Just to prove how crotchety I am, here's another grammar-and-usage pet peeve: the way many people, including radio journalists, confuse "amount" and "number." Do any of the following make you shudder?
A. "There was a good amount of people at the wedding."
B. "I've never seen such a large number of ducks on that pond before."
C. "The amount of natural disasters happening around the world is really frightening."
I hope you selected (A) and (C). "Amount" refers to continuous quantities, like water or oil or money or happiness. For discontinuous, countable quantities, use "number." For example, you can eat a large amount of cake but a large number of cupcakes. You only need a small amount of shoe polish to polish a small number of shoes.
Showing posts with label usage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label usage. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Principle vs. principal and may vs. might
Today I'm going to gripe about two errors in usage I've seen multiple times in the past couple of weeks. The first is failing to distinguish between principal and principle. The principal is the headmaster of the school. Your principal player is the most important member of your team.
A principle, on the other hand, is a fundamental rule, doctrine, or guide for conduct. It should never be used as an adjective. So let's not read any more LA Times stories chiding the Lakers for the way they "abandon well-worn principals," unless they mean someone is leaving graying and exhausted headmasters by the side of the road.
My other complaint is a little more subtle. Many writers don't seem to recognize that the helping verb "may" has a past tense, and that past tense is "might." For example:
He may come to the party.
He said he might come.
If you don't finish your paper, you may flunk the course.
If you hadn't finished your paper, you might have flunked the course.
James thinks Sarah may be the love of his life.
James thought Sarah might be the love of his life.
I think it's the second example where I've been seeing the most errors, both in children's books and in journalism. People write something like, "If Gore had won the election, we may not have become entangled in the Iraq war." NO! We might not have become entangled.
A principle, on the other hand, is a fundamental rule, doctrine, or guide for conduct. It should never be used as an adjective. So let's not read any more LA Times stories chiding the Lakers for the way they "abandon well-worn principals," unless they mean someone is leaving graying and exhausted headmasters by the side of the road.
My other complaint is a little more subtle. Many writers don't seem to recognize that the helping verb "may" has a past tense, and that past tense is "might." For example:
He may come to the party.
He said he might come.
If you don't finish your paper, you may flunk the course.
If you hadn't finished your paper, you might have flunked the course.
James thinks Sarah may be the love of his life.
James thought Sarah might be the love of his life.
I think it's the second example where I've been seeing the most errors, both in children's books and in journalism. People write something like, "If Gore had won the election, we may not have become entangled in the Iraq war." NO! We might not have become entangled.
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