January 2004

This Wonderful World of Words

by Robert C. Cumbow

As Paul Shaffer sings on Letterman (stealing a march from the old Perry Como Show), "Letters, we get letters . . . ." My last column ("Pet Peeves," Bar News, September 2003, p. 35) generated a lot of letters—and even more e-mail—and boy, has it been a learning experience, a reaffirmation of how crazy and wonderful this world of words is.

In response to something I wrote about "the horns of a dilemma," one reader advised me that the Greek "dilemma" is but one of a family of related words: problemma (one tough nut), dilemma (tough choice between two), trilemma (tough choice among three), and polilemma (tough choice among many). Who but the Greeks, with their great philosophers and their worry beads, would have so many precise classifications for problems?

Trying to alert readers that not every noun ending in –er or –or comes from a verb (a mentor doesn't "ment," so there is no such thing as a "mentee"), I went one example too far when I said, "a laser doesn't lase." Evidently it does. "Laser" is a coined word, and its inventor coined both the noun and verb form, which he had every right to do. My apologies — and my thanks — to Raymond Takashi Swenson for the lesson.

My criticism of the term "identity theft" came in for a lot of criticism itself. A few people saw the dark humor in imagining what it would be like if we could truly have our identities stolen; but several wrote to defend the term, saying that the word "identity" in "identity theft" doesn't describe what was stolen, but the means the thief used to steal it. I remain unpersuaded, but I have recently heard a term for this modern form of outrage that I prefer: "ID theft." "ID" stands for "identification," and that, not one's "identity," is what really gets "stolen" in these situations.

One reader argued through several e-mails that I was too hard on people who pronounce "lingerie" as if it were "lawnzheray." (The French pronunciation is closer to "lanzheree.") The upshot of the argument was that we're American, not French, and our particular version of the English language is filled with words that came from other languages and are no longer pronounced the way they once were. I buy that, and I wouldn't object if the accepted American pronunciation of the word were something like "lingeree," with the first two syllables rhyming with "finger." What really bothers me, I finally figured out, thanks to this stimulating e-mail dialogue, was not the mispronunciation, but that it was passed off not as an Anglicization but as the proper French pronunciation. The real French pronunciation of the word apparently didn't sound French enough, so it had to have that "ay" sound transplanted onto it. I think department-store elevator operators did the foul deed. They're a gone breed, but their revenge is still with us.

And they're off and running . . .
My holding forth on the term "track record" evoked two kinds of responses. The first consisted of folks telling me that the phrase can actually mean either what I said it meant (the best performance in a particular event at a particular location) or what most people think it means (one individual's past performance, good or bad). Some people sent me recent dictionary entries in support of this. Of course, dictionaries are good reference resources, and some are better than others, but the vast majority of them are merely codifiers of popular usage. If people are using a word or phrase in a particular way, bang, into the dictionary that usage goes, right or wrong. The only dictionaries that are truly helpful are those that alert us to subtle—and sometimes profound—differences between the various meanings ascribed to a word or phrase, and let us decide for ourselves whether it is worthwhile to preserve an important meaning or distinction, or to adopt a popular new understanding or misunderstanding.

However, one reader provided a source showing that the term "track record" has been used — in the way I criticized — since at least the 1940s. That's made me a little more tolerant of the popular usage. I'm still inclined to stick with the original meaning of "track record," though, because I think we ought to preserve the distinction between a person's "record" (history) of past performance and a true track "record" (achievement).

The second type of mail I received on this point took me to task for citing an incorrect answer to the question, "What's the track record at Emerald Downs for the four-and-a-half furlong?" On this point, I plead extenuating circumstances. It seems that a new track record was set between the time I wrote my column and the time it appeared in Bar News. Moreover, even the Emerald Downs website still had the incorrect information as of the publication of my last column.

Walking the line
Well, on the theory that I shouldn't just recap correspondence provoked by my previous column, but ought to try to give you all something new to worry about, I'd like this time to say a little about balance and agreement. The heart of any kind of writing, and especially of legal writing, is well-balanced sentences — sentences that are easy to follow even when they are complex, because the writer understands the reader's structural expectations.

