Word Worries

If you are a regular reader, let me just get this out of the way right off the bat—as much as I wish they didn’t, writing errors make their way into the paper pretty much every week.  Now, I’d suggest that the same is true of almost every newspaper, magazine, and even full book out on the market, but that isn’t really an excuse.  Neither is the onerous task of proof-reading around 12,000 words a week, many of which are names that only exist for one person (which is often the point, of course).  So, I freely admit that things get past me, and I don’t think there’s any shame in it—it happens.

The reason I bring it up is because I’d like to bring an occasional column to the paper, and it will require you to have some faith in me as a writer.  I’d like to write a column wherein I talk about some of the things people have questions about with writing.  I’ve worked with thousands of students over a couple of decades teaching English, tutoring, editing, and writing.  And one thing that is almost universal in my experience is anxiety about writing.  Fear of public speaking is consistently listed as one of people’s top fears, but in my experience, people face just as much anxiety about writing.  While maybe it doesn’t provoke the same kinds of physical symptoms as talking to a crowd does, sending your writing out into the world for other people certainly seems to cause a lot of anxiety.  

A lot of the issues and questions people have are common among people of all ages and backgrounds, and I’d like to put some of my experience to work and hopefully ease some anxieties, or at least explain a few mysteries.  So if you’ll indulge me, I’ll try to tackle a grammar issue, a word problem, and a punctuation puzzle.

Who or Whom?

One of the most common (but ultimately harmless) confusions revolves around the set of words “who” and “whom”.  A very common belief is that “who” is the regular, everyday word, while “whom” is reserved for fancy occasions like the china handed down from grandma, or uncomfortable church shoes.  Well, you might be happy to know that such an idea is absolutely, 100 percent, entirely wrong!  

Who and whom are both types of words called pronouns, which of course we’re all familiar with these days for unrelated reasons.  Pronouns allow the writer or speaker to refer to a noun without the need to repeat the same noun over and over.  They also have one other feature, which is that they come come in a number of different forms that help explain the noun to the rest of the sentence.  For instance, “myself” is an example of a “reflexive pronoun.”  It redirects the action of the verb of a sentence back to the speaker/writer of the sentence.

In the case of “who,” its form is that of a “subject pronoun.”  It is a pronoun that can stand as the subject of a sentence.  “Who is here?”  is a complete sentence, where “who” is the subject, and “is” is the main verb.  (“Here” is an adverb in this case, but that’s for another day.) One way you can test this is to change the question into a sentence, and replace the pronoun with the correct noun.  For instance, “He is here.”  “He,” like “who,” is the subject pronoun.  

On the other hand, “whom” is what’s called an “object pronoun.”  It can never be the subject of a sentence.  It can only receive action, not initiate it.  You cannot say “Him is here.”  By the same token, you cannot ask “Whom is here?”  

Object pronouns usually follow words called prepositions, such as “to, in, for, at, with, of, on, by” etc.  The most common way to use “whom” is to clarify just such a preposition, for example: “I know I should give this to someone, but to whom?”  It works the same way as the subject pronoun “him.”  

There, clear as mud, right?

The Penultimate Question      

Another example of assuming that something is different because it’s “fancy” is the word “penultimate.”  Because it’s longer and stranger than, say, “ultimate” it does seem like it might just be something like a leveled up form of that word.  But it’s actually a case where the prefix determines most of the meaning.

The main part of any word is referred to as the “root,” for obvious reasons.  Something attached at the front is a “prefix” and at the back a “suffix.”  The root word of “penultimate” is “ultimate.”  Ultimate is derived from a Latin word (the verb “ultimare”), which means “to come to an end.”  We often think of ultimate as having something to do with  quality, but it actually has to do with sequence.  So, a phrase like “the ultimate dessert” really just means “the last dessert”. Over time, our brains have filled it in to imply "the last dessert you'll ever need."

In the case of “penultimate,” the “pen” part comes from another Latin word (“paene”) that means “next to” or “second to.”  It’s the same word part as in “peninsula,” which literally means “almost an island,” or “Pennsylvania,” which is named for William Penn, but also means “next to the forest.” So "penultimate" precisely means "second to last."

In any case, using “penultimate” to mean “really, really, great!” is wrong in both parts of the word.  For whatever reason, it’s been cropping up a lot and I thought I’d give you a fun word to harass people about when they misuse it.

Octowhat?

If you want to be insufferably precise, this thing many of us use on a daily basis is called an octothorpe: #.  The “octo” is from the eight points, of course, and the “Thorpe”?...Well, no one knows for sure.  As a sign, it’s only really been in use for about fifty five years, having been used by Bell labs on early touch tone phones.  One folk etymology suggests that the person who named it was a fan of the athlete Jim Thorpe.  It makes as much sense as anything else,
I suppose.  

The symbol is mostly used in mathematics, social media, and programming, but it does have a name, by golly!

Thanks for indulging me, and send any questions you might have to [email protected] with ATTN WORD WORRIES in the Subject line, as I am the one to whom you will ultimately be sending it.  #happythanksgiving