lollardfish | The Death List

The Death List

In seventh and eighth grade, my English teacher was Mrs. Venable. She had a list of mistakes called the "Death List," and if you made any of them in your assignment you got, at best, a 59 (an F). In honor of me using effect instead of affect in a syllabus draft, I have decided to re-institute the Death List for all non-formal writing assignments for my students (things graded pass/fail. If they make the mistake, it's fail).

All of them are things that spellcheckers do not catch, and that I see CONSTANTLY in student writing. They must be things that remain valid in modern usage (i.e. First person singular and plural /future/ should be "shall" instead of "will." But that ship has sailed. Similarly, quote is a verb and quotation is a noun, but, quote is now also a noun, damnit!)

I am looking for death list submissions. Here are mine so far (will be updated as I develop them).

On the list:

Your/You're
Their/There/They're
It's/Its
Affect/Effect
Principle/Principal
Ensure/Insure
Who's/Whose
Wear/Where
Led/Lead
Lose/Loose
To/Too

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if you add 1st person to the list, do make a note that this is a History-gaffe only, as in lit careful use of the 1st person is appropriate. (I actually make my srs recite in class "I contend," "I note," "I acknowledge," etc to help break them of the deeply ingrained passive voice that can too easily hide where they stop & the critics they cite begin).

I fight passive voice also, but yeah, I know there's a different standard. For me, it's an issue of confidence. Instead of making strong statements, the students hedge their bets with "I thinks" and "I believe." I work to ween (sp?) them from the first person as younglings, then reintroduce it once they have mastered. If it really is about them, then first person is great. But it rarely is.

oh, no, I entirely understand, and it really is almost entirely absent from historiographical writing. I think students just take lists like this as Truth, which is fine when you're talking about they're/their/there issues, but needs a dab of context when it's a 1st person issue.

(and I swear to god, I'm thinking of instituting Bernie-style -and length- syllabi including the final contract-page. Should I do so I will include a list like this myself).

I can't do such a list on grade assignments. But I can, and will, try it for pass/fail assignments with my survey class. We'll see how it goes.

And yeah. That's why first-person is on the 'maybe' list. Otherwise I shall just have to rant about it. I do like circling every first person, or every passive voice, in a paper with a sharpie. It drives the point home.

Passive voice seems to be the standard for much of science writing. As is a fair amount of the aforementioned "bet hedging". This may be because these stylistic tools help foster the illusion of an objective observer merely recording facts, while simultaneously acknowledging that the conclusions drawn from these facts may be inaccurate or incomplete. Using first person draws an audience's attention to the observer's role in the process, something that one often wishes to avoid in science writing.

Of course, since the written word is a form of communication, what really matters is if the content is conveyed correctly (according to the wishes of the writer); style is a tool used to fine tune this communication. Knowing when to use which of these stylistic tools can be a tricky thing to master. Rather than a list of "do's and don'ts", perhaps a guide that indicates when it is appropriate to use these methods to enhance meaning and clarity would be in order.

(Disclaimer: No active, first persons were harmed in the making of this post.)

Spelling: "wean" (but no matter).

I had a student argue that she should not have lost a point on an assignment for poor spelling and punctuation because she had not been warned that would be counted for evaluation purposes. Then she went on to state that her fiancee's paper had not been docked a point for similar transgressions. I've asked her to stop by and see me after class so I can tell she's made an excellent argument for her fiancee getting docked a point, not getting one herself.

(Sheesh, it's COLLEGE, people! Good writing counts!)

I make one long and passionate speech (I thought it was wean, but was too lazy) per class about how content and style are completely indistinguishable to me in terms of how I grade. It's a lie, of course, but one with some truth to it.

Don't forget "ensure" and "insure". That one drives me nuts.

Good one. Thanks.

Please do not put on your Death List any usage that is approved by whatever dictionary you consider standard; you will confuse your students and turn them into Miss Thistlebottoms. (Reference to Theodore M. Bernstein, Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins: The Careful Writer's Guide to the Taboos, Bugbears and Outmoded Rules of English Usage.

For example, if you use Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged:

Main Entry: in·sure
...
3 : ENSURE 3
intransitive verb : to contract to give insurance : UNDERWRITE; also : to procure or effect insurance
synonym see ENSURE

"insure." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (5 Feb. 2006).

That's fair. It's more the other way - using insure for ensure.

