Oh, the things we see in print these days \u2026<\/p>\n
From Time<\/em> magazine: \u201cGeneral David Petraeus asked a famous question: \u2018Tell me how this ends?\u2019\u00a0\u201d Did you catch it? Here\u2019s a clue: tell me how that\u2019s a question. If Petraeus had asked a question, it would have been something like, \u201cTell me, how does this end?\u201d But in Time<\/em>\u2019s sentence, \u201ctell me\u201d is a request, so delete the question mark.<\/p>\n A school district official was quoted as saying, \u201cWe have been appraised of all the relevant issues \u2026\u201d The word appraise <\/em>means \u201cdecide the value of.\u201d The gentleman clearly meant \u201cwe have been apprised<\/em>,\u201d i.e., informed. A bungled sentence from a representative of educated America is not the message our embattled schools want to be sending.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s minor compared to this mindlessness from \u201ca leading Latin American scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies\u201d who reportedly said, \u201cMy personal view is, it\u2019s us who is more responsible than Mexico.\u201d The more forgivable of this man\u2019s two howlers is \u201cit\u2019s us.\u201d OK, he was trying to sound like a regular guy. But \u201cit\u2019s us who is\u201d? That would even make a regular guy nervous. And this is an esteemed expert speaking on the record. We don\u2019t want to have a beer with him; we want him to speak to us in a manner befitting his authority. He should have said \u201cit\u2019s we<\/em> who are<\/em> more responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n A while back, an e-mail to the Associated Press website asked, \u201cIs there a rule about the use of \u2018a\u2019 versus \u2018an\u2019 when used in front of a word beginning with a vowel?\u201d I still can\u2019t believe it\u2019s come to this, but then I read things like: \u201cThere could be a independent or special prosecutor\u201d and \u201chas allowed it to linger as an mitigating factor.\u201d So my sympathies go out to the e-mailer, who probably has read enough of those illiteracies to doubt his own linguistic sanity.<\/p>\n Compare that with \u201cplans to use a $850 million loan commitment\u201d and \u201cLG showed off a 84-inch monitor.\u201d All you have to do is say those aloud to know it should be \u201can<\/em> $850 million loan commitment,\u201d \u201can<\/em> 84-inch monitor.\u201d I\u2019m guessing these writers outsmarted themselves: The rule is that an<\/em> goes before a vowel, and there\u2019s technically no vowel in \u201c$850\u201d or \u201c84.\u201d But this wrongly assumes that when we see words on the page we don\u2019t simultaneously hear them in our heads.<\/p>\n