What are your pet peeves re English usage?

celine dion, the canadian songstress, grew up speaking french and learned english only once she started her singing career. (i personally don't care for her singing, but that's another matter).in an interview she said that she worked hard to get a reasonable command of the english language; she was rather surprised when she made her first attempt to greet a fellow entertainer, who replied : "wassup, momma ?". she said that she thought she had learned the wrong language, because most of the other entertainers were speaking a language she could hardly understand. hbg

Speaking of the Olympics -- as we were just a while ago -- my most recent pet peeves have to do with the abysmal asininity of American sports announcers and TV commentators. One chap actually informed his audience, while doing a background piece on the city of Athens, that the goddess Athena was "the patron saint of Athens." And people wonder why I hardly ever watch television.

inanity, thy name is Sports Announcer. We have a series of bloopers collected from the sports desks of Britain called 'Colemanballs'. David Coleman was a sports commentator who was always coming up with asinine remarks. Some have passed into the English cliche drawer - such as This is a game of two halves, and I don't know which horse is leading but it's definitely the one in front. There was a kerfuffle in the Hong Kong press today because a careless reporter had referred to the excolony as 'the island nation of Hong Kong'. There had to be a long grovel to China. But in this instance I support the reporter.

Thanks to Howard Cosell and others, but mostly Howard, the American language has been permanently scarred. Agility has disappeared from the sports announcers vocabulary (if they ever knew the word) and is replaced by "quickness." -- "Bill, he's fast, real fast, and displays great quickness" [Please, please stop--i'll pay you!]. The noun defense has become a verb to these peawits--"Bailey can think on his feet [good thing, it's a bad idea to lie down during a basketball game], watch how he defenses the paint." Howard Cosell introduced clichés of a rather dull-witted variety, the repetition (ad naseum) of which demonstrate that even someone as dull-witted as Howard was is not the lowest common intellectual denominator in sports announcing. The one which sends me screaming is "up close and personal."

Back in the 70's, there were complaints about the announcers talking too much. It's understandable, really, as they came over from radio, where dead air is a cardinal sin, and they have to talk non-stop. So in response, NBC (National Broadcasting Company) aired a football game in which they didn't say a damned thing other than "We'll be back after a word from our sponsors." They're like a bunch of petulant children--if you don't like the style, we'll take our toys and go home.

There were a lot of funny ones in the category "announcer-speak" posted to me recently; I'll see if I can find them. While I'm doing that, let me say that I have some sympathy for the poor announcers- it must be hard to speak for 30 mins without some kind of faux pas or double entendre- and why have the French cornered the market in these phrases?

p.s. nah, can't find it. I must be thinking of my computer at work. I'll just have to edit this later.

McT

"Colemanballs": I did once hear David Coleman say, of a fine Cuban middle-distance runner

"And now Juantorena opens his legs and shows his class".

My favorite:

"He flyed that one off to left so the count remains two and oh, two strikes and no balls on the batter."

"The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey".

lol

on the subject of 'anouncements', at C(anadian) B(roadcasting) C(orporation), some time ago, the announcer given the duty of the boring station identification, came up with:

"This is the Canadian Broadcorping Castration!"

Why did ya ax dis here queshun in da first place? My English iz fine. w0rd!

Hiyall, she said, jumping in with both feet (since to jump in with only one foot would be difficult for a biped).

Those Colemanballs are wonderful. I love Yogiisms (Yogi Berra...as in the baseball legion, not the cartoon character). "It's déjà vu all over again." "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." "The future ain't what it used to be." "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."

One of my pet peeves is the improper placement of "only" in a sentence: "I only go to town on Tuesdays" instead of "I go to town only on Tuesdays." The sentence my favorite English perfesser used to illustrate the point was "I said I kissed her leg." Put "only" before each word to radically change the meaning of the sentence. Only I kissed..., I only kissed..., right on down to I kissed her only leg.

Here's something from Mike Quinion's WorldWideWords service, a mailing I subscribe to, which might be of interest. Comments welcome.


Topical Words: Internet

Do you put an initial capital letter on "Internet", or the related
words "Net" and "Web"? This may seem a fussy, not to say pedantic,
question. But it's one that copy editors and those charged with
creating the house styles for publishing firms must wrestle with in
order to create text that looks consistent, avoids annoying or
confusing readers, and quietly states that it forms part of a
unified publication, whoever wrote the words.

This came into the news this week because Wired magazine, the house
magazine of Net geeks, publicised a change of policy (see
http://quinion.com?X59J). From now on, it says, all three words
will be written in lower case. "Why?", writes Tony Long, the copy
chief. "The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to
capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was."

Hm. There are arguments for following the magazine's lead, as we
shall see, but Tony Long's comment ignores the historical evidence.
The Internet was originally, in the late 1960s, a US Department of
Defense project called ARPAnet (after the Department's Advanced
Research Projects Agency). It was designed to permit its academic
researchers to talk to each other more effectively by linking their
individual computer networks. So it was an "inter-network", or
"internet". The latter word, in lower-case, seems to have been
first used in 1974, in a standards document written by Vint Cerf;
references to it in memoranda and technical specifications in the
following years were also usually lower case. The first example in
the Oxford English Dictionary's entry with an initial capital
letter is from the magazine Network World in 1986, though by then
it had become common in standards documents, too. Virtually all
publications adopted this style into and through the 1990s.

