Category: Punctuation

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Etymology Punctuation Spelling

Vowel language

Q: The vowels are reversed in “fuel” and “feud,” but they’re pronounced the same. Is it because “fuel” comes from French and “feud” from Scottish? Is it that simple?

A: Your instinct is right, but it’s not that simple.

“Fuel” and “feud,” which have similar sounds that are spelled differently, do come from different branches of the family tree.

Ultimately, “fuel” comes from Latin and “feud” from old Germanic sources. But their ancestries apparently don’t account for the difference in their spellings.

Of the two words, “fuel” has the more straightforward history.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins says the precursor to “fuel” was the Anglo-Norman word fuaille, derived from the medieval Latin focalia. The ultimate source is the classical Latin focus (hearth, fire).

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, in the mediaeval Latin of France and England, focalia occurs frequently “in charters with reference to the obligation to furnish or the right to demand supplies of fuel.”

When the noun “fuel” came into English sometime before 1200, the Middle English spelling was fewaile, and the word was probably pronounced something like that.

Subsequent spellings, the OED says, included “fewall,” “fewel,” “fewell,” “fowayle,” “fowaly,” “fowel,” “fowell,” “fwaill,” “fuell,” “fuelle,” “feuel,” and finally “fuel.”

Why did the vowels end up as “ue” and their pronunciation as YOO?

Your guess is as good as ours, but you can see from the spellings above that the two vowels (or their sounds) seesawed a bit over the years.

By comparison, “feud” has a much more convoluted history.

Its probable ancestor is a prehistoric Germanic word reconstructed as faikhitho, which roughly means a state of “foe”-hood. The root of this same ancestor, faikh (hostility or enmity), gave us “foe.”

The word showed up in the early 14th century in Scottish English, where it was spelled “fede, feide, or something phonetically equivalent,” says the OED.

But the Scots didn’t get “feud” from Germanic sources, at least not directly. They borrowed it from the Old French fede or feide, which had been borrowed in turn from a word in Old High German, fehida.

In the 16th century, the word was adopted in England “with an unexplained change of form,” says the OED. The changes of spelling included “food,” “foode,” “feood,” “fuid,” “fewd,” and finally “feud.”

But don’t lose sight of the old “foe” connection. In the 17th century “the word was occasionally altered into foehood,” the OED says.

Now here’s the convoluted part.

That Old High German word that was borrowed by the French, fehida, had a cousin in Old English—fæthu (enmity), which apparently died out in Anglo-Saxon days.

Thus during the Middle English period the Scots had to re-borrow the word by the back door, as it were, by way of French.

As for the eventual spelling, Ayto comments, “It is not clear how the original Middle English form fede turned into modern English feud.”

It’s also not clear how the YOO pronunciation of the vowels in “feud” became the  dominant one.

So in the end we can’t account for the different spellings of the similar sounds of “fuel” and “feud.”

As we’ve said before (more or less), language isn’t Euclidean geometry.

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Etymology Punctuation

With malice toward none

Q: On a recent visit to the Lincoln Memorial in DC, I noticed that there were no commas in the Second Inaugural Address carved into the wall. There are dashes and periods, but no other punctuation. Did writers of the time not use commas?

A: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address has plenty of punctuation—commas, semicolons, periods, and dashes.

At least it did when he wrote it. For example, here’s the concluding paragraph of the speech, as written:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

You can see images of Lincoln’s manuscript of the speech, in his own handwriting, at the Library of Congress website.

Of course, mid-19th-century prose had a lot more semicolons than we use today. When the speech is reproduced these days, the punctuation is usually somewhat simpler, with commas replacing the semicolons.

But the version engraved at the Lincoln Memorial is simpler still.

Both the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address are engraved at the site in their entirety. And, as is usual with public memorials, the engravers have done their best to make the writing unreadable.

The speeches are rendered in all capital letters, with paragraph indentations barely visible and punctuation reduced to a minimum. The website of the National Parks Service has an image of the speech as engraved.

See what we mean? The stone inscription certainly doesn’t invite readers in, to say the least. And that’s too bad.

The Second Inaugural is one of the most powerful and stirring speeches in our history. Lincoln delivered it on March 4, 1865, during the final days of the Civil War. Little over a month later, he was assassinated.

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Etymology Grammar Pronunciation Punctuation Usage

Is the diaeresis driving you dotty?

Q: Why has “naïve” survived, but not “coöperate”? Why do we write “Noël,” but not “poëm” or “reïgnite”? I’d appreciate (or appreciäte) any help you can offer on the rules for using the diaeresis. This particular issue is driving me dotty.

A: In a word like “appreciate,” the “i” and the “a” toward the end are clearly not a married couple.

Those two letters happen to be adjacent but they’re not a unit and aren’t pronounced as such. They belong to different syllables, and no one could mistake the way they’re sounded.

But in some words, two vowels side by side are pronounced as a diphthong—one vowel sound gliding into another within the same syllable, like the “oi” in “oil” or the “ou” in “loud.”

