Then, a couple days ago, a friend posted a photo of his breakfast on Facebook and wrote, “This is my breakfast. There are many like it, but this one is mine!”

It seemed like everyone was saying, “This is my _______. There are many like it, but this one is mine.” I became fixated, so I did some research and found out it comes from the rifleman’s creed that the United States Marines say. It starts, “This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

I can’t say that I know a lot of military or gun enthusiasts, so it seems more likely that they picked it up from the creed’s influence on pop culture. For instance, it was popularized in the classic war movie Full Metal Jacket.

But I imagine just as many people learned it from Family Guy when it took the creed’s formula and, just like the people I mentioned earlier, changed out the word rifle:

This happens a lot—when you learn a new word or phrase, and then you seemingly see and hear it everywhere. The phenomenon has a name: Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. The reason it got its name seems to be a result of that very phenomenon.

As Alan Bellows explains in this fascinating article about it:

It seems likely that some individual learned of the existence of the historic German urban guerrilla group which went by that name, and then heard the name again soon afterwards. This plucky wordsmith may then have named the phenomenon after the very subject which triggered it.

Something tells me you’ll be hearing more about Baader-Meinhof very soon. You’ll probably hear it everywhere.

I grew up in Appalachia, and though y’all is more often used in the southern parts of the United States, I did hear it as a child. Now living Minneapolis, which is more “civilized” and devoid of cows and other livestock, saying y’all makes me feel homey, almost like I can smell the manure on the cornfield by my old house every time I say it. (Apparently when one is homesick, even manure can bring good memories.) So I’m going to continue to say it. And that’s okay.

In case you were wondering, y’all is a legitimate word in the same way that ain’t is a word. People say it, so it’s a word. They’re both perfectly fine to use in conversation. I just wouldn’t encourage using it on a college admission essay, lest the mighty academics judge you to be unedjeecated.

But why I ask, dear readers, does y’all have a bad reputation? It’s simply a contraction of you all. While that may be redundant, is it any different, I ask, than the you guys I hear so frequently in the north? Or you lot, which people say in England? Y’all just gets bound up with all these bad stereotypes of the kind of people we envision saying it. Well, this y’all sayer does not wear jean overalls and does not have a piece of hay sticking out of her mouth. But if she did, that would be okay, too.

How to use y’all
Now that I’ve obviously convinced you that it’s okay to say y’all, let’s look at how to use it correctly.

Y’all is spelled like that. It’s not ya’ll. The apostrophe goes after the Y. Perhaps people get confused with the contraction for we will, which is we’ll, and thus misplace the apostrophe in y’all.

Also, there is some debate about whether y’all can be singular. The majority of authorities I checked seem inclined to say it is only plural. I agree. Since it’s a contraction of you all, the all lends itself to meaning more than one person.

Y’all revolution
If you’re feeling a bit feisty today, and are up for a debate, I encourage you to drop a y’all in conversation and gauge the listener’s response. If the listener thinks you’re silly for saying that, then ask why. If more than one person is in your group, perhaps say, “What’s so wrong with y’all, y’all?” You may find it will spark a lively conversation about words and stereotypes—and maybe, by the time y’all are finished, we’ll have world peace.

 

With Mother’s Day right around the corner and spring finally pushing up the daisies, many of us are thinking about pockets full of posies this week. That’s why I headed over to the Online Etymology Dictionary and found ten flower names with rather interesting histories.

carnation: Carnation has an uncertain origin. The name could come from the word coronation because the flowers were used in chaplets (wreaths worn on the head) or because the petals look crown-like. As carnations are often pink, it is also thought the name comes from the Middle French word carnation, which means person’s color or complexion.

daisy: The Old English term for daisy is dœgesege, which is a combination of the words dœges and eage, meaning day’s eye. Daisy originally got its name because the petals open at dawn and close at dusk.
Fun fact: Daisy being used as a woman’s name is believed to have started as a nickname for Margaret.

dandelion: This word comes from the Middle French dent de lion, which literally means lion’s tooth. It got this name because of its tooth-like leaves.
Fun fact: Apparently, dandelions used to be used as diuretics. In Middle English, it was sometimes called piss-a-bed, and in French, pissenlit. (Lit is the French word for bed, and the Old French verb for to urinate is pissier.)

forget-me-not: Though its scientific name is Myosotis palustris, this nickname comes from the Old French ne m’oubliez mye (don’t forget me).
Fun fact: The nickname arose from the thought that people wearing the flower should not be forgotten by their lovers.

gardenia: One may think that gardenia comes from the word garden. In a way, it does. However, its name comes from the name of Dr. Alexander Garden, an American naturalist.

lavender: Lavender gets its name from its use to scent washed fabrics and bath water. The word is associated with the French lavande and Italian lavanda, which means a washing.

orchid: Orchid means testicles. It comes from the Proto-Indo-European root word for testicles, orghi-. It is so named because the shape of its roots apparently looks like the man parts.

pansy: This word comes from the Middle French pensée, which means thought, rememberance.

peony: The long etymological route this word took may have started with Paion, who the ancient Greeks believed to be the physician to the gods. The plant apparently has healing qualities, with its roots, flowers, and seeds all formerly being used in medicine.

tulip: This flower’s name comes from the Turkish word tülbent, which means turban, because people thought it looked like the headwear.

