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“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

What? You didn’t get that? It’s a perfectly good sentence.

For those of you who don’t know, “buffalo” is a very versatile word. It can be a singular or plural noun (meaning any of various wild oxen, including the American bison), a proper noun (a city in western New York), or a verb (meaning to bully, baffle, or bewilder).

Basically, the sentence above describes the pecking order of buffalo in the city of Buffalo. It’s a bit easier to understand when we substitute alternate words for “buffalo”:

Buffalo bison [that] Buffalo bison bully[,] bully Buffalo bison.

(Really, it’s grammatically correct.)

And if that’s not enough for you, here’s a similar sentence starring my favorite animal: “Dogs dogs dog dog dogs.”

Know of any others? Do share!

Special thanks to my brother-in-law-to-be, lover of all things peculiar, for bringing this grammatical monstrosity to my attention.

Filed by rebecca at 6:05 pm under For the love of words
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“Honey, we’re out of bananas.”

“No problem. I’m heading to the oporopolist this afternoon.”

“Great. … Huh?”

Have you visited your neighborhood oporopolist lately? Maybe you have and you don’t even know it. You see, “oporopolist” means “fruit-seller”—and it’s my newly adopted word.

I recently took in oporopolist from savethewords.org, a Web site sponsored by Oxford Fajar, a subsidiary of Oxford University Press. Save The Words’ purpose is to keep words from being dropped from the English language because, according to the site, 90% of everything we write is communicated by only 7,000 words. That’s a pretty grim statistic for a linguaphile like me.

So, why oporopolist? Well, I was in the process of choosing between latibule (n. hiding place), quaeritate (v. to ask), and radicarian (adj. pertaining to the roots of words), when oporopolist literally yelled out at me (note to site users: turn on your speakers!). It sounded so desperate, that I just had to adopt the little guy. Plus, I love the staccato sound of “op-or-op-olist.” It’s so fun to say!

With its ransom note-like background and witty copywriting, savethewords.org is a great place to spend some time and learn something new. I especially enjoyed the “spread the word” page, which contains amusing ideas on how to keep your adopted word alive, such as wear it on a sandwich board on your lunch hour or use it as a unique name for your pet.

Although I will not be getting an “oporopolist” tattoo, per my adoption pledge, I promise to use this word in conversation and correspondence as frequently as possible.

“Anybody hungry? I’ll make a run to the oporopolist. …”

What word will you save?

Filed by rebecca at 11:54 am under For the love of words
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Oh, I just love this time of year. Snow is falling, carolers are singing, Christmas tree’s are twinkling—wait, “Christmas tree’s”? Really?

Sorry to be the grammar grinch, folks, but I can’t help but feel a bit grouchy when faced with holiday-related misspellings and typos in ads, signs, and greeting cards. Just because we’re filled with cheer and goodwill (and eggnog) doesn’t mean we should abandon proper grammar and style.

Here are just a few of the grammatical errors I’ve encountered this holiday season:

Seasons Greetings
Don’t get me wrong: I’m more than happy to give and receive warm greetings of the season—but only in a grammatically correct way. You see, the proper term is Season’s Greetings, with an apostrophe before the “s” signifying a possessive.

Christmas tree’s for sale
As we know from my post on the proper use of apostrophes, these marks are primarily used for forming possessives and indicating missing letters or numbers—neither of which apply to the sale of Christmas trees. Vendors beware: The next incorrect sign I encounter may end up with red editing marks!

New Years Eve
Reading about New Years Eve and New Years’ Eve celebrations makes me as sick as drinking too much champagne. Note to party promoters: It’s New Year’s Eve (and New Year’s Day).

The Smith’s
Again, it’s that pesky apostrophe! When you’re addressing a Christmas card to a family of people with the last name Smith, you should address it to The Smiths. (The only time you’d use an apostrophe is if you’re addressing something belonging to the Smith family, and, in that case, you’d add the apostrophe after an “s,” as in “The Smiths’ dog.” But that would be weird. Why not just call her Riley?)

Tis
I suppose I should let this one go, since the term in question dates back to the 1400s and is rarely used these days. But, if you want to be grammatically correct, the proper spelling is ’Tis, with an apostrophe before the “t” to indicate the missing letter “i.” (’Tis is a contraction of “it is,” as in ’tis the season for good wishes and bad grammar.)