Then there are vowel pairs that might look like diphthongs but are in fact separate sounds in separate syllables.

In this case, a mark consisting of two dots over the second vowel can be used to show that the letter is sounded separately and not part of a diphthong.

This mark is called a “diaeresis” or “dieresis,” depending on which dictionary you follow. The two standard dictionaries we consult the most differ on this.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) prefers “dieresis” while Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) favors “diaeresis.”

Garner’s Modern American Usage (3d ed.) says the occurrences of “diaeresis” in print outnumber those of “dieresis” by three to one, which is why we’re going with the longer version here.

A classic example of the diaeresis is in the word “naïve,” where the first two vowels are phonetically divided: nye-EVE. The mark over the “i” tells the reader it’s pronounced separately.

A diaeresis is also placed over a lone vowel to show that it’s not silent, as in the name “Brontë.” But in most names (as well as words) with diaereses, the mark is suspended over the second of two vowels: “Chloë,” “Eloïse,” “Zoë,” “Noël.”

In practice, however, many familiar words are no longer written with diaereses, since readers already know how to pronounce them. In familiar names, the marks mostly serve as decoration.

As Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.) explains: “Since the sign is not often on modern keyboards it is often omitted in printed work; and it has also usually been dropped from such familiar words as aërate, coöperate (now aerate, cooperate).” 

But Fowler’s adds, “Occasional examples still occur, e.g., I reëntered the chestnut tunnel—New Yorker, 1987.”

Most publications don’t resort to diaereses as much as the New Yorker, where you’ll find spellings like “coördinate,” “reëngineer,” “preëminent,” “coöperative,” and so on.

In fact, “naive” often goes naked these days in publications other than the New Yorker.

In their entries for the word, both Merriam-Webster’s and American Heritage indicate that the diaeresis is optional. The spelling is given as “naive or naïve,” indicating that they’re equal variants and the choice is up to the reader.

You mention “poem” and “reignite.”

In fact, the first has sometimes been spelled with a diaeresis—“poëme” in the 1500s and “poëm” in the 1600s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

And we found a few examples in blogs of “reignite” spelled with a diaeresis, though the usage seems to be extremely rare and idiosyncratic.

Today when a writer  worries that a word could be misread, the solution is usually a hyphen (“re-enter,” “re-ignite,” “co-op”), not a diaeresis.

The OED defines the noun “diaeresis” as “the division of one syllable into two, esp. by the separation of a diphthong into two simple vowels.”

It adds that this is also the word for “the sign [ ¨ ] marking such a division, or, more usually, placed over the second of two vowels which otherwise make a diphthong or single sound, to indicate that they are to be pronounced separately.”

The word for the mark was first recorded in English in 1611, according to citations in the OED.

It comes from the Latin diaeresis, but its source is the Greek diairesis (division), which in turn comes from the Greek verb diairein (to divide).

Now here’s a little detour.

The roots of that Greek verb are dia (apart) and another verb, hairein  (to take or choose), which also gave us the word “heresy.” Etymologically, a “heresy” is a choice one makes, a “heretic” being one who makes the wrong choice.

But getting back to the diaeresis, don’t confuse it with its look-alike, the umlaut, which is also two dots above a vowel.

The word “umlaut” comes from German (um means “about” or “around” and laut means “sound”), and the mark is used in English only with German words and names.

It shows that a vowel sound has been modified, as in the word über or names like Göring and Gödel (which are sometimes rendered in English as Goering and Goedel). 

Both the diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritical marks (or “diacritics”). They’re not punctuation; they’re phonetic guides. Such marks are becoming less common in English, though they cling to some foreign borrowings.  

Besides the diaeresis and the umlaut, here are the most familiar diacritical marks, along with words they may appear with: the acute accent (“blasé”), the grave accent (“learnèd”), the circumflex (“bête noire”), the cedilla (“façade”), and the tilde (“señor”).

As for the “rules” on when and when not to use a diaeresis, the best authority is your dictionary.

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Etymology Linguistics Punctuation Spelling Usage

Worl-dwide English?

Q: A few days ago I saw “worldwide” hyphenated as “worl-dwide” in a book. Is this an artifact of a computer spell-check program?

A: We’ve written before on our blog about some of the oddities of hyphenation, including postings last year on Jan. 15 and July 25.

As we note, hyphenations change, and different publishers may treat the same compound differently.

You’ll find “world-wide” in some places and “worldwide” in others. Generally, as compounds become more familiar over time, they tend to lose  their hyphens. So “world wide” becomes “world-wide” and eventually “worldwide.”

Now, a case like “worl-dwide” is a simple typographical error.

We’d guess that a word the publisher treated as a solid compound (“worldwide”) broke at the end of a line, and the typesetting program wasn’t properly programmed to hyphenate it correctly (“world-wide”).

In most cases, line-break errors in manuscripts are caught by proofreaders before publication. But strays can and do slip through the cracks.

