This error has gotten soooo common!

Another post from the kodiakdailymirror.com Herman's Hawks and Handsaws collection

In the language of Western tonal music, a V chord at the end of a phrase makes your brain expect a I chord. This V-I sequence, called an “authentic cadence,” creates the most satisfyingly final-sounding ending possible. Consider the end of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, a sequence of G and C chords (the V and I in the key of C) alternating eight times, just to make sure everybody really gets the point.
Other types of cadences play with the strong sense of expectation. The “deceptive cadence” creates a sense of surprise by following the V chord with a VI instead of the expected I.
The “half cadence” just cuts off at the V, ending the phrase with the unshakable feeling that something more must follow.
But where Beethoven could use that feeling to carry us into the next musical idea, people speaking and writing English have taken to misusing a little word, leaving listeners and readers hanging.
The culprit is “so,” when used as a substitute for “very,” as in this example:
“The teen vampire was so dreamy.”
This adverbial “so” needs another clause to make a complete sentence:
“The teen vampire was so dreamy that the girls swooned.”
or
“I swooned because the teen vampire was so dreamy.”
One might argue that the incomplete version belongs in the category of exclamations, like “Wow!” and “What a fluffy kitty!” These sentences share with imperatives an exemption from usual subject/predicate requirements. That whole area would make for some interesting syntax papers.
Meanwhile, I associate the incorrect usage with a style more immature than illiterate, but it has spread beyond the junior high schools.
The same internal grammar sense that gives me the “unfinished” feeling about those “so” sentences leaves me unhappy with an AP-sanctioned usage. It goes like this: The omnipotent stylebook tells us to use upper-case “Gov.” or “Sen.” before a name, as in “Gov. Sean Parnell.” But that leads to the less perspicuous usage “former Gov. Sarah Palin” or “ex-state Sen. Ben Stevens,” supported by a dedicated entry on the word “former.”
That bugs me because it applies the AP style by grouping the wrong elements. The rule should apply only to titles like “governor” or “senator” — not, I argue, to quasi-titles like “former governor.”
In formal syntax terms, “former Gov. Sarah Palin” treats “Gov. Sarah Palin” as if it is a constituent, excluding the “former.” However, any reasonable structural analysis would treat “former governor” as a constituent separate from the following name.
How say the readers? Should I defy AP and start using “former governor Sarah Palin”?
And why should my sense of what sounds wrong — as opposed to anybody else’s — have any relevance in deciding the issue? Frankly, the best reason is that I grew up in a middle-class family in Toledo, Ohio, and therefore use the most generic possible American English. It looks like this blog will keep coming back to the question of prescriptive authority for language.
Ceterum censeo “utilize” esse delendam.

Did elsewho among the studentry sneeze?

Serious publications naturally adopt a conservative stance toward language choices, or diction. At the same time, language inexorably evolves, so that the Latin of Caesar’s time turns into the French, Italian, Spanish and so on of 1,000 years later.
I am fascinated by the ways change comes to different languages — and how communities consciously try to control the change. People who read Modern Greek can understand a 2,500-year-old text pretty well. The Icelandic of today differs little from the Old Norse of 1000 AD that changed to become Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. For English the break-off point comes a little before Shakespeare.
And I will come back to the Académie Française in a later blog.
It happens bit by bit. The Associated Press recently decreed that the venerable “e-mail” must now appear as “email,” and cell phones are now “cellphones.” Both demonstrate the common progress of compound nouns: first two words, then hyphenated, then one word.
I don’t particularly like “email,” but I won’t fight AP on this one.
Americans have brought several logical improvements to the language, including “plow” for “plough” and “today” for “to-day.” Phonologically, “centre” versus “center” is a toss-up.
Some reforms didn’t make it. I think it was the old Chicago Herald that tried to give us “thru” instead of “through” in a crusade to save three characters worth of ink.
Professor Strunk (pictured above) suggested one of my favorite failures. He wanted “studentry” to replace the awkward “student body,” by analogy to “faculty” and “peasantry.”
Eminently sensible, and stylistically strong, to boot.
Even more sensible would be to drop the biologically silly term “crab fishery” in favor of “crabbery.”
I don’t really think I’ll win this one, either, so here is another of my ideas for reform:
The word “elsewhere” is so tidy and useful, why not also “elsewho,” "elsewhen” and "elsewhat”? Much neater than “somebody else,” etc.
And of course, when I am king, “snaze” will become the official past tense of “sneeze.”
The complementary category consists of words and phrases that clearly do not deserve to survive. Some people call them “buzzwords,” but I say that’s one of them. This week two that have long outlived their time came over my desk. Please immediately and permanently retire “no-brainer” and “man up.” Other candidates?
Ceterum censeo “utilize” esse delendam.