Season’s greetings, everyone!

Filed by rebecca at 3:19 pm under Grammar guide
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In my last post, I wrote about how the New Oxford American Dictionary named “unfriend” its 2009 Word of the Year. Well, apparently there is more than one “Word of the Year,” and Merriam-Webster recently announced that “admonish” tops its annual Words of the Year list. This list is based on actual user lookups to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Thesaurus.

Admonish, which means “to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner,” gained popularity when Congress voted to admonish U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson for shouting “You lie!” at President Obama during a televised speech last September. Scores of people who were unfamiliar with the term went to the Internet to find its meaning.

Most of the top 10 terms can be tied to significant news events this year: The word “emaciated” made the list because so many people looked it up after it was used to describe the condition of Michael Jackson’s body after his death in June. The word “rogue” sparked a good deal of interest as a result of the November release of Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue.” And the word “philanderer” was looked up frequently due to news stories about indiscretions by Rep. Mark Sanford and talk show host David Letterman (and it’s probably still being looked up a lot these days thanks to Tiger Woods).

Here are the 10 most looked-up words on merriam-webster.com this year:

1. admonish (verb): to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner
2. emaciated (adjective): wasted away physically
3. empathy (noun): the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
4. furlough (noun): a leave of absence from duty granted especially to a soldier
5. inaugurate (verb): to induct into an office with suitable ceremonies
6. nugatory (adjective): of little or no consequence
7. pandemic (adjective): occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population
8. philanderer (noun): of a man: to have casual or illicit sex with a woman or with many women; especially: to be sexually unfaithful to one’s wife
9. repose (verb): to lay at rest
10. rogue (adjective): resembling or suggesting a rogue elephant especially in being isolated, aberrant, dangerous, or uncontrollable

Filed by rebecca at 10:17 pm under For the love of words
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This week, the New Oxford American Dictionary announced its 2009 Word of the Year: “unfriend.”

Unfriend, a verb, means “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

The choice points to the prevalence of social networking in our culture. In fact, a lot of the new words considered for Word of the Year grew out of our collective obsession with being connected to our networks.

For example, take “hashtag” (a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets), “intexticated” (distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle), and every tween’s parents’ nightmare, “sexting” (the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone).

Some considerations come from current issues in politics and the economy, such as “death panel” (a theoretical body that determines which patients deserve to live, when care is rationed) and “funemployed” (taking advantage of one’s newly unemployed status to have fun or pursue other interests), while others, like “deleb” (a dead celebrity) and “tramp stamp” (a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman), tend toward the frivolous.

I wonder what’s in store for our vocabulary in 2010 …

Filed by rebecca at 9:09 pm under For the love of words
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Ah, alliteration. One of my most loved literary devices. Whether placed in poetry or prose, alliteration is like music to my ears.

Also known as “head rhyme,” alliteration is the repetition of the same sounds at the beginning of words—or in stressed syllables—in close succession. Although modern alliteration primarily uses consonants, certain literary traditions, such as Old English and Old Norse verse, use vowel sounds.

Alliteration has long been used for poetic effect. The first verse of Robert Frost’s famous poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a great example:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Not only is alliteration melodic, it also highlights words and makes certain phrases stick in your head. That’s why marketers often employ this stylistic device in their copy. Take, for instance, the following taglines: “We’ll leave a light on for you” (Motel 6) and “Every kiss begins with Kay” (Kay Jewelers). They’re not easy to forget, are they?

The same goes for names of restaurants (Dunkin’ Donuts), TV shows (“Sesame Street”), music groups (Beastie Boys), books (“Where the Wild Things Are”), and movies (“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”). You get the picture.

As a copywriter, I often employ alliteration in my headings, subheads, and throughout my copy. Clients appreciate it because it connects certain words and phrases that they’re trying to emphasize to their audience.

Speaking of reaching a certain audience … few are as good at this as the late, great Dr. Seuss. His use of alliteration is legendary—and it helps teach generations of kids to read. Here’s one of my favorite alliterative phrases from “Dr. Seuss’s ABC”:

Many mumbling mice
are making
midnight music
in the moonlight …

mighty nice

Now try getting that out of your head!

