I’ve been trying—no, really, I have!—to be less judgmental about typos in print. But inevitably I’ll come across something like this: “Both songs, which are among the catchiest in the KISS cannon, still hold up, particularly the former.”

Now, unless KISS stores its songs in a piece of heavy artillery (which would be pretty much on-brand for these guys), the writer probably meant canon*:

canon noun “The body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art.”

That’s not quite right, though. By definition, a canon must include works by multiple artists, e.g. the heavy metal canon. So I think what the writer actually intended to convey was oeuvre:

oeuvre noun “The works of a writer, painter, or the like, taken as a whole.”

Yes, yes, it’s perhaps a bit much to use a pretentious French loanword when speaking of a band whose bass player wears “demon makeup…breathes fire…and spits out blood.” But then, a grown man actually reviewed a KISS concert in 2021, so….

*To be fair, homophones, which I’ve written about here and, more recently, here, can trip up even the most careful of writers.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

Bidding on a first-edition copy of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations commences in five days. Fewer than a thousand were printed, and it sold out in six months. Christie’s estimates the book, in two volumes, will bring in $80,000 to $120,000 – which, when you think about it, is a pretty paltry sum for “the first major expression of the theory of free trade.”

And in the event you’re interested in purchasing any of 13 vehicles featured in the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road, Lloyd’s will no longer accept offers after 7 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time on September 26th. Don’t worry if you can’t be there to pick up your War Rig or Ratrod Chev: “Nitrous, no-nonsense shipping can be arranged for anywhere in what’s left of the World.”

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Following up on Tuesday’s post, I think a lot of people reflexively use if instead of whether because the latter is homophonous with weather. We already have enough trouble with its and it’s (not to mention medal, meddle, metal, and mettle), and it’s just easier to avoid embarrassment, even if that means being a little less clear.

I get it. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only reason I’m slightly less inclined to make that mistake is that, when I was a kid, I learned that yet another spelling and meaning exists: A wether is a castrated ram.* Which makes weather, wether, and whether multinyms.

*I learned this from, um, castrating rams. Which led to coming up with what 12-year-old me thought was a knee-slappingly hilarious joke: I’d choose the next victim from the pen and announce, “He’s next.” Then I’d grab my trusty elastrator and get to work. After the poor lamb staggered back to the flock in shame, I’d turn to my step-dad and say, “I just predicted the wether!”

Get it? Get it?

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

For nearly all of my professional writing life, part of my job has included editing others’ work. During that time I’ve learned that most people don’t understand capitalization, subscribe to all manner of superstitions around how sentences should begin and end, and generally use far too many words.

Here’s another thing: People are far more likely to write if when they ought to use whether. Paul Brians explains the difference:

“If” is used frequently in casual speech and writing where some others would prefer “whether”: “I wonder if you would be willing to dress up as a giant turnip for the parade?” Revise to “I wonder whether. . . .” “If” can’t really be called an error, but when you are discussing two alternative possibilities, “whether” sounds more polished. (The two possibilities in this example are: 1) you would be willing or 2) you wouldn’t. In sentences using “whether” “or not” is often understood.) Don’t substitute the very different word “whither,” which means “where.”

The way I was taught is that if is conditional, i.e., if X, then Y.

“If I were a rich man,” sings Tevye in Fiddler on The Roof,

I’d build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below
There would be one long staircase just going up
And one even longer coming down
And one more leading nowhere, just for show

See how that works? If he were rich, then he’d blow his money.

But if you’re wondering about the state of Tevye’s finances, you might ask one of his friends, “Do you know whether Tevye is rich?” There are two possibilities, neither of which is conditional: (1) yes, he’s rich, or (2) no, he’s not.

And right about now you’re thinking to yourself, I wonder whether Aaron is this much of a pedant in real life.

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With all the terrible stuff in the news of late—Afghanistan, COVID, the death of Charlie Watts—it’s worth remembering the words of Samwise Gamgee:

It’s like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.

And what could be more worth fighting for than, say, corgi racing?

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“My chief complaint against some practitioners of heavy metal guitar from the early 70s through the early 80s,” writes guitarist and composer Marc Ribot, “is that I can immediately tell their distorted sounds are not really placing their amps at risk. To whatever extent I have a moral sensibility, this offends it.”

Reminds me of one Saturday morning when, thinking I was alone in the office, I figured it was okay to play Earth 2: Special Low-Frequency Version at an appropriately ear-splitting volume. I was about mid-way through “Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine” before I realized CK was, in fact, also in the building. He was somehow under the impression that the refrigerator was dying. The majesty of drone metal apparently eludes him.

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This is your daily reminder that premises, when referring to a tract of land together with its buildings, is already a singular noun. So your home is your premises, not your premise. (The latter is a logical proposition or legal statement.)

While I’m, at it, I should also point out that it’s versus, not verse, when, e.g., you run across something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b42_RVpvVoc

(Because it turns out we get versus from the Latin adversus for against. Either v. or vs. is an acceptable abbreviation.)

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