I am concerned.
People come to Open Salon for all sorts of reasons, but nearly all of us are here to write. You may want to be a writer (whatever that means to you) or you might just want to communicate something in writing (opinions about politics, for example, or information you find pertinent or interesting).
Regardless of why you write, the basic process is the same as any other act of creation—you turn raw materials (words) into a finished product (an article, poem, blog entry, rant). But just like that builder you hired without checking references, someone who uses the wrong materials will create an inferior—or unrecognizable—product.
Of course, you have to know what the correct materials are before you can know whether or not you are using the wrong ones. Unfortunately, some people here seem to be unaware that they are saying something quite different from what they think they are saying.
For example, I recently noticed several instances of the incorrect use of:
empathy
It was clear from the totality of the writing in each example that a dictionary is absent from these households. There also seems to be a lack of familiarity with those Interweb word-lookup thingies,* else they would have known that empathy does not, in fact, mean "indifference" or "laziness in such measure that it prevents you from getting off your ass long enough to display the slightest interest in searching out a definition." Rather, in this example, the proper word to use is:
apathy
It may seem rude to publicly point out the mistakes of others. You may consider me downright uncivil for questioning whether or not someone should entertain even a fantasy of being a "writer" if they don't have at least a passing familiarity with the meanings of the words they toss around. If you suspect that I have a solid aversion to the commission of this particular sin, then you would be justified in accusing me of expressing:
antipathy
If, on the other hand, you credit me with feeling your pain, if you believe I can relate to the embarrassment you feel at having failed to use the correct word on a site devoted (in theory, if not reality) to providing a public forum for talented and learned writers, then you should employ the word with which I began.
* on-line dic-tion-a-ries
ADDED: Yes, that is a self-portrait. And thank you to all of you who have said it is a cute picture. Personally, I think my nose is a little big ;p
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Comments
You wouldn't believe how much time I spent on this little piece. But if one wants to lecture others on their use of words, it behooves one to make an effort to check that one's own use of words is correct.
And--LOL!--it's hard to read about definitions or word choices or grammar without getting paranoid, isn't it? Not to worry, though. This was as much a writing exercise for me as it was an admonishment to all of us to pay attention to language :D
" A," "I," or "People ?"
:-)
Great lesson here. I find myself Googling words all the time. I want to get it right, damn it!
Though, while I was typing that, the niggling phrase (Dylan Thomas? Oscar Wilde? Winston Churchill?) "the barrier of a common language" kept buzzing at the back of my mind. In fact, some of yesterday's contentious discussions demonstrated some of this - the meaning of "nice" for instance. (Or maybe that was just differences in application of the quality "nice".)
Anyway, I've noticed some instances of the empathy/apathy sort of thing, tho I can't think of anything off the top of my head, and it brings one up short. Sometimes this process of absorbing the subtle meaning of words doesn't work 100%. (Omygdz, I may not be immune!)
Haha, a quick check on google suggests "Ian Thomas", a *mistake* , I'm sure, and further digging (another minute or so) suggests that it was George Bernard Shaw, tho the phrase doesn't appear in his published work...
P.S. - cute photo
I also find an actual lack of empathy here on OS. Too many posts seem empathetic, but are actually self-aggrandizing. Sometimes that makes me angry, but usually it makes me apathetic about rating and commenting.
Oh, and I feel your pain.
As for me? I have to look up the word "nonplussed" each time I want to use it because I can't keep its meaning in my head.
So no one's perfect.
But editors are fabulous.
(For what it's worth, sometimes I have a hard time deciding whether to use "empathy" or "sympathy" in a given context.)
Hee-hee! I like the way yer noggin works, lady.
Thanks for commenting on the other page Susan. I find it bizarre that people are so willing to judge, and yet so unwilling to help.
Kim, apologies never necessary on these matters, as I fully appreciate (even if I don't always understand) good Aussie humor. It was for thee and we that "divided by a common language" was coined, of course :)
Thank you, Mimetalker. It suddenly occurs to me that the easiest solution to all this grammar and definitions nonsense is to simply speak in "mime"!!
MiddleAgedWoman, I don't think I have to tell you how many times I googled and re-googled (is that a word yet?) the words in those few paragraphs. It is the quickest and easiest way to find out, hence my impatience with people unwilling to do so.
Someone who was trying to impress me kept telling me about how he was totally ambivalent about his ex-girlfriend. From context clues, I think he meant indifferent or apathetic. He did not get to be my Facebook friend.
Oh, and, I lllluuurve you.
Myriad, I think that you and I will become the Twin Feared Commentors of Open Salon. You share my love of the blog-post-length comment. I wasn't kidding when I said I think that's my real offering here! But more to the point, your first paragraph demonstrates the love of language that is the hallmark of a true writer, to both appreciate the words in themselves and to want to use them, not just properly, but finely (in both senses of that word), so that our writing rewards a closer reader.
That should be "... our writing rewards a closer reading.
