Editor's Corner

Good morning! I heard a new term (new to me, anyway) that piqued my interest: ghost words. Since Halloween is just around the corner, this seems like the perfect time to share what I learned!

My first thought was that ghost words must be something eerie, unearthly, or maybe just vague. I was a little off-track, but I think you’ll be interested in what they actually are.

Ghost words are words that are formed by error. They are misreadings, mispronunciations, typos, transcription errors, etc. They occur because someone made a mistake, and the incorrect word was entered into a dictionary or other reference (if only for a short time). Interestingly, some ghost words made it into the dictionary, stayed there, and are still used today.

One word that is mentioned repeatedly in articles about ghost words is dord. The Online Etymology Dictionary provides this description:

dord

1934, a ghost word printed in "Webster’s New International Dictionary" and defined as a noun used by physicists and chemists, meaning "density." In sorting out and separating abbreviations from words in preparing the dictionary’s second edition, a card marked "D or d" meaning "density" somehow migrated from the "abbreviations" stack to the "words" stack. The "D or d" entry ended up being typeset as a word, dord, and defined as a synonym for density. The mistake was discovered in 1939.

Following is an alphabetized list of other ghost words and a little information about each one (I found the list on the Grammar Girl website, but I shortened the lengthy descriptions so you’d have time to get your actual work done).

abacot
This word is a misprint of “bycoket,” a kind of cap or head-dress. It appeared in reference books for approximately 300 years before the error was discovered by James Murray, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

derring-do
Chaucer wrote “in durring don that longeth to a knight” meaning “in daring to do what is proper for a knight.” The phrase was misprinted in a later work by John Lydgate as “derrynge do,” and then taken by Edmund Spenser to mean “brave actions” or “manhood and chevalrie.” Sir Walter Scott used it in Ivanhoe in the manner of Spencer, using the spelling we use today, writing, “if there be two who can do a deed of such derring-do!”

esquivalience
This word was invented purposefully by an editor at the New Oxford American Dictionary and included in the 2001 edition to help the company track copyright violators who were lifting entries from the dictionary. If the made-up word appeared in another dictionary, it would be clear that it had been copied from the New Oxford American Dictionary.

foupe
Multiple sources say that Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary had the word “foupe” when it should have been “soupe” (another word for “swoop”) because the archaic long “s” so closely resembled the letter “f.”

gravy

Gravy became a word because a 14th century translator misread a French cookbook. The word was originally spelled with an “n”: “grane” (also sometimes spelled “graine”), and it was related to the word “grain,” which meant “anything used in cooking”; but English cookbooks translated from French in the 14th century and later nearly always have a “v” or a “u” instead of the “n,” leading to the word “gravy.” Researchers believe it was simply a scribal error. If the word had been transcribed properly, we’d be having “grany” on our mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

Imogene
The name of the character in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline is hypothesized to be a misspelling of the name Innogen.

sane
In Middle English, “sane” was a verb that meant “to cure” or “to heal.” A work titled Middle English Word Studies: A Word and Author Index lists a 1986 paper by Lister Matheson, and summarizes it as hypothesizing that “sane” was a misreading of the verb “save” (also spelled “saue”) that came from the Latin “sanare,” which meant “to cure” or “to heal.”

syllabus

This word was crated due to a misprint in the 15th century. The Roman philosopher Cicero died in 43 BC, but his work has been read ever since. Two of his “Letters to Atticus” (one, two) have the word “sittybas” (possibly “sittubas”—sources disagree), which was a Greek word meaning “a label for a book or parchment” or “title-slip”; but one printing of this work mistakenly spelled the word as “syllabus.”

People apparently thought “syllabus” was Latin, and the spelling stuck so well that “syllabus” took on its new meaning in the mid-1600s and now even has a fake Latin plural: “syllabi.”

tweed

We got the word “tweed”—a type of wool—from a misunderstanding of the Scottish word “tweel,” which was how the Scots said “twill.” That mistake may have happened because there’s a Tweed river in Scotland, so when people heard or saw “tweel,” they thought of the Tweed River.

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.278.0432 | Extension: 765432

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Today, I have a pre-Halloween spell for you…but nothing involving eyes of newt. Here is an article from Richard Lederer that might help make you appreciate the crazy spellings of English words a little bit more. Enjoy!

Must our English language remain under a spell?

