Cathy in the Wright

Noun Sequitur

It’s time for a grammar rant. I want to raise hells about the misuse of collective nouns, which are becoming an endangered species.

For example, “e-mail” is en-route to passenger-pigeon status, replaced by the clunky term “e-mails.” If e-mails is (are?) correct usage, it follows that newspapers ought to be carrying advertisings and the Post Office should be delivering mails.

Now, you know why I'm raising hells about this!

Let us pause to morn the simple, clear word “behavior.” This fine collective noun has been choked out of existence by its milfoil form, “behaviors.” Even newspapers are lured into such lexical misbehaviors.

We can blame the academic community for "behaviors," but I can't reason why anybody fluent in the language would adopt its unfortunate practice of lexical vacuity. Can’t you hear Earnest Hemingway whining, “Gee, I want my next book to read like a Ph.D. thesis.?”

It’s good that Hemingway wasn’t after an advanced degree, or academics might have forced him to dull-down his prose. That was the fate of an author about whom I heard many years ago.

A colleague said his friend wrote a thesis about the then-new field of business aviation. The guy was a fine writer, and his text was said to be an easy read as well as informative. However, the author’s pedagogical betters sniffed and huffed and protested that the thesis was not “sufficiently academic.”

To get his paper accepted, the guy rewrote in academic argot. After receiving his Ph.D., the writer titled his original thesis “Wings of Business” and sold it to a publisher. Ever hear of another thesis being sold, or even read by anybody outside the tight little circle of academic advisors huddled over the degree candidate like the witches in "Macbeth?" Or, in today's usage, should that be "the witches in Macbeths?"

Lexical evolution does not seem to be providing for survival of the fittest. Or, should I say, the “fittests.”

p.s., although The Chairman calls me The Professor, there isn't an academic bone in my body. I just worked with words for 40 years and hate to see them abused like foundlings in a Dickens novel.

There, a daily posting, with 10 minutes to spare.

Posted by Professor at August 7, 2003 11:43 PM