If “worl-dwide” appeared in the middle of a line of text in a book, the error would be more unusual. We can’t begin to guess how that would happen!

A book is one thing, the Internet something else. We googled “worl-dwide” the other day and got 23,000 hits, most of them written as two words. Yikes!

A few examples: “Dhl Worl Dwide Express (Dubai)” … “RATED AS A TOP 10 DJ WORL DWIDE” … “Worl dWide PR.”

We won’t bother with links, since this posting may prod the miscreants to mend the errors of their ways.

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Punctuation Usage

Quotes of many colors

Q: I’m puzzled by the way you use quotation marks/inverted commas on your blog. I thought they were only used for speech and longer quotations, but you use them in other ways.

A: No, quotation marks are not used solely for speech and other quotations. And the quotations don’t have to be long.

They can also set off words referred to as words (“restaurateur,” for example).

The convention with words used as words is to enclose them in quotation marks or to use italics, and we’ve chosen the former, which is newspaper style.

We’ll quote The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), section 7.58: “When a word or term is not used functionally but is referred to as the word or term itself, it is either italicized or enclosed in quotation marks.”

Here’s an example given in this same section: Many people say “I” even when “me” would be more correct.

In addition, we use quotation marks when we make up examples that illustrate our points (“with Trixie and me,” not “with Trixie and I”).

This is a common practice and helps in readability. Otherwise, it can be unclear where an example ends and regular text begins.

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Etymology Linguistics Punctuation

Stop signs

Q: I was watching “Law & Order: UK” the other day when the Crown Prosecutor (or perhaps a barrister) ended a sentence by saying “full stop.” This reminded me that the British use “full stop” where Americans say “period.” I’d be interested in the history of these punctuation terms.

A: The terms “full stop” and “period” date back to Shakespearean times. Although both were once used in Britain for the punctuation mark, the Oxford English Dictionary describes “period” as now chiefly North American.

The OED’s earliest citation for “period” in this sense is from Arte Brachygraphie, a 1597 book about shorthand, by the English calligrapher Peter Bales: “The first is a full pricke or period.” (Here, “pricke” means a dot or spot.)

We haven’t seen the text of the Bales book, but the OED says the word “period” here refers to “the single point used to mark the end of a sentence.”

The dictionary has an even earlier citation that uses “period” for the full pause at the end of a sentence, rather than for the punctuation mark itself.

Here’s the citation, from Penelope’s Web, a 1587 collection of tales by the English writer Robert Greene: “She fell into consideration with her selfe that the longest Sommer hath his Autumne, the largest sentence his Period.”

The dictionary’s first citation for “full stop” to mean the punctuation mark is from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1600). In urging Salanio to get to the end of a story, Salarino says, “Come, the full stop.”

And here’s an example using both “period” and “full stop,” from Micrographia, a 1665 book by the English polymath Robert Hook about his observations with a microscope: “A point commonly so call’d, that is, the mark of a full stop, or period.”

The use of “period” for the punctuation mark is derived from the Medieval Latin periodus (spelled peri[o]dos in Aelfric’s Grammar, a text in Latin and Old English from the early 11th century).

And with that, we’ll come to a full stop.

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Etymology Punctuation Usage

A tussle over tousle?

Q: I looked up the word “tousle” in my dictionary today and was surprised to find that it’s pronounced TAU-zul. I always thought it was TAU-sul. I asked a couple of other people, one American and the other British, and there was no tussle. We all pronounce it TAU-sul. What is your ruling on this?

A: We assume you’re referring to the verb “tousle,” which means to rumple or dishevel. The less common noun refers to a tangled or disheveled mass of something, such as hair.

Both Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) list two acceptable pronunciations of the verb: TAU-zul and TAU-sul. (The first syllable rhymes with “now.”)

However, Merriam-Webster’s gives only one pronunciation for the noun: TAU-zul. American Heritage has the same two for verb and noun.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists only the TAU-zul pronunciation for verb and noun, and it includes “touzle” as well as “tousle” as spellings.

The verb showed up in English in the 15th century, several hundred years before the noun.

In addition to the verb’s usual meaning of to rumple, the OED lists one that’s new to us: “to handle (esp. a woman) rudely or indelicately.”

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Grammar Punctuation Usage

Comma place

Q: What has happened to the comma that joins parts of a compound sentence?  Is it no longer used? I am seeing more and more compound sentences without it.

A: You don’t mention what kind of compound sentence you’re referring to, but we’ll do our best to answer your question.

There’s no absolute rule that one must use a comma to separate independent clauses joined by a conjunction. (A clause is a group of words with its own subject and verb.)

In a blog item last year, we noted that comma use is sometimes governed by taste and rhythm, not by any formal rule of punctuation.

One author may use a comma to separate parts of a compound sentence where another with somewhat different tastes in punctuation might leave the comma out.

In our Jan 23, 2009, blog item, we quoted a passage from John Updike’s Rabbit, Run as an example of  the tasteful use and nonuse of commas.