With apologies to James J. Kilpatrick, I'm going to borrow his approach, provide you with examples of atrocious sentences, and then try to tell you why they're atrocious. Here's one from a recent piece of legal journalism (a genre that, by the way, is an excellent source of howlers): "The man was also ordered to pay $5000 in restitution to Vivendi Universal, a $2000 fine, and received three years of probation."

Now you probably had no difficulty grasping the meaning of the sentence, and the information it sought to convey. But unless you are a very forgiving reader, that last phrase probably sounded like a pistol shot next to your ear. Why? Because your structural expectation was that the third item in the writer's list would be, like the first two, an object of the verb "to pay." Let's go through it:

The sentence begins, "The man was also ordered to pay." Pay what? you ask. The writer is going to tell you. The following phrase is "$5000 in restitution to Vivendi Universal," and if the sentence ended there, it would make perfect sense. But the writer instead gives you a comma, and provides a second element, "a $2000 fine." Now you've recognized the $2000 fine as the second item on a list of items the man was "ordered to pay." But now the gunshot goes off. You read "and," and you're all ready for a third item that the man was ordered to pay. Instead, you get the word "received." Not only not a sum of money, like the $5000 and the $2000, but not even a noun! Suddenly there's a verb to be dealt with, and your fevered brain has to go quickly back and discover the fact that there is a compound predicate here. You were ready for a sentence that would say, "The man was ordered to pay 1, 2, and 3," but instead you get a sentence that means to say, "The man was ordered to pay 1 and 2, and received 3." Where did the writer go wrong?

The writer should have alerted you to the fact that the series of two items following the verb "to pay" is over, and that now a new verb—indicating an additional element of the court's order—is about to follow. How should he have done that? By inserting the word "and" between the two payments. If there'd been an "and" there, you'd have known that the $2000 was the end of the list of payments, and that the order also involved something else. The comma between the $5000 phrase and the $2000 phrase looks like a "serial comma"—so called because we use it to separate the elements in a series. But the important thing about the serial comma is to put the word "and" after the last one, so the reader knows that the next element ends the list.

Here's what the writer should have written: "The man was also ordered to pay $5000 in restitution to Vivendi Universal and a $2000 fine, and received three years of probation." Still not a great sentence, but at least a grammatically correct one, and one that doesn't make its reader take a sudden turn with no warning.

A better solution would be to recast the sentence to put the compound's weight at the end: "The man received three years of probation, and was ordered to pay $5000 in restitution to Vivendi Universal and a $2000 fine."

Running the gamut from G to L
"The case had attracted much attention," wrote Mike McKee in The Recorder this past April 25, "with amici curiae ranging from Attorney General Bill Lockyer and National Association of Consumer Advocates on the plaintiff's side, and the American Association of Health Plans and the California Bankers Association among those on the defense side." The phrase "ranging from" tells us we are being given a "range" of elements, and that range, like all ranges, is defined by its opposite extremes. Having read "ranging from," we naturally expect to find the word "to" somewhere in the remainder of the sentence. In fact, it is our right. But this writer doesn't give it to us. Instead, he connects the "plaintiff's side" and the "defense side" with the word "and," leaving us with the impression that he has, midsentence, completely forgotten that he was describing a range, and has begun instead to fill in a simple list.

So the "and" should have been a "to." But that wouldn't have been enough to save this disastrous sentence. Here we come to another of my pet peeves, the "fake range." Too often, writers seek to describe a "range" that doesn't convey any real information to the reader. The sentence above tells us that the case's amici curiae ranged from Mr. Lockyer and the NACA to the AAHP and the CBA. Have we actually learned anything about the range of amici curiae in the case? Does the range the writer has described include the ACLU? The AARP? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Gerry Spence? We don't know. The writer really hasn't given us a sense of the "range" of the amici curiae at all; he's simply listed who four of those amici curiae were.

The use of fake ranges in the form "everything from ____ to ____" reminds me of Dorothy Parker's famous remark that a 1933 performance by Katherine Hepburn ran "the gamut of emotions from A to B." That comment had meaning, because "A to Z" is a meaningful range—one that includes everything—and "A to B" is a range that includes a whole lot less. But the purported "range" from Mr. Lockyer and the NACA to the AAHP and the CBA defines no real discernible spectrum at all. All the writer wanted to do was to impress us with the diversity of the participating amici curiae, not define a range. He should have said so by using a phrase such as "as varied as" instead of "ranging from."

