Canadian Spelling

As Winston Smith said with unconscious irony, the best books are those that tell you what you know already, and the same goes for opinion pieces in the Globe and Mail, such as this one by Galadriel Watson, “At the ‘center’ of a controversy: a defence of Canadian spelling”.

Like her, I’ve inwardly railed at “Health Center”and similar signs. “Centre”, apart from the fact that it’s spelled that way everywhere else in the English-speaking world, made etymological sense. Why should Noah Webster change it on a whim? Besides, the spelling is the same in French, and better suited to Canada.

The article covers other Canadian spellings which have survived the American influence, such as the “-our” words like colour, the “ll” words like counsellor and traveller, and the verb-noun distinction in practice(n)” and “practise(v) and licence(n) and license(v). The author is concerned that our schools do not always promote Canadian spelling.

[E]ducational settings must be careful – including a child-care facility being built by the school district itself. A habit set in childhood is a habit set for life. My own daughter, as she was about to graduate high school, wrote an essay using “practice” as a verb. I tried to persuade her to change it to “practise.” She declined. She said that spelling it like that would be weird.That’s the point. If becoming Americanized makes us “normal,” I’m all for being weird.

On word that didn’t survive the American influence is “aluminium”, which is, of course, the original Latin. One story has it that current spelling results from the carelessness of an early American typesetter. Fortunately, his negligence didn’t leave us with “sodum”, “potassum”, “barum”, etc.

And now for the most pernicious American influence of all — on the punctuation of quoted words. You will notice how, in the previous paragraph, for example, the quotation marks do not include the comma, for the comma is not part of the quotation. That is how the rest of the English-speaking world, and the Oxford Canadian English Dictionary, would punctuate it. It’s also how the person in the street would do it, because it’s common sense. But look at the quotation from the Globe and Mail, which, like other Canadian newspapers, continues to do it the American way. This malpractice, too, is said to have resulted from the act of an early typesetter who thought it looked neater if the comma or period were tucked inside the quotation marks. So much for tradition and meaning and common sense!

I will conclude with the last sentence from that quotation, correctly punctuated!

If becoming Americanized makes us “normal”,  I’m all for being weird.

For more articles, see Table of Contents.

Flush

I’ve railed a lot against ugly words like “fulsome” and “behaviours” and “precarity” and “incentivize”, so perhaps it’s time to share some of my favourites. To my mind, the best words have a sound about them that evokes their meaning. They are onomatopoeic, or what I call pseudo-onomatopoeic. The word “crag” is an example of the latter. But recently, in a loo in North Saanich, I came upon a truly beautiful onomatopoeic word:

Flush

Say it, and feel the tongue moving around your mouth. Four distinct sounds which perfectly convey the process of flushing.

It wasn’t always like this. I remember “pulling the chain” in the old lav back in Perth where the water was stored in a concrete trough above the seat. A chain descended from a lever which released the valve at the bottom of the trough, whereupon the water gushed down a pipe into the bowl, carrying all before it. No sophistication. No meaningful swirl around the bowl. Just a torrent of water. It was effective too. No floaters reappeared. But it could be finicky, not always engaging on the first pull. I can hear it now. You always knew when someone was in the lav.

Clank, clank, clank, gush!

For it wasn’t a flush at all. More of a gush of water down into the bowl. In fact, I don’t think we ever flushed the toilet. “Don’t forget to pull the chain,” my mother would say. 

But back in North Saanich the other day, it was a flush. F-l-u-sh. The water issued forth, swirled around and around, and disappeared with something between a cough, a splutter and a sigh.

Flush. What a beautiful word!

For more about lavs see Dunnies, or consult the Table of Contents.

The Old Man and the Leaf-Blower

I saw a solitary leaf 

Blown across the lawn,

I gazed in disbelief,

Just one! Its fellow leaves forlorn

A mottled heap across the way,

A mouldering mass, already in decay.

Back and forth it flew, in vain. 

The victim of an owner’s scorn.

There was no way it could remain

A blemish on a pristine lawn.

