola Rosling, and daughter-in law Anna Rosling Ronnlund (see article at Wikipedia). John confused his son with his wife, and left out his daughter-in law. I commented on that mistake and, of course, he said I was right.  

 

Dr. Livingston also claims:

 

“A very famous book written by Dr. Marshall McQuillan entitled THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE implanted in the minds of several generations of journalists and media practitioners the idea that an impression or a narrative was far more important than the actual reality.”

 

The Wikipedia article about that 1967 book instead lists the title as The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, and the authors as Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore.  

 

On September 11, 2020 I blogged about Editing tips for speechwriters and other writers. In that post I mentioned two previous articles by Dr. Livingston with spelling errors. He is also the medical policy adviser for the Idaho Freedom Foundation, whose advice cannot be trusted.   

  

The image was adapted from a 1949 Make Friends with Books poster at the Library of Congress.

 

Is that a RHINO or a RINO?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Wikipedia the acronym RINO redirects to a page titled Republican In Name Only. There is an article by Phil Edwards at Vox on September 29, 2015 titled A brief history of the term RINO, from Roosevelt to Boehner.

 

But at the Gem State Patriot News blog for August 4, 2021 there is an article by Dr. John Livingston, who is notorious for not proofreading his writing, titled ED (Electile Dysfunction) which says in the fourth paragraph that:  

 

“….We have three conservatives running for Governor in the Republican primary and they have been triangulated and essentially marginalized by the Romney/Kasich - RHINO establishment wing of our party.”

 

And in the sixth paragraph he says:

 

“….They are essentially placing themselves above the cause—which is what the RHINOs and their close allies the Dems want us to do and are counting on…..”

 

The word rhino instead refers to a rhinoceros, and the acronym to Really Here In Name Only.

 

Images of a rhinoceros unicornis and Mitt Romney both came from Wikimedia Commons.  

 

What is a fairy tale and what is real?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on May 6, 2020 at the Gem State Patriot News Dr. John Livingston had blogged about  What IS Real? Media Madness. On July 23, 2021 he recycled that title with another post on What is Real? John says you should begin to assess data by considering the messenger, and then assess the message. Based on that criterion he flunks miserably. The worst part of a paragraph is his current post says:

 

“…. I supported and still support Dr. Hahn’s role in advising our Governor, but people like Dr. Ryan Cole who had impeccable academic credentials should have received wider coverage. Nationally people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Marty Makaray, Dr. Scott Atlas, and the signers of The Greater Barrington Project should have been front and center in the media coverage precisely because they were offering non-conventual contra opinions.”

 

First, let’s look at Dr. Ryan Cole’s lack of credibility. At KTVB7 on April 2, 2021 there is an article by Brian Holmes titled St. Luke’s chief medical officer fact checks a doctor’s anti-vax claims. Another article by Saranac Hale Spencer at FactCheck dot org on April 19, 2021 is titled Idaho doctor makes baseless claims about safety of Covid-19 vaccines.

 

Second, let’s look at Dr. Marty Makaray. Oops – Dr. John Livingston instead meant to refer to surgeon Marty Makary.

 

Third, let’s look at the Greater Barrington Project. Oops again! When you Google it nothing comes up since it really is the Great Barrington Declaration. That document is discussed by David Gorski in a long article at Science-Based Medicine on December 28, 2020 titled 2020 and the pandemic: A year of (some) physicians behaving badly:

 

“Perhaps the most despicable propaganda being promoted by some physicians is that, because COVID-19 is known to be much more lethal in older people and people with comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes, we should simply, in essence, let the virus rip through the ‘young, healthy population’ and used ‘focused protection’ to keep it from killing the elderly in nursing homes. Yes, I’m referring to the Great Barrington Declaration, a document produced by an epidemiologist, a biostatistician, and a Stanford physician basically advocates doing just that, never mind that it’s impossible to achieve herd immunity without a vaccine, unless you are willing to accept millions of deaths, and then it’s debatable whether it’s possible at all. Basically, the Great Barrington Declaration is a eugenics declaration, the denials of its authors notwithstanding, and a physician was one of the three authors who collaborated with the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a right wing think tank advocating ‘opening up’ the economy. Even more sadly, although it is true that there were a lot of fake signatories to the declaration, spoofs done to demonstrate how lax the website’s procedure for signature verification was, it is also true that a lot of apparently real physicians did sign it.”

 

An article by Kate Ng at the Independent on October 9, 2020 is titled Coronavirus: ‘Dr Person Fakename’ and ‘Harold Shipman’ signatures on scientists’ letter calling on government to embrace herd immunity and also subtitled Other names in list of Great Barrington Declaration include ‘Dr Johnny Fartpants’ and ‘Professor Notaf Uckingclue’

 

Fourth, let’s look at Dr. Scott Atlas. He also is discussed by David Gorski in that long article at Science-Based Medicine:

 

“Arguably the absolute worst example of a physician behaving badly during a pandemic is Dr. Scott Atlas, who rose to prominence advising President Trump on his coronavirus response during the summer. Atlas is a neuroradiologist and, so it seems, a formerly well-respected one, having served as the chief of the neuroradiology section at Stanford University. Unfortunately, later he became a political hack working for the Hoover Institution at Stanford, a conservative think tank that’s been a font of bad takes on COVID-19. The reason Dr. Atlas so quickly gained Trump’s ear even though he had no relevant expertise in infectious disease, epidemiology, or public health, of course, is because told Trump what he wanted to hear, that COVID-19 was not deadly, that we could achieve herd immunity, and that the cost of the ‘lockdowns’ was far worse than the ‘disease’ of COVID-19 being addressed.

