Soon The Moon Will Rise at Noon

English is beloved by language lovers everywhere for its lexical richness, a result of its heritage as an amalgam of both Romance and Germanic words. It may not have the elan of French or the gusto of Italian, but no language compares to English in terms of the depth of its vocabulary.

Like other Indo-European languages, English relies on a large supply of prefixes, suffixes, and other units of speech to convey meaning. Most suffixes are quite flexible, and are used by English speakers to coin new words (think Kafkaesque, doable). This makes English almost infinitely expandable, and enables anyone to contribute neologisms to the lexicon.

My topic of discussion today is one suffix in particular: "-oon."

Oon may be my favorite suffix, as its appendage makes any word instantly more fun. What's more exciting, a bar or a saloon? Who would you rather meet, a magnate or a tycoon? Which is a better insult, idiot or buffoon? (The list goes on--bass vs. bassoon, storm/monsoon, etc.) And who doesn't like cartoons?

Oon words are fun on the tongue (or, more precisely, the lips) and also fun to write. I remember the first time I learned about the people known as Walloons who live on the border of Belgium and France. What a fantastic name, I thought! I think I imagined Walloons as jolly, playful people, possibly combining the concepts of "walrus" and "balloon" in my head.

Today my enjoyment of the suffix is no less, and I look forward to English adding more oony words in the years to come.
Keep reading...

Punctuation Perplexity

How to punctuate interpersonal communication is a perpetual quandary for me. Though our alphabet offers quite a few marvelous marks (my favorite being the em dash), they tend to fall short in many common everyday situations.

Take courtship. When writing to a prospective paramour, one must pay attention to the smallest details. Not only the words, but also the punctuation marks between them, contribute to the substance of the overall message. For example, say you want to tell someone how great it was to meet them last night. Should you write:

It was great to meet you last night.
or
It was great to meet you last night!

The first sounds sterile and nonchalant, while the second comes across as overly enthusiastic and aggressive. Since the advent of the digital age, however, people have taken to creating new symbols (emoticons) to fill the semantic gaps. So we have a third option:

It was great to meet you last night : )

This smiley communicates the necessary flirtatiousness, without being too over-the-top. Professional emails may also be subject to this tonal ambiguity.

Thanks for taking the time to speak with me yesterday.
Thanks for taking the time to speak with me yesterday!

While the first sounds objective and slightly sterile, the second may come across as unctuous. After agonizing over this decision many times, I finally came up with a solution: the ellipsis.

Thanks for taking the time to speak with me yesterday...I hope to hear back from you soon!

In this case, the exclamation point feels less forced, since it is now emphasizing two points, connected by those three helpful dots. An ellipsis comes in handy in all kinds of situations, and has become my go-to punctuation when none others seem to do. In fact, I recently met someone whose ellipsis-affinity is even stronger than mine. All of his text messages use ellipses as substitutes or add-ons for other punctuation marks (On way... Good deal...K... OMG....!!! Really...???). As an ellipsis lover, I felt true kinship with this person.

There are many marks that are rarely seen, but fill in important gaps in the usual punctuation bank. The interrobang (‽), for example, combines a question mark and exclamation point, and would likely be used extensively were it included on keyboards. Personally, I've always found there to be an excess of symmetric enclosures--{}[]()<> on keyboards, some of which could surely be relegated to the "symbols" box for their occasional use, freeing up valuable keyboard space.

As language continues to evolve, people will surely find new uses for existing marks and perhaps create new ones. In fact, the first mark used to separate sentences was the interpunct ( · ), common in Ancient Latin texts. Who knows what linguistic transformations will take place over the coming years to affect punctuation. (Should I end that with a period or a question mark? Hmmmmm...) Keep reading...

Coke's Verbal Creativity is Lacking

Last week the Coca-Cola Company announced the upcoming launch of an innovative new plastic bottle made partly (30%) from sugar cane and molasses. This new packaging is fully recyclable, and is said to reduce carbon emissions by as much as 25% over the product lifecycle. Dasani will be the first drink to be sold in the new bottle, followed by vitaminwater next year.