In the passage (which we’ll repeat here), the protagonist, Rabbit Angstrom, shoots a basket on a playground as he’s watched by a group of schoolboys:

“As they stare hushed he sights squinting through blue clouds of weed smoke, a suddenly dark silhouette like a smokestack against the afternoon spring sky, setting his feet with care, wiggling the ball with nervousness in front of his chest, one widespread white hand on top of the ball and the other underneath, jiggling it patiently to get some adjustment in air itself. The cuticle moons on his fingernails are big. Then the ball seems to ride up the right lapel of his coat and comes off his shoulder as his knees dip down, and it appears the ball will miss because though he shot from an angle the ball is not going toward the backboard. It was not aimed there. It drops into the circle of the rim, whipping the net with a ladylike whisper.”

Updike uses (and doesn’t use) commas here because of a rhythmic effect he’s employing to build suspense. It would be a crime to interrupt and separate some of those breathless clauses.

Nonfiction is different, of course. But when no rules are being broken, writers have a lot of latitude in comma use.

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Etymology Punctuation Spelling Usage

Lurve affair

Q: One of the participants at the Daily Beast’s recent “Reboot America!” conference was reported as saying the US needed “innovation and luurve.” I’ve never seen “luurve” and can’t find it in my dictionary. Is this a typo?

A: You won’t find this word in standard dictionaries, but it’s not a typo. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as a chiefly British colloquial term for “love.”

The OED’s entry for this noun spells it “lurve,” but it gives “lerv,” “lurv,” “lurrve,” and “luurve” as other spellings.

The dictionary defines the word this way: “Romantic infatuation; sex; love. Freq. when regarded as being treated (esp. in films, pop music, fiction, etc.) in a hackneyed or clichéd manner.”

The OED says the term represents “an emphatic, humorous, or arch pronunciation” of the word “love.”

It adds that the pronunciation sometimes parodies “the slow, smooth, crooning” of “love” in popular songs, and may reflect “British perceptions of the U.S. pronunciation” of the word.

The earliest citation for the noun is from a 1936 issue of the Daily Mirror that describes a situation in which “(a) you’re in Lurve, but (b) you’re not sure he’s in Lurve with you.”

However, the OED has an entry for an older verb, with even more spellings, including some with the “u” or “r” occurring four or more times.

The first citation for the verb is from The War in the Air, a 1908 novel by H. G. Wells: “I am pleading the cause of a woman, a woman I lurve.”

Here’s an example of a three-“u” version from a 1989 issue of the British magazine Q: “I luuurve that jacket, Bobby!”

And here’s a three-“r” version from Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel Bridget Jones’s Diary: “I kept saying the words, ‘Self-respect’ and ‘Hug’ over and over till I was dizzy, trying to barrage out, ‘But I lurrrve him.’ ”

Although the word in its various guises is mainly seen in Britain, it’s not unknown in the US as you’ve noticed.

And the usage may survive—in whole or in part—when a British book crosses the Atlantic.

For example, Luuurve Is a Many Trousered Thing, a book for teens by the British writer Louise Rennison, arrived in the US with the title Love Is a Many Trousered Thing.

But Rennison’s labor of “luuurve” wasn’t entirely lost. The word appears throughout the text of the American edition.

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Punctuation Usage

Hyphen notions

Q: I often see a hyphen used in sentences like this: “Different animals live in fresh- and saltwater.” Is the hyphen really necessary? I think it’s ugly.

A: The short answer is that a hyphen isn’t necessary in that sentence. We’ll explain why later, but let’s first discuss what’s going on here.

To keep things simple, we’ll use another example: “He has a stomachache and a headache.”

The two nouns in that sentence are compound words, the first made up of “stomach” and “ache,” the second of “head” and “ache.” Compounds can also be hyphenated (“mayor-elect” and “governor-elect,” for example).

To get rid of an “ache” in the sentence above, the usual style is to replace it with a hyphen: “He has a stomach- and a headache.”

As The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) explains it, when the second part of a  compound is omitted, a hyphen is used, followed by a space. It gives this example: “both over- and underfed cats.”

Note, however, that the second part of the compound, “fed,” is the same in both words. This hyphen business doesn’t work when the second part is different.

As the Chicago Manual points out, you would write “overfed and overworked mules,” but not “overfed and -worked mules.”

We’ve simplified this a lot. If you’d like to read more about dropping parts of compounds, check out page 374 in the Chicago Manual.

Getting back to your question, why isn’t a hyphen necessary in the sentence you ask about?

Because four of the five dictionaries we checked consider the noun versions to be two words, “fresh water” and “salt water”—noun phrases, in other words.

They appear as two words, for example, in both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and the Oxford English Dictionary.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) is the lone dissenter, but we’ll let the majority rule here.

Since these two noun phrases aren’t compounds, no hyphen is needed when a word is removed: “Different animals live in fresh and salt water.”

However, the adjectives “freshwater” and “saltwater” are solid compound words in four of the five dictionaries we looked at.

