Cited for Reckless Language but the Charges Don’t Stick

I’m behind again in acknowledging tickets I have received from the language cops.

As usual most of them are bum beefs.

Jane Strain of Thousand Oaks tags me for this sentence on the lack of intelligence in horses. “We have all seen the one (movie scene) where the horse sees a fire starting in the barn and runs to the front door of the house, pawing at the door to arouse the household.”

She says: “I’ve never seen a horse with paws.”

How about the girl who tells her groping boyfriend, “Don’t paw me”?

Webster’s New World defines the verb paw as “to touch, dig, hit, strike out (at), etc. with the paws or feet (a horse pawing the air).”

Dick Jones of Long Beach accuses me of an oxymoron in writing “The latest object to turn up missing is my shoes.”

Jones not only doubts that something can turn up missing, but also suggests that shoes are plural, and it should have read “objects . . . are my shoes.”

I think “turned up missing” is idiomatic in our language, as “I could care less” is becoming idiomatic for “I couldn’t care less” (though I can’t stand it).

I can’t think of any defense for “is my shoes.”

Allen Kramer questions “a cold stein of beer,” suggesting it should be a “a stein of cold beer.” I have previously been taken to task for writing “a hot cup of coffee.”

Draft beer should be served in a cold stein. Icy, in fact. When the coffee is hot, the cup is hot. Both these expressions are idiomatic and unobjectionable.

Ben A. Tupper of Romona disputes my argument that “One in seven are now living in poverty” is right, because one in seven (out of 250 million) is a large number indeed, and certainly plural.

Tupper argues that I have forgotten my sixth-grade grammar: that I have made the verb agree with the object of a prepositional phrase, not the subject. (I consider “one in seven” as a noun phrase or subject.)

George W. Feinstein tags me for writing “it is not a function of the apostrophe to indicate plurals.” “You forgot for a moment that it is definitely a function of the apostrophe to indicate plurals of numbers and letters. Our 3’s often look like 5’s, so let’s mind our p’s and q’s.”

I appreciate Feinstein’s leniency in allowing that I had forgotten the rule. My purpose was to point out the common misuse of the apostrophe to indicate plurals, as in “the Smith’s,” meaning the Smith family, or “the Jones’s.” The plural of Smith is Smiths. The plural of Jones is Joneses.

Roland A. Kerber of Huntington Beach asks what a man whose last name is Walter is to do. If he calls his family the Walters, it may be thought that the name is Walters, as in Barbara Walters. The plural of Walter is Walters; the plural of Walters is Walterses. If everybody got it right, there’d be no problem.

Walter VanderVort of North Hollywood objects to the popular phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” He argues that the phrase is a contradiction in terms. “Fix implies repairing something, which you clearly can’t do if ain’t broke to begin with.” He suggests an alternative: “If it’s working OK, why mess with it?”

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is not only succinct and clear, it’s also very good advice, especially when it comes to medicine and surgery. It’s probably here to stay. As for VanderVort’s revision, I’d say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Edward H. Moss of North Hollywood condemns the phrase “I don’t think so,” He says, “Literally, it is impossible to ‘not think,’ so the words do not mean what they say. What they mean is ‘I think not.’ ”

I think not. If we say “I don’t like fudge,” it doesn’t mean that we don’t like anything . If we say I don’t drink on Sundays, it doesn’t mean that we don’t drink at all. I don’t think Moss has a point.

Pa uline K. Robinson of Balboa Island raises the old question of the misplaced only , noting that when correctly placed it sometimes sounds silly. I agree. It’s poignant and poetic to say “We only hurt the one we love.” But “We hurt only the one we love” is stilted and pedestrian.

Many readers have written to applaud my defense of the terminal preposition. George Binder recalls a conversation between two boxing managers at the old Main Street Gym.

One says, proudly, “My boy is starting his comeback.”

The other dings the spittoon and replies, “Comeback? Where was he ever at to come back from?”

Shakespeare couldn’t have said it better.