Sign of the Times: Drive ... Nice?

Bless Miriam K's heart. She took this photo while running a half-marathon in Seattle.

This is one of those tweener grammar issues. You no doubt remember the "Think Different" campaign for Apple. That was legitimate--they were not telling us to think in another way, but rather, to think about what it means to be different. It's a slight difference in construction, but a big difference in meaning. It's much better to be encouraged to think about the world-changing outliers than it is to be told the way you're currently thinking is faulty.

On this one, though, we wish the makers of the sign hadn't flattened the adverb. "Drive nicely" is admittedly stodgy, but "drive nice" doesn't, to us, convey any extra meaning.

We do wish they'd had a typo and written "DRIVE MICE." We've always wanted to saddle up one of those bad boys.

Oh, and if you are interested in learning more about linking verbs, which are legitimately followed by adjectives and not adverbs, click here for some helpful information.

Eggs Over Easy? Or Over Easily?

One of our members just sent in this question:

My optometrist told me he once joked with a breakfast server by ordering his eggs 'over easily,' rather than 'over easy.'

Understandably, spoken language in this setting is casual; however, in theory, is one form more acceptable than the other? Or, is the use of 'easy' in this case automatically recognized as an adverb?

I suspect the preposition 'over' complicates matters and may originate from how eggs were, and continue to be, served over toast.

Some food for thought; no pun intended!

We love questions like this.

Easy is an adverb as well as an adjective, and it means "without difficulty." So in another context, something like "sleep easy" is grammatical (even if some people say it's not).

So is it an adverb or a noun here?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "over easy" is a 79-year-old idiom that works as an adjective. That means it's modifying the noun "eggs." It's in a special class of adjectives the OED calls postmodifiers, which means it's a phrase follows what it modifies, limiting the meaning of the original word.

Here's the definition:

adj.2

Of a fried egg: turned over when almost cooked and fried briefly on the reverse side. Also occas. of other fried foods. Cf. sunny side up at SUNNY adj. 5b(c), once over lightly at ONCE adv., conj., adj., and n. Phrases 11. Chiefly as postmodifier.

1930 Newark (Ohio) Advocate & Amer. Tribune 30 Aug. 4 Mikos, a restaurant owner, received an order for ‘two over easy’. He broke one egg into a pan and it was perfect. But the next egg, on being broken, yielded no yolk. 1945 California Folklore Q. 4 53 ‘Sunny side up’ and ‘Over easy’ are used in many American homes. 1946 Amer. Speech 21 88/2 Over easy, eggs fried lightly on both sides. 1972 J. MITCHELL Barangrill (song) in Compl. Poems & Lyrics (1997) 89 Ah, her mind's on her boyfriend And eggs over easy. 1994 Trav. & Leisure Dec. 67/1 A menu that includes over-easy fried porcupine, deep-boiled ox,..and fried silk worms. 2000 Elle Sept. 79/1 Sarah Jessica slithers into a seat and orders two eggs over easy, bacon and a toasted bagel.

So, the optometrist is being funny by being hypercorrect. But it's the kind of funny that means he probably shouldn't quit his day job.

The Cremation of Your Dreams...

Carey sends along this delightful advertisement:

Things That Make Us Go Hmmmm....

Linking verbs can be tough. There are the easy forms, such as "to be." These verbs link a subject to an adjective, which is why you say, "I am short" instead of "I am shortly." It's also why you say "I feel bad" instead of "I feel badly," unless you are, in fact, talking about your sense of touch.

But there are sometimes subtler cases.

For example, Joan Rivers got all pissy with someone on "Celebrity Apprentice" for saying, "I sat here and acted professional."

"Professionally," Rivers shot back.

Now, to SPOGG, to "act professionally" means to be paid for acting.

One way to see if "act" is a linking verb here is to swap in another adjective. I acted tired. I acted angry. Both of those sound somewhat awkward to us, but preferable to "I acted tiredly," or "I acted angrily." We'd say, "I acted as if I were tired." Actually, we'd be more likely to write that. We'd be more likely to say "I acted like a professional" or "I acted professional."

Therefore, we don't think Joan Rivers is right in issuing this correction. Nor are we a fan of all the plastic surgery, something that is entirely unrelated but must be said. Edit your language, friends, not your faces.

Eat Good?

Susan F. takes no prisoners, at least when it comes to her snacks. She objects to language in a Power Bar ad that reads: "Eat Good. Look Great."

She says, "I wrote a letter, saying that 'Eat Well' would have been a better choice of words and grammatically correct.

After another letter, sent because the rep told me that ads that are slogans don't have to be correct, I finally got two coupons for $1.50 off the bars. The ads have not changed. I gave the coupons away!"

She's putting her money where her mouth is by not putting ungrammatical protein bars in her mouth. Hooray! Though we think the letters were worth more than $1.50. Oh well. It's hard to get rich on grammar, though you can get thin trying.

Something Fishy About This

Pardon the hideous scan, but we couldn't find our scissors. This is a Pepperidge Farm Goldfish bag, scrunched under the lid of our scanner. Note the marketing slogan: Think differently!

Does that sound familiar? It should. It's a ripoff of Apple's "Think Different" campaign that irked so many grammarians way back when.

Here's the thing, though. Apple's campaign is better. While it's true that we use adverbs to modify verbs, applying that rule slavishly here undercuts the inspirational message of the ad.

