How Not to Be Annoying

Apparently e-mail is the No. 1 means of annoying your co-workers. Perhaps even more annoying than stealing lunch. "Action News" (a name we love almost as much as we'd love "Inaction News") reports on the many ways one can e-grate.

We couldn't help but notice this word of caution from an etiquette expert:

For Pamela Eyring, the owner and director of the Protocol School of Washington, correct grammar and punctuation--whether it's avoiding the all caps curse or using spell check--is essential.

"When you're doing e-mails, the first thing you have to remember is that your e-mails reflect you," Eyring says. "So that e-mail courtesy is just like writing someone a letter: [You need] correct grammar, spelling and punctuation.

While it isn't scientific proof that bad grammar is annoying to encounter at work, we'll take it. (Read more.)

Congratulations, Mondegreen

Mondegreen has finally made it into the dictionary--a mere 54 years after it first appeared in print.

This comes from the AP story about new additions to Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary.

And then there's "mondegreen." In a category of its own, it describes words mistaken for other words. A mondegreen most often comes from misunderstood phrases or lyrics.

It comes from an old Scottish ballad in which the lyric "laid him on the green" has been confused over time with "Lady Mondegreen."

Among the best-known modern examples: "There's a bathroom on the right" in place of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "There's a bad moon on the rise" and "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy" in place of "kiss the sky" in the 1967 Jimi Hendrix classic "Purple Haze." [NOTE: WE THINK "WRAPPED UP LIKE A DOUCHE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IS FUNNIER THAN THESE EXAMPLES. CAN YOU NOT SAY "DOUCHE" IN A FAMILY PAPER?]

Mondegreen, first spotted in print in 1954, was among tens of thousands of words the wordsmiths watched for decades. That and others make the cut for the dictionary based on how widely they are used in publications ranging from newspapers to technical manuals.

We consider this a good thing, especially because "mondegreen" appears in our forthcoming book, Things That Make Us [Sic], along with a host of other things that might not have made the dictionary, including lolcat (we study the rules of this particular brand of kitty-pidgin).

We reviewed the index this morning; here is a partially marked-up snippet for the "egregious errors" entry:


We hope that makes you want to buy the book. It comes out in October, but you can order it in advance and save 32 percent. (At SPOGG, we are thrifty as well as grammatical.)

Better Than Hunchback

Microsoft's search team is offering to pay people to use their product. We have no objection to that, even if it sounds a wee desperate.

We do not, however, like the word "cashback."

Cash back is TWO words. Did they disable their spell-check? The only "cashback" we know is a pink piggy bank with a slit on his spine. We wouldn't object to being stuffed with money, but it would be so hard to reach back there that it couldn't possibly be worth the special post-surgery wardrobe.

In any case, this is the second time Microsoft has been stingy with the space bar. Remember when MSN was more useful "everyday"? Goodtimes. Forsure.

Beware Oniontown

We have a small quibble:

DOVER, N.Y. -- Two teenagers who drove to Oniontown after a series of YouTube videos portrayed the hamlet as a run-down, backwoods dump were pelted with rocks by an angry group of young residents, authorities said.

The two 17-year-olds from Mahopac, about 30 miles south of Oniontown, suffered head and face injuries.

Troopers arrested a 17-year-old from Oniontown on Thursday and charged him with criminal mischief. Additional arrests were expected, police said.

State police investigator Eric Schaefer said it wasn't the first time out-of-towners were attacked by local residents.

"The biggest recommendation at this point is for everybody to stay out of there," Schaefer said. "Anybody that doesn't belong there, anybody that's not a resident, just stay out of Oniontown."

No, we're not going to make fun of Oniontown. We don't want anyone throwing rocks at us. Though, it does seem a bit run-down and backward to pelt outsiders with rocks. If you want to prove your sophistication, you should throw purebred cats, or maybe designer cheese. But that's not why we posted this.

Rather, we wanted the sheriff to know he should say "who" instead of "that" when he's talking about people. Even if they don't have a fancy Oniontown address, they're still people.

Our Patriotic Duty

We felt it imperative to point out a missing apostrophe on the home page of our local paper's Web site.

We're out of sorts. Not were.

