Sunday, March 1, 2015

Wrong Word

Dear Readers,
  As you are aware, I often come across the wrong word used either in speech or in writing. Keep reading to see some of the newest ones I have come across.

Example:  In the TV show "Motive," Detectives Flynn and Vega are working to solve a murder.  In the Vancouver P.D. office, their colleague Lucas says to them, "So it occurred to me that we need to re-review the phone records."  *According to the Random House Dictionary, review already means "the process of going over a subject again ..."  His redundancy is redundant.

Example:  During Steve Harvey's daytime talk show, a young man tells Steve about his experience of starting college while living in his car.  Steve asks him why he didn't ask for help.  Colin explains that his parents were going through a divorce at the time and, "it wasn't the most harmonous situation."
*I believe the word he wanted to use was harmonious.  It's clear that going to college while living in a car is an impediment to a good education.

Example:  Daniel James Brown wrote a powerful book entitled The Boys in the Boat.  Generally it was very well written except for a couple of errors.
1.  Brown uses one of my pet peeves that I have already written about [March 2013]:  "That was a whole nother ball of wax." *There is no such word as "nother."
2.  Here he writes, "As many as a hundred thousand people had been expected for the regatta but by midafternoon only perhaps a third of that number had showed up."  *The past participle of the verb "show" is "shown."   If you read his aloud, it sounds like you have a cold.

Example:  On the TV show "Modern Family," Gloria's sister Sonia is visiting from Colombia during the Valentine's weekend and decides to cook dinner for Gloria and her husband Jay.  Jay feels bad so he offers to Sonia the gift he originally bought for his French bulldog, Stella - a necklace with a letter "S" charm.  Sonia is so touched she gives Jay a huge hug.  He turns to the camera and says, "When will I learn?  I'm catnip to sister-in-laws."  *When will the writers learn to check spelling on -in-law plurals.  It's always "sisters-in-law," "brothers-in-law," and "mothers-in-law."

Since I watch and read a lot of crime stories, I often come across the expressions blood spatter and blood splatter.  Which is correct?  According to Grammarist.com, to spatter is to scatter or dash (liquid) in small drops.  The small drops are key.  For example, a light rain might spatter the roof.
Splatter, which came later and was probably formed by blending splash and spatter, has a similar meaning, but it doesn't necessarily involve small drops.  A splatter of liquid might be large and messy.   Think of spatter as a synonym of sprinkle or spit, and splatter as closer to splash.  Still, this conventional distinction notwithstanding, the words are often used interchangeably.  See the following examples:

Example:  One of my favorite TV shows, now off the air, is "Dexter," who is the blood spatter expert for the Miami-Dade police department.  However, in a TV Guide article on the series, it describes him as "the Miami Police Department's blood-splatter expert."

Example:  On TV's "Mike and Molly," when police officer Mike's partner Carl notices the drippings of a chili dog on Mike's uniform, Carl says, "I've seen triple homicides with less splatter."  *Since splatter indicates more of a splashing than a sprinkling, that must have been some chili dog, right?

Example:  On the show "Forever," NYPD detective Jo Martinez brings her medical examiner Dr. Henry Morgan to the scene of a murder.  She says, "No weapons were found, blood splatter was irregular.."  But in another episode, M.E. Dr. Morgan tells a different police inspector, "Look, see the way the blood spatter landed?" *Come on, writers, please make up your mind.

Example:  In two different episodes of TV's "CSI:  Crime Scene Investigation," I heard this:
1. A murder victim was killed in a billiards hall.  While checking it out, CSI Sara Sidle says, "Blood spatter on the table says that this is almost certainly the primary [location]."
2.  CSI's Stokes and Brody are inspecting a convertible car in which sits their latest victim.  Brody points out, "Cast-off and spatter indicate he was killed in the car."  *At least the writers on this show are consistent.

Example:  In C.J. Box's novel Trophy Hunt, he describes the scene of a crime:  "The rock was granite ... It was green except for the spatter of dark blood on its surface."

Example:  Also found in Daniel James Brown's The Boys in the Boat, he writes these two descriptions.
1.  "Light rain head been spattering on the boys' straw hats ..." as the 1936 crew team waited at the opening of the Olympic Games in Berlin.
2.  As the crew members entered the Olympic stadium, he writes, "For the most part, the crowd applauded politely.  Mixed in with the applause, though, was a spattering of whistles and the stomping of feet, the European equivalent of catcalls and boos."   *I'm not sure that spattering is the correct word here since it doesn't deal with liquid.  I think he might have meant to use the word "smattering," which means slight or superficial.  What do you think?


I heard Dennis Prager on KRLA radio explain the misuse and correct use of these two expressions:  heart-rending and gut-wrenching.  Heart-rending is defined by the Random House Dictionary as:  causing or expressing intense grief, anguish or distress.  Gut-wrenching, as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means causing mental or emotional anguish.  Although the definitions are quite similar, the words cannot be interchanged, as in the examples below.

Example:  People magazine, in an article from the January 2015 issue, wrote about a murder that took place in 1985.  "In the 29 years since that heart-wrenching call ..."

Example:  In the novel The Oath by John Lescroart, Brendan Driscoll, an assistant to recently deceased Tim Markham, has been let go by the company.  "The no doubt heart-wrenching departure scene with Driscoll ..." *These first two examples should have read "heart-rending" OR "gut-wrenching," but not a mixture of both.

In these next examples, the correct expression has been used.

Example:  Tracy Smith, of the news show "CBS Sunday Morning," interviewed Charles Spencer, brother of the late Princess Diana.  They discuss the eulogy he gave at his sister's funeral.  Tracy tells us, "Charles said it took him only 90 minutes to scrawl out his heart-rending speech."

Example:  C.J. Box, in his novel Trophy Hunt, writes, "Marie gasped, seemed to hold her breath, then let out a gut-wrenching wail ..."

Example:  I read an article on Brooke Shields's autobiography in another People magazine.  The article quotes her when she had to put her mother, Teri, into an assisted living facility. She writes, "All my frustrations, fear and worry and what little anger I really and rarely possessed melted in abject, gut-wrenching and profound sadness."

 On the lighter side, check out the use of the wrong word in the title of the sequel to the movie "Dumb and Dumber." -  "Dumb and Dumber To."  I laughed so hard, and it obviously achieved exactly what it set out to do.

So, Readers, it may not be heart-rending nor gut-wrenching to see or hear these mistakes, but it does make me take notice, and now you can, too.