Bloody Well Write

Since we’re almost done with this whole building-a-house thing, I think that it’s high time I figure out — once and for all — the difference between concrete and cement. So here goes:

Cement = the powder that is mixed with water and either sand or gravel to make concrete

The difference is important when you’re talking about pavement. It’s concrete pavement, not cement pavement. Same goes for  concrete blocks, driveways, retaining walls and the like.

It also makes the phrase pounding the cement seem a bit silly. Pounding the pavement? Yes, indeed — that’s fine.

Easy-peasy, yes? Yes.

Happy trails!

SAK

Hello, dear Bloody Well Write readers!

My site stats have enlightened me to the fact that I recently posted my 200th blog post, so I thought that was cause for some celebration. No trip to Fiji, no new Mini Countryman — at least not yet — but a “woohoo!” was uttered as I decided to post a few Bloody Well Write stats, just for kicks. So here goes:

• 200 posts
• 463 comments
• 255 approved comments (that means I’ve edited out quite a bit of spam, don’t you know)
• 23 categories
• 839 tags
• 78,761 total views
• 349 = busiest day: Tuesday, January 5, 2010
• Views today = 138 so far

This all sounds pretty good to me, but you know how it goes: Someone’s always better off than you are and someone’s always worse off than you are. Ain’t that the truth?! And you know what? I’m cool with that. Roll with it, Henry, right? Right. Just keep on truckin’ and you’ll get to where you’re headed. Baby steps, tortoise and the hare, that sort of thing. I climbed the Pikes Peak Ascent twice, my friends, and baby steps got me up that sucker both times.

What am I saying? Well, for starters, it’s late at night and my brain gets fuzzy, so who knows? But really, I’m just saying this: Thank you for reading my silly little grammar blog and humoring me. I do enjoy it and hope that you on occasion do, too.

Happy trails!

SAK

May 1 is May Day, here in the United States and around the world. While it’s lost some of its popularity here in the states, May Day is still marked the world over, celebrating spring and the seasonal renewal it brings with it. What’s not to love about that?

Here are a few tidbits you may not know about May Day:

• May Day grew out of the early Celtic Irish tradition of Beltane, a festival recognizing the earth’s fertility and renewed hope for the coming seasons. The festival included bonfires marking transition, purification and the power of the sun.
• The Romans celebrated Floralia in honor of Flora, the goddess of flowers and vegetation. The festival lasted an entire week and incorporated flowers, drinking and dancing.
• Central and Northern European countries celebrated versions of Walpurgis Night, a traditional spring festival with bonfires and dancing. Participating countries included the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden.
• When Christianity spread through Europe, many of the pagan traditions — including May Day — lost their religious undertones and became secular holidays. Other celebrations morphed into Christian holidays, such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.
• Traditional May Day events include giving May Day baskets that hold flowers or sweets, dancing around a May Pole and crowning a May Queen. While these events still occur in other parts of the world, they have dwindled in popularity throughout the U.S.
• May 1 is also International Workers’ Day, Law Day (U.S.) and Lei Day (Hawaii) — but of course, since a lei is a wreath-turned-necklace made of flowers.

Everyone gets into Lei Day (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/exfordy/5224187290/)

Happy May Day!

SAK

Here’s news to me: The word myriad should not be followed by the word of.

I know, right?!

I’m not alone in my surprise. The online dictionaries of Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, Cambridge Dictionary of American English and Macmillan all give examples of myriad being used as a noun, with myriad of clearly displayed as a viable option.

Dig a bit further, and you’ll find that myriad has been used as both a noun and an adjective for many moons — myriad moons, even. According to American Heritage, for example, myriad was first used as a noun — thus allowing for myriad of — and only in 19th-century poetry did myriad sprout adjective tendencies — myriad, sans of.

The latest rendition of the AP Stylebook, however, states that myriad is an adjective and  — and I quote — “Note word is not followed by of. The myriad books in the library.” It makes no mention of myriad nor myriad of used as a noun.

Oof. After several decades of hearing myriad of, plain, ol’ myriad just doesn’t sound right to me.

"One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?" — "Walden," Henry David Thoreau (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kio/430028423/)

That being said, I asked my grammar guru, Bill Walsh of The Washington Post and The Slot fame, his opinion on the matter. He responded that ‎while using myriad of isn’t technically wrong, why would I risk being considered wrong by those who follow AP style (which, my friends, is a whole bloody lot of folks)?

Why, indeed? And so there it is. AP says no of. Bill Walsh says no of. I, then, follow suit — no of.

Happy trails!

SAK

It’s time to get my backside in gear and write a Bloody Well Write post. The inspiration today is, I must say, lacking. Thus, I turn to my trusty AP Stylebook to guide my way. It’s a real pal that way.

So I have alighted on light-year. That’s right, with a hyphen. I’ve had no idea it required one, but there it is in proverbial black and white, so be it.

Why not the two-worded light year, you query? (Yes, at least a few of you query while the rest of you roll your eyes). My guess would be that, since light year isn’t quite as popular in today’s vernacular as the one-word lifestyle or lifetime, it doesn’t warrant one-word status just yet. Perhaps the good folks at the AP Stylebook have decided that changing light-year into lightyear will have to make news some other year at a future grammarian conference.

Here’s a cool little YouTube video that explains what the heck a light-year is. Mind-boggling, really.

Frankly, I don’t know the exact reason why it remains hyphenated. If you do, please enlighten me — this year, pretty please. Then it may be a light year for me, har, har.