That said, a movie about the Founding Fathers being werewolves could be really cool. They didn't just want democracy; they wanted freedom from the King and his endless supply of silver bullets. Aroooo!

Anyway, we feel better having called this apostrophe catastrophe to your attention. This is ever so much more useful than wearing a flag pin, however attractive those might be.

Independently yours,

SPOGG

Some Things Are Self-Explanatory

If they cook as well as they spell, we understand why things didn't go their way.

Thanks to Charles D. for the contribution.

What's Worse Than a Typo?

A typo that's several feet tall:

Thanks to James for the photo.

Has Modern Life Killed the Semicolon

Reta sends in this fascinating piece from Slate on the semicolon, its history, and its questionable present:

Has modern life killed the semicolon?
By Paul Collins
Posted Friday, June 20, 2008, at 4:51 PM ET

When the Times of London reported in 1837 on two University of Paris law profs dueling with swords, the dispute wasn't over the fine points of the Napoleonic Code. It was over the point-virgule: the semicolon. "The one who contended that the passage in question ought to be concluded by a semicolon was wounded in the arm," noted the Times. "His adversary maintained that it should be a colon."

French passions over the semicolon are running high once again. An April Fool's hoax this year by the online publication Rue89 claimed that the Nicolas Sarkozy government planned to demand "at least three semicolons per page in official administrative documents." Parliamentarian Benoist Apparu was in on the joke—"The disappearance of the semicolon in Eastern France is absolutely dramatic," he gamely proclaimed—and linguist Alain Rey (barely) kept a straight face for a video calling Frenchmen to arms.

Read more...

The semicolon is hardly dead. Though it appears more commonly as part of a wink than as a punctuation mark that links two related sentences, how many other punctuation marks have merited articles in the New York Times, Slate, Rue89 and Encarta? ;-)

Mark our words. It will enjoy a comeback even better than the one John Travolta made in "Pulp Fiction." We just need to find the punctuation equivalent of Uma Thurman so that the two may dance.

A Freudian Slip?

This comes from the BBC by way of a loyal reader in the Midwest:

Mr Berlusconi has faced corruption charges in the courts for many years but has always protested his innocence.

[Wethinks he doth protest too much here. The word the reporter meant was probably "maintained." English. It's tricky, even if you are English.] <--- Pretend we never typed that.

This just in! Barry L., who never misses a thing, reminds us that protest has additional definitions.

Here is No. 4, from Encarta's dictionary: 4. transitive and intransitive verb say firmly that something is true: to state or affirm something in strong or formal terms
He continued to protest his innocence.

The Trouble with Spell-Check

We've written before about a 1990s-era spell-checker recommending "Sodomy Hussy" as an alternative to Saddam Hussein.

Now, apparently, Hotmail recommends "Osama" as an alternative to "Obama." Sigh...We hope by now that people know not to accept all suggestions the software makes. It's software; you have a much more discerning brain.

The real reason we're posting this, though, is the hideous mixed metaphor below. Opening a can of worms the Obama campaign wants to stamp out? Since when does stamping get rid of worms? That's a fine way to make worm pudding on the sidewalk, which is just gross. We'd much rather eat stud pie. (See below. And, sorry for that.)

Hotmail spell-check associates Obama with Osama
HOTMAIL GLITCH Dictionary offers 'Osama' as alternate word
June 15, 2008

BY BOB VON STERNBERG Minneapolis Star Tribune

For months, Barack Obama's campaign has repeatedly, and not always successfully, tried to swat away references to Barack "Osama," the mutating of the candidate's name into the similar-sounding moniker of the world's most-wanted terrorist.

Some of the mix-ups have been made accidentally (as when Sen. Ted Kennedy did it). Some have been made maliciously by Obama's critics (as when Rush Limbaugh did it).

One mix-up, with potentially vast effect, apparently belongs to the unintentional category and gained wide currency this week: The spell-checker in Microsoft's Hotmail e-mail software recommends that users replace the word "Obama" with "Osama."

The glitch, which a Microsoft spokeswoman said the company is trying to fix, was brought to light this week by Minnesota political adman Bill Hillsman, who said the e-mail wrinkle "opens a whole can of worms again that the Obama campaign desperately wants to stamp out."