 

…. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Atlas was entirely on board with the Great Barrington Declaration, and, as a result, in October the Trump administration was seriously considering a herd immunity-based strategy before there was a vaccine. Truly, when the history of the pandemic is finally written with the perspective of a decade or two from now, Dr. Atlas will likely end up being one of the worst of the worst in terms of physicians promoting misinformation, largely because of his outsized influence in the Trump administration before he finally - and mercifully - resigned a few weeks ago, when it finally became absolutely clear that Trump’s legal challenges of the election results would fail and that there would be no second Trump administration, at least not in 2021.”

 

And fifth, Dr. Livingston meant to write nonconventional but instead wrote non-conventual. The definition for conventual in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is:

 

“of, relating to, or befitting a convent or monastic life.”

 

Back on September 11, 2020 I blogged about Editing tips for speechwriters and other writers. In that post I mentioned Dr. Livingston misspelling flu as flue, which he again did in his current article.  

 

The image was photoshopped from a 1922 book cover for Elizabeth Rhodes Jackson  at Wikimedia Commons.

 

A good writer edits drafts of his story, speech, or song

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A writer needs to edit his drafts both for grammar and spelling. The April 27, 2021 Pearls Before Swine cartoon has dialogue where Rat tells us what NOT to do:

 

Goat: Hey, Rat. What are you doing?

Rat: Just got to the end of a story I’m writing. I’m hoping to get it published.

Goat: That’s great. How much time will you need for the re-writing?

Rat: My writing’s perfect the first time.

Goat: I see.

Rat: Revisions are only for sad little losers.

 

Recently I was listening to the radio and heard a 2008 song Human by The Killers. Its chorus is shown above. Use of dancer rather than dancers makes me cringe, and my suggestions for five changes (adding s) are shown in red. Some who couldn’t understand the lyric had transcribed it as saying denser. Brandon Flowers refused to change it, but he claimed to have gotten the idea to use dancer from this quote from Hunter S. Thompson:

"We’re raising a generation of dancers, afraid to take one step out of line"

 

Other songwriters are not afraid to edit their lyrics. Josh Ritter has a song titled Harrisburg on his album The Golden Age of Radio. One version of its second verse says:

 

“Could have stayed somewhere, but train tracks kept going

It seems like they always left soon

And the people he ran with, they moaned low and painful

Sang sad misereres to the moon”

 

I had to look in the Merriam-Webster dictionary to find out the obscure word miserere means a vocal complaint or lament. The acoustic version on the Deluxe Edition and a live version have that verse changed to instead read:

 

“They could have stayed somewhere, train tracks kept going

It seems like they always left soon

And the wolves that he ran with, moaned low and painful

Sang their sad lullabys at the moon, at the moon”

 

Some lyrics are memorable because they contain an unusual phrase, like the title for the popular song Seven Nation Army by the duo The White Stripes. You can watch and listen to it in this YouTube video. I imagine a Seven-Nation-Army might have appeared somewhere in the J. R. R. Tolkien novel The Return of the King. But actually as a child Jack White misheard it as being what is the Salvation Army. There also is a YouTube video with Homer and Bart Simpson starting to play the song. But the murderous opening riff really isn’t played on a bass – it’s on a guitar lowered an octave.   

 

Don’t botch your spelling!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typos in visual aids for a speech can occur easily. Even one wrong letter will change the meaning of a word, as is shown above where botch could become batch, bitch, or butch. The vowels U, I, and O are right next to each other on a keyboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other examples where just changing a vowel will produce one of either three or four words are shown above. There even is a 2015 book by Kalman Toth titled 8100 One Letter Different Word Pairs: Nurture Your IQ.

 

Homophones are another spelling problem. Today’s Pearls Before Swine comic strip has Larry the Crocodile starting a new venture offering the world his opinions. At first his sign says Larry Nose, but then Zebra corrects him, and he fixes it to say Larry Knows.  

 

Watch out for misspellings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Incorrect spelling in visual aids is not good for a speaker’s credibility. Spelling errors often slip through proofreading.

 

I just saw a hilarious example in an article by Nomaan Merchant at the Associated Press on November 19, 2020 titled Trump’s election lawsuits plagued by elementary errors. It said where they should have referred to ‘poll watchers’ they instead said ‘pole watchers’ - perhaps thinking about customers at a strip club.

 

A second article by Benjamin G. Shatz in For the Defense on February 2007 titled Watch out for tricky typos mentioned lawyer mistakes of statue for statute, pubic for public, trail for trial, and untied for united.

 

A third article at Re:word titled The difference one missed letter makes says in those cases you would get asses for assess, pubic for public, and heroin for heroine.

 

Adding an extra letter also can be awful, as pointed out in a fourth article at The poke on October 14, 2017 titled ‘Best legal typo of all time. Do not stop looking til you find it’ where an extra f changed from ‘assisting’ into ‘assfisting.’ Another article by Stacy Zaretsky at Above the Law on January 10, 2018 called it The most embarrassing typo in a lawyer letter, ever.

 

The image of Miss Pellings was adapted from this photo at the Library of Congress.

 

UPDATE

 

An article at The Hill by Jordan Williams on November 26, 2020 titled Ex-Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell files lawsuits in Michigan, Georgia reported:

 

"Both of the cases filed by Powell were riddled with typographical issues. The case in Michigan had a number of formatting problems that removed spacing between words, Bloomberg reported. In the Georgia suit, the word district was misspelled twice on the first page of the document: There was an extra c for 'DISTRICCT,' and then it was spelled 'DISTRCOICT.' "