Readers Horror 241228

I saw three examples of this in one day! Two in the New York Times! Example with discussion below:

Name your second-favorite airport- or airplane-based movie.

“Die Hard 2” was certainly was an influence.

—from interview with T. J. Fixman, writer of Netflix movie Carry On

Just a general discussion because I don’t know how to rate errors like this, annoying to read as they are. Your eye might have skipped over it. In the author’s response, the passive verb was gets repeated before and after the adverb certainly. Presumably when first typed, the writer of this sentence wasn’t certain whether to split the verb from its descriptive object influence (called a subjective complement to be exact). Did this occur because the author thought the editor would pick the ‘right’ one? Technically both are correct, but I could make an argument for “certainly was”. Is the author self-editing, and planned to come back to this? Or, as I fear most likely, did the author have a brain-fart, being unable to carry the sentence construct mentally for only three words?

Twice in one session of reading, New York Times? When I saw a third one on a sports blog, I couldn’t believe it, but at least it’s written by dedicated amateurs more interested in sports than writing. I can’t rate it because it’s egregiously wrong, yet quite possibly represents a case of just typing too quickly and hitting ‘Send’.

Reader’s Horror 241219

Today’s assault holds a special dose of vinegar because it inverts the usual way this mistake gets committed. In a New York Times article about the Congressional scuttling of a temporary federal funding bill, Hakeem Jeffries is quoted thusly:

House Republican have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt every day Americans all across this country.

I’m ignoring the politics involved here, except those of grammar, usage, and mechanics. Usually when writers mix up every day and everyday they use the latter to refer to every singled blessed day. This is wrong. When referring to all of the days, every single one of them, there must be a space because we’re using the adjective every to describe and restrict the noun day. However, when we want to describe something as being routine, mundane, ordinary, etc., no space is used. Make the compound word everyday to describe the noun of your choice. In the paragraph above it’s Americans.

I’m tempted to say the above error actually hurts everyday Americans right now, not in some undefined future, but the mistaken usage likely slipped right past most of them. The everyday/every day error resembles those involving into/in to and onto/on to. In the case of today’s horror, the most common format for every + day would be with a space. Non-proficient writers usually slam them together making this supposed-to-be uncommon word more common in print these days. I suspect the reverse is true for the other two, but I’ve no data to support this.

Author’s role: I’m going to assume this error found its way into print due to the author, not an editor. This is a writer for the NYT, one of the premier news organizations in the world. The author should know better. We therefore rate this a 4.

Egregiousness of the error: The error will be read by most readers to mean what the author intended. As explained in the first Reader’s Horror, these space-oriented mistakes where a compound word is used when it should not be represent one of the many confusing aspects of English. Since most readers won’t notice it and will get the intended meaning, we therefore rate this a 2.

My personal reaction rating: I sigh, shake my head slightly, and mutter, “but of course.” Immediately thereafter I also say, “but it’s still wrong.” That makes it a 1.

Final rating: This error rates a 4/2/1 for an 7 out of 10 on the Reader’s Horror scale.

[Note: I’m tweaking the scale, and I’ll write a quick update later. The egregiousness rating above became a “2” instead of a “3” as a result.

Reader’s horror 241210

Yesterday I read the word jell in the New York Times. If most errors I highlight represent analogs of fingernails on blackboards, this one joins a select group which seems more like needles in my eye or somesuch. Why? Because…

Once there existed the word gelatin/gelatine. In the very early 1700’s French people contrived the word (gélatine) from the Latin gelare meaning “to freeze, congeal” and has roots in the concept of coldness and freezing. Gelatin (my preferred spelling) became shortened to gel to make a verb meaning “to become a gelatin” and around the 1950’s took on a figurative meaning, “to come together and agree well.” Diverse opinions would get discussed and a consensus would gel around a course of action. It branched out to other shades of this meaning.

Once there existed the word jelly. We know what that is; we like to eat it on toasted bread products. Substances would jell to become jelly. By the beginning of the 1900’s a figurative meaning evolved, meaning “to solidify” referring to an idea or project ‘firming up’. A film in the works for years would start to jell around a specific path forward and a casting call would go out.

Though extremely subtle (and frankly, extremely subjective), gel means diverse things coming together and firming up. But jell means the innate properties of a something which should come together and firm up, do so. Not exactly the same.

Obviously both gel and jell look like twin brothers of different mothers, but by my childhood and young adulthood in the 60’s and 70’s the use of jell seemingly had disappeared. That’s a personal observance; maybe it remained widely used, just not in one blessed thing I read. During that time a common product, Jell-O, began whipping the commercial airwaves with every star personality it could find (even if some turned out later to have been sexual predators). And guess what? I began to see jell used where gel had been used before.

I suspect, have suspected, and will continue to suspect the re-introduction of jell doesn’t represent an informed decision to use a word with connotations of sweetness, and doesn’t get limited to projects or ideas firming up. It represents a giant wave in the ocean of writing which has rolled through the ranks of writers too damn ignorant or lazy to realize they’ve co-opted a contrived version of a contrived brand name which comes from gel. And the entire concept of gelatin itself was contrived when the product was invented.

I’m not going to rate this one because “nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong,” and I hate admitting I’m wrong. Hmmph.

Reader’s Horror 241122

“Remember when Trea was the shiny new thing we were all exited about, back before we kneeled beside our bed each night?”

The above was posted on The Good Phight, a semi-professional blog about the Philadelphia Phillies hosted on SBNation. In case your eyes zipped over it, the error is “exited” for the intended word “excited”.

Author’s role: This is an author who has a day job. Writing never danced on stage for him as a possible role in his adult life. We therefore rate this a 2.

Egregiousness of the error: This is either a typo or an autocorrect error the author missed. (I doubt any editing occurs on this site.) A plain typo rates a 1, an autocorrect a 2. I’m going with the benefit of the doubt here that he just plain forgot to hit the “C” key. It’s a 1.

My personal reaction rating: I like this site. I willingly suffer the numerous run-on sentences, the failed verb tenses, the just plain “WTF did he mean there” writing. This is more mild than mild for this site. I’m giving this a 0.

Final rating: 3.

Reader’s Horror, 241119-1

From a story in today’s New York Times describing a veteran who was court-martialed for shooting an Iraqi in 2004.

Mr. Richmond shot the herder in the back of the head from six feet away as the man, who has handcuffed, stumbled.

—from “Veteran Who Was Court Martialed Gets 4 Years in Prison for Jan. 6 Attack”, New York Times, November 18, 2024

Error: “…, who has handcuffed,…” instead of “…, who was handcuffed,…”

Type of error rating: 2, because this seems to be a typo which wasn’t caught. (Although we should note the H key isn’t near the W key. Actually this is more a brain-fart than a typo.)

Author/editor rating: 4, because regardless of the minor level of error, a reader of the Times has a right to expect the author (or an editor) actually reads the copy prior to its being published, and even if it slipped by everyone on Nov. 18, it would be noted by somebody and corrected by the time I read it midday on the 19th.

Personal reaction rating: 1…It neither entertained or enraged. It jarred me a little, but my blood pressure stayed constant.

Bottom line: This error rates a 2/4/1 for a 7 out of 10 on the Reader’s Horror scale.

Discussion:

I’m going to need to see if all of these errors wind up being in the 7-9 range. The scale won’t mean much if so.
Writing something like this really puts one on his toes. I know I’ve corrected numerous errors in already-published posts!