So a hyphen is needed if the adjectives are used in a similar sentence and part of the first one is dropped: “The aquarium has both fresh- and saltwater fish.”

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Etymology Punctuation

Grocery business

Q: When I lived in Ohio in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I noticed that people pronounced “grocery” as GRO-shree instead of GRO-sir-ee. I live in New Jersey now and hear both pronunciations. Is GRO-shree an example of a shift in pronunciation, or is it a mistake?

A: Pat added a  chapter on pronunciation to the third edition of her grammar and usage book Woe Is I. Her advice on “grocery” is clear cut: “There’s no ‘sh’ in grocery. Say GRO-sir-ee.”

This pronunciation—three syllables and no “sh”—is also the only one given in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).  

Another source, Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.), says either the two-syllable GRO-sree or the three-syllable GRO-sir-ee is acceptable.

Garner’s, which lists “grocery” among the most frequently mispronounced words in American English, calls GRO-shree a mispronunciation. 

But people who say GRO-shree do have one authority on their side. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) lists it among three acceptable variants (along with GRO-sree and GRO-sir-ee).

The “sh” pronunciation doesn’t appear, though, in our 1956 copy of Merriam-Webster’s New International Dictionary (the unabridged second edition).

This suggests that the Merriam-Webster’s lexicographers have recognized a shift in pronunciation. Will other dictionaries follow suit? We’ll see.

Both “grocer” and “grocery,” by the way, are very old words, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

“Grocer” first appeared in writing in 1321 and originally meant “one who buys and sells in the gross.”

It acquired a “y” suffix in 1436 and gave us “grocery” (originally “the goods sold by a grocer”), according to the OED.

The word “grocery” didn’t mean a grocer’s shop until the early 1800s.

But back to pronunciation. Our advice is to leave the “sh” out of “grocery,” but not to fret too much about people who leave it in.

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Colon treatment, part 2

Q: Thank you for the explanation on when NOT to use a colon. Can you also share some examples on how to use one?

A: The correct usage of the colon is pretty straightforward.

As Pat writes in Woe Is I, the colon is used to present something: a statement, a series of things, a quotation, or instructions. (Note that we just used one in that sentence.)

Here are a couple of bulleted paragraphs from the book: 

• Use a colon instead of a comma, if you wish, to introduce a quotation. I said to him: “Harry, please pick up a bottle of wine on your way over. But don’t be obsessive about it.” Many people prefer to introduce a longer quotation with a colon instead of a comma.

• Use a colon to introduce a list, if what comes before the colon could be a small sentence in itself (it has both a subject and a verb). Harry brought three wines: a Bordeaux, a Beaujolais, and a Burgundy.

 As for capitalization after a colon, Pat adds this note in Woe Is I:

“If what comes after the colon is a complete sentence, you may start it with a capital or a lowercase letter. I use a capital when I want to be more emphatic: My advice was this: Bring only one next time. (This is a matter of taste, and opinions differ. Whatever your choice, be consistent.)”

A colon is sometimes used to present a piece of information in an emphatic way. If you prefer, a dash can do the same thing.

As Pat explains elsewhere in the book, “A single dash can be used in place of a colon to emphatically present some piece of information. It was what Tina dreaded most—fallen arches.”

Colons are also used in telling the time, as in “Meet me at 3:45.” And as we’ve written in our blog, colons are used in Biblical citations.

In case you’re  wondering about how to use a colon with quotation marks, we’ve written about that on our blog too.

As we note, in the American system, a colon goes outside the closing quotation marks. Here’s an example from Woe Is I:

There are two reasons she hates the nickname “Honey”: It’s sticky and it’s sweet.

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Etymology Grammar Punctuation Uncategorized

Why is the apostrophe possessive?

Q: A question that has been on my mind for a long time deals with the use of the apostrophe in a possessive like “John’s house.” How and when did this usage come into use?

A: When the apostrophe mark was introduced into English in the 1500s, it was originally used to show where a letter or syllable had been omitted. 

We still use it this way in contractions, but in fact it’s also how the apostrophe came to be a mark of possession.   

In Old English, long before the apostrophe came into use, the possessive ending for most nouns was es.

A house belonging to John, for example, would have been called something like “Johnes house.” (Another way to show possession was by using the word “of,” as in “the house of John.”) 

After the apostrophe came along, a possessive word like “Johnes” was written as “John’s” to show that a letter had been dropped—the e in es.

But the story is not as simple as that.

In Middle English (around 1100-1500) and later, the possessive ending es was often misheard as the possessive pronoun “his.”

This accounts for such erroneous old constructions as “John his house” (meaning “Johnes house”).

Historians have suggested that printers used the apostrophe (“John’s”) as a shortened form of either possessive, the legitimate “Johnes” or the illegitimate “John his.”

In “Axing the Apostrophe,” a 1989 article in English Today, the language writer Adrian Room has called the word for this punctuation mark “a cumbersome name for an awkward object.”

Where does this clunky name come from?

