LEND ME YOUR EAR: USING ADJECTIVES WHERE THEY BELONG; OVERVIEW: SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

In this column we offer guidance for whoever feels the need to learn or re-learn some of the points of usage we have tried to get across for almost a decade. Results have been discouraging, but as James Kilpatrick wrote recently: "If we succeed in teaching some lad or lass to get only in its proper place, we shall not have strived in vain."

Because we had an earlier column devoted to "only," and space is limited, a single example of the misplacement of "only" must suffice this time around. A contest sponsored by a clothing shop has been announced over radio with this warning: "You only can win if you visit our shop." This means you are the only one who can win. The announcer meant: "You can win only if you visit our shop." Used as an adverb, "only" should adjoin the word it limits.

Among a multitude of offenses against usage, we note a growing tendency to resort to adverbs where adjectives are in order. A news commentator has informed us that if our economy slumps any lower, it will make us look "ridiculously" to the rest of the world. A TV staffer predicts that every time a lottery player wins, the lottery becomes "more busier." A weatherman has announced that in some regions the winds have become "more blustier." Would you say your daughter is "more beautifuller" than her cousin even if the cousin's mother was not within hearing range?

On a talk show, a lady told her host, "The trouble is between she and I." For the umpteenth time, let me remind offenders that "she" and "I" are properly used as subjects or predicate nominatives, never as objects. She and I could be at war, but the trouble is between her and me.

In an interview with another talk show host, a popular movie star said of her husband, "He's a lone wolf even more than me." Would this attractive lady have said, "He's a lone wolf even more than me is?" We believe not. The verb is understood, but few speakers or writers seem to understand.

On a documentary about the famous artist Thomas Eakins some weeks ago, the narrator averred that Eakins "had a technique that was different than normal people." Famous artists are rarely considered normal, but that was not the issue. On this side of the Atlantic, we say "different from," and Eakins was an American. Let me explain further that it was the artist's technique that was "different from that of" other artists. Only in metaphor could we render a person and a technique synonymous.

In a letter about a university homecoming affair, a dignitary wrote: "The singular classes being recognized will thus be those which graduated in 1942, 1957...." The friend who passed this letter on to me wrote: "How about those who were graduated"? Precisely so. As I have written before, a person is never a which, he's a who (or less often, a that). And no matter what your computer tells you about the passive voice, we say three cheers for anyone who still permits the schools to do the graduating.

Writers and speakers in general appear not to know there is a distinction between "somewhat" and "something." "Somewhat" is an adverb. "Something" is a pronoun. Thus no one should be called "somewhat of an artist," as was said of President Eisenhower some time back on a TV documentary about presidents and their hobbies. A U.S. president may be "somewhat artistic," and the weather "somewhat chilly" but Eisenhower was "something of an artist" and the weather "something of a surprise."

As anyone familiar with good English knows, this overview is incomplete. Uses of the subjunctive, possessives with gerunds, "who" vs "whom," "try and" for "try to" sentence fragments, colloquialisms, absolutes and obsoletes, and a host of other problems must await another rainy day. And we close with a response to a young adult who plans to be a teacher.

This college student has complained in Speak Out that teachers have to "work their butts off" and only get shortchanged for their efforts. If this is the student's attitude, we suggest he or she settle for a more rewarding vocation. A teacher has to use more than the back of the lap to succeed in his profession, and unsuitable language is only one of the many problems facing teachers from the neck up.