I know, keep my day job. Got it.

Happy trails!

SAK

Once a week, I get an email from Houzz.com, a time-sucking site that focuses on home design and decor. This morning’s email had a link to a tongue-in-cheek article about various terms familiar to architects but completely foreign to the layperson. One of the words was interstitial.

“Sounds like a cool word,” I thought. Since the article didn’t give a serious definition (though it did give a good sense of the word through wit), I decided to look it up.

Interstitial has one basic meaning — the space between — that has been applied to a variety of fields:

Advertising and communications — an interstitial webpage is the page that shows up before the page that you really want to get to (e.g., an advertisement shows up, which you may or may not be able to click through before going to a selected page).

Architecture — Interstitial space is the space located between floors, commonly found in hospitals and labs to enable easy access to mechanical systems; the 7 1/2 floor in “Being John Malkovich” is a comical example of how architects use “the space between.”

Art — Interstitial art isn’t easily categorized, as it falls between familiar confines of genres or media.

Biology — Interstitial fluid, a solution that bathes and surrounds the cells of multicellular animals.

Medical — An interstitial pregnancy is a pregnancy located outside of the uterine cavity in the area of the Fallopian tube that penetrates the muscular layer of the uterus.

A few other examples? Sure thing. How about being stuck between a rock and a hard place? Or Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle”? Or Dave Matthews Band’s “The Space Between”?

Happy trails!

SAK

There’s a holiday for everything, apparently.

Today is Walk on Your Wild Side Day, and I’m happy to share that news. Everyone needs to walk on the wild side every now and then, and though some of you don’t need any prodding, others benefit from a gentle reminder. So here it is: Go take a wild hike!

And for your listening pleasure, here’s a phenomenal tune from “Transformer,” Lou Reed’s 1972 album, to get you going:

Happy trails!

SAK

Ask me what my three favorite books are, and my consistent answer is this:

• “The Scarlet Pimpernel”
• “The Count of Monte Cristo”
• “Mutiny on the Bounty”

I must have a thing for the late 1700s and early 1800s — that’s odd.

Regardless, all three stories are swashbuckling adventures that include intrigue, mystery, romance, heroes and scoundrels. “Mutiny on the Bounty” in particular has Captain Bligh, who tried to control the men on his ship with fear and loathing. He accomplishes this — quite well for a while — by enforcing public whippings of those who do not live up to his high demands. He has these men flayed, both literally and figuratively, to prove his power. Of course, it ends up backfiring in a major way when the men decide to mutiny, led by one Fletcher Christian.

So what does flay mean? Literally, it means to strip the skin off via whipping. Figuratively, it means to give a tongue lashing — to verbally put someone else down in a lame effort to bolster oneself up. Flaying is, in my opinion, never a good thing.

In comparison, flail means to swing one’s arms about wildly. I’m sure that there was plenty of flailing going on aboard the Bounty, too, but not in direct reference to the whippings. If you think of flailing, think of, perhaps, mosh-pit or hardcore dancing; it’s a pure form of abandonment of control, letting arms (and legs and head and so on) go where they will. Some modern dance moves look like flailing but are probably more of a controlled effort made to look uncontrolled.

Happy trails!

SAK

It’s the merry month of March, and if you’re a college basketball fan, you know that means that March Madness is in full swing. And boy, is it ever.

I went to the University of Kansas and am thus a Jayhawk now and forever. I was on campus in a play rehearsal when we won the NCAA National Championship back in ‘88 (I can sense that you’re doing the math), sneaking peeks between scenes at the small TV plugged in backstage. As soon as our team won, all the actors booked it outside to experience the campus shenanigans. Horns were blaring, lights were blinking and people were just beginning the long celebration.

Good times.

Big Jay had some fun with the cheerleaders after the 2008 championship tipoff (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmrosenfeld/3024312791/)

Then we won again in 2008. And now, just four short years later, we’re on the brink of possibly winning again. So what does this have to do with grammar?

Ah — the tipoff. And yes, I mean tipoff as a one-word noun (or even an adjective if need be). Please don’t write about the excitement of the championship tip off unless you’re referring to someone giving someone else a hint that the bathroom line is shorter at the other end of the stadium.

The correct one-word, no-hyphen tipoff refers to the jump ball that begins each basketball game.

See? It relates. And again: Rock chalk, baby!

Happy trails!

SAK

Anyone who grew up in America throughout the last several decades is most likely aware of Bugs Bunny and his carrot-seeking ways. And most people the world over are familiar with a carrot — that crunchy orange veggie plucked out of the dirt, often steamed (to the discontentment of many a squirmy child) or used as a healthy way to scoop insanely huge amounts of unhealthy ranch dip into the mouths of party-goers.

But what, pray tell, is a carat? And a karat? And a caret?

Two keyboard carets

carat = a measurement of precious stones, particularly diamonds (”What a lovely engagement ring she has — must be three carats!”)

karat = a unit for measuring the pureness of gold combined with an alloy; 24-karat gold is 100% pure (”What a lovely 24-karat gold ring she has — looks like an heirloom!”)

caret = a mark used by proofreaders, editors and writers to give copy direction (”I inserted a comma where the caret suggested, and boy, does that editor know what she’s talking about — this sentence rocks the house now!”)

Sorry, got a little excited about my work. I’ll try to keep it in check.

Happy trails!

SAK