Dear Richard Lederer: Why doesn’t the U.S. government do something proactively for once? Millions of people struggle to learn English. Why doesn’t the government commission a team of American English experts to recommend changes to the language to make it easier to understand, learn, teach and promulgate? For starters, all words that rhyme, like hair and dare, should be spelled the same. Second, silent letters should be totally removed for being useless. –Dane Marolt, Rancho Penasquitos

In “The Devil’s Dictionary,” Ambrose Bierce defines orthography (spelling) as “the science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear. Advocated with more heat than light by the outmates of every asylum for the insane.” “English spelling,” declares linguist Mario Pei, “is the world’s most awesome mess,” while Edward Rondthaler, the inventor of the Soundspel System, labels spelling “a sort of graphic stutter we’ve tolerated for generations.” My Haverford College classmate David Grambs adds, “Three things you can be sure of in life are death, taxes and misspelling.”

Nowhere is the chasm that stretches between phonology (the way we pronounce words) and orthography (the way we spell them) better illustrated than the demonic letter combination -ough, which can be sounded at least 10 different ways, as in bough (ow), bought (aw), cough (off), dough (oh), hiccough (up), lough (ock), thoroughbred (uh), through (oo), tough (uff) and trough (oth).

If the road to language heaven is paved with good intentions, why haven’t we Americans followed the succession of well-intentioned spelling reforms proposed by the likes of Benjamin Franklin, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair and Theodore Roosevelt? Because, as in most matters linguistic, simplified spelling is no simple matter.

For one thing, spelling reform would plunder the richness of homophones in the English language. Rain, rein and reign were once pronounced differently, but time has made them sound alike. Knight was a logical spelling in Geoffrey Chaucer’s day, when the k, n and gh were distinctly sounded. Today its pronunciation matches that of night. In John Milton’s time, colonel was spoken with all three syllables. Now it sounds the same as kernel. Thus, the bizarre spellings that the reformers would excise are actually an aid to differentiation in writing. Think, for example, of the chaos that would be wrought by spelling the same-sound antonyms raise and raze identically.

Such transformations raise the specter of losing the rich etymological history that current spelling generally preserves. We cannot deny that seyekaalogee, Wenzdae, nite and troosoe are accurate visualizations of the sounds they represent. But do we really want to banish the Greekness from psychology (from the Greek goddess Psyche), the Scandinavianness from Wednesday (from the Norse god Woden), the Old Englishness from knight and the romantic Frenchness from trousseau?

Another telling fret in the armor of simplified spelling is that even its most ardent adherents acknowledge that many words, such as skejl/skejl, are pronounced differently in the United States and the United Kingdom, necessitating divergent spellings of the same words. Moreover, when we acknowledge the existence of Irish English, Scottish English, Welsh English, Australian English, South African English. West Indian English and all the other world Englishes, we must wonder how many variant spellings we would have to live with.

In the Middle Atlantic states, whence I hail, cot and caught are sounded distinctly as kaat and kaut. In New Hampshire, to which I moved, I often heard kaat for both words. Not far to my south, many Bostonians say kaut for both words. I say gurl, in Brooklyn they say goil (as in the charmingly reversed “The oil bought some earl”), and farther south and west they say gal and gurrel. Because our present system of spelling is as much hieroglyphic as it is phonetic, speakers of English can gaze upon cot, caught and girl and pronounce the words in their richly diverse ways.

Even if our spelling were altered by edict, a feat that has never been accomplished in a predominantly literate country, pronunciation would continue to change. As the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson proclaimed more than 250 ago, “Sounds are too volatile and subtle for legal restraints; to enchain syllables and to lash the wind are equally undertakings of pride.” No surprise, then, that Johnson predicted that spelling reformers would be shaping “a model which is changing while they apply it.” The phoneticizing process of spelling reform would itself have to be reformed again and again.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

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Dear readers,

Over the years, Donna and I have written several articles about the word impactful and pleaded with you not to use it. Often it is just the word impacted that makes me cry, because growing up, only two things I ever heard of got “impacted.” One of those things was a tooth; the other thing was part of your heinie. Neither of those are things I want to think about when reading business emails or articles.

So, we edit out that word and people argue with us. Here is a little something from the Chicago Manual of Style in our defense. (The highlighting is mine, and yes, I am yelling out the highlighted words and having a hissy fit.)

Q. Is impactful a word and can it be used in place of influential?

A. Absolutely. Impactful is a word, and it is often used in place of influential. But like irregardless, ain’t, and alright (all of which are words in the dictionary), impactful is frowned upon as nonstandard English. Please see CMOS 5.250 (17th ed.), under impact; impactful: “Avoid impactful, which is jargon (replacements include influential and powerful).”