Frank, you have already been elevated to god-like status with your novel. Your recognition of my beautiful wickedness was the capper. Now you have, with great economy, conveyed the meanings of the words I went to such lengths to explain! Or explicate. Or assassinate, cause I ain't nothing if not mean.
There are also things that are interchanged for different reasons. The ones I am most at risk of interchanging are empathy and sympathy, even though I understand them. My right brain thinks they're synonyms sometimes (probably because many people use them without distinction) and my left brain (which knows better) usually has to notice the fact of having used the word on gut impulse incorrectly and correct it last-minute.
Sheila, see my comment to Rob about arcana. Sometimes we just gotta appropriate a word for our own use or make up a new word to convey something for which there is no adequate word. Of course, misuse of standard words is a recipe for miscommunication and I think we all know it is just a small step from there to nuclear annihilation!
Lorraine, I think we are going to have to just banish penultimate from the language because it seems to rarely be used correctly anymore. "Dude! That was just the pen-ultimate, man!" No. Just no. And for what it's worth, I thought it was Churchill, too.
Rob, I can relate to all of that. Over-thinking, especially. You do bring up an important point, which is that language must evolve because society evolves. I think arcana is well on its way to having the meaning "obscure information" because we want a word that conveys that meaning. Obscure is an adjective, and obscureness just sucks, so arcana it is!
C.K., you know you are my girl! Don't y'all go trying to take her away from me or I'll have to get ugly on you. Or "uglier" depending on your point of view about that self-portrait up there.
Steve, you can probably nab me using infer and imply wrong all the time. Although you may have actually lodged that in my mind well enough now that I'll at least stop and look it up before I write it :)
I use a long I in the second syllable. Words that sometimes cause me to pause when I'm reading aloud (confession time): heroine, err, banal, puerile, ... and probably others. Not that the way I think they're pronounced is wrong, but I've read people like William Safire and Edwin Newman and so forth coming down strongly in favor of one variant, even if others are correct.
Ambivalent is commonly confused with ambiguous, of course, and I don't know that I will ever be confident enough to use one of those words without careful consideration. But the use of the word to mean indifferent is a new (and inexcusable) mistake.
I fully support your criteria for deciding who to "friend" on Facebook, by the way. Abuse of language? Click "ignore" ;p
There really is no need to go look up the spelling of Massachusetts, for example, when typing Massachusets, as I constantly do, pops up the red squiggle that signifies a misspelled word. Then a simple right click of the mouse brings up suggested corrections, and another click replaces the miscreant with lovely correctness. Easy peasy.
And it works surprisingly well, except when it runs into words not included in the spell-check thingy, like "peasy," or "thingie."
But as many times as I have pointed this feature to others, the world seems no more settled or orderly. A friend who is a published poetess frequently refers to her stomich, and occasionally to her stomich akes, oblivious to the stomach aches I get from reading such oblivious misspellings. She sees the red squiggly thingies but drives right through them as though she were talking on a cell phone.
Of course this doesn't obviate the need to select the correct word in the first place. Red squiggles won't save you if you right "kicked me in the crouch," because the wrong word was spalled correctly.
I feel your pane, I really do. Isn't that what empathy is all about?
Now that we have established that... :)
In the examples that I cite and in numerous others we could all provide, the problem is that the speaker/writer simply does not know the meaning of the word they are using. They actually think that empathy is apathy, for example.
What you are describing falls into a category we might loosely call "typos." This may be worthy of a post in itself, especially now that I have your informative comment here that adds a great deal to my meager thoughts on this subject. Speaking and writing definitely employ different areas of the brain (with overlap, obviously), and when you throw in the complication that we use a language that is Chock full o'Homonyms, you are pretty much guaranteed to use the wrong word on occasion.
The corrective for that, of course, is.... proof what you write, at least when it really matters. In my years as a freelance writer I have learned to proof carefully before I submit an article as this endears you to editors and garners you more assignments. But like so many people here on OS, I am less inclined to always proof my comments, which means I am sometimes obliged to submit a follow-up comment in which I offer the corrected version.
I may do a short post after this explaining the difference in empathy and sympathy, as this is the more common source of confusion. But it is a less egregious crime against the language, imho, as they do have very similar meanings.
I've never tried Dragon Naturally Speaking, but I did many years ago try out one of the earlier speech recognition programs. It didn't handle my Southern accent very well. ;p
Thank you, L&P. I hope that I do honor every day to my much loved English teachers. I was so lucky to have not a single one tarnish my love of reading and writing.
David Kinne--- I interrupt this comment in progress to note that your last name has been identified as deserving of the red squiggle.
As I was about to say, David, I think perhaps I will just make you one of my favorite referents, as in, "If you want to know how to write well, with clarity and humor, see 'Red-Squiggle-Kinne, David.'" You also dispense extremely useful advice for the spelling challenged among us, and yes, that includes me. Thank you.
