I'm glad I am not the only person who thinks the expression "fiscal cliff" is silly and inaccurate. One American university, the Lake Superior State University, puts it at the top of its 2013 "List of Words to be Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness" (Hmm, an American uni using the label "Queen's English"!). Here's the full list from the site:
http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php
Fiscal cliff
Kick the can down the road
Double down
Job creation/creators
Passion (as in, "that's my passion")/passionate
YOLO ("you only live once")
Spoiler alert
Bucket list
Trending
Superfood
Boneless wings
Guru
-------------------------------------------------
Take this test, and you won't misuse this word-combination ever again!
Read aloud the second line, "men and women between the ages of 18-30". You are not to read it silently. You have to hear yourself say the entire string of words.
Do not go on to the rest of my blog entry until you have actually done so, ie, read that portion out aloud.
Now look carefully at what's below:
How did you do? Did you read aloud "men and women between the ages of 18 TO 30" or "men and women between the ages of 18 AND 30"?
If you had read it as "men and women between the ages of 18 AND 30", give yourself a pat on the back. You are a grammar maven.
Strangely, despite all the years of formal schooling, most people -- including proficient speakers -- will, in speech, use "between xx TO yy" when the correction word-combination is always "between xx AND yy". There is no exception.
In writing, people tend to be more careful. But, even then, the example above, "We are looking for tertiary students between 17 to 24 years old...", is grammatically wrong.
Interestingly, I daresay no one gets it wrong when using this word-combination to refer to people and other "non-numbers", eg:
What's going on between Ah Heng and Ah Hway?
Between the devil and the deep blue sea...
Actually, when numbers/range of figures are being used, simply avoid using "between". So, in both examples above, speak or write them thus (using these variations):
"men and women aged 18 TO 30..."
"men and women from the ages of 18 TO 30..."
"We are looking for tertiary students aged 17 TO 24 years old..."
"We are looking for tertiary students from the ages of 17 TO 24 years..."
------------------------------------------------
In my blog entry yesterday, I forgot to add in this delightful cartoon -- on the prickly topic of durians...
------------------------------------------------------
And I had griped yesterday about how I had difficulty aligning the dials on my sun/moon phase analogue watch in readiness for the New Year. Well, there was this prominently displayed ST page one ad today for an almost similar but much more expensive watch:
Haha, it's out of alignment too! I thought an ad for such a prestigious watch would have had much more impact if -- since the ad appeared today, the second day of the new year (Wednesday, Jan 2, 2013) -- the dials for day, month, date and year were set so as to be up to date. As it were, we know the ad is outdated... the picture was taken in July 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment