Grammar Punk Blog

Killdeer don’t Kill Deer I think it has been established that I have a thing for birds. Of all kinds, shapes, sizes and temperaments. I’m crazy about them and have been known to nearly drive off the road watching them.

The other morning I came out to my car to find a duck waddling about the parking lot of my workplace. A cute brown duck that had no business being in the parking lot, yet there he was. This morning I pulled into the same parking lot to find a pair of killdeers wandering about the rock gardens that front the building. Killdeers! I hadn’t seen a killdeer since the last time I was in the canyon camping. A long time indeed.

Killdeers are very cool indeed if you haven’t run across them before. Not only are they quite distinctive looking with beautiful markings but they have these very long legs and tend to run about as often as flying from spot to spot. Their name apparently comes from the other very cool thing about them, namely their particular cry, which does indeed sound like “kill-deer, kill-deer” in a very high range. Which is a good thing since I’m also very fond of deer…

They also have another cool thing that I did not know about until I went looking.” These birds will frequently use a distraction display (“broken-wing act”) to distract predators from their nests. This involves the bird walking away from its nesting area holding its wing in a position that simulates an injury and then flapping around on the ground emitting a distress call. The predators then think they have easy prey and are attracted to this seemingly injured bird and away from the nest. If the parent sees that a potential predator is not following them, they will move closer and get louder until they get the attention of the predator. This is repeated until the predator is far from the nest, and the killdeer suddenly “heals” and flies away. And good parents too. I knew there was a reason I love killdeer.

Molls or Malls

Moll: [mawl] the woman companion of a gangster

A prostitute

I do love a homonym. I was recently reading a mystery and one of the characters obliquely
referred to a rather antiquated phrase, calling another character a “moll” A
moll is a gangsters girlfriend though the term fell out of favor at roughly the
same time period as the term gangster. Now it denotes a woman of less than
stellar brainpower who allows herself to be bullied by a man. I did not know
that the dictionary also includes the term prostitute in the definition. Live
and learn.

Not to be mistaken for its homonym, mall.

Mall: [mawl]

Also called shopping mall. a large retail complex containing a variety of stores and often restaurants and
other business establishments housed in a series of connected or adjacent buildings or in a single large building.

2. a large area, usually lined with shade trees and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade.

Now before there were malls: congregations of excess, there were malls: lovely expanses of nature and
walkways. Guess which one I prefer.

This led to the hyphenate, pall-mall.

4. the game of pall-mall.

5. the mallet used in the game of pall-mall.

1. a game, popular in the 17th century, in which a ball of boxwood was struck with a mallet in an attempt to drive it through a
raised iron ring at the end of a playing alley.

Which sounds an awful lot like croquet to me—another of those things like malls with promenades not made of indoor/outdoor carpeting that have gone the way of the dodo bird. Alas.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, challenge your students to examine this particular pair of homonyms. Then write about it!

Headlining Headlines

I know I’ve griped about this before, but seriously, headlines crack me up sometimes. Like
daily. I’m a big fan of my MSN homepage and enjoy this little nuggets of
mini-news. Except for possibly the snippets of headlines—and the always-present
typos and missing words—but that’s another rant.

I wouldn’t necessarily call these dangling modifiers as much as confusing modifiers,
missing modifiers or maybe mysterious modifiers.

Mother of homeless man beaten by cops gets $1M settlement

Now is it the mother of the homeless man who was beaten by the cops or the homeless man?

Or this little jewel: Flesh-eating bugs after birth

Are the bugs eating each other after birth? To whose
flesh does this refer? Do I really want to know? Okay, you know I clicked on
this one.

And my favorite—for today: Close escape as tree hits car

Don’t you just hate it when a tree leaps out of the
forest just to hit your car? I didn’t actually read this one so I suppose it is
possible the tree was somehow in flight when it accosted the car but I have no
idea who—or what managed the close escape.

I understand pithiness is essential given the nuggets of
news thing, but really, are you just trying to drive us grammar folk nuts on
purpose? Good work.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, here’s a good
writing assignment. Send your students on a search for unintelligible and
ungrammatical headlines—then let them rewrite the stories to match the
headline. Then share.