Up and down in hot pursuit came Stihl, 

A blast from hell, snarling, roaring like Smaug, 

Farting foul fumes, pollutants worse by far,

Three-hundred-fold, than a gas-guzzling car.

And in a humbler part of town, 

Across the street from me, an old man stoops,

Battling the leaves as well, employing not

The devil’s tool, but from another age

An implement almost as old as time

Itself, that serves its master well — a rake.

The one, a sad reminder of our former state,

The other, foul and potent symbol of our fate.

(These Satanic machines are permitted to operate in a city which several years ago considered suing Alberta oil and gas companies for their contribution to climate change. For other topics, see Table of Contents.)

Comprises or Comprised of

This is not going down well on the left of the Democratic Party, which is clustered in cities and increasingly comprised of the well-educated. (Globe and Mail, 14/10/21)

Spare a thought for Wikipedia editor Bryan Henderson, who would have had a minor apoplectic fit on reading the sentence above. He detested the phrase “is comprised of” so much that he dedicated much of his life to removing it from the dictionary, replacing it 47,000 times with the simple verb “comprises”. He would have corrected the Globe as follows:

The Democratic Party increasingly comprises the well educated.

Surely, his Sisyphean effort deserves our support. Why? It’s shorter. It’s active rather than passive. It is also logical, etymologically, coming from the old French comprehendre, via the feminine past participle, comprise. And it’s the preferred usage of style guides.

A whole comprises its parts. “Comprise” functions grammatically in the same way as “include”. However, after “comprise” all the parts making up the whole are named, while after “include” only some need be mentioned. “The set comprises 12 volumes; the 12-volume set includes an index.” (Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage)

A few days later, the Globe gave us another disputed usage of the verb. Here the subject and object of the verb “comprise” are reversed.

In the oil and gas sector around the world, women comprise 27 per cent of positions that require a college education, 25 per cent of mid-level positions and only 17 per cent of positions of leadership, according to the report. (Globe and Mail, 17/10/21)

No, Women constitute (or make up) 27 per cent of positions that require a college education.

Two days later, the verb crops up in the Globe again, this time used "correctly".

The Rogers Control Trust, which, along with other family holding companies it controls, owns 97.5 per cent of the company’s voting Class A shares, is overseen by an advisory committee comprising 10 people. (Globe and Mail, 19/10/21)

For more topics, see the Table of Contents.

The Missing Apostrophe

All hail to thee, apostrophe. Prithee,

Why dost thou stray from where thou dost belong

Within a word considered rather long,

Where once, it seems, a  letter used to be?

Or from thy cherished spot before the S

To show a noun in the possessive case?

Forsooth, stray not, poor mite, but know thy place

Within the lexicon. Do not transgress!

Certes, ‘tis true, when there is more than one,

After the S thou findest thee a gig,

But never on a verb, that’s infra dig,

A solecism grave, that thou must shun.

Of all the marks of punctuat-i-un

Thou causest the most grief, to all and sun’.

The omission of an apostrophe in a Facebook post is likely to prove expensive for an Australian real estate agent, according to a ruling by a New South Wales judge. More on that later.

There are many apostrophe errors. Like the Oxford Comma, one even has a name: the Greengrocer’s Apostrophe, the apostrophe applied erroneously in front of an “s” indicating a plural, not possession, as in 

ORANGE’S  $2.29 a lb.

You don’t find many greengrocers these days, but the error is widespread. 

Other apostrophe errors can be named as well.

Pupils who listened to their teacher saying "put the apostrophe in front of the 's'", but missed the rest of the lesson, will put the apostrophe in front of every "s", as in the greengrocer's apostrophe error, or even worse, in the present tense of a third person singular verb, to commit the Verb Apostrophe Error.

The snail crawl's across the room.

The Cottage Sign Apostrophe Error is common in cottage country, where proud owners have erected a sign in front of their cabin, such as

SMITH’S HAVEN

when in fact the dwelling belongs to more than one Smith.