Filed by rebecca at 2:31 pm under For the love of words
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Well, here it is, one of my favorite days of the year: National Punctuation Day (NPD).

Now in its sixth year, NPD has a mission to cure the “epidemic of poor punctuation in the United States,” according to founder Jeff Rubin.

How can you observe NPD?

Go around town and point out all the incorrectly punctuated signs you can find—but please don’t vandalize!

Enter the NPD baking contest; whip up a pastry or bread in the shape of a punctuation mark and win a prize.

Write a blog post including as many punctuation marks as possible (like I did here [did you notice?]).

Brush up on the proper use of punctuation:

• Where’s the semicolon love?
• Put it in parentheses (please)
• The colon: an unappreciated mark with an unfortunate name
• Read this post about exclamation points!
• Save the apostrophes!
• Quoth the writer, “Nevermore”
• The ellipsis is cool, but …
• The ampersand: form & function
• Slash away
• All about brackets

Filed by rebecca at 8:36 am under Grammar guide
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Last night, Kim and I participated in our second straight CreateAthon—and we had a great time doing so!

What is CreateAthon, you ask? It’s a 24-hour creative blitz during which advertising agencies and design firms around the country work on a pro bono basis for nonprofit organizations. The event was hosted locally by smith&jones, a full-service marketing and advertising agency in Sturbridge, Mass.

We at SmithWriting donated our copywriting services to the cause, drafting a brochure, poster, and ad for an organization that provides free resources to first-time parents under the age of 20. Needless to say, our few hours of volunteering were productive and deeply satisfying (and all the yummy food didn’t hurt!).

Best of luck to the crew at smith&jones, now entering their 21st consecutive hour of creative designing (and probably pouring their 21st cup of coffee!). We know that your eight lucky clients will be thrilled with their new marketing materials!

For more info about CreateAthon—and real-time updates—tune into smith&jones’ blog.

Filed by rebecca at 9:51 am under Copywriting
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OK, I admit it: Sometimes I break the rules—grammar rules, that is.

You may find this hard to believe (coming from a self-proclaimed grammar guru), but, in some cases, I think that disobeying certain rules results in better copy.

Here are some common grammar regulations and my thoughts on when it’s acceptable to defy them:

Always use complete sentences.

Pshaw. In my writing, I’ll sometimes use sentence fragments, because I believe they add emphasis:

My dog enjoys naps, walks, and treats. Lots and lots of treats.

No, the latter sentence is not grammatically correct, but it certainly lets the reader know how much my dog likes treats, doesn’t it?

Never begin a sentence with a conjunction.

And why not? I find that beginning a sentence with and, but, as, or because lends a tone of informality to my copy—something I strive for when writing for a young adult audience, for instance:

In our program, you’ll work harder than you ever have in school. But you’ll have a blast doing it.

Never end a sentence with a preposition.

Where did you pick that up from? At times, ending a sentence with a preposition (e.g., by, for, on) is much less awkward than the alternative. For example:

Where are you from? sounds much more natural than From where (whence?) are you? (unless, of course, you’re at a Renaissance Fair).

What are some grammar rules that you’ve been known to break?

Filed by rebecca at 1:14 pm under Grammar guide
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As a copy editor, I often find myself correcting the misuse of the terms i.e. and e.g.

These seemingly harmless letter combinations can actually do a lot of damage when used improperly: Not only can they change the meaning of your work, they can also make you look stupid—and no one wants that. So here’s a quick lesson on their proper usage:

i.e.

an abbreviation for the Latin term id est, meaning “that is” or “in other words”
Use i.e. to provide clarification:
Many writers become flummoxed, i.e., frustrated and confused, over the use of i.e. versus e.g.

e.g.

an abbreviation for the Latin term exempli gratia, meaning “for example”
Use e.g. to provide examples:
Perhaps they should turn to the professionals at SmithWriting for help with their writing projects, e.g., advertisements, brochures, and Web sites.

Always put a comma after i.e. and e.g. And be sure to include a period after each letter in both abbreviations.

So, is it i.e. or e.g.?

Since I don’t know Latin, I use this trick to determine which term to use:
I ask myself, “Am I giving examples?” If so, I use e.g. (Reverse the first letters of “giving examples,” and voila!)  If not, I use i.e.

Filed by rebecca at 5:29 pm under Grammar guide
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