What President Trump's Tweets have accomplished is full-time employment and enjoyment for those who love to laugh at someone's gaffes. And quite frankly, the president is, if he is nothing else, entertaining.
Sarah Lyall of the NYT in a recent piece, 'Trump's Twitter War on Spelling,' about President Trump's Twitter style and his seemingly obliviousness of even rudimentary rules of usage. It's a decent to-date collection.
The president has used "their" instead of "they're." I remember when in second or third grade the teacher wrote the three forms on the blackboard: there; their; they're.
Yes, when I went to school it was a slate blackboard, written on with chalk, and wiped clean with a felt eraser that required the favorite student to "clap" two together when the teacher wanted to rid the felt of the accumulated chalk dust. Nowadays it's a whiteboard, written on with colorful markers and erased with some kind of solvent, or dry eraser. Chalk dust now would be seen as an environmental hazard that would easily close the building for a month while the contractors vacuumed the air. It would be that or wear surgical masks. But as usual, I've jumped the track.
At this early age when Eisenhower was president and Nixon was his vice president, we were instructed on these three forms, they're, their, and there; how they differed and how to use them properly.
We also learned the difference between its and it's and you and you're. We learned that contractions, like it's were written in place of it is; you're in place of you are. The use of the apostrophe was there to alert us that something has been subtracted, eliminated.
And of course the bugaboos, two, to and too can always be counted on to be misused. I've educated a few email writers on the correct usage. They've been thankful.
I've received email from educated adults—albeit younger than myself—who misuse the variations. The Millenials on their cell phone have effectively flattened the you're/your dichotomy by just typing ur, which of course when you say it, doesn't require you to spell it. Perhaps they are onto something.
Of course The Times loves anything disparaging about President Trump. Ms. Lyall's piece got front page placement yesterday, A1, Sunday, September 1st.
And of course there is a fair litany of presidential Tweets that are head scratchers. Presidents after leaving office publish memoirs. I've often wondered, since the Tweets are transmitted through the Internet, are they in the public domain? Could an adventurous publisher collect all of them and put out a stocking-stuffer book? I mean, Chairman Mao had his little red book; The Donald can have his utterances memorialized in traditional print.
Aside from recapping the president's greatest gaffes to date, Ms. Lyall rolls out the quotes from the language experts, those with all the right credentials and books to comment on the president's baffling "style."
One such expert, Bryan A. Garner, the author of "Garner's Modern English Usage." goes so far to propose a Federal job that could pay $75,000 a year for someone to be a Presidential Proofreader. Already on Twitter there are those who feel this is waaay too little compensation for having anything to do with the president. (I would think with health insurance, the salary and some other perks, it might just be right.)
Other credentialed names and their curriculum vitae are presented to the court of public opinion to convince us (as if it were needed) that the president might not just be harmful to NATO and the environment, but to the English language as we know it today. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
And Trump is not the only whose gaffes are mentioned. Clinton, George Bush, and of course the famous Dan Quayle spelling of potato as potatoe. Everyone laughed at Christopher Columbus, and that one.
The vice president was also chastised for his mailbox that apparently proclaimed it belonged to "The Quayle's." I forgive anyone who blows the correct way to use an apostrophe, Sure it should just be "The Quayles" but my oldest daughter two years ago sent out her Christmas cards signed "The O' Connor's." (She heard from me, my wife, and her sister.)
But while potato got the biggest laughs I still have to take exception to it being considered wrong that potato can be spelled potatoe. Again, back in the Eisenhower, black and white era, I distinctly remember we were allowed to spell potato potatoe, with that trailing e that everyone laughed at. My wife remembers as well.
And judgment. Does anyone remember when judgment had to be spelled with no e between the g and the m? Now it's either way which doesn't seem fair since I've invested a part of my memory that clings to judgment as being the only correct spelling. 'The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage' agrees with me.
