It's easy if you can count!

When it comes to correct word usage, the beautiful truth is that a few simple rules can go a long way toward developing your confidence in your writing and speaking. Why? Because if you commit to just a few simple rules, you’ll be right more of the time! Here’s one of those rules:

Well, if you are, who could blame you? 

I have found these three words confounding to just about everybody. Recently an organization asked me to review their web site content. I found all three of those “sure” words on one page; one of them was used correctly. It’s no wonder people have trouble. The words are so similar in spelling and pronunciation and even in meaning, and they’re all just ordinary, useful words that find their way, appropriately, into our daily vocabulary.

. . .  but How Much Communication?

Recently I was riding a Seattle metro bus along with a friend who visits this Speakeasy regularly and follows the conversation. Shortly after we boarded, the bus stopped to admit a bevy of eight young teenage girls, immediately effecting a complete change in the volume within the bus. Oh, the streaming! Oh, the volume! The cacophony!

I’m a political news junkie. I admit it. I kicked the sugar dependency, I can limit myself to four ounces of wine each evening, and I refuse all opiates for the rare pain I might have, but I suck up political news and reporting and “speeching” like nobody I know. I watch it all. (Yes, I’m of that generation that still has a thing in her living room called a television.) How bad is my affliction? I watched ALL the debates.

I know what you’re thinking: “There are a myriad of ways to use that word.” If your mind immediately goes to “of” after “myriad,” just stop it, please! That construction, which we hear at every turn, is just plain wrong. I heard it again this afternoon; I hear it almost everyday. A beautiful Greek word that means, literally, ten thousand, has been adopted – and very poorly – by just about every Tom, Nick and Shari.

It's "preventive medicine." Does that sound funny to you? Sure, that’s why you want to call it “preventative.” All those syllables just feel right. They make it sound like quantitative or qualitative or administrative. “And “preventative” is a perfectly good word – it’s just not an adjective, so it can’t describe medicine or anything else – not now, not today, not ever.

But listen for five minutes to TV news or any political speech, and you'd start to wonder. Recently I was listening to a youthful (and quite exuberant) newscaster on TV delivering breaking news on a rather serious subject.  In her effort to emphasize the seriousness and drama of the situation, she regularly pronounced “a” as “ay,” a long A sound. She seemed to think that such an incorrect pronunciation ramped up the emphasis or importance

It seems, in recent years, that most of the population has ceased believing in the existence of abbreviations. You rarely hear anyone refer to an abbreviation anymore; it’s all “acronyms” now. Too bad, because there is a distinct and simple difference.