I always told my son I made enough money to provide the three essentials of life: food, shelter, and books. But now that I do most of my work in the home my son has left, I realize that conversation is every bit as essential to life. Small talk and big are no longer built into the fabric of my days, a byproduct of the daily grind of work. I can't get them automatically from those who share my household — cats may be good listeners, but they don't laugh at my jokes and they're lousy conversationalists. Just as I have to go out on expeditions for groceries, I have to make deliberate expeditions in quest of the good talk I'm just as hungry for. More ... 

The great English etymologist Owen Barfield once wrote that "words may be made to disgorge the past that is bottled up inside of them, as coal and wine when we kindle or drink them yield up their bottled sunshine." When we uncap the sunshine that is stored inside the many words that relate to the Christmas season, we discover that the light that streams forth illuminates centuries of human history and customs. More ... 

Two stories in today's newspaper, concerning two quite different matters, call attention to the very peculiar way in which words are sometimes used. One story turns on the belief that words are infinitely malleable, taking one shape or a very different one as their user desires; the other suggests a belief that words possess some occult quality, a power to shape and reshape reality. More ... 

Mine is the last generation to remember Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the nineteenth-century American poet who became an icon during his lifetime and remained so well into the twentieth. One of the so-called schoolroom poets along with John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, he was a mainstay in our early adolescent education. That was a much different world, of course, from today's. Freeways did not yet exist, kids went to the local public library on Saturday morning to hear stories instead of watching television, and they routinely read classics like Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and Rudyard Kipling's Kim. More ... 

Because of their diminutive dimensions, Beethoven's bagatelles for piano are often referred to as "chips from the Master's workbench." I propose to collect an assortment of my own chips for this month's offering. Not every set of observations lends itself to a full-blown column. The end of the year seems a good time to collect those incipits (the term musicologists use for fragmentary stabs at a composition) that have been littering my study for months, and to weld them inharmoniously into a year-end grab bag. Herewith the potpourri for 2002 (but I remind you that these shards are sketchy by nature; my modest hope is that they may offer a bit of that quaint appeal people seem to find in unfinished works, or in a cryptic unpolished comment). More ... 

Abandoning the idea that objectivity is attainable and worth striving for — a dangerous step in itself — seems to lead inexorably to the even more pernicious step of thinking that there is no such thing as objective reality: not only can we know nothing, really, but there is nothing, really, for us to know. Even the findings of the hard sciences and mathematics have been called simply stories that we like to tell ourselves, and stories very different from those that other cultures, or at least alien beings in distant galaxies, might tell themselves with equal justification.¹ And this doctrine, in itself so abstract as to seem to have no bearing whatever on sublunary life, has in fact had some very curious effects on Western politics and cultural life. More ... 

"They were complaining they can't read the signs in the shop windows any more because everything is written in English. You stupid Americans ruin everything." More ... 

Although few people can complain of another's grammatical mistakes with impunity, that is, without revealing their own, we are hopeful that "Grumbling About Grammar" will encourage us all to pay more heed to how the language is used — by ourselves as well as by others — while bettering our ability to speak and write it.

connotate Solecistic for connote. • I think the difference between the words denotate and connotate is one of those important distinctions people need to know about words. USE connote. [Kim's Cultural Critique Lesson] • The reference to "God's eyes" is an Old Testament term used to connotate divine oversight of God in the life of an individual or group of people. USE connote. [Arguments Against Abortion] • Obviously, therefore, a white elephant in India's cultural context can never connotate redundancy, as it would in the West. USE connote. [The Indian Elephant] • In common usage in the Usui Shiki Ryoho and Usui/Tibetan Systems in the West, Reiki "Mastery" does not connotate advanced spiritual development, enlightenment, superior moral character or virtue. USE connote. [Reiki Plain and Simple]

Connotate is, or ought to be, obsolete. Connote, to suggest or imply meaning in addition to the explicit meaning, is the word to use. More ... 

