gracchusdixit

As Donald Trump seems hell bent on distorting the truth and destroying our democracy, I don’t know about you, but I feel exhausted and crave for a break.  So, let me turn from the depressing antics of our Idiot-in-Chief to one of the few beneficial, albeit unintended, results of the Trump presidency:  the remarkable fact that Americans are paying more attention to the news—on television, on the internet, in print—than at any time in recent memory.

Since Trump’s election, news consumption has grown by leaps and bounds.  The cable news channel MSNBC, for instance, has doubled its audience, to the point that it now regularly beats Fox News Channel, an event once thought to be as likely as the earth reversing its spin.  Digital subscriptions to the nation’s leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have increased several-fold, as these hoary journalistic institutions, recently thought to be on their last legs, have led the way in exposing the innumerable scandals and travails of the Trump White House.  This is indisputably good news.  We Americans are a notoriously ignorant people, and the more we watch and read, the less ignorant we may someday become.

There is, alas, a flaw in the otherwise cheery pattern of this carpet.

Like so many others, I have gobbled up more news coverage in the last year than in the previous ten.  This has caused me to pay more attention, not only to the content of what is being said, but to the words themselves, many of which are sloppy, unclear, or just plain wrong.  Newspapers are less often guilty than television, but both commit their share of mistakes and malapropisms. What is worse, the same blunders recur time after time, which suggests that they are not inadvertent but, rather, the result of ingrained ignorance.

Since the challenges we now confront are as serious as any in our history, it is all the more important that those in the news media speak, write, and think clearly.  That is the reason for the nits I am about to pick—an exercise that might otherwise seem to be pedantic.    Pedantic or not, here are the howlers that drive me particularly crazy:

Data is, isn’t.   Data is not a collective noun, like herd, fleet or gaggle, and cannot properly be followed by a singular verb.  It is the plural of the Latin word datum, which means “given,” as in “a given fact”.  One cannot say “the data says,” any more than one could correctly say “the statistics says”.  The same is true for other commonly used Latin and Greek plurals.  Media is the plural of medium; phenomena is the plural of phenomenon; criteria is the plural of criterion.  To follow any of these plurals with a singular verb like says or is, is simply wrong.  One venerable American dictionary claims otherwise, pronouncing that the word data now “has a life of its own”.  This is poppycock and a mere concession to sloppiness.

Percent is, isn’t—except when it’s one.  A related mistake is a statement like:  “Sixty percent of the American people disapproves of the president.”  The word percent describes a ratio between 100 and another number.  Except when that other number is one, as in one percent, the verb that follows percent must be plural, as in:  “Sixty percent of the American people disapprove of the president.”

Staunch, stanch, stench.  Confusion between the words staunch and stanch is pervasive, and the confusion seems to go only one way:  staunch is used when stanch is meant.  How this confusion began, or why it so stubbornly persists, is anyone’s guess.  Once upon a time, these words were interconnected and to some extent interchangeable; staunch, stanch, and even stench meant the same sort of thing.  But that changed a very long time ago, whereupon these words sorted themselves into separate and distinct meanings.  Staunch means “strong, loyal, or stalwart”.  Stanch means “to stop the flow of blood produced by a wound”.  And stench means, well, you know.

If I was you, I wouldn’t be me.  The clause, “if I was you,” pollutes the linguistic landscape like a malodorous bird dropping.  “I was” is what grammarians call the “indicative mood”—a verb form used to make a factual statement, express an opinion, or ask a question.  The instant you put the word “if” in front of “I was,” everything changes.  The expression, “if I was you,” is nonsensical, since I can never be you, and you can never be me.  To make such wishful, imaginary, or hypothetical statements requires a different “mood,” called the “subjunctive”.  The only proper expression is:  If I were you.

Homogenous, homogeneous, homogenized.  The words homogenous and homogeneous have become so blurred in colloquial speech, so homogenized, that even some dictionaries, which should be ashamed of themselves, now declare them to be synonymous.  That is wrong.  Homogenous is a biological and medical term that has a strict meaning; it describes organisms with similar characteristics that derive from a common genetic origin.  Homogeneous describes commonality in a broader and more general sense, and can be applied to any group of persons, things, or concepts that are much alike.  As with staunch and stanch, when these words are conflated, the conflation almost always go in one direction:  journalists say homogenous when they mean homogeneous.  It is possible that such people are not, in fact, confusing the two words but simply cannot spell.  That does not lessen the gravity of the sin.

When less isn’t less.  Less may be used correctly less often than any other word in the English language.  When used as an adjective, it applies solely to singular nouns:  “less food,” “less water,” “less money,” and so on.  It cannot properly be applied to plural or collective nouns:  “less votes,” “less people,” “less taxes”.  In such cases, the proper adjective is fewer, as in “fewer votes,” “fewer people,” “fewer taxes”.

Alright, already.  One of the most persistent and infuriating errors in print journalism is the substitution of the non-word, alright, for the proper words, all right.  How this abomination snuck into the language is anybody’s guess.  Whatever the cause, alright isn’t all right—it is all wrong.

None are, is nonsense.  The word none has the same meaning as no one or not one.  The important bit is one.  Any word that describes one person or thing should be followed by a singular verb.  Therefore, the statement, “None were surprised,” is nonsensical.  It should read: None was surprised.

Ad hominem, ad absurdum.  Every time a public figure lashes out at some real or imagined foe, journalists label it an ad hominem—by which they mean, a personal—attack.  The phrase ad hominem describes, not a personal attack, but a rhetorical argument designed to persuade an audience.  It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle who first described how such arguments work:

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word, there are three kinds.  The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

The first two of Aristotle’s three “modes of persuasion” are ad hominem arguments, emotional tricks designed to distract attention from the third mode, which relies on “the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself”.  Ad hominem arguments are not “personal attacks” on an opponent.  Rather, they are attacks on the emotional feebleness of the audience.

I will bore you no further, except to say this: words matter no less than actions; we cannot save our democracy without regard for the truth, and we cannot know the truth without regard for clear thinking and clear language.  The one depends upon the other—now, more than ever.