My limited understanding beats out your knowledge and expertise any time!

No, readers, this is not a political post!  (But don't get started in that area!)

This is not my real attitude, but experience with an employer's (yes, readers, I now I have an employer!) blog software made think of this experience. You've seen it in choir rehearsals--"My high school choir director taught me to do it this way in 1952, and you'll never convince me to do it any other way! I don't care about unity--all the audience will know that I alone am doing it right!" That, along with "What? You mean the English language hasn't always functioned the way we understand it today?!" both amaze me.

Back to the topic at hand. As a favor (because, believe me, David doesn't write copy for data entry wages!) I helped edit a couple of blog posts written by someone whose native language is not English. My understanding is that he had grabbed information from other sources and glommed it together. Well, after my best efforts, the software gave me red lights for both SEO recognition and readability. SEO-schmay-zee-oh! If someone searches for Persian rugs or Oriental rugs they'll find the blog posts and learn about the business. (Link. Yes, they need my help with their web site, too.) But the readability business really irritated me. You see, I knows something about writing.

I don't know which was more irritating--the fact that this software continually recommended bad style choices, or that the fellow I was helping out simply refused to move forward until both SEO and readability lights were green. I know something about the English language. I have been writing for publication for a little while now. I had very good training in English grammar while I was in school. (Something I'm sure the public schools in North Carolina are far too busy with accountability and running away from shooters to offer nowadays!) I can understand that the software likes simpler sentences that I often use. I can understand that it doesn't like passive voice. (I actually did edit out a lot of passive voice language in the original posts, and the ratings got better.) But using what they call "transitional words" in every other sentence? Let us establish now that I think "therefore" is overused and more often than not used incorrectly. (I also think "forever" is used far too often, and don't get me started on "zero" vs. "no" or "none"!) Someone who is searching for this topic is probably able to read my sentences. Someone who isn't able to read them will likely be paying someone else to do the online research for him.

Why do I have such an emotional response? As they say, if it's hysterical, it's historical. Tell me I'm not smart and I'll hurt you bad. I'm not kidding. I guess it's hard for me to remove myself from these suggestions that I am a bad writer. Surely it resonates with other things in my life, past and present. I'll work on that and I'll keep you posted. Unless the six or eight hours daily of data entry drive me to jump off a building or something.

A word from Scrooge

As we hurl ourselves into the holiday season (making some of us want to hurl), I must make an effort to educate you lot about one more language thing that makes me crazy. Well, crazier.

Which of the following is a Christmas carol?

A.  Joy to the world
B.  Here we come a-caroling
C.  I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus
D.  We need a little Christmas
E.  Coventry carol


The correct answer is B. Only B. OK, sometimes E, depending on how it's treated. A is a Christmas hymn. C and D are Christmas songs. (D is also an abomination, but I digress.)

A Christmas carol is a type of Christmas song. It is not every Christmas song. Wikipedia, that authoritative source, defines it thusly: "A carol is in Modern English a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and often with a dance-like or popular character." Please note the the important characteristics: festive, dance-like or popular character, not necessarily connected with church worship. 

Picture actual carolers in medieval England, going from house to house offering a few moments of entertainment, hoping to be invited in for a mug of wassail and gifted with a coin or two. The carolers would have been poor tenant farmers or townspeople knocking on doors of wealthy merchants or landholders. Would they be singing "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas"? Not likely. They'd be singing "Good King Wenceslaus" or "Deck the Hall". The spirit of those carols made reference to Christmas while also celebrating the secular fun that is had at Christmas--often poking fun at the householder they're serenading, suggesting the only way to show the Christmas spirit is to invite the carolers in.

Splitting hairs?  Yes. Will it spoil your holiday season if you use the wrong term? I doubt it. Will it spoil mine? Not really. But God keeps track of such things!

I'm not a grammar Nazi. Really, I'm not!

Nowadays people are wont to state that they speak or dress or act in a way to express their own unique personalities. Who am I to question that? I'll tell you who I am--I'm a cranky, middle-aged man with an education and too much free time!

