Week 16 - Points for Creativity

Having mastered French in the last couple of weeks, let's switch back to English and do a couple of word-for-word exercises. We'll then finish (I'm building the suspense here) with a couple of real winners in the realm of creativity -- definitely worth waiting for.

In vs. into

I ran across a sentence the other day, one of many examples that have cropped up over the years, something like:

When I walked in the room, I noticed a book lying [not "laying," mind you -- see Week 8] on the table.

The problem with this one is that when you move from one place to another, you should use "into" or "out of," since "in" and "out" refer to positions, not motions. Our sentence above should have been

When I walked into the room, ....

Alternatively, if you noticed the book in the course of a circumnavigation inside the room, you might have said

When I finally got up off the couch and walked around the room, I found the xzl!*& book on the table, right under my nose.


Appraise vs. apprise

This one is a frequent source of confusion, since the two words sound so similar. My sample sentence should make the distinction crystal clear:

Shortly after Bob came to appraise our house, he was able to apprise us of the current value.

How can you remember this one? Well, "apprise" almost always has a person (or people) as a direct object [Shaky on direct objects? See Week 1], as in "to apprise us...," and "appraise" almost always doesn't (it's usually about money). [It's easy to remember the "money" angle -- ...raise = money, get it?] Occasionally, you'll find an example of someone doing a financial appraisal that does involve people (or at least their bodies). Remember Sean Penn's line, "Righteous bucks!" from Fast Times at Ridgemont High?


Persons vs. people

Here's one that I haven't looked up to make sure I'm not crazy, but I've always been bothered by sentences like

Will all persons who need tickets please form a line over here?

I always thought that the plural of "person" was "people," but maybe I'm just old-fashioned. It's pretty hard to defend the English language on this one, though -- isn't it perverse enough that the plural of "woman" is "women" (and they're not even pronounced the same) and that the plural of "deer" is "deer?"


Likely vs. liable

This one shouldn't be too tough:

If you tick me off again, I'm liable to open a can of Whoopie on you!

I guess it's always hard to use perfect grammar when you're really angry, but in the example here, the tickee should have said "I'm likely to open a can...." On the other hand, that doesn't sound very scary, so maybe it should have been

Tick me off once more, I'm a mess you up real bad.

Either way, since violence isn't condoned in polite society (except in sports, of course), our tickee could definitely be liable (in court this time) if s/he actually carried out the threat.


OK, the moment you've all been waiting for, the Points for Creativity section. There's always confusion about the distinctions among "insure," "ensure," and "assure," even after we talked about those in Week 7. But I saw a perfect solution a couple of weeks ago on a slide at a conference:

Essure that no auditors come to your campus except on routine visits.

Finally, the prizewinner for creativity is a tour guide at a museum we visited the other day. We were getting ready to take a walk into [not "in," mind you] the rural Chinese house that was relocated to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., and the guide said

When you get withinside, please activate your audio devices to hear more about the house.

Well, it's a beautiful early spring day here in Boston. I hope none of you is withinside reading this blog -- please wait until it starts raining again!