If the president were to never Tweet again, his offering of the 7 letter combination of letters that "spells" Covfefe will be his everlasting legacy. It's equivalent to Orson Wells and the word "Rosebud" in 'Citizen Kane'.
No one knows what the hell he was saying there. My first thought was that he transcribed some lettering from that block of granite, Kryptos, that sits in front of the CIA that has all sorts of characters on it. Code. The challenge being for someone to crack it. Attempts have been made, and cipher experts have gotten close, but then the agency announced the stone cutter made a typo, thus invalidating codebreakers' efforts so far. Imagine: "Not Calais, Normandy" being mixed up by the Allies. Oh boy.
Thoroughbred owners and breeders love a good pun, or a play on words that combines spelling features from the foal's sire, mare and even their sires and mare.
Thus we got American Pharoah,[sic](Trump's not the only one who can't spell) the 2015 winner of the Triple Crown, from Pioneer of the Nile. A list of examples can go on and on.
But say it's 2016 and the mating of the sire Into Mischief with the mare Antics, herself from the sire Unbridled, presented you with a healthy foal that needs a name to be registered with the Jockey Club.
And say President Trumps plays stump-the-world with the offering that Covfefe is a word. Wouldn't it be a hoot to name a horse Covfefe? It sure would be.
Turns out Covfefe is not just any thoroughbred, but a rather good thoroughbred, who had won races at the highest level of competition, Grade 1, not once, but twice, earning $483,300 to date.
The president, always quick to bristle at his critics, tells us in Ms. Lyall's piece, "After having written many best selling books, and somewhat priding myself on my ability to write, it should be noted that the Fake News constantly likes to pour over my tweets looking for a mistake."
Ms. Lyall points out he's dangled a modifier and misspelled a four-letter word, all in the course of a single sentence.
"Written best selling books..." Who is he kidding? A small cadre of writers, copy editors, and proofreaders helped produce anything that came out with his name on it as the author. This troop of people can be referred to as ghost writers, and for good reason. Their names do not appear anywhere near the title.
I can spot the misspelled, or rather misused version of the word pore. As for the "dangling modifier," I'm ls lost as The Donald. If it were a split infinitive, I'd be lost as well.
I just finished the book 'Colon' by Cecelia Watson and wrote about it in the prior posting. One of Ms. Watson's last footnotes related the story of being in Grand Central Terminal, feeling very thirsty and very frustrated from a lengthy conference, and ordering "two gins and tonic" from the bartender before getting on the train to New Haven (to Yale, of course).
This cause puzzlement on the bartender's part, and they needed clarification from Ms. Watson on what her drink order really was. Quite honestly, I would too.
The server offered "two gin and tonics" as the solution to the perceived misspeak.This frustrated Ms. Watson, who eventually got her drink order as she assented and told the bartender, "Sure. The gin is more important to me than the tonic" rather than try and educate the server on the pluralization rule.
This confuses me. Did the server then give her two separate gin and tonics—one for her and one for the assumed person she is probably getting one for as well—or, did she really want a "double" gin and tonic, two pours of the gin with one part tonic, in a single cup? Since her conference was stressful, I go with the "double." And of course gin, since Ms. Watson is British.
President Trump doesn't drink, so there's little chance his drink order will be open to interpretation. But with a "pluralization rule"* on the books, what if he's Tweeting North Korea's Kim Jong-un about missiles? One big one, or two little ones?
Jesus, we're fucked.
*I have no idea what the rule is. Alert reader please help.
http://www.onoff.ramp.blogspot.com
Longtime copy editor here, weighing in on making a compound plural.
ReplyDeleteIf the compound has only one noun, that noun becomes plural: mothers-in-law, rear admirals.
But if the compound contains more than one noun and if the nouns are of equal importance, then the unit is made plural in the way that a single noun would be made plural (typically by adding an "s" to the very end). So "gin and tonics" is correct. (You can see that making the 1st noun plural creates a brief miscue: two gins and one tonic?)