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

619-542-6773 | Ext: 766773

Symitar Documentation Services

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Rule 3: Capitalize Phrasal Verbs in Titles

When writing titles, we capitalize major words (such as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and lowercase minor words (such as articles, prepositions, and conjunctions). The JHA Style Guide calls this style “title case,” and The Chicago Manual of Style calls it “headline-style capitalization.”

Some writers have trouble with phrasal verbs in titles. The second part of a phrasal verb looks like a preposition (which should be lowercased), but acts as an adverb (which should be capitalized).

Once you’ve identified a phrasal verb, this rule is easy: capitalize the whole verb.

Examples:

· Backing Up Your Data

· Setting Up Your Printer

· Logging On to Your Computer

Rule 4: If the Direct Object of a Transitive Phrasal Verb Is a Pronoun, Put It Between the Verb and the Adverb

This rule sounds difficult, but like putting adjectives in the right order, you’re probably already doing this without realizing it.

The Oxford Dictionaries web site explains this rule simply, and the Macmillan English Dictionaries web site explains it in great detail, so I’ll just give a few examples.

Consider the sentence, “Set up your printer.” Set up is a phrasal verb. Your printer is a noun phrase. You can put the noun phrase after the phrasal verb, or between the verb set and the adverb up.

· Correct: Set your printer up.

· Correct: Set up your printer.

What if you replace the noun phrase your printer with the pronoun it? You can still put the pronoun between the verb and the adverb, but you can’t put it after the phrasal verb.

· Correct: Set it up.

· Incorrect: Set up it.

Ben Ritter | Technical Editor | Symitar®
8985 Balboa Avenue | San Diego, CA 92123
619-682-3391 | or ext. 763391 | www.Symitar.com

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What’s that phrase? “When in Spain, do as the Romans do.” Well, that’s not quite it, but anytime I go to a place where there might be Roman or Greek ruins, I have to explore. The Romans were amazing with their aqueducts and sewers and buildings, some of which are still standing. In Barcelona, the Museu d’Historia de Barcelona is actually built on top of the ruins of the Roman city, and on top of that the more Jewish version of Barcelona, and later the Christian city, and so on up to today.

One of the words I kept reading and hearing at the museum was garum, which I wasn’t familiar with. Hold your breath: I’m about to tell you what it is!

Here is some edited information from Wikipedia:

Garum was a fermented fish sauce used as a condiment in the cuisines of ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium. Although it enjoyed its greatest popularity in the Roman world, the sauce was earlier used by the Greeks.

Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville derive the Latin word garum from the Greek γαρός (garos). Garos may have been a type of fish, or a fish sauce similar to garum. Pliny stated that garum was made from fish intestines, with salt, creating a liquor, the garum, and a sediment named allec or allex.[KC – Yum. Fish liquor!] A concentrated garum evaporated down to a thick paste with salt crystals was called muria; it would have been rich in protein, amino acids, minerals and B vitamins. Garum was used to salt foods, because it added moisture to the foods, whereas table salt extracted moisture from them.

Roman ruins (garum containers) under the Museu d’Historia de Barcelona.

Roman wine-making area, including grape crushing area, duct for juice, and storage vats.

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

Daily Writing Tips recently sent out a list of 12 idioms that people often get wrong because of homonyms, which are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings (for example, toe and tow). We’ve covered a couple of incorrectly used idioms in other posts, but most of the ones on this list are new and definitely worth looking at.

If you use one of these idioms incorrectly while speaking, no one will know since the words sound the same. But you need to be careful when you use an idiom in your writing. If you use the wrong homonym, it will be obvious to people in the know. So, to keep us all from embarrassing ourselves, here are 12 idioms that people commonly get wrong. Don’t be one of commoners. You’re better than that.

1.
Incorrect: baited breath
Correct: bated breath

This phrase refers to abating, or stopping, breathing, and the related adjective bated is intended.

2.
Incorrect: eek out
Correct: eke out

Eke originally meant “increase”; the verb is now obsolete except in the phrase pertaining to achieving after exerting effort; it has nothing to do with a squeal of surprise one might make when one is startled.

3.
Incorrect: just desserts
Correct: just deserts

This idiom refers not to a sweet dish served after a main course but to what one justly deserves. Deserts is a noun, obsolete except in this usage, which refers to just that.