The short answer, John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins tells us, is that we got it via Latin and French from the classical Greek phrase prosoidia apostrophos, literally “accent of turning away.”

But there’s usually a long answer when tracking down the origin of an English word.

In this case, “apostrophe” entered English in the 1500s with two meanings, one in punctuation and the other in rhetoric.

In rhetoric, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an “apostrophe” is a “figure of speech, by which a speaker or writer suddenly stops in his discourse, and turns to address pointedly some person or thing, either present or absent.”

The earliest published use of this sense in the OED comes from Sir Thomas More’s Apology (1533): “With a fygure of apostrophe and turning his tale to God criyng out: O good Lorde.”

The first citation for the word used to mean the punctuation mark is from the Shakespeare comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost (1588): “You finde not the apostraphas, and so misse the accent.”

(The word is spelled “apostraphas” or “apostrophus” in various editions of the play. The latter spelling persisted into the 18th century,  echoing the late Latin apostrophus.)

And that’s the story of how John’s house got its apostrophe.

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Punctuation

Colon treatment

Q: My boss wants to use the following sentence in an article for a trade journal: “A successful company must focus on its ability to: plan, improvise, and create.” The use of the colon here is awkward, and I suspect incorrect. This would be an easy edit, but what is the specific grammatical crime I can cite?

A: You’re right. That colon is inappropriate here.

Many people routinely stick a colon in front of every series or list. But that’s not always kosher, especially if the list is introduced by a verb or a preposition.

The trouble is that it’s generally incorrect to use a colon to separate a preposition or a verb from its object. So a series that’s introduced by a preposition or a verb shouldn’t ­­have a colon in between.

Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.) has several warnings about misused colons, including “Don’t put one between a verb and its complement or object” and  “Don’t put a colon between a preposition and its object.”

In the sentence you cite, the boss uses a colon to divide “to” from the series that follows. In the phrase “to plan, improvise, and create,” the word “to” is a preposition with three objects: the infinitives “plan,” “improvise,” and “create.”

No, the word “to” in a phrase like “to plan” isn’t part of the infinitive. It’s a prepositional marker that tells you an infinitive is coming. We’ve written about this before in explaining the “split infinitive” myth.

Some language types disagree with the terminology above, but the Oxford English Dictionary defines “to” as a preposition when it’s used in front of an infinitive. And standard dictionaries do, too.

Getting back to your question, the boss’s sentence would also have been incorrect if written like these:

­(1) “A successful company must focus on: planning, improvising, and creating.” (This is another example of a preposition separated from its objects.)

(2) “A successful company must: plan, improvise, and create.” (This illustrates a verb separated from its complements.)

Neither of those sentences needs a colon.

The new 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style also warns about such misuses of colons:

“Many writers assume—wrongly—that a colon is always needed before a series or a list. In fact, if a colon intervenes in what would otherwise constitute a grammatical sentence—even if the introduction appears on a separate line, as in a list—it is probably being used inappropriately.

“A colon, for example, should not be used before a series that serves as the object of a verb. When in doubt, apply this test: to merit a colon, the words that introduce a series or list must themselves constitute a grammatically complete sentence.”

The Chicago Manual uses these examples.

Correct: “The menagerie included cats, pigeons, newts, and deer ticks.”

Incorrect: “The menagerie included: cats, pigeons, newts, and deer ticks.”

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (page 1744) also notes that a colon is generally not used to separate a verb from its complement or object.

Finally, Pat’s grammar and usage book Woe Is I offers this advice on the use (or rather the nonuse) of the colon:

“Don’t use a colon to separate a verb from the rest of the sentence, as this example does. In Harry’s shopping bag were: a Bordeaux, a Beaujolais, and a Burgundy. If you don’t need a colon, why use one? In Harry’s shopping bag were a Bordeaux, a Beaujolais, and a Burgundy.”

Some of these examples don’t apply to the specific sentence you’ve asked about, but they’re worth noting. Every bit of support helps when you have to correct your boss.

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Punctuation

Martha, Oprah, and the serial comma

Q: In a phrase like “Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey and others,” is a comma required before the “and”? In classic literature I rarely see the comma but in modern literature a comma is often included.

A: When listing items in a series, a final comma before “and” is not required. But many people (we’re among them) like to use it anyway.

Pat discusses this in the new third edition of her grammar book Woe Is I. Here’s a two-paragraph excerpt:

“Use commas to separate a series of things or actions. She packed a toothbrush, a hair dryer, her swimsuit, and her teddy bear. She finished packing, paid some bills, ate a few Oreos, and watered the plants.

“NOTE: The final comma in those last two sentences, the one just before and, can be left out. It’s a matter of taste. But since its absence can sometimes change your meaning, and since there’s no harm in leaving it in, my advice is to stick with using the final comma in a series (sometimes called the ‘serial comma’).”

Of course the absence of a final comma doesn’t always make a difference. But let’s invent a sentence (using you know who) in which the lack of a final comma can leave the meaning fuzzy:

“The biggest influences on my career have been my sisters, Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey.”

