What? You didn't even notice?

One thing I HATE about blogs is that posting that basically says, "Hey, sorry I haven't been writing but I've just been so busy but I promise I'm going to get back on the stick and start boring you again with my nearly daily updates about what I ate today and why I can't stand people who shop at Whole Foods or why I can't stand people who DO shop at Whole Foods blah blah blah." And then you scroll down and you can see that the blogger wrote pretty much the same thing 3.82 months earlier.

My point? Hey, sorry I haven't been writing much lately, but no one even noticed anyway, so, whatever. I'll probably be back at some point. No, really. I will. It's a money-back guarantee.

Teaching Without Tazers: "More Than" vs. "Over"

Don't you hate bloggers who refer to their blogs all the time? It's really just the semi-grown-up, online version of what teenagers do. I am constantly trying to beat it out of my students--you know, this urge to continually write about their writing. I call it writing self-consciously, and I ban it in my classroom. Force of [bad] habit makes teenagers spend a lot of time writing things like this:

In this essay I am going to tell you....
As you can see from what I wrote in the previous paragraphs....
In conclusion, I think I used good evidence to show....

Dentists, last I heard, still hold the dubious honor of being the profession with the highest suicide rate; I contend that English teachers who actually read and grade student essays must be catching up. I can't see how we're not at least giving dentists a good run for that record.

The reason I bring this up is that I am about to do something that I find incomprehensibly annoying when I see it on other blogs. I am going to blog about my blog. But only for a moment, and only as a starting point for a brief yet important lesson on one of my Wild Peeves. Stick with me here; this will be pretty painless (unlike your last visit to Dr. Yankatooth). So here we go with the annoying self-conscious self-promotion:

Earlier today the Happy Dog blog hit the 1,000 page views mark!

So what? Well, besides the fact that I'm pretty stoked to get this kind of traffic after only 39 days, it also gives me an opportunity to school you in one teeny, tiny misusage that gets under my skin.

Imagine I tell you that I reached 1,000 page views.

If you liked me, you would probably say something like, “Over 1,000 page views? That's awesome.”

And if I liked you, I would probably reply something like, “Thanks. Yeah, I'm pretty stoked.”

And if I didn't like you, I would have to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “No, I don't have OVER 1,000 page views. I have MORE THAN 1,000 page views.”

It's a small, small thing, I know. And perhaps I am a small, small person for even caring about this. And I am not even going to look up what the current stance is on this by famous or wanna-be-famous grammarians. Because I don't CARE what they say. Lots of things become proper usage through incessant misusage, and I am digging in my heels against it. Therefore, on the whole OVER vs. MORE THAN issue, let me break it down for you.

In what I consider to be its purest usage, OVER should function primarily as a preposition in a prepositional phrase that shows the relationship between two things.

The horseshoe hung over the door.
(shows current relationship of horseshoe to door)
She spread the chocolate frosting over the cake.
(shows current relationship of frosting to cake)
Your mother is coming to visit over my dead body.
(shows future relationship of marriage)

Yes, you can use OVER as an adverb instead of a preposition, as in,
The smell of your cologne makes me want to keel over.
But even then, OVER is being used basically to show physical positioning and direction. Which way will I keel? Over.

When we are talking numbers, quantities, amounts, monies, I much prefer MORE THAN. That's what MORE is for: to say that there exists a greater number, quantity or amount of something. The following sentences include both OVER and MORE THAN and may be illustrative in showing how and why each serves a specific purpose:

* When Sue discovered Brian had more than one girlfriend, she beat him over the head with a frying pan.
* The thief jumped over the wall and was greeted by more than one pit bull.
* There are more than a few ways to skin a cat, but only one way to serve it: over rice.

Is all this an almost gross oversimplification? Yes, of course it is. But just like your middle school English teacher gave you only the bare bones of grammar until you shook off your teenage angst and acne, I, too, am sensitive to the demands on your time and attention. Suffice it to say that your formal writing and speaking will benefit from using MORE THAN when referring to quantities rather than using OVER, which is informal, conversational, and frankly, a bit lazy when used in those same situations.

Oh, and about the cat thing...I was just kidding, so save your hate mail. It's better over couscous.

Don't Taze Me, Bro...Teach Me!

Hypercorrection makes me hypercrazy. It seems to have reached the point where if one does NOT hypercorrect it sounds wrong. And I don't know who to blame, but I know there is plenty of blame to go around. And plenty of offenders. I have considered packing heat in the form of a tazer for the express purpose of shooting at and paralyzing all those who abuse the language at the wrong time (i.e., when I overhear it and am already in the throes of a serious chocolate withdrawl), but the cons of that plan so clearly outweigh the pros, I won't even insult your intelligence by enumerating them.