Then there’s the Boy’s Gym Error, which I have observed in schools, where a large facility is frequented by only one person, or the official perhaps has corrected this error, and now always places the apostrophe after an “s” with plural nouns to commit the Mens' Washroom Error. Unfortunately, if the unfortunate official is forced to correct his Mens’ Washroom error then he may go further and come up with Ladie’s Washroom.

The Boy's Gym error is ubiquitous. Many an institution is limited to having only one member. For short time, in the seventies, I was the only teacher in the Manitoba Teacher's Society.

In the Possessive It’s Error, the writer has forgotten that only as a contraction does “its” require an apostrophe, as in “It’s a nice day”, but not as a possessive, as in “The dog sat on its tail.” Possessive pronouns don’t have apostrophes, except in the King James Bible in the Sermon on the Mount. 

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.

Now the unfortunate official, and others who have not had the benefit of a solid grounding in the correct use of apostrophes, might be tempted to leave them out altogether. After all, it’s usually good advice: if you don’t know what you’re doing, do nothing. But not in the case of a foolish Australian realtor who in a post on Facebook accused his competitor of cheating his employee, or was it his employees?

Late on 22 October last year, Anthony Zadravic posted that another real estate agent was “selling multi million $ (sic) homes in Pearl Beach but can’t pay his employees superannuation” (Guardian, October 10, 2021).

In the absence of an apostrophe before the “s” to indicate a singular employee, a judge concluded that the Facebook accusation suggested that the practice of withholding contributions to the employees' superannuation funds was widespread, and refused to dismiss the case. Even if the damages awarded were minimal, the court costs were likely to be at least $160,000. 

I feel a bit sorry for the poor fellow. What provoked this folly? Had his rival called him a horse’s arse, with the apostrophe in the right place? And surely the post in question was more likely to do damage to the reputation of the writer than the rival. 

For more on these punctuation errors, and to see other posts, consult the Table of Contents.

 

The Endangered Adverb

“Breathe easily,” I said to the sign erected by an institution that cared not for the adverb. But the battle was lost 48 years ago in the ParticipACTION campaign which shamed us all into getting fit by equating the health of a 60-year-old Swede with a 30-year-old Canadian. And the slogan for this campaign?

Breathe Easier

It rankled us at the time. I was horrified. Here was I trying to teach grammar and the Federal Government was promoting this error. Was it not possible to use the comparative form of the adverb? Didn’t the government care about the grammatical health of the nation!  “Breathe more easily,” they might have said, and given comfort to beleaguered adverbs everywhere, already on the endangered parts-of-speech list.

Now the adverb is threatened more than ever before. Act responsible! Eat healthy! Shine brighter! Book easier, travel happier! But some of us refuse to give up. My friend Paul has a driving manual on his desk, entitled, “Drive Smart”, on the cover of which he has inked in the “ly”. 

That Ugly Word Again

 And the Vancouver School Board said in a statement that the new curriculum mandates “an inclusive model of education,” so “all students will be able to participate in the curriculum fulsomely”. (Globe and Mail, 16 June, 2021)

In these words, the school board attempted to justify their cutting of programs for gifted children. Anyone who speaks like that does not inspire confidence in the claim he is making, does he? Full of jargon, it’s the kind of vague and general answer a politician gives to a specific question. But especially loathsome is the use of the word “fulsomely”.

The adjective “fulsome” instead of “full” is ugly enough, but the use of the adverb instead of “fully” is even worse. As an adjective, in a cliché like “fulsome praise”, for example, the words might have slipped out from the speaker’s ready vocabulary of hackneyed phrases, but the adverb on its own must have been deliberately chosen. Why?

There are many reasons never to use the word in any form.

It is used frequently by politicians and others who are trying to impress.

It is confusing. Is it being used in its commonly misused sense of “full” or its original meaning of “excessive” or “cloying”?

It is not plain language. Its use is disrespectful to an audience hoping for clear answers.

To delve more fulsomely into the misuse of this festering sore of a word, but at your own risk, see A Fulsome Consultation.