We all know far too well how to write everyday English, but few of us know how to write elegant English — English that is expressed with music as well as meaning, style as well as substance. The point of this feature is not to suggest that people should try to emulate these examples of elegant English but to show that the language can be written with grace and polish — qualities that much contemporary writing is bereft of and could benefit from.

This is a world in which each of us, knowing his limitations, knowing the evils of superficiality and the terrors of fatigue, will have to cling to what is close to him, to what he knows, to what he can do, to his friends and his tradition and his love, lest he be dissolved in a universal confusion and know nothing and love nothing. It is at the same time a world in which none of us can find hieratic prescription or general sanction for any ignorance, any insensitivity, and indifference. When a friend tells us of a new discovery we may not understand, we may not be able to listen without jeopardizing the work that is ours and closer to us; but we cannot find in a book or canon — and we should not seek — grounds for hallowing our ignorance. If a man tells us that he sees differently than we or that he finds beautiful what we find ugly, we may have to leave the room, from fatigue or trouble; but that is our weakness and our default. If we must live with a perpetual sense that the world and the men in it are greater than we and too much for us, let it be the measure of our virtue that we know this and seek no comfort. Above all let us not proclaim that the limits of our powers correspond to some special wisdom in our choice of life, of learning, or of beauty. ... More ... 

Whereas a witticism is a clever remark or phrase — indeed, the height of expression — a "dimwitticism" is the converse; it is a commonplace remark or phrase. Dimwitticisms are worn-out words and phrases; they are expressions that dull our reason and dim our insight, formulas that we rely on when we are too lazy to express what we think or even to discover how we feel. The more we use them, the more we conform — in thought and feeling — to everyone else who uses them.

in any way, shape, form, or fashion That anyone uses this expression is wondrous. To discerning listeners and readers, in any way, shape, form, or fashion, as well as similar assemblages, is as rickety as it is ridiculous. • If students are asked to leave the University, their return certainly should not be celebrated in any way, shape, form, or fashion. DELETE in any way, shape, form, or fashion. • Do you feel being on television will help you in any way, shape, or form? REPLACE WITH somehow. • That control is no longer there, not in any way, shape, or form. REPLACE WITH at all. • He wants something that doesn't resemble the landmark in any way, shape, or fashion. REPLACE WITH in the least. More ... 

Words often ill serve their purpose. When they do their work badly, words militate against us. Poor grammar, sloppy syntax, misused words, misspelled words, and other infelicities of style impede communication and advance only misunderstanding. But there is another, perhaps less well-known, obstacle to effective communication: too many words.

a (the) decreased (decreasing) number of fewer. • The financial position of the healthcare system has become more and more strained, and this in turn has resulted in a decreased number of hospital beds. The financial position of the healthcare system has become more and more strained, and this in turn has resulted in fewer hospital beds. • This means there are a decreased number of pellets being shot at the target. This means there are fewer pellets being shot at the target. • In particular, it has led to a dramatic decline in the profitability of Japanese small businesses and decreasing numbers of small firms. In particular, it has led to a dramatic decline in the profitability of Japanese small businesses and fewer small firms. More ... 

Inadequate though they may be, words distinguish us from all other living things. Indeed, our worth is partly in our words. Effective use of language — clear writing and speaking — is a measure of our humanness. What's more, the more words we know and can correctly use, the broader will be our understanding of self, the keener our acquaintance with humankind.

anurous (ah-NOOR-es) adj. having no tail; tailless. More ... 

Each month, "Oddments and Miscellanea" will focus on a particular matter of faulty grammar, slipshod syntax, or improper punctuation. This month's admonition:

Do not use about after discuss or explain or similar words. More ... 

Among the best written, if least read, books are those that we will be featuring each month in "On the Bookshelf." No book club selections, no best-selling authors are likely to be spoken of here. Best-selling authors, of course, are often responsible for the worst written books.

Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey More ... 

Stacie Leone
staciepl@yahoo.com More ...