Vote for Your Favorite Portmanteau

We apologize in advance for the length of this list. How were we to know portmanteaus would be so very popular? We apologize, too, for some of the gross words. Believe us, there were worse.

The winner gets something from the SPOGG shop or a signed copy of our forthcoming book, Things That Make Us [Sic]. Wuhoo!

Please check the post above to see the definitions of the words in the contest. Thank you for playing! (And don't forget to scroll to the bottom of the list.)

Facebook Grammar

Facebook rejects advertisements it decides are ungrammatical or incorrectly punctuated.

The people who developed that software should pick a fight with the people who write the display copy for the site. We just found this:

Somebody has just compared you to its other friends.

Its other friends? We get that they wanted to avoid somebody+a plural. But "its" isn't right, either. If such a thing is possible, it's probably even more incorrect, even though anybody--and, presumably anything--can get a Facebook account these days.

There are several ways to write around this.

One of your friends has compared you to others.
You've been compared to others.
How do you compare to others? Find out!

Even "somebody has just compared you to their friends" is better than what they've got. How does this happen? It's madness, we say. Madness!

Unbelievable

This is from NBC's Olympic coverage. Really. It officially counts as the WORST bit of writing we've ever seen on a professional news site. Thanks to Danielle B. for sending it:

It seemed she wuz robbed, China's He Kexin geting the gold, Liukin left with silver. China's Yang Yilin got the bronze, the bars results adding to the host nation's sensational gymnastics performance at these Games -- the great haul of China.

Wuz Liukin robbed?

Read more here...

The first sentence isn't even a proper sentence. It's a big, ugly run-on.

And then there's the use of "wuz." Twice!

We simply do not understand this. Unless you're 5 years old and just learning to read, "was" is not a difficult word to pronounce. So it's of no service to the reader. From the writer's perspective, "wuz" doesn't save any letters, so it's not an easier word to type.

In short, it's just idiotic. It's like certain inane fashion trends--floating trucker hats, pants that hang down below the bum, belly shirts on people who have no business baring that band of flesh..... Oy!

We can only conclude this meant to say "Look at me! Look at me! Aren't I happening?" But it really says "I am trying so hard to be cool that I look foolish."

Alan Abrahamson, the writer, deserves to be banned from journalism for writing like an idiot instead of the professional correspondent fans of the Olympics truly deserve.

Foster Care? This Sounds Criminal

Bad-taste warning. Click away if you're feeling prim.

Here's a headline from the Seattle Times:

11-year-old who once hopped plane, 3 brothers in foster care

It was bad that he hopped aboard a plane. But as far as we know, he never climbed atop his brothers, no matter how bad this headline sounds.

A better headline would have read:

Plane-hopping 11-year-old, brothers in foster care

Grammar Advice for the School Year

Karen S. sends this along (the original author is unknown, but we'll give credit where it's due if someone speaks up):

1. Verbs HAS to agree with thei r subjects.
2. Prepositions ar e not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually)
unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used unless you don't want to seem too formal.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not always apropos.
13. Do not use more words, phrases, sentences, or other linguistic elements than you, yourself, actually really and definitely need to use or employ when expressing yourself or otherwise giving voice to what you may or may not be thinking when you are trying to say how many words you should use or not use when using words.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, i.e. etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill excessive exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others elude to them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate distracting quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have once remarked, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
And finally…
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

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.

That's One Angry Judge

Look! People do judge you for bad spelling and grammar at work. Apparently, it's worse when a judge is judging:

Angry judge has a spelling fit
Monday, August 11, 2008

A judge has labelled a prosecution worker an 'illiterate idiot' after spotting a spelling mistake.

Judge David Paget looked with disgust at an indictment accusing a man of assaults, including attempted 'greivous' bodily harm.

He fumed: 'The word grievous has been mis-spelt four times.'

Reading on, he said that another charge accused the defendant of using an offensive weapon, 'namely axe', instead of 'an axe'.

Note: in England, where this story originates, some past-tense verbs are "spelt" with a T on the end. In American English, you're more likely to see that spelled as "misspelled." Same goes with words like "labeled" and "traveled." These will have two Ls in the U.K., but generally only have one here.

Punctuation, It Has an Accent?

Dana D. sent this in, noting the extra comma after "evolved." Is it possible this is, how you say, Russian cat?

Things That Make Us [Sic]

In just a couple of months, St. Martin's Press will publish Things That Make Us [Sic]: The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar Takes on Hollywood, the White House, Madison Avenue & the World.

There are now nearly 9,000 members of SPOGG worldwide, and the book owes much to all you loyal readers with your sharp eyes and even sharper senses of humor.

The book's official Web site is finally live (see it here). We're proud to be running a contest for copy editors in memory of our friend, Steve Higgins, a copy editor and bon vivant of the finest sort. The prize is a good one--an Amazon Kindle. So if you know any professional editors, do pass along word.

You can buy the book in advance of publication at Amazon.com for a mere $13.57. We'll have more updates occasionally as the date draws closer (and as we find the stomach for marketing--not the best part of the job).

Thanks, members of SPOGG. This book is most definitely for you.

Read Our Ellipse

Here's a delightful new book by Craig Conley: Annotated Ellipses.

In it, he takes a page from "The Wind Bloweth," a ellipse-filled novel by Donn Byrne, and he explains the hidden story behind all those daffy dots. It's so creative, so funny, and so completely Craig, who also wrote a dictionary of one-letter words and a field guide to identifying unicorns by sound (really!).

We love it!