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Martha: I ALWAYS use the Oxford comma! 🙂
Did you know there's a song called "Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend? It's not safe for work or for kids because of language, but here's a link to listen:
http://popup.lala.com/popup/1225260582293423346
Or if that doesn't work. 🙂
On spelling mnemonics:
I always had a problem spelling broccoli. I never could remember whether there were two c's, two l's, or two of both. Until a friend of mine said to think "e. coli, where e = broc".
I know that's silly and probably wouldn't work for anyone else but me, but that is literally how I remember how to spell broccoli each and every time I type it. 🙂
Would anyone care to spend some time talking about words that other people will assume you have misspelled (especially when the difference hinges on the presence or absence of a double letter)?
We've all known people who routinely "correct" his just deserts to make it seem like it's about ice cream. And fans of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers may remember being briefly confused by the references to a corespondent in "The Gay Divorcee".
> What's the best term for "someone who's being mentored"?
"Mentat" immediately came to mind. Apparently it is not a Real Word(tm), but it seems like a good candidate nonetheless.
ob. cit.: http://www.wordnik.com/words/mentat
-mpg
Unless I am mistaken, the word mentat was coined by Frank Herbert in the Dune series. The meaning was a person who, in the place of computers, was a kind of savant at doing large-number mental manipulations and complex analyses. They were hired for their skills, which could be greatly enhanced by sappho juice which, while increasing their cognitive speed and mental activity, could also be quite addictive.
Anyone who has that association (Anyone? ... Anyone?) would be confused by the use of the word for a person being mentored.
Ron Draney said:
We've all known people who routinely "correct" his just deserts to make it seem like it's about ice cream.
This is certainly my most notable example. Each time I put it in writing, "just deserts" creates a firestorm. Now I avoid it.
Last time I saw it "in print" was the Wall Street Journal online, wsj.com, in an acticle about Eliot Spitzer. You can fill in the blanks. Online it was spelled "just desserts" so I ran (as fast as I could) to a buddy I knew would have the paper copy, in which it was spelled correctly as "just deserts." I prefer to assume the print editor was more skilled than the online editor, and made a last-minute change. The alternative possibility that the online editor "corrected" the spelling to "desserts" would be too distressing to dwell upon.
I e-mailed wsj.com, but got no reply, and the online article was never corrected to my knowledge.
Ron Draney said:
We've all known people who routinely "correct" his just deserts to make it seem like it's about ice cream.
Glenn said:
Last time I saw it "in print" was the Wall Street Journal online, wsj.com, in an acticle about Eliot Spitzer. You can fill in the blanks.
No longer any need to take my word for it.
WSJ misspells "just deserts"
Saw this just this morning in the forum discussion of the Ask Amy column in the Chicago Tribune, March 12, 2010. The discussion was in response to a letter written by a high school student who was being pressured to spend too much time babysitting.
"They need to get on the stick and find themselves another sitter or two."
Oddly, tutee sounds nearly identical to an etymologically correct form (Lat. tuti, past passive participle of the verb from which tutor comes), for those who are tutored. (The primary meaning of the Latin verb is to guard.) For one person, it would be tutus (male) or tuta (female), similar to alumnus, alumna, alumni.
Not for the oblique reason above, but because tutor does actually come from a verb and not a name, I do not find tutee as offensive as mentee.
Re: Mentor
I would suggest "trainee". It's not fancy, but it carries almost no baggage. To me, it simply means one who is learning the ropes.
I read a fantasy book once that described a magician's apprentice as a "tyro". I've always liked that word, but it's a little too obscure for me to use in daily speech.
Re: Spelling
I always had trouble with "privileged" until I memorized the sequence of vowels - i,i,e,e.
Words frequently mispelled: The past tenst of "cancel" and "travel", and anything else with an 'l' at the end that doesn't get doubled when it goes to past tense. I'd have to give the British the point on that one. I think they got it right.
telemath said:
Re: Spelling
I always had trouble with "privileged" until I memorized the sequence of vowels - i,i,e,e.
That's not quite the same thing; the examples I mentioned are words that are valid either way (so that spell-checkers don't flag them!), but people unfamiliar with the right word will "helpfully" change it to the wrong one.
As for words that are just hard for most people to get right, you're not going to do much better than sacrilegious and minuscule.
stalagtites and stalagmites - I checked dictionary.com and could not find an entry for stalagtites. I've always seen it spelled stalactites, with a "c", not a "g".
To remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites, I learned the tip that "stalactites" (with a "c") were stuck "tight" to the ceiling (notice the "c").
Why do we get other people's names wrong?
There is a story of two elderly men talking about the improve-your-memory seminar one had just attended.
"We learned to create a mental picture related to the name to help us remember," he told his friend.
"I think I'd like to go to that. What was the speaker's name?" the friend asked.
"It's... uh... What's that flower you buy on Valentine's Day and has thorns on the stem?" the first man asked him.
"You mean a rose?"
"Yeah, that's it." Then he called out to his wife in the kitchen, "Hey, Rose! What was that guy's name?"
Whip up a big batch of pistachio pudding, then add pineapple, walnuts, Cool Whip, and marshmallow bits, and what do you have? A Los Angeles woman says her grandmother used to make a dish with those ingredients that she called pooflapoo pie. Is that just her family's name for it, or do other people refer to it that way? Other people call it Watergate salad or ambrosia.
I found, through the magic of Google Books, a book written by Gordon Hunt (that's Helen Hunt's father) in the late 1970s. It had a number of screenplays, including Barefoot in the Park (1967, with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda).
I think he has the actual words of the movie wrong. But, in black and white, on page 77 of How to Audition, he writes:
If our marrige hinges on breathing fish balls and poofla-poo pie its not worth saving. I am now going to crawl into our tiny little single bed. If you care to join me we'll be sleeping from left to right tonight.
That's not what was written in the other scripts of the movie that I've found. But someone, Gordon Hunt or someone working for him or SOMEONE, wrote down "pooflapoo pie" and published it.
Regarding the final caller of the show, who asked about 'one of the best candidates' vs. 'one of the better candidates', Martha was at a loss for coming up with a general rule for exactly when to use the superlative. I can't help, but I can at least pass on that non-native English speakers get this confused as well. I was reading a promotional brochure for a Mexico City skyscraper called the Torre Latino the other day, which described the building as being "the sixth taller in the world between 1933 and 1960." Makes sense -- it's not the *tallest*, so you can't use the superlative, right?
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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