Sounds like the writer’s sisters are Martha and Oprah! Now see how a serial comma ends the ambiguity:

“The biggest influences on my career have been my sisters, Martha Stewart, and Oprah Winfrey.”

Our apologies to Martha and Oprah. We hope using them in those two examples isn’t a serial crime!

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Punctuation

Questionable punctuation?

Q: I recently read this in an online sports column: “The biggest question is just how valuable can he be.” I’m guessing that the author ended it with a period because the sentence as a whole is a statement, even though it contains a question. However, it seems awkward to me.

A: The writer probably intends the sentence to be an indirect question, not a direct one, and an indirect question doesn’t need a question mark.

But in that case we would have expected him to write “he can be” instead of “can he be.” The usual syntax for this kind of construction is “The biggest question is just how valuable he can be.” 

The Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.) says an indirect question “never takes a question mark” and “takes no comma” (pages 259 and 255).

The Chicago Manual gives some examples of indirect questions, including these: “How the two could be reconciled was the question on everyone’s mind.” And, “What to do next is the question.”

As for the sentence you’ve asked about, it can be written (as we noted above) in a way that would require a question mark: “The biggest question is, just how valuable can he be?”

Note the use of the comma. The Chicago Manual explains that “a direct question included within another sentence is usually preceded by a comma; it need not begin with a capital letter.”

The style manual gives this example: “Suddenly he asked himself, where am I headed?”

If you’d like to read more, we’ve written before on the blog about punctuating questions within questions.

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Grammar Punctuation Usage

Sui genitive!

Q: I have a grammar question that’s been bothering me. If we say “the Six-Day War” and “the seven-year itch,” why do we also say “the Hundred Years’ War” and “five years’ experience”? Is there a difference I’m unaware of?

A: Normally, nouns used with numbers to form adjectival phrases are singular, as in “two-inch rain,” “three-year-old boy,” “two-dollar word,” “eight-volume biography,” and “four-star restaurant.”

However, where a plural noun is used by tradition to form such a phrase, it’s generally followed by an apostrophe, as in “the Thirty Years’ War” and “the Hundred Years’ War.”

The plural followed by an apostrophe is also used in phrases like “ten dollars’ worth” or “five years’ experience” or “two days’ time.”  

Apostrophe constructions like these aren’t “possessive” in the sense of ownership; strictly speaking, they’re genitive. 

As we’ve written before on the blog, genitives involve relationships much wider than simple possession or ownership. One such relationship is measurement, as in “two weeks’ pay” or “six hours’ time” or “five years’ experience.”

Other common examples of genitives include “a summer’s day,” “for old times’ sake,” “in harm’s way,” and “at wits’ end.” (We’ve discussed “at wits’ end” on our blog as well, in case you’re interested.) None of these apostrophes indicate possession, strictly speaking. 

Where measurements are concerned, we often have a choice of modifying phrases. Let’s say we’re waiting on the tarmac for our plane to take off.

We can use either a plural noun in the genitive case (“a three hours’ wait”), or a singular noun as part of an ordinary compound adjective (“a three-hour wait”).

Either way, it’s a long wait!

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Punctuation

Hyphen anxiety

Q: I’m puzzled about when words are hyphenated and when they aren’t. What’s the rule? Help!

A: The use of hyphens is a long and complicated subject, and Pat devotes a considerable section to it in her grammar and usage book Woe Is I.

There’s no single rule that covers all situations. But there is one rule (involving compound modifiers before a noun) that’s pretty straightforward.

In general, two-word descriptions are hyphenated before a noun (“powder-blue dress,” “red-haired cousin,” “well-done hamburger”). But if the description comes after the noun, no hyphen is used (“a dress of powder blue,” “a cousin who’s red haired,” “a hamburger well done”).

However, there are many exceptions!

Compound modifiers in which one of the words is “very,” “most,” “least,” or “less” (as in “most pleasing tune”) don’t have hyphens. And if one of the words ends in “ly,” there’s generally no hyphen (as in “incredibly difficult task”).

Some prefixes always take hyphens (as in “self-effacing,” “ex-husband,” “quasi-official”).

Others sometimes do and sometimes don’t (“pre,” “re,” “ultra,” “anti”). Hyphens appear in fractions (“two-thirds”) but generally not in whole numbers (“two hundred”) unless they’re compounds like “twenty-three,” “forty-six,” and so on.

Some compounds simply have to be memorized – or, better yet, looked up in the dictionary. For instance, hyphens appear in some family terms (like “brother-in-law”) but not in others (“half sister”).

In fact, “half” is all over the map as part of a compound: sometimes hyphenated (“half-moon,” “half-life”), sometimes separate (“half note,” “half shell”), and sometimes solid (“halfhearted,” “halftime”).

When you look words up, make sure you have a recent dictionary. Hyphenation may change from edition to edition.