Naturally, I applaud this move. I hope the next few decades see the gradual disappearance of toxic petroleum-based packaging in favor of more renewable choices. So why am I bothering to post this story? Actually, it's because of the name of this new plant-based bottle.

PlantBottle™. They jammed together the two most generic words to describe it, and then trademarked the result. Granted, the "P" and "B" sounds do go well together, given their common plosive (meaning an expulsion of air from one's mouth) nature. As a site note: linguistically, "B" is a voiced plosive, meaning your vocal cords vibrate when you make the sound.

As Seth Meyers might say on Weekend Update, "Really, Coke?" It's hard to believe that's the best name a multi-billion dollar company and all its ad agencies could come up with. Just off the top of my head, here are a few alternatives:

EcoBottle
BioBottle
FlexiBottle

...more to come. Keep reading...

Linguistic Blessings and Duties

It used to make me feel bad that, when traveling, I can count on the people I encounter to speak English, and generally have no need to learn their language. This expectation seemed unfair at best and imperialist at worst. It was conducive to linguistic laziness, as well as a failure to immerse myself in the culture I had come to observe and experience. It just seemed wrong to come to someone’s country and expect them to speak your language.

Lately, however, I’ve been seeing things differently. Ever since the fall of the Tower of Babel, the world has needed a common language to facilitate interlingual communication. Phoenecian was the first lingua franca, followed by Greek, Latin, French, and, for most of the past two centuries, English.

As a native speaker of this versatile language, I should view my ability to communicate virtually anywhere as a privilege, not a crutch or an embarrassment. This, however, in no way excuses me from learning, at the very least, a few words and phrases in the language of the people with whom I’m speaking. Such a token effort is quickly rewarded with appreciative smiles and more amicable relations with the locals. Furthermore, and it hardly needs mentioning, the deeper one delves into a given language, the better one will come to understand the culture it represents.

Those of us fortunate enough to speak fluent, native English should be encouraged to use this gift for the benefit of our extra-lingual friends—by teaching new immigrants or going abroad to teach others—and consider it a motivation, not a deterrent, to learn additional languages ourselves. Keep reading...

Sunday Links

The New York Times has put together an interactive infographic showing the history of Olympic torch design, apparently reading my mind (two months ago I had searched for a book on just such a topic).


Wordle creates customizable word clouds of whatever text or website you choose. Keep reading...

Grammar Gripe

As someone who considers copy-editing one of life's little pleasures, and a strict adherence to the rules of grammar a worthy and admirable pursuit, I am dismayed by the disdain to which I and my partners in punctuation punctiliousness are subjected by the less fastidious general public. The pejorative nature of the epithets we have willingly adopted are proof enough of the position in society we hold: linguistic pariahs, bothersome prescriptivists stuck in a bygone era when people actually knew that you don't "try and" do something, you try to do it. We are referred to as grammar whores and grammar nazis, both of which comparisons demonstrate the audacity (and neologistic creativity) of those who view the steadfast insistence on linguistic exactness as a fool's errand. I take umbrage at the idea that my desire for a world with communication standards is the least bit comparable to the Germans' (former) desire for a world with racial standards.

I do, however, realize that modern society presents many situations (text messaging and chatting casually with friends, for example) in which exhibiting proper usage, punctuation, and even spelling would be looked upon as supercilious and unnecessary. To require grammatical perfection at all times would be a senseless and wholly unachievable goal. But we have a duty to pay attention to the way we use language on more formal occasions; English is a living organism, and we are its caretaker. Clarity of communication is crucial; linguistic mistakes can lose jobs, offend friends, even start wars. Language binds us together, and its abuse can rend us apart.

Of course, as long as grammar fanatics are in the minority, we will need a term of reference. I propose either "grammar guards" or "grammar guardians," as both better reflect our true role in society than the names mentioned above. It is my hope, however, that we will all be grammar guards one day, eliminating the need for the term altogether. Keep reading...