4.
Incorrect: making due
Correct: making do

The expression pertaining to managing with available resources is “making do.”

5.
Incorrect: marshal law
Correct: martial law

A marshal is a type of law-enforcement official, and to marshal is to order or organize, so this error is understandable, but the phrase refers to martial law, a state in which military forces maintain order under martial, or warlike, conditions.

6.
Incorrect: peak (one’s) interest
Correct: pique (one’s) interest

In the sense of arousing interest, the correct verb is pique.

7.
Incorrect: reign in
Correct: rein in

This phrase refers to managing someone or something as if one were using reins on a horse to control its movement, hence “rein in.”

8.
Incorrect: sewing doubts
Correct: sowing doubts

This phrase refers to planting doubts as if they were seeds—thus, “sowing doubts.”

9.
Incorrect: slight of hand
Correct: sleight of hand

This idiom is sometimes misunderstood to refer to deceptive movement so slight as to be undetectable, but the key word is sleight, meaning “dexterity.”

10.
Incorrect: to the manner born
Correct: to the manor born

It is natural to assume that this phrase alludes to being born in a certain manner—specifically, “in an affluent environment”—but “to the manor
born” pertains to those born in a manor, as opposed to a more humble dwelling.

11.
Incorrect: tow the line
Correct: toe the line

The phrase alluding to placing one’s feet right on a line and not stepping over it is “toe the line.”

12.
Incorrect: wet your appetite
Correct: whet your appetite

This idiom refers to sharpening one’s desire for something, not moistening it. Whet means “sharpen by rubbing against,” as with a whetstone against a knife, and the correct phrase is “whet your appetite.”

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.278.0432 | Extension: 765432

Symitar Technical Publications Writing and Editing Requests

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Today I’d like to share a little language lesson with you that has less to do with English than it does with Spanish. I know many of you are fluent in both, however, so this might interest you. When we were in Spain last week, we were in Barcelona, which is part of Catalonia. There, most people speak at least three languages: Catalonian, Spanish, and English.

The thing I found fascinating was that if I couldn’t figure out the Spanish, I could look at the Catalonian, and often it seemed closer to English and I could figure it out. For example, the Catalonian “atencio” is closer to “attention” than the Spanish “cuidado” is. The Catalonian “terra” is closer to terms we know from Latin than the Spanish word for floor (piso) is.

Then there are these signs for breakdancing that defy all languages. (No, I’m kidding. Here are a few examples of things in Catalonian, Spanish, and English, just to show you the differences in the languages.)

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

Hello, all! It seems like forever since we’ve “talked” with each other. In the past few months I’ve worked from my dad’s house in Washington a few weeks, and I went on a brief vacation to New York with my mom, but over the last week and a half, I finally got to go on vacation with my husband. What a luxury! I don’t have a lot of English tips to share with you because we were in Barcelona (Spain), but hopefully, I can teach you some things I learned about, share some photos, and weave in some handy language tips in the process.

Today’s selection is a few items from a much longer list of house idioms, from Daily Writing Tips.

The integral nature and the ubiquity of houses in our culture has given rise to a number of idiomatic expressions that include the word house. This post lists such terms.

1. A house of cards: a precarious situation, from the notion of an activity in which one or more people try to build a structure out of vertically placed playing cards without causing it to collapse

2. Basket house: A music venue in which performers earn only money collected in a basket or other receptacle as donations

3. Boardinghouse reach: An especially long reach across a table, alluding to the relaxed table manners of a boardinghouse, a lodging in which meals are provided

4. Brick house: A sexually attractive woman, from the notion that she, on the analogy of a sturdy structure made of brick, is well built

5. Get along like a house on fire: Become friends immediately upon meeting

6. Hash house: An inexpensive restaurant

7. House of many doors: Slang for prison

8. Shotgun house: Slang for a long, narrow house built with rooms in a straight line, from the notion that a shotgun shell could be fired through the front door and out the back door

And as far as the vacation connection, one of the most amazing things we saw was Casa Batlló (the Batlló House), designed by Antoni Gaudí. What a thoughtful, creative architect!

Casa Batlló

Living Room at Casa Batlló

Light Well Through Glass at Casa Batlló

Kara Church

Technical Editor, Advisory

Symitar Documentation Services

I don’t know about you, but I see plenty of written words that I never, or rarely, hear spoken; so I’m not 100 percent sure how to pronounce them. Then there are words that I hear pronounced differently by various people, and I’m not sure what the correct pronunciation is. If I’m not sure how to pronounce a word, I try not to use it until I’ve done my research.

