condomplate

condomplate (v): to contemplate whether to use a condom in the heat of sex

A hard time opening a rubber's wrapper induces condomplating.

Condomplate [Urban Dictionary]

Linguists vs. Lexicographers: Why Stylebooks Should Not Be Dictionaries

Should the way people do speak dictate the way people should speak?

To wit: Should a stylebook (such as the MLA Handbook and the Chicago Manual of Style) take its cues from a dictionary, which records words as they’re used, or should a dictionary take its cues from a stylebook, which takes positions on how words ought to be used?

The former method constitutes the status quo: both MLA and Chicago follow Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. The problem is, Merriam-Webster doesn’t make recommendations; it records the most common spellings, not which spellings are necessarily correct.

Chicago contends that spelling issues such as capitalization, hyphenation, and compound words are for each writer to decide. Yet it offers no criteria by which writers can make these decisions. Should we use the word’s prestige? How it was first written? Its present-day connotation? Its frequency of usage?

Without a rule, or at least a rule of thumb, a writer is left to weigh each word on its own, capitalizing “Ivy League” but not “website”; unhyphenating “email” but not “e-book”; merging “smart” and “phone” but not “health care.”

But surely one of the purposes of stylebooks is to standardize such inconsistencies—to bring order to the chaos of “style.” Indeed, what makes stylebooks like Fowler’s and Strunk and White’s so important is that dictionaries are not the final word on semantics. That’s what stylebooks are for: to prescribe.

There’s a phrase for those charged with prescribing who instead parrot those charged with describing: dereliction of duty.

Good Writing Is Good Writing

Regardless of your audience or publication, good writing is good writing. Whether you’re writing a children’s book or an op-ed, your words should bristle with energy and elegance. Whether you’re writing a letter of recommendation or an insurance policy, your words should be clear and crisp. Good writing is good writing.

Are Americans of Latin American descent "Latinos" or "Hispanics"?

According to an internal memo from the Los Angeles Times, they're "Latinos," which is the umbrella term for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and others from the Spanish-speaking lands or cultures of Latin America. The memo concludes, "Latino should be used in nearly all contexts; the exceptions ... must truly be exceptional."

Here's the memo, which is addressed to Times copy editors:

We have updated our rule on the use of Latino to reflect more accurately what the editors of the 1995 Times stylebook intended: that the term in virtually all cases is the appropriate choice over Hispanic, in keeping with the practices and sensibilities of residents of our region.

We offer this combined new listing in place of two separate and occasionally confusing former entries:

Latino, Hispanic: Latino is the umbrella term for people in the United States of Latin American descent. It refers to Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and others from the Spanish-speaking lands or cultures of Latin America. A Latino woman is a Latina. It is preferable to say that an individual is Mexican American, of Salvadoran descent and so forth, instead of using the umbrella term.

Keep in mind that Latino is an ethnic group, not a race category. Latinos may be of any race: white, black, Native American, Asian, mestizo, etc. Some speak Spanish; some don't. Some are U.S. born; others are immigrants.

Note: Hispanic is acceptable in quotes or in proper names. The U.S. Census Bureau uses terms such as "Hispanic or Latino" and "non-Hispanic or Latino" in its survey questions on ethnicity and race. Stories and graphics based on census information are allowed to use that language when it is essential to explain methodology, but we should otherwise use Latino to describe the people in question.

In describing the old entries as "occasionally confusing," we mean especially every 10 years upon the release of fresh census data. It was easy to see why many of us interpreted the old rules as not only an invitation to use Hispanic but, in census stories, a requirement to do so. The old entry on Hispanic said, in part, "Use Hispanic only in quotes, in proper names or reports based on census data."

So, to be clear: Latino should be used in nearly all contexts; the exceptions, as described in the revised entry, must truly be exceptional. The online stylebook has been updated accordingly.

"Couple" vs. "Couple Of"

I recently e-mailed Merriam-Webster's Language Research Service the following question. Associate Editor, Neil S. Serven, replied as follows.

Q: Is it grammatically incorrect to say "a couple hours" instead of "a couple of hours"?