It was a major factor in buying the house. That and the fact that the attic had been turned into living space so I could shoo Sam and his friends up there and keep the downstairs relatively clean and peaceful.
Kudos.
2. Excellent post.
3. Also jealousing over the shelves.
4."Jealousing" gets a red squiggly line thingy. There should be a way to correct that as we all know that "jealousing" is a perfectly valid, and perfectly spelled, word.
And that is indeed an excellent likeness of me, amiga!
If you incur that I'm ambitious about Mrs. Michaels, then you obtusely don't recollect that Sarah is my penultimate.
"Tasted it off the corner of my tongue"?
Or for Surly, "smelled it out of the corner of my GIANT NOSTRIL!"
It would benefit all of us to take at least a few extra minutes to edit and proofread before we post.
I'll look forward to your post on typos.
My dear, dear Monsieur, I can't imagine that you would misuse a word except as a literary device. There are few as careful and thoughtful with their prose as you are.
You have also, M. Chariot, divined the heart within this post, and I believe within the heart of the writings of so many here: the love of words, of language, of exploring the ways we can employ it to inform, motivate, inspire, embolden, and if there were a single word that could stand in for "cause to swoon," I would add it here as well! Merci, my fine friend.
::ahem::
Meanwhile, back at the farm, I'm increasingly disturbed by people who claim to be/want to be writers and who steadfastly refuse to learn from those around them, or who get all uppity when someone points out an error.
My pet peeve of the week is "verbage." This was used repeatedly by the guy writing the copy for a set of posters being created by THE FUCKING COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT." Oops, sorry. Yelly.
Just so we are all clear, there is no effing such word as verbage; it is verbiage. Just because you are uncomfortable with the extra "i" in there, doesn't mean you get to change the word to ryhme with garbage, albeit, you are closer to finding your truth. Do.not.get.me.started...just.do.not. But just let me say that I learn something new about writing every friggin week, and I'm thrilled when I do even if a little embarassed at not knowing.
Oh, lovely post. Wonderful content. Exceptionally well-written. Rated. :)
(And while I love this photo, I am more intrigued by the background. When can i visit?)
Ah, Eff, I can see that we would get along just fine. I think it would be fair to say that "verbage" is garbage. I think we can take the critique a little further, though, and point out that verbiage is not a synonym for words. Rather, it means "blathering on and on about nothing." Apparently it can also mean a particular style of writing, although I don't recall seeing it used that way. Personally, I never use the word because I don't like it.
The guest room awaits you, Eff. The coffee pot is on a timer in case you get up before we do. I'll show you where I hide the booze, too.
Are you sure you want to show ME where you hide the booze? It might be best to point out where the nearest liquor store is and have me fend for myself.
I'll make your effing coffee anytime.
I do love this language. And Susan Mitchell. And I don't drink coffee, so you just have to show me to the liquor, because I will crash any party you bring Eff Muppet to.
That said, you'll be an excellent addition to any party to which Ms. Susan brings me. I just know I'll end up in a comma.
Don't get here late. You won't want to miss the prepositioning and the part where we all watch Eff lapse into a comma :)
Emma, I think you are right about there being a lot of people who have blogs but are not particularly into reading. I think for some, the blog (how I hate that word) is just an extended format for Facebook status updates.
On the other hand, if you want to be taken at all seriously as a writer, reading is pretty much essential. I suppose there are a few savants out there who don't need to read, but everybody else needs to pick up a book or at least a magazine that has some standards.
Newspapers? Not so much. As journalism has been mostly consumed by the infotainment industry and corporate masters, the basic writing standards have declined accordingly. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to take my blue pencil to a newspaper and then mail it to their editors!
Have written a bit about empathy myself. As you might expect, I find your brief but intense discourse delightful. Thank you.
Have taken a fisheye picture of my self with a pair of broken glasses held on by a rubber band. It's at least as, ah, interesting.
To Rob St. Amant, whom I referred to in my last post, bravo! (And just informationally, though I do not think dictionaries, which after all are put together by people who on the whole have less feeling for language than we do, are the final authority: I use "arcane" to mean esoteric and little-known; I use "arcana" to mean little-known collections of sometimes enigmatic principles or supposed facts, like say the Kabala or the Southern Baptist creed.
You gave me a hearty laugh this morning, too, because I was also raised as a Southern Baptist. Thankfully, we survived and escaped.
Oh, this is the blog you meant. Pardon. You're quite right as to my opinions on dictionaries. I love em. Just that they are not put together by good writers, with the exception of the first one for English, Samuel Johnson's. And he didn't write poetry, fiction, or drama. I look to W.S. more often than the dictionary.
It's my understanding that words like the "to" at the end of Mrs. Michael's sentence are verb particles, not prepositions. I speak of grammatical function, not spelling. "To bring to" is not the same verb as "to bring."
Many people who think they are great writers because all their friends tell them so are going to end up as embarrassed and upset as those people on American Idol who make fools of themselves croaking off key in front of a national audience.