Often nouns begin life as two separate words (like “home school” and “try out”), then become hyphenated words (“home-school,” “try-out”), and finally lose their hyphens as they become more common (“homeschool,” “tryout”).

We’ve written before on the blog about “homeschool,” “tryout,” and “cross” (a term that can be bewildering in compounds).

Both “half” and “cross” are great arguments for buying a dictionary, in case you don’t already have one.

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English language Etymology Punctuation Usage

Compounding interest

Q: I am curious as to why the Rules of Court in New Jersey would hyphenate the word “cross-claim,” but consider “counterclaim” one word. Is it proper to hyphenate either or both words?

A: Hyphenation conventions are rich and varied, and the results for individual compounds can differ from stylebook to stylebook, dictionary to dictionary. It may be that the editors of the Rules of Court favor one dictionary or style manual over another.

In general, most compounds formed with “counter” are written as one word (as in “counterpoint”), while those formed with “cross” are sometimes one word (“crosswalk”), sometimes hyphenated (“cross-country”), and sometimes two words (“cross section”).

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has “counterclaim” and “cross-claim.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) lists only “counterclaim,” which leads me to believe it would prefer that the second term be two words, “cross claim.”

In short, it’s perfectly reasonable that the Rules of Court would show one term as hyphenated and the other not. This may reflect the different ways in which we treat “counter” and “cross” in combination with other words.

The “counter” in “counterclaim,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a prefix from the Latin contra (“against” or “in return”).

It’s defined as meaning “done, directed, or acting against, in opposition to, as a rejoinder or reply to another thing of the same kind already made or in existence.”

But the “cross” in “cross-claim” is a combination word rather than a prefix, according to the OED, and “here cross becomes practically the equivalent of an adjective.”

In some of the compounds with “cross,” the dictionary adds, “the combination is very loose” with “the use of the hyphen being almost optional.”

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English English language Linguistics Punctuation Uncategorized Writing

A comma, too?

Q: I’ve managed to get myself into a debate with my girlfriend that is now running to two weeks and threatening our relationship. The question is whether or not one should use a comma before the word “too” at the end of a sentence—e.g., “Steve likes chocolate ice cream too.” The Chicago Manual of Style says you shouldn’t, but my girlfriend has found a website that says you should. I’m no grammarian, but I’d appreciate something approaching a definitive answer. Can you help?

A: In the universe of yeses and noes, the comma-bef0re-“too” question is a maybe (which explains why two intelligent people can disagree about it). There’s no grammatical rule that says you must use a comma with “too” in the kind of sentence you describe. It’s largely optional, and depends on the inflection the writer intends. In the case of “too,” use a comma if you intend to be emphatic about it.

Take your example: “Steve likes chocolate ice cream too.” Context might call for a comma or it might not. If Grandma has just given Steve’s pushy little brother Sam a scoop of ice cream, and their mother wants to suggest that shy little Steve should get the same, she might say, “Steve likes chocolate ice cream, too.” (With a little lilt at the end, emphasizing the “too.”)

But if Mom is just describing a catalog of the stuff that Steve likes, and has already mentioned, say, vanilla ice cream, she might say, “Steve likes chocolate ice cream too.” (No particular inflection there.) It’s often a judgment call.

In the middle of a sentence, however, a comma before “too” can be a help to the reader.

[Update, Feb. 19, 2021: Since we published this post, almost 15 years ago, The Chicago Manual of Style (now in its 17th edition) has clarified its position. It now says (section 6.52): “The adverbs too and either used in the sense of ‘also’ generally need not be preceded by a comma.” One of the examples given: “Anders likes Beethoven; his sister does too.” It adds: “When too comes in the middle of a sentence or clause, however, a comma aids comprehension.” The example: “She, too, decided against the early showing.”]

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English English language Etymology Punctuation Usage Word origin

On ’til and till and until

[Note: A May 30, 2022, post discusses the history of “ ’til,” “till,” and “until.”]

Q: My pet peeve is the use of the word till to mean until. Isn’t ’til the correct contraction of until? I see it all the time (and I mean all the time) spelled till, which makes me think of working the soil. Am I wrong? I can’t rest ’til I know.

A: I’m sorry, but you are wrong. Both till and until are legitimate words.

Historically, in fact, till came first. Later, un was added and the final l dropped, giving us until.

In modern usage, they’re interchangeable, though until is more common at the beginning of a sentence.

So it’s not correct that till is a shortening of until. Rather, until is a lengthening of till.

Where did ’til come from? It all began in the 18th century when writers muddied the waters by creating ’till and ’til under the mistaken assumption they were contractions of until. Not so.

The word ’til (with or without an apostrophe in front to indicate an omission) is etymologically incorrect, and frowned on by many usage writers.

However, some standard dictionaries now accept ’til  as a variant spelling of till. As The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), explains:

“Although ’till is now nonstandard, ’til is sometimes used in this way and is considered acceptable, though it is etymologically incorrect.”

[This post was updated on Oct. 17, 2015.]

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