A: Both expressions are standard, though “a couple hours” is considered to be more informal. As such, couple is entered in the dictionary as both a noun and an adjective. The excerpt below from Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage discusses the use of couple as an adjective.

couple, adjective.
While the commentators were worrying whether the noun couple could be used to mean simply "two" and whether it could mean "a few" (see COUPLE, noun), the word itself was following the path of development that dozen had taken centuries earlier—dropping its following of and being used like an adjective. We are not sure when this process began in speech, but we begin to find written evidence in the 1920s. Sinclair Lewis heard it in the dictation of George W. Babbitt:

... all my experience indicates he is all right, means to do business, looked into his financial record which is fine--that sentence seems to be a little balled up, Miss McGoun; make a couple sentences out of it if you have to—Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, 1922

Lewis was not the only one to use it:

... where the land rises to a couple or three or four feet—W. H. Hudson, Far Away and Long Ago, 1924
... in the phrases a couple peaches, a couple of peaches, only two should be meant—Krapp 1927

G. P. Krapp is the first commentator to mention the construction, but he evidently saw nothing wrong with it. A decade later, however, it was thought to be wrong:

couple. Not an adj.; must be followed by "of" and preceded by article—Muriel B. Carr &} John W. Clark, An A B C of Idiom and Diction, 1937

Of all the subsequent commentators who have disapproved the omission of of, Evans 1957 has the most interesting observation. While insisting that standard English requires of between couple and a following noun, he points out that the of is omitted before a degree word such as more or less. And indeed this construction is found in standard English:

We can end this chapter by looking at a couple more examples of Middle English writing—Charles Barber, The Flux of Language, 1965
... middle-aged men expecting a couple more promotions—Peter Preston, Punch, 28 Nov. 1973

These examples are all British; the construction is explicitly recognized by a recent British dictionary, Longman 1984. The construction occurs in American English too:

... till they had taken a couple more first-class lickings—Elmer Davis, But We Were Born Free, 1954

But American English usage seems to have been influenced by the number of commentators stressing the necessity of of. The result is the occasional " a couple of more":

... a couple of more wins from Jim Palmer—Jim Kaplan, Sports Illustrated, 10 Apr. 1978

Nickles 1974 refers to this construction as a "garble" and opines that it results from confusion of a couple of with some such construction as a few more; he fails to recognize the standard a couple more. Theodore Bernstein seems to have encountered the construction, too; in a June 1967 Winners & Sinners he quotes Evans with a measure of approval, but questions whether all degree words fit the pattern. He comes a cropper by confusing Evans's "degree words" with ordinary adjectives. Bernstein was unable to find any specific comment in usage books on "a couple of more" and concludes therefore that it is not wrong, though "ungraceful." If you find it ungraceful also and do not care to omit the of before more, you can put the more after the noun instead; the example above would become "a couple of wins more from Jim Palmer." Bernstein also notes that when more is promoted to pronoun by omission of the following noun, of is not used, as in "... I think I'll have a couple more."

But we have strayed from the red-blooded, 100-percent-American adjective before a plural noun that Sinclair Lewis heard in the speech of the middle-class Middle West. The usage is apparently not found in British English. Here are a few American ones:

The first couple chapters are pretty good—E. B. White, letter, 26 Oct. 1959
So let's start with a couple samples—Quinn 1980

Afterward, I met Mark Mullaney upstairs for a couple beers—Ahmad Rashad, Sports Illustrated, 25 Oct. 1982

... though Mr. Shaw himself still operated a couple wagons for hire—Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, 1985

This construction seems well established in American English. Everyone who comments knows it to be common in speech. It is now quite common in general prose, but we have seldom found it in prose that aspires to formality and elegance. Its two most frequent uses are with periods of time and with number words like dozen, hundred, and thousand:

... have surfaced dramatically in the last couple weeks—James P. Gannon, Wall Street Jour., 16 Oct. 1970

A couple thousand cases of liquor—Wall Street Jour., 14 July 1969

To recapitulate: a couple without of seems to have begun being used like a few and a dozen in the 1920s. It is firmly established in American speech and in general writing (though not the more elevated varieties) when it is used directly before a plural noun or a number word. Before more, a couple is used without of in both British and American English and in this context is often preferred even by American commentators.

Do You Love Grammar?

Then Christopher Johnson, author of the new book, Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little, has your number:

“If you meet someone who claims to ‘love grammar,’ chances are they mean they love ‘correct’ grammar and enjoy pointing out other people’s mistakes.”

What's Wrong With This Sentence?

In his Sunday column, Tom Friedman made an elementary grammar mistake: He wrote "is" instead of "are."

Where have all the adults in this party gone? Where is Dick Lugar, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Colin Powell, Hank Paulson and Big Business?

Had he used periods instead of commas, then "is" would have been right.

Koufax

Koufax [Sandy Koufax, the Jewish Hall of Fame pitcher, sat out the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur] (v): to forgo an important sporting event because it coincides with a religious holiday

In the first episode of season eight of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry accuses Marty, a newly observant Jew, of "Koufaxing us" because Marty refuses to play in the golf tournament because it falls on the Sabbath.