In speaking and writing, common usage becomes popular usage, and popular expressions of yesteryear (such as "is wont to") are forgotten. Grammar is a descriptive study, not prescriptive. There is no right or wrong in grammar, no matter how stupid someone sounds. This is not, however, license for a linguistic free-for-all. While grammar may not be prescriptive, style is. One doesn't write a cover letter in the same way one would write a Facebook post. One doesn't write a notice to building residents in the same way as a letter to one's grandmother. (If people still write letters to their grandmothers.)

I won't go into style too much, because I'm really more eager to list the language errors that make me crazy:

• "No pun intended." More often than not, no pun has occurred. Wikipedia defines a pun as "...a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect." The most common form of pun is when a word could be confused with another with the same pronunciation, or a homophone. Examples include the title of the old music hall song, "She sits among the cabbages and peas," and the quote attributed to George Carlin, "Atheism is a non-prophet institution." Other forms of word play are not puns! (This is closely related to the misuse of the word "acronym") 
• Dangling participles. They're not so much annoying as amusing, because one finds them in the speech and writing of some very highly educated people. By definition, a dangling participle is a verb form (a participle) used as a modifier, where the word order or sentence structure leaves doubt about who or what is being modified. A simple example is, "Hiding beneath the table, the boy found the cat." Was the boy or the cat hiding beneath the table?  
• "It just so happens"  "So" is a pronoun, meaning it stands in for another word or phrase. "So" usually stands in for a condition or occurrence in sentences like this. In this case, if the occurrence or condition has not been mentioned previously, the correct usage would be, "It [just] happens that [condition or occurrence]," or a simple statement of the condition or occurrence. Mention of the condition or occurrence might sometimes have an element of longing to it, such as, "I really wish that [condition or occurrence]." In this case, one might say, "Well, it just so happens!"
• "They" or "their" for third person singular. Yes, I know Shakespeare did it, and I know there's no escaping it, but I avoid it like the plague. Politically and socially I am a feminist, but linguistically I long for the old days, when people were OK with the use of "he" when the sex of the person discussed was unknown.  (This also brings up the use of "sex" or "gender"--they're not synonyms, people!  Use your dictionaries!)
• Misuse of commas. I wrote once about appositives, but apparently I wasn't very convincing, because people are still making errors, e.g., "Blogger, Taminophile to speak at the United Nations"
• Rule no. 1: If the second word or phrase, known as the appositive, is necessary for the sentence to have meaning, you don't need commas. If the sentence stands alone without it just fine, you do.  
• Rule no. 2: I can not stress this enough-- Regardless of whether you heed Rule no. 1, if you use a comma before the second word or phrase, use a comma after it.

Consider the headline mentioned above: "Blogger, Taminophile to speak at the United Nations".  "Taminophile" modifies "blogger", and is necessary for the meaning of the sentence to be clear: "Blogger to speak at the United Nations!" does not carry the same meaning. If the meaning is not completely clear without the second word, then you don't need commas.  The correct headline would be, "Blogger Taminophile to speak at the United Nations".

However, in the sentence, "Taminophile, local blogger, to speak at the United Nations" the sentence would make complete sense if either "Taminophile" or "local blogger" were removed:  "Local blogger to speak at the United Nations" makes sense. If the meaning is clear without the second word, then you do need commas.  

There are other, more simple errors like using quotes or upper-case letters for emphasis, the obvious "there/they're/their" and "to/too", and other such mistakes. But I've already made my point. I don't expect the world to be a better place if you take my linguistic advice, but it might be a less harsh for sensitive types like me.

Addendum:
Forever.  A totally superfluous adverb in most cases.  "His life was changed forever."  As opposed to changed temporarily? The very nature of the verb "to change" implies some permanence unless a modifier contradicts that. Unless you're singing Handel choruses, you could easily live your life without using "forever" and not see a noticeable difference. You could give it up forever.