Are you sure you're saying what you mean? Using insure to mean ensure is acceptable to the dictionary; however, one cannot correctly say, for example, "I ensured my house for $300,000"--thus using ensure for insure.

I try to be fair to modern standard usage, even if I hate it.

Loosing points seems fair, failing seems harsh, unless one has lost so many points for their sloppy work that they fail as a direct result.

It's pass/fail. And you have to do, like, 12 of 15 assignments. So there's room to fail a few times.

losing / loosing

(sorry, but that one drives me nuts)

Well, using "insure" to mean "ensure" is not "modern standard usage." Confining the meaning of "insure" to financial contexts (to insure a car, a house, one's health, etc.) is actually the newer usage; in older contexts, "insure" was simply a variant form of "ensure." (My source: the OED, which says, "The form INSURE is properly a mere variant of ensure, and still occasionally appears in all the surviving senses. In general usage, however, it is now limited to the financial sense.")

I fear the misuse of the word "nauseous" is also a ship that has sailed. "Nauseated," means 'feeling nausea.' "Nauseous" means 'inspiring nausea.'

Anyway, I do recommend putting whose/who's on the death list.

Oh, and 'shall' as the proper first person future is, I believe, English usage, not American. I've been told of this distinction by British people, anyway, and never ever heard it done "correctly" by any American who hasn't picked up British idiom.

Hmph on "shall."
Who's/Whose added.

I am not adding who/whom, cause, like, that's hard (until you learn latin and realize it's just an issue of the case, and then it's still hard). But I'd like to!

You should add it. Figuring out what constitutes an object of a preposition is not that tough.

Natalie Harper of esteemed memory (for whom my second child received her fourth name) taught us all to say these things properly or face the mighty wrath of her long-suffering gaze, the slow shake of her head and the wag of her finger. If we could learn it all when distracted by the heedy New England autumns and springs, surely your students can learn it all in the middle of Minnesota!

She was also very strict about using the word 'hopefully' as an adjective instead of using it to replace the words, 'I hope'. "Hopefully, he went to the mailbox."

"Hopefully" (in the sense of 'hopefully, it will be sunny tomorrow') has passed into idiom.

You have to choose your battles.

It's like normalcy (which isn't a word. The word is normality!). Stupid modern usage.

Oh, please. "Normalcy" is a word; the OED traces its use to the mid-1850s. I'll bet that every day you use many words that are newer to the English language.

In fact, the OED's first citation of "normality" in English writing is only eight (8!) years older than the first citations of "normalcy."

I stand (sit) corrected! I was misinformed. ;)

That's the problem. I mean--please believe me!--no disrespect to you as a teacher, but this is exactly how these mistaken ideas about "correct" usage get spread around: instructors (at various levels, grade school through college) who have no expertise in the subject pass on their pet rules and language prejudices to their students, who then pass them on to others, saying "I was taught ..."

If I had my druthers, no one would ever be allowed to instruct others in correct language usage without, at a minimum, consulting the OED on every point. I am so tired of people railing about "misusages" that have been standard in English--written English by educated writers--for hundreds of years.

Oh, I don't know. Can you come up with other examples? And simply because something appears in the OED doesn't necessarily demonstrate "usage." My whole point was that normalcy, which is an odd word certainly, is commonly used and that I don't pick fights with common usage.

No, I meant the problem was that you had been misinformed. Someone told you that "normalcy" isn't a word, or at best is, in your phrasing, "stupid modern usage." Yet it's only a few years newer than "normality," which someone apparently told you was a perfectly fine word.

My pet peeve is serial commas: when people don't use them when they should. I see this in the media constantly, and it drives me bats!

Example: The vendor was selling red, white and blue balloons. I ask you, how many colors of balloons is the vendor selling? Two or three? (One red and one "white and blue"? Or one red, one white, and one blue?) Strictly speaking grammatically, I count two. Common usage these days assumes three. If three, the sentence should read: The vendor was selling red, white, and blue balloons.

I hate it because it is confusing. I can no longer tell from reading the sentence how many colors of balloons the vendor is selling. In this case, I cannot accept "common usage" as an excuse, because it hinders meaning. My Angry Fascist Grammarian persona thinks people who fail to use this correctly, and hence write confusingly, should be flogged. A failing grade may suffice as appeasement, though.