Instead, the kinder, gentler side of me—the side that lets my dog lick me on the mouth—has won out. For now at least. I have decided that instead of simply ranting and criticizing and generally freaking out over something that obviously no one cares about but me, I will instead try a more productive approach.

The new approach, unfortunately, does not involve a tazer. As much as I would love to condition the populace at large through the tried-and-true method of electroshock therapy (whose effectiveness I am convinced has been not just underrated but perhaps completely squashed as a result of elaborate conspiracies, the likes of which could only be orchestrated by the ACLU, the Tea Party, or the largely underground My-Kid-Is-Not-A-Menace-Just-Because-He-Tortures-Your-Cat-And-Keeps-Starting-Fires-In-Our-Livingroom-Society), it's not the most feasible solution. It would be fun, of course, to run around tazing grammar felons, but it's more likely to land me in court than to start a solid grassroots movement toward better speaking.

Hypercorrection is not the only problem that needs to be addressed, as you well know. The bad news is that there are far more than 31 flavors of screwing up the English language, most of which you can hear in a single walk through the mall or even after spending five minutes reading almost any blog; the correlative good news is that widespread ignorance, laziness, and the tendency for most of us to have long ago blocked out everything related to middle school English classes should provide me oodles of fodder for future posts.

Oh...I almost forgot. My new approach? Teaching. Not tazing.

Yep, I am going to provide a free and needed service. Right here on the Happy Dog blog. Feel free to leave comments here or on the Wild Peeves page to lobby for a lesson. And check back often for easy-to-understand instruction that will hardly insult you at all. Or better yet, sign up via email and get lessons right in your mailbox. I know it sounds too good to be true, but I'm good like that.

Come Back, Comma, Come Back

Maybe it's because the sky is a little gray today and the clouds are loitering low in the sky, too lazy to move on or to rain, but I'm feeling a bit melancholy. I tried to figure out where the empty feeling was coming from. Holidays are approaching, family is far away, my African violet is looking sickly. All kind of sad, but none responsible for that little ache inside. You know what's really bothering me? I miss the comma.

Specifically, I miss the comma that used to escort the word too into and out of a sentence, and when needed in the middle of a sentence, stand guard on both sides. He's a small thing, the comma, literally. But symbolically, he's one of the Heavy Lifters in written language—tiny but mighty. I'm tired of seeing the little guy pushed around and evicted from situations where he used to reside not only with purpose, but with dignity as well. Too deserves to be flanked on either side by the comma; a small word itself, too also pulls a heavy load, but without the commas can be glossed over, swallowed up, forgotten.

And please: spare me the whole language-is-constantly-evolving diatribe. I know it is. And I can't stop it, but I don't have to like it, and I will duct tape myself to a tree in protest of the bulldozer of linguistic laziness if necessary. In fact, my complaints about the deterioration of the English language are only just beginning, and I've got a whole list of grievances I'll be filing on behalf of the comma alone. I reserve the right to defend the comma and his other punctuation pals on a pro bono basis whenever and wherever the mood strikes. And don't even get me started on the semi-colon or the emdash; those guys have me on retainer already.

Anyway, that's the whole point of having a blog, right? I get to complain about whatever I want, and you, too, can get in on the action. Agree or disagree, at least we're talking about something that matters.

Anyways, it's anyway.

If you are a true logophile, every day, on average, you
-> cringe 16.23 times
-> do a double-take 2.1 times, and
-> bite your tongue/lip/inside of your cheek or dig your fingernails into your own palm 5.5 times
...all in an effort to keep from correcting a co-worker, friend, family member or complete stranger on the grievous misuse of the English language.

One of the frequent causes of my linguistics-tics is the increasing use of the word “anyways.” It's become so common that one may believe that it is acceptable--and maybe even interchangeable--with “anyway” based on personal preference or regional dialect, a la to-MAY-to versus to-MAH-to.

And this is tough to say (because some of my very best friends are anywaysers), but I really think it's time we put a stop to this. Any is an adjective that is meant to modify a singular noun. Just because we decided to take out the space between the two words and make it an adverb (which, incidentally, still means basically “in any way or manner”) does not mean we need to continue to take unnecessary liberties with the language. From an economical point of view, we conserve type space by pushing the words together, and then screw it up by adding an extra letter. Why? I say stop it now, in any way or manner possible.

I am right about this; really, I am. But anyway, any person who has any thought that there is any problem with any piece of logic just presented should feel free to express any disapproval using any method, including leaving any comment desired below.