Avoid writing badly

Good Article: The Essence of Bad Writing! is a great article. He's also offering a writing course on a free CD. Get that link in the article.

Tha Wizard of Was

The Language Perfectionist: The Wizard of Was
By Don Hauptman
What's wrong with these sentences?
"He acts as if he was the boss."
"What if war was outlawed?"
"I wish I was taller."
Of course, each "was" should be "were." But why?
The rule is that if the statement is hypothetical or otherwise contrary to fact, the subjunctive "were" is correct. That's easy to remember, isn't it?
You may occasionally encounter, or write, a sentence in which it's open to debate whether the situation described is real or hypothetical, and thus whether "was" or "were" is the right choice. But such cases are rare. Most of the time, the correct word is obvious.
This is yet another battle that we language purists may be losing. But those who are educated and respect language know the rules. If you flout them, you may be judged illiterate, low class, or unworthy of an important assignment or promotion. So it often pays to observe conventional wisdom.
You've probably heard the song "If I Were a Rich Man" from the musical Fiddler on the Roof. A Russian peasant who doesn't even speak English got it right! So no one has an excuse.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Traffic Exchange Splash Page

"Who says traffic exchanges are DEAD? They have not join Lords of Traffic"

Traffic Report

Heard on a local radio station: "The wet roads were blamed on the accident." Now it's possible that the tractor trailers involved were carrying liquids, but since it was raining, I think they meant that the the wet roads were blamed FOR the accident.

Does Anybody Write (or Speak) "Standard" English Anymore?

Nobody on radio or TV seems to know the difference between less and fewer, or between good and well. They are doing good, and eating less calories, and buying vehicles that use less gallons of gas per mile. Now one can do good, but that refers to good works. What, in context, they seem to mean is that they are doing well. To get to the grammar lesson, do is a verb that needs to be modified by an adverb, not an adjective. Well is an adverb; good is an adjective. As a previous post noted--if you can count the items you are referring to, use fewer, i.e. fewer gallons, less gas.

Another ubiquitous error is the use of the possessive form ('s) to indicate a plural. How did that get started? Could part of the problem be the pop psychology idea that we damage our children when we(God forbid)tell them that something they've done is WRONG? Is their self-esteem really so fragile that correcting their errors will destroy them? Of course the longer this goes on, the fewer people there will be who know that others are mangling the English language, so the manglers will just appear normal rather than ignorant or uneducated. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can reverse or at least slow down this trend?

The Whole World is Learning English

So much of the internet is in English that netizens worldwide are learning English.
EN 101 is THE site on the web for easy language learning. Their main product is English language classes, but you can also learn Spanish, Russian or Chinese and the courses are taught in all the major languages of this planet. There are translation scripts available, but nothing beats understanding the original language that something was written in. And even the best translation programs can come up with some very funny results if you go from one language to another . . .to another . . . to another. . .or another before returning to the original. It's sort of like the old children's game where people sit in a circle and one person whispers something to the next person who passes it on around the circle until it gets back to the start and bears very little resemblance to what was originally sent.

Kids learn languages easily and retain what they learn. A second language learned as a child gets "hard-wired" into their brains. I learned German before I learned English and even though for years I suppressed it and did not consciously understand German, it all came back when I took German in High School, and has been there whenever I've needed it since. One side effect is that every other language I have studied, I've spoken with a German accent. (Considering the current world situation, that might be safer than speaking with an American accent.) Having been bilingual as a child also made it easier to learn other languages and made it possible to retain them. I still remember most of my 2 years of French taken over 40 years ago, (and the one semester of Russian a few years later.)

So give your kids a head start with a subscription to EN 101. Their new Kids 101 makes learning fun. Check it out today.

"typos" Discussed

We had an interesting conversation about misspellings on web pages in the weekend conference for Magic Highway Traffic Exchanges. The majority opinion was that misspellings stand out and hit the reader in the eye. They tend to distract the viewer from the message of the site, and detract from the impression of authority and professionalism that the site owner should be trying to project.
But, just to show we are all human, one of the members who was quite vocal in the discussion managed to misspell her own name when entering the prize drawing.
Looks like we all need a good proofreader. :-)