I always use the serial comma in my own writing, for the very reasons you cite, and the publishers for whom I edit and copyedit mandate it, but this is simply not a question of "correct" and "incorrect." It is a matter of style; some styles call for the serial comma, and others (U.S. newspaper style for one) do not.

Given the prevalence of the lack of serial commas in newsprint, I'm sure that you are correct that this is considered a style thing. My point is that it hinders communication, and thus is incorrect -- whether or not some "Rule" (or editor!) says so or not. The point of grammar and punctuation rules is to clarify meaning. My position is that "clarity" trumps "correct" when they clash. I also have no problem with writers who deliberately break the rules in order to make their points. To do that successfully, of course, you must know what the rules are in the first place. I have little patience with careless writers.

Usage issues are also about meaning. Using the wrong word can lead to confusion. Students need to learn the right words to communicate their ideas in the right contexts. By right words, I mean words that are grammatically correct and that also consider the connotative meaning and cultural context-- the "baggage" of words, as it were. "Crusade" is such a word whose meaning extends beyond the strict definition. Dave's responsibility is to teach them what is appropriate style in History writing, and why crusade has the baggage it has.

where/wear (believe it or not)
definately (which Word appears invariably to correct to 'defiantly')
to/too

oh, and
led / lead (as in present tense of the former, not a form of metal)

I think "lead" gets used as a past tense by analogy to "read/read." English spelling and pronunication is ridiculous; I'm amazed that anyone ever learns it well. Is there any other language that has sentences like "The tough coughed as he hid the dough in the slough"? (And maybe you can even work "plough" in there somewhere.)

We use Diana Hacker's Pocket Guide as a reference in our department. I like it: it's small, portable, easy to follow. It has a usage guide that contains many of these problematic words, and an online tutorial for students whose instructors have registered.

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/book.asp?1149000255

Yeah. I like the Hacker guide. I should make them use it.

quote is a verb and quotation is a noun, but, quote is now also a noun,

Well, for rather generous values of "now." According to the OED, "quote" has been used in written English to mean "quotation" since the 1880s.

I see another one. This is definitely one I learned as a middle schooler. Again, though, the OED is the book that encompasses all correct possible meanings. Editors, all the time, tell me that something I have written is correct, but that another usage is preferred.

That last sentence makes it clear that you understand that the opposite of "preferred" is not "incorrect." Unfortunately, not everyone does. One problem is that people conflate grammar, usage, and style.

As I said above -- usage is about meaning. "Correct" usage, according to some style sheet, that does not communicate your meaning well, is more of a problem than incorrect (stupid modern usage) that does convey what you want to say.

I think it is more important to teach students why using the right words is important, rather than just passing on a list of pet peeves. So the death list should have those words that are commonly misused, and thus hinder communication. Then you tell students that the point is about communicating effectively. Misusing the words on the Death List may be less of deal than writing fornications instead of fortifications, but it is the same category of error. Understanding the concept will make the students better writers than just remembering the words on Mr. Perry's death list 20 years later.

Hmmm... so, hey. Put fornications/fortifications on the list, or some other such obviously problematic mistake -- it might drive home the point a little better. Not to mention that a little humor may make the whole thing more memorable.

I guess the more important thing is whether you see anything on the death list that shouldn't be there?

Perhaps capital/capitol? Seems like you've covered the big ones.

I don't see that one. This list is really a reaction to common errors I've seen, rather than possible. But I'll keep my eye open for it and think about it in the future. This is very much an experiment this term.

here/hear

and any incidence of AOLspeke, though for my money that should be a course misconduct and ejection offense.

And yes, I have seen it.

("Loose" drives me nuts. And people have /argued/ that one.)

(as I mark papers)

saying "on the contrary" when they mean "on the other hand"

(or is only my kids who do that?)

i think it's mean to have it's/its on that list. i get those wrong all the damn time. ahem.

however, any use of an apostrophe to signal an oncoming s should cause the student to be beaten about the head and shoulders. i don't know about failing the assignment, but definitely the beating.

and last but not least, you realize that you are now morally required to put wean/ween on the list, yes?

Is ween even a word? I thought it was just my mispelling! :) List is out and done. We'll see if I have the courage to give zeros to people who mess up.

Someone probably already added Two to To/Too. Also, accept/except, moot/mute (this last is usually a pronunciation error. Which leads to the possibility that perfectly valid points are being bound, gagged, and thrown in a broom closet until they are no longer relevant.)

...vectored here by way of Becca's wedding post, btw.

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The Death List

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