If you tell someone to "think differently," then you're telling him his current mental mode isn't working. Is that a way to sell a product? We think not, unless insulting your customers is your plan. You can probably get away with this with children, who are used to taking orders from adults all day long. Ah, school. Yet another link between fish and kids.

When you're frying bigger fish, though, telling your customers to "think different" is another matter. Here, "different" works idiomatically, if not strictly grammatically. Let's think of another example along these lines: "Think green." You'd never say "think greenly" if you're encouraging someone to think with an environmental focus. Likewise the "buy local" campaign wouldn't mean the same thing if it read "buy locally." The first means buy produce grown in your area. The second means to buy it at a nearby store, instead of online or through a remote catalog.

Our language is flexible enough that you can communicate a big concept with just two words when you know the idiom. If you ignore this, you might end up saying something you really don't want to say, even if it's perfectly grammatical.

In its defense, Pepperidge Farm really is encouraging its little customers to think about things in different ways--if you click to enlarge the photo, you can see that they've laid out fish silhouettes to spell a name and to make a cello. It's a fine lesson for kids, even if "think creatively" or "think imaginatively" would have been the more direct ways of delivering that message.

Meanwhile, we're sending mental instructions to the marketers to "think semicolon" next time. The sentence "Be open minded, what do you see below?" requires a semicolon where the comma stands.

McCain Said What?

Republican presidential frontrunner John McCain flattened an adverb today, after explaining he'd lose the election if he couldn't get Americans to stay the course in Iraq:

"Let me not put it that stark," the likely GOP nominee told reporters on his campaign bus. "Let me just put it this way: Americans will judge my candidacy first and foremost on how they believe I can lead the country both from our economy and for national security. Obviously, Iraq will play a role in their judgment of my ability to handle national security."

Would that he had said "starkly." That would have sounded much better to our poor tender ears.

Now that the campaigns are thoroughly underway, we'd love it if you'd send along grammar goofs by our leading politicians, their spokespeople, and the journalists who cover them. We can make this a regular feature. Send your finds to info @ spogg.org. Thank you!

The Sort of Thing That Gives Grammar a Bad Name

We received this complaint in our e-mail today. A grammar quiz asked readers which was correct: "I feel bad" or "I feel badly." A reader insists we gave the wrong answer. He writes:

"'I feel badly' is the correct answer, as feel is a verb and requires an adverb."

This is what we wrote in the answer of the quiz. Perhaps he didn't read that far along:

So many people misuse bad and badly that it may seem like nitpicking to point out the distinction in usage. But to feel badly (or awfully for that matter) literally means to touch or handle something in a clumsy fashion. Use badly, an adverb, only to describe an action. Use bad, an adjective, to describe a condition or a passive state of being--such as feeling.

"Adverbs modify verbs" is one of those rules that some people cling to as if life depended on it. But there is a certain type of verb, called the linking verb, that connects a modifier to the subject. The subject is not a verb; it is a noun. What's interesting is that most people get this in other contexts. You don't see anyone having a cow at the expression, "I feel blue." No one would argue we must say "I feel bluely" to be correct. And yet, with "I feel good" and "I feel bad," there are legions of people who insist those usages are barbaric.

They're not. Truly.

Likewise, the fact that there are a few examples of hypercorrection does not prove that all rules of grammar are for rigid ninnies. Just as traffic rules keep us safe on the road (and in some cases, safely on the road), and just as having rules for sports keep the contest interesting, rules of language help us communicate clearly and artistically with each other. Those things are worth protecting. Think of that on March 4!

Not So Fast, Whippersnapper

We found this in the Boston Globe:

Stop sign travesties!
Self-proclaimed "grammar vandal" goes after public mistakes that grate
By Danielle Dreilinger, Globe Correspondent July 15, 2007

The ads said "run easy," but they made Kate McCulley's teeth clench.

The 22-year-old grammarian stared at Reebok's Marathon-themed posters on her commute from Somerville to Fort Point this spring, on her way to her job as a research assistant at a concierge services company. "RUN EASY BOSTON," the ads
announced, inviting locals to . . . do what?

The question began to haunt her.

"Should I run an easy Boston? Should I run, and is Boston a promiscuous city?" she riffed on her travel blog, katesadventures.com. Her conclusion: "Without punctuation, we have nothing."

It didn't help her mood that she was reading "Eats, Shoots & Leaves," the best-selling book about grammar that tickles readers with its gentle wit but hits hard about the sorry state of language usage. Her copy included a packet of punctuation stickers as a do-it-yourself correction kit.

The Reebok sign should have read "run easily," McCulley observed, and it should have had a comma after "easily," before "Boston." (More... )

While we appreciate the zeal, easy can be used as an adverb that means "with ease," and has been used this way since 1400. (We checked in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

There is some widespread misunderstanding out there that all adverbs end in -ly, and anything that ends in -ly is also an adverb. Lolly, lolly, lolly, this just ain't so.

Deathly, as in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is an adjective. So are friendly, ghostly and ghastly. As we've said, "easy" can function as an adverb.

So how is one to know what's correct? The dictionary. We use ours several times a day -- when we encounter unfamiliar words, when we're double-checking usage or pronunciation, or just because it's fun to find new treasures in its pages.

It's too bad no one at the Boston Globe thought of doing this, but hey -- that would have ruined a perfectly good story. Why let the facts do that?

The grammar vandal is correct, though, in demanding a comma after "easy." Run easy, Boston. (As opposed to Run, easy Boston -- this really would mean run, you slutty city.)