The reasoning behind capitalising it was that there was just one
entity that was called by this title, that it was a specific thing
with a proper name, and that by the usual rules that name ought to
be capitalised. In the USA, an initial capital is still the norm
and is recommended in style guides. But we've begun to see a shift
away from the use of an initial capital letter in all three words,
especially in the UK, where the Daily Telegraph, the Independent,
the Guardian, and the New Scientist have all lower-cased "Internet"
for several years.

The reason is hinted at in Tony Long's piece: in public perception
the Internet has changed from a device to a process. It's becoming
regarded as a communications medium and most people don't think of
themselves as Internet users. Instead, their mental focus is on
what they're doing - they're getting information, sending e-mails
to their friends, or downloading music - in just the same way that
they think of the telephone. You don't call it "The Telephone", you
regard it as a generalised mechanism with which to get in touch
with a friend or order a pizza. And just as we don't capitalise the
words for media such as "television", "radio", "mail", "telephone",
or "newspaper", why should we capitalise "Internet"? The change,
though minor in itself, is a cultural marker for a shift in public
perception and a further sign that the Internet is becoming a
mature medium. I've no doubt myself that the lower-case forms will
eventually prevail.

So what do I do now? My personal house style says the words should
have initial caps. As with everybody else in the business of words,
the decision by Wired magazine is another indication that at some
point I may have to rethink.

World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2004. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at <http://www.worldwidewords.org>.

Oh, and welcome, hiyall! Come and set a spell. Coffee's on the back burner and the folks is (mostly) friendly.

I was taught that proper nouns get a capital letter.

That is, if it's a name of something, not a generic description.

Thus, I would write "internet cafes", but the "Internet". Also, "web design", but the "Web".

Should I write "The Web"? Probably. Yes, I think so.

It's a strange one, though, isn't it, Mc? There was a time before The Internet [sic] when there were a number of quite different computer venues. Today there is only one internet [again, sic]. To me, it seems that consistency is important. Should I speak of 'internet connections' but then refer to having seen something 'on the Internet'? We capitalize proper nouns, yes. But a noun becomes proper by being unique in a specific way, a peer amongst other nouns. Thus we may speak of a building as a being a cathedral (no cap). But when we speak of the Winchester Cathedral, the building takes a capital letter. It's just a building, not the Chrysler Building. But when there is only one, as the internet is, does it become The Internet? For me, as for Quinion, it's a conundrum.

How about 'the Government' vs 'the government' or the P/president, G/governor, M/member of P/parliament? Aren't capitals just a nuisance there, since the meaning is clear without? Is it a German relic??

I was taught in school that one capitalizes words e.g. president, governor, king etc. when they precede the person's name, but writes them lower case otherwise. Thus, it would be: "In the opinion of President Bush..."etc. but "The president has indicated that..." etc.

Just for fun- I found it.
Sorry if it's a bit too rude.



Michael Buerk watching Phillipa Forrester cuddle up to a male
astronomer for warmth during BBC1's UK eclipse coverage remarked:
"They seem cold out there, they're rubbing each other and he's just come in his shorts."

Ken Brown commentating on golfer Nick Faldo and his
caddie Fanny Sunneson lining-up shots at the Scottish Open: "Some
weeks Nick likes to use Fanny, other weeks he prefers to do it by himself."

Mike Hallett discussing missed snooker shots on Sky Sports:
"Stephen Hendry jumps on Steve Davis's misses every chance he gets."

Jack Burnicle was talking about Colin Edwards' tyre choice on World superbike racing: "Colin had a hard on in practice earlier, and I bet he wished he had a hard on now."

Chris Tarrant discussing the first Millionaire winner Judith Keppel on This Morning: "She was practising fastest finger first by herself in bed last night."

Winning Post's Stewart Machin commentating on jockey Tony McCoy's formidable lead: "Tony has a quick look between his legs and likes what he sees."

Ross King discussing relays with champion runner Phil Redmond:
"Well Phil tell us about your amazing third leg."

Cricketer Neil Fairbrother hit a single during a
Durham v Lancashire, inspiring Bobby Simpson to observe: "With
his lovely soft hands he just tossed it off."

Clair Frisby talking about a jumbo hot dog on Look North said:
"There's nothing like a big hot sausage inside you on a cold night like this."

James Allen interviewing Ralf Schumacher at a Grand Prix, asked:
"What does it feel like being rammed up the backside by Rubens Barrichello?"

Steve Ryder covering the US Masters: "Ballesteros felt much better today after a 69."

Willie Carson was telling Claire Balding how jockeys prepare for a big race when he said: "They usually have four or five dreams a night about coming from different positions."

Steve Leonard, talking about vegetation on Vets In The Wild, told Trude: "There's something big growing between my legs."

Carenza Lewis about finding food in the Middle Ages on Time Team Live said: "You'd eat beaver if you could get it."

A female news anchor who, the day after it was supposed to have snowed and didn't, turned to the weatherman and asked,
"So Bob, where's that eight inches you promised me last night?".
Not only did HE have to leave the set, but half the crew did too, because they were laughing so hard!

US PGA Commentator - "One of the reasons Arnie (Arnold Palmer) is playing so well is that, before each tee shot, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them.... "

Ted Walsh- Horse Racing Commentator - "This is really a lovely horse. I once rode her mother."

New Zealand Rugby Commentator - "Andrew Mehrtens loves it when Daryl Gibson comes inside of him."

Pat Glenn - Weightlifting commentator - "And this is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning and it was amazing”

Oh Gawd.