To Overlook or To Oversee

Overlook: o·ver·look – to fail to notice or check something as a result of inattention,
preoccupation, or haste; to choose to disregard or ignore a shortcoming or fault

Oversee: o·ver·see  - to watch over, manage, and direct
somebody or a task done by somebody; to observe something covertly or secretly
while it is happening

I do so love a pair of words seemingly so similar when in fact they are nearly antonyms of
one another. Overlook is carelessness while oversee is micromanaging.

Look and see.

Look: to use the eyes to examine, watch, or find somebody or something

See: to examine, look at, or watch somebody or something using the eyes

And to add to the fun, the word over can be either a preposition denoting a position
directly above something or an adverb, positioned on or moving to the other
side of something such as a barrier or obstacle. So no help there.

Hmmm.

Teachers of English, writing, and grammar, here’s a good writing challenge for your
students. Explore the two words and then write a paragraph or two explaining
the differences types of characters might display being the overlook or the
overseer.

Unperforated vs. Imperforated

Partially or completely closed: anatomy describes a body
part lacking an opening of the normal size, especially because of atypical
development

With no holes: describes a sheet of postage stamps
produced without the perforations that allow easy tearing or division

First of all, ewww, I know,
especially the one about anatomy, but it’s the prefix that gets me about this
one. Is it just me or does unperforated sound more correct than imperforated?
Both un and im mean not or without so they are pretty much interchangeable. And
then I ran across another of those wonderfully obscure even nonsensical little
rules: the prefix ‘im’ means ‘not’ when it proceeds a
B, M or P. As in, immature, improper, imbibe—and imperforated. Really? I don’t
care, still looks weird.

The same premise works backwards with the word infamous rather
than unfamous, I’m just saying.

Teachers of English,
grammar, and writing, here’s a good one to get your students thinking about
those pesky prefixes. And why it’s not unperforated.

Air travel, as I have noted before has become much more…businesslike. We travelers are no longer treated as guests on the worlds biggest and fastest buses, we are now merely cargo. Or so it feels as you’re stuffed into those tiny little excuses for aircraft.

 This, I’m assuming is the reason for the rather odd display I noticed at the baggage claim on my last trip.

 I have arrived at my home airport after midnight on the past couple of trips—I’m also assuming this has something to do with the additional…cargo.

 You may or may not have heard about ARUP, which is a company which deals in, among other things, human hemoglobin. Yup, blood. ARUP ships their cargo in bright yellow boxes, largish, about three by four or so. They are distinctive. The last couple of flights I have noticed several—say six or seven—ARUP boxes being offloaded with the rest of the luggage, and while I didn’t think much of it, it was a little…unsettling. All that blood, flying by itself. Okay, I’m reading too much into it, but remember, I tend to read Stephen King novels when I travel, so there you go.

 Anyway, on my last trip there I was, awaiting my luggage to disembark and lo and behold, bright yellow ARUP boxes began to appear. And appear. And appear. There were forty-three, count ‘em, forty-three boxes of human blood. And intermixed meekly and awkwardly, our hapless luggage. It was quite a site, the conveyer belt going round and round, tons of yellow boxes, wee pieces (comparatively) pieces of luggage.

And all I could think, (knocking wood, crossing fingers, crossing anything) was what if the plane had landed…more firmly than intended. Think of the mess.

 Teachers of English, writing and grammar, here’s a good writing challenge to throw at your students—ask them to look around and notice the oddities that might pop into everyday life. Then write about it.

The March Hare

“The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won’t be raving mad — at least not so mad as it was in March.”

“Mad as a March hare” is a common British English phrase, both now and in Carroll’s time, and appears in John Heywood’s collection of proverbs published in 1546. It is reported in The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner that this proverb is based on popular belief about hares’ behavior at the beginning of the long breeding season, which lasts from February to September in Britain. Early in the season, unreceptive females often use their forelegs to repel overenthusiastic males.

The wonderful illustration by Sir John Tenniel shows the March Hare with straw on his head which was a common way to depict madness in Victorian times. I couldn’t find an etymology as to what straw on one’s head had to do with madness but I’m supposing it may have to do with tossing unfortunates into prisons with straw strewn on the floors as small comfort.

I’m more interested in the ongoing theme of madness in the story itself. These folks are not just mildly eccentric but seriously…odd. And the more delightful, if disconcerting for it. As Mad as a March Hare is about as bad as it gets, this means you’ve gone completely round the bend which is never good.
It serves us well to remember the day and age this tale was written (1865) and the prevailing opinion of things like insanity let alone children best seen but not heard.