Digression: Note, by the way, that, in Mrs. Parker's opinion, Hepburn's acting ran the gamut from A to B — not the gauntlet. You often hear "ran the gauntlet from ____ to ____ ," which is incorrect in two ways. First, as I've already noted, a range is a gamut. But secondly, when people speak correctly of something someone runs, they mean the gantlet, not the gauntlet. Running the gantlet was a form of punishment whereby the victim had to run between two rows of individuals, who struck him as he went past. So what's a gauntlet, you ask? A gauntlet was a thick, armored glove, worn by knights in the Middle Ages. When a knight challenged another, he would remove one of his gloves and cast it to the ground in front of the adversary—hence the phrase "throw down the gauntlet." So remember, you throw down the gauntlet, run the gantlet, and run the gamut from A to whatever.

But we're still not done with Mr. McKee's sentence. Notice how he defines the first elements of his purported range as "on the plaintiff's side," but the second ones as "on the defense side." There's nothing grammatically wrong here, but a well-balanced sentence would have weighed "plaintiff's" against "defendant's," not "defense." Moreover, he has encumbered the second element with the extra baggage of "among those." Let's rewrite this sentence, using balance, agreement, and even a little economy:

"The case had attracted much attention, with amici curiae as diverse as Attorney General Bill Lockyer and National Association of Consumer Advocates for the plaintiff, and the American Association of Health Plans and the California Bankers Association for the defense." (By the way, what ever happened to the notion that amici curiae are friends of the court, rather than of the plaintiff or the defendant?1)

A disagreeable disagreement
This is getting a bit long, but let's look at one more sentence. (After all, this has to hold us for another three months.) This one's not from the world of legal reportage, but it's typical of the kind of monstrosity you get when you try too hard to be politically correct: "If you are tasting wine with a professional, ask him or her to speak specifically about the flavors they perceive." (The Seattle Times, April 16, 2003.) Well, the "him or her" isn't grammatically incorrect, though it does make for clunky reading. Still, it's a well-intentioned effort to assure the reader that the writer knows that wine professionals can be either male or female, and certainly doesn't want to exclude anyone. Of course the well-intentioned effort is grounded not in a genuine desire not to offend but in an even more genuine desire to make the writer appear understanding and inoffensive. Thus it calls undue attention to something that any reader would have taken for granted.

But the real atrocity lies before us. Who is this "they" who perceives flavors in the sentence's concluding phrase? It certainly can't be the "professional," the "him," or the "her" we encountered earlier in the sentence, because all of those were singular, and "they" is most definitely plural. In his eagerness to impress the reader with his political correctness, the writer (or, to be charitable, perhaps his editor) ran slam into the problem of compounding the already cumbersome "him or her" with an even clunkier "he or she." But at least that would have agreed with the previous part of the sentence, even if it made for really annoying reading. Instead, we have the sudden appearance of a "they," which by definition refers to multiple persons, while we are in the company of only a single professional.

When all else fails, recast the sentence. There are always other ways to say it. How about this? "If you are tasting wine with a professional, ask the taster to speak specifically about the wine's perceived flavors."

Agreement and balance are crucial in fulfilling the bargain that every writer implicitly makes with readers. Let's work on keeping them in mind when we write.

Robert C. Cumbow is a shareholder with Graham & Dunn, Seattle, where he counsels clients in beverage, food, communications, entertainment, and other businesses on trademark, copyright, advertising, and media law. He teaches at Seattle University Law School, has written widely on law, film, food, and language, and contributes this column quarterly to Bar News.

NOTE
1 In her brilliant parody of judicial journalism, "Supreme Court Roundup," the late New Yorker writer Veronica Geng noted, "The Modern Language Association filed a brief of amicus curiae ('friendly curiosity')." Veronica Geng, Love Trouble (Houghton Mifflin, 1999). The editor tells me he always thought it meant "friends of Don Ameche."

Back to table of contents >>