Lucky for me, Dictionary.com does the research for me! Today, I give you a list of commonly mispronounced words along with the correct pronunciation and a little background. I have shortened the explanations. To read the entire article, click here.

· Nuclear
A handful of very famous and well-educated people have demonstrated difficulty producing this word. Rather than saying [noo-klee-er], some speaker say [noo-kyuh-ler], which is sometimes spelled out as nucular.

· Ask
Many people transpose the s and the k, saying [aks] rather than [ask]. Today this pronunciation is considered by many to be a mistake; however, this pronunciation has been present in English for centuries.

· Mischievous
The term mischievous is easier to say than many people think. Its correct pronunciation is [mis-chuh-vuhs] not [mis-chee-vee-uhs].

· Utmost
Many people use the term upmost with a p when they mean to say utmost with a t. This drives grammar sticklers insane, tough it’s not necessarily incorrect. To read more click here.

· GIF
The pronunciation of GIF is a polarizing topic. Steve Wilhite, the creator of this file format, insists that you pronounce it [jif], with a soft g, however [gif] with a hard g is also acceptable according to Dictionary.com.

· Hyperbole
If you only ever come across the literary term hyperbole in reading, it’s hard to know how it’s pronounced. This word is pronounced [hahy-pur-buh-lee].

· Niche
British English speakers prefer the pronunciation [neesh] while American English speakers prefer [nich].

· Cache
This term has retained the French pronunciation [kash]. Because some languages accent the terminal e, it’s easy for confused English speakers to mispronounce the term as [kash-shey].

· Sherbet
Many English speakers add an extra r into this tasty French loanword. The correct pronunciation is [shur-bet].

· Meme
This word is pronounced [meem]. English speakers mispronounce this as [mee-mee] or as the French word mêmé, pronounced [mem].

· Arctic
In pronouncing arctic many people leave out the first c opting for [ahr-tic] instead of [ahrk-tik].

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.278.0432 | Extension: 765432

Symitar Technical Publications Writing and Editing Requests

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Capitalization Quiz

If you are one of our loyal readers who likes quizzes, it’s your lucky day! This quiz (from DailyWritingTips.com) will test your capitalization skills. The rules that apply to these quiz questions are common capitalization rules that we adhere to at JHA.

So, when you’re ready, correct the capitalization in the following five sentences, and then scroll down to see the correct answers and explanations.

The only prize for getting them all right is your own self-satisfaction. You can’t put a price on that!

1. Next sunday will be our fifth Anniversary.

2. My best school subjects are History, french, math, and Physics.

3. Sallie bought new curtains for her French windows.

4. When we visit Rome, we hope to obtain an audience with the pope.

5. London and paris were already centers of culture in the middle ages.

Answers and Explanations

1.
Original: Next sunday will be our fifth Anniversary.
Correct : Next Sunday will be our fifth anniversary.

In English, days of the week are capitalized. Common nouns, like “anniversary” are not.

[dbb – Capitalizing
common nouns is a common error. Common nouns are nouns used to name general items rather than specific ones. Whereas,
proper nouns are used to name specific things. For example, “the credit union” is a common noun but “First City Credit Union” is a proper noun.]

2.
Original: My best school subjects are History, french, math, and Physics.
Correct : My best school subjects are history, French, math, and physics.

Languages are capitalized, but other school subjects are not.

3.
Original: Sallie bought new curtains for her French windows.
Correct : Sallie bought new curtains for her french windows.

Although capitalized in other contexts, “french” is not capitalized here because “french windows” refers to a certain type of window. The same usage would apply to “russian dressing” and “danish pastry.”

4.
Original: When we visit Rome, we hope to obtain an audience with the pope.
Correct : When we visit Rome, we hope to obtain an audience with the Pope.

The word “pope” is capitalized here because it refers to a person who bears the title.

5.
Original: London and paris were already centers of culture in the middle ages.
Correct : London and Paris were already centers of culture in the Middle Ages.

Names of cities are capitalized, as are distinctive historical periods.

Donna Bradley Burcher | Senior Technical Editor | Symitar®

8985 Balboa Ave. | San Diego, CA 92123 | Ph. 619.278.0432 | Extension: 765432

Symitar Technical Publications Writing and Editing Requests

NOTICE: This electronic mail message and any files transmitted with it are intended
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