By Bob Yearick
Media Watch
• Luann Haney, co-winner of our recent grammar contest, spotted this in a CBS News online story: “[Manager of Dollar Universe LLC] Luis Almonte said that he buys the packages in palates from liquidation centers for vendors in Brooklyn and New Jersey.” Palate refers to the roof of the mouth. What the reporter should have written is pallet — a wooden platform used for storing and shipping various products. A similar word, palette, denotes the board on which artists keep their paints. Palette is also used in a figurative sense, to refer to a range of colors or a comparable range or selection of other things. In fact, wherever the word range is used, palette is a potential synonym.
• Reader Bob Rufe submits this News Journal headline: “Phillies have as good of a chance as Eagles.” It should read: “as good a chance.” Avoid the intrusive of in such expressions.
• Gabe Lacques, in USA TODAY: “But there’s fewer pop-up showers that ruin batting practice on the road, . . . There’s no wild gusts of wind that can turn an infield pop-up into a warning track adventure.” Gabe is another writer who ignores subject-verb agreement when using the contraction there’s (and, often, here’s). Both showers and gusts are plural, so the plural verb — “there are” — is correct.
• In her USA TODAY column, Nacy Armour quoted a post about Caitlin Clark from basketball guru Dick Vitale: “Some day they will realize what she has done for ALL of the players in the WNBA. Charted planes — increase in salaries-sold out crowds — improved TV ratings.” Aside from punctuation issues, there are two errors here: First, it’s someday — an indefinite future time, not some day, which refers to a single day, as in “I have an appointment some day next month.” Second, it’s chartered (rented, hired) planes. Charted involves mapping or planning, typically in a detailed manner.
• Jack McCallum, veteran Sports Illustrated writer, in a story on San Antonio Spurs Coach Greg Popovich: “He would no doubt say that he could care less about [being misunderstood], but I hold that he did . . . and does.” Hard to believe that a writer of McCallum’s talent and experience doesn’t know that the expression is “couldn’t care less.”
Department of Redundancies Dept.
• Headline in USA TODAY about a retired football player who has a doctorate in clinical psychology:
“The mental NFL thinker.” As opposed to the physical NFL thinker?
• Son Steven spotted this sloppy two-fer from Scooby Axon, of USA TODAY, in a story about Cailtin Clark’s WNBA All-Star votes: “Clark received the most fan votes, but when it came to her fellow peers in the league, she isn’t quite regarded as an elite player as a guard.” Her peers are, by definition, fellow players, and the phrase as a guard is a useless add-on.
• I recently watched the 2001 movie Behind Enemy Lines, and in a scene toward the end of the film the captain of a U.S. aircraft carrier announces: “We will set course for home base, effective 2300 this evening.” Military time is a 24-hour clock system used to avoid confusion between a.m. and p.m. Hours are numbered 1 through 24, followed by two zeros (pronounced “hundreds”) and, usually, the word “hours.” So 11 a.m. would be 1100 hours, and 11 p.m. would be 2300 hours. No need to indicate whether it’s morning or evening.
How Long, Oh Lord, How Long?
(In which we note examples of the continuing abuse of the apostrophe.)
• President Trump, posting on X (in all caps, of course): “CERTAIN IRANIAN HARDLINER’S SPOKE BRAVELY . . .” The apostrophe makes hardliners a possessive, when it’s simply a plural: hardliners.
• From reader Maria Hess comes this post by ABC News about the late singer Bobby Sherman: “His performances made him a full-fledged teen idol in the 60’s and 70’s.” Apostrophes indicate either a possessive, which doesn’t apply in this case, or the absence of either letters, as in don’t, isn’t, they’re, etc., or numbers — in this case, 19. So the correct punctuation is ‘60s and ‘70s.
Word of the Month
lustrum
Pronounced lus-trum, it’s a noun meaning half a decade; a five-year period.
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