Teachers of English, grammar and writing, this is another interesting topic to explore with your students. What other expressions do they know to connote someone who’s… a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Then write about it. Then share.

Names that are also…

Don, Jack, Bob, Frank, Sue, Curt, Lance, May

Names that are homonyms: Phil (fill), Carol (carrel), Harry (hairy), Bill, Josh, Art, Mark, Sue, Bea, (okay, diminutives probably shouldn’t count but…) Mary, Barry, Drew, and on and on.

Names have always fascinated me. From what I’ve gathered there are any number of reasons for the names given, occupation, tribal, geographical, the confusion that arises with so many “hey, you’s! floating about. And of course time and distance further corrupts to the original name. My own last name is a case in point; half of the extended family added an E the rest kept the E at bay but we’re all still related.

Look at all the occupation names: Smith, Baker, Cooper, Goldsmith, Miner, Carpenter, Gardener, Thatcher, Wagoner, etc.

And all the possessive father names: Johnson, Peterson, Matheson, Larson, Swenson, Neilson, Anderson, Olafson, (the Swedes seem to be particularly possessive) Jenson, Stevenson, Carlson, Brunson, Davidson, Ferguson, Haroldson, Isaacson, Richardson and on and on and on. I’m still waiting for Fransdaughter or Louiseson to catch on.

Teachers of English, grammar and writing, here is a great writing prompt that will get your students thinking. Have them compile their own name anomalies, then give them character attributes, then write about it! And share!

Color My World

I love colors. As far back as I can remember I’ve been crazy about colors. All colors, bright, dark, neon, pastel, bold, subtle. Some of my earliest memories revolve around the big box of Crayola crayons. Not the little box but the huge box with the 100 or something crayons. I especially loved a new box with all those sharp crayons and their flat tops, I would just sit and look, relishing the colors.

As much as I adored the visual aspects of that big box of crayons the names were just as intriguing. I learned my colors from those crayons and not just the regular ones, the red, blue, green, yellow, brown, black, white, but lovely, scintillating, luscious names like periwinkle, plum, sienna, magenta, butterscotch, azure, crimson, salmon, aqua and brick. And lovely descriptive ones like soldier blue, forest green, persimmon, peacock, charcoal and vermillion.

Nature provided so many inimitable names for colors how can you resist raspberry, almond, melon, mulberry, nutmeg, pine, mustard, buttercup, mint, canary, lemon, pistachio, celery, corn, and chocolate. Great, now I’m hungry.

Incorporate color in your world and in your writing. When writing creatively go for the unusual description, charcoal instead of grey, cobalt instead of blue, buff instead of tan, burgundy for red, emerald for green. Get colorful!

Teachers of English, writing and grammar encourage your students to get colorful with their writing. Toss out a color and ask for first impressions, characterization, emotion, etc. Then write about it. Then share!

I am not a math person. Intellectually I know that numbers are our friends, and I even embrace the notion that they have their own simple, elegant beauty. But I hate them, nonetheless. And yes, I know that my loathing stems from the simpler emotion of fear, yet I don’t care. I can’t, don’t, won’t do math more complex than the multiplication tables, simple fractions, and the occasional stab at long division.

 That being said, I have always had an affinity for words. Big words, small words, the funkier the better, I mean I am killer at Scrabble and Boggle, just don’t ask me how to extrapolate the perimeters of an Isosceles triangle. Or whatever.  

 My point?

 Writing, the act, skill, everydayness of writing is not what it used to be. I’m not talking about the art of writing, (though no doubt I will at some point) I’m referring to the act of writing in and of itself. The concept of using language to communicate ideas has…changed. To say the least. But this explanation is much too simple and rather beside the point. The fact is language is our form of communication and not an opt-out sort of a thing. Yet that is what seems to be happening. It’s not dramatic, it’s even subtle, which merely adds to the problem. The worry. The crisis. The simple, necessary act of writing is slipping away. Urgency is called for. Because the fact is the skill of writing, writing well is a skill that is a must-have. Never mind penning the Great American Novel, think more along the lines of job applications, resumes, business letters, reports.

 Writing, quite unlike math (at least for me) really can be adapted, adopted, and acquired by doing. The more one writes the more the act of writing becomes like muscle memory, it doesn’t require quite so much thinking. Unlike algebra.