It’s pretty easy to make me happy. Give me a kitty to pet, put on an old episode of Star Trek, take me to a baseball game, or let me rant about grammar. I found a letter to the editor today in the Star Tribune, our paper here in Minneapolis, that made me smile because it combines two of my favorite things: baseball and grammar. I felt I just had to share it with you. D.L. Struckman of Watertown, South Dakota, wrote it. I don’t know who that is, but s/he’s pretty awesome.

Here it goes:

I’m looking forward to the Minnesota Twins having an exciting year. However, there are several things I dislike hearing or seeing during the games. One is the “Circle Me Bert” signs. Where or what is your “Bert”? Is that similar to saying, “Circle me chin”? Perhaps those with the signs don’t know you are to punctuate a noun of direct address. “Circle me, Bert” would show that you did listen in English class.

Another irritation is announcers’ use of “hit” for “bat.” When you say that Willingham, for instance, will “hit” next, how do you know that? I’m sure that he will bat next, but he has only about a 30 percent chance of hitting.

Also, the ball usually passes over the center edges of the plate, not the corner. It would have to come at a really sharp angle to cross one of the corners. Think of how many syllables you could save during a game by saying “edge” instead of “corner.” 

For more baseball and language, here is a post I wrote a couple years ago about baseball slang. Enjoy: http://grammarpartyblog.com/2011/04/13/baseball-slang-is-in-my-wheelhouse/

Today we’re discussing when to hyphenate the phrases years old and year old.

Let’s take a look at two sentences:

His son is four years old.
He has a four year old boy.

In the first sentence, you would not use hyphens. In the second sentence, you would, making it four-year-old boy. This is because the phrase four year old is modifying the noun boy.

A good clue to determine whether you should hyphenate the year old phrase is to see if a noun comes after it. If there is a noun, hyphenate:

six-year-old toy
fifty-year-old whiskey
eight-year-old cat

If the sentence is simply stating that someone or something is so many years old, then don’t use a hyphen:

Her dad turned sixty years old today.
His baseball card is seventy years old.

Quiz
Determine whether the words in italics should be hyphenated. The answers are at the bottom.

1) Sasha is eight years old.
2) She has a three year old turtle.
3) Maddie is a five year old girl.
4) The painting is one hundred years old.
5) He ate the hamburger that was fourteen years old.
6) He ate a fourteen year old hamburger.

Answers:

1) not hyphenated 2) hyphenated; three-year-old turtle 3) hyphenated; five-year-old girl. 4) not hyphenated 5) not hyphenated 6) hyphenated; fourteen-year-old hamburger.

 

Today we’re discussing words with prefixes and whether we should hyphenate them. In general, English is moving away from hyphenation (it’s coworker, not co-worker, for instance), but there are some situations in which using the hyphen is the better course of action.

For this, I turned to the dog-eared, super-highlighted section 7.85 of my copy of The Chicago Manual of Style, which is my go-to resource for style questions. (Word style, not fashion style—I can handle the latter part on my own. Hellooo, silver combat boots!)

Here’s what the book says about prefixes.
A hyphen should appear:
1)   Before a capitalized word or a numeral, such as sub-Saharan, pre-1950
2)   To separate two Is, two As, or two other same vowels, such as anti-intellectual, extra-alkaline
3)   To separate other combinations of letters or syllables that might cause misreading, such as pro-life

(There are a few more rules; however, these are the ones you’ll most often experience, so let’s keep our focus here. And, as always, there are exceptions to the rules above, but we’re discussing what you should generally do.)

So, according to rule 1, it would be prewar, but pre-WWII (because of the capitalization).

According to rule 2, it would be extrasmart, but extra-academic (because of having the two side-by-side letter As).

Rule 3 is where it gets tricky to me. It basically says, if you think not hyphenating a word may cause people to misread it, then use a hyphen. Well, that’s open to interpretation of what one thinks may lead to a misread. The rule, according to The Chicago Manual of Style is: when in doubt, check Merriam-Webster. This means, if a word is not hyphenated in that dictionary, don’t hyphenate it.

In the last book I edited, I had a conundrum with words starting with rein (so the prefix re- and a word that started with the letters I and N.) For example, this morning I looked up the word reinvest, as in “to invest again.” To me, I see this word as two words smushed together: rein and vest. It looks (to me) like a noun that means “a vest you wear with your reins.” Like: “I wore my reinvest so I didn’t fall off my horse.” But, of course, that’s not its meaning. Yet, the lords at Merriam-Webster think people won’t have a problem misreading that word, so it shouldn’t get a hyphen.

I might lose my grammar police badge for this, but in the last book I edited, I used my own judgment (in some cases) regarding hyphenation. I encourage you to do this, too. If you think readers will be confused if you don’t use a hyphen, then use a hyphen. (But don’t tell anyone I told you that.)

Quiz
Decide if each word should be hyphenated. Keep in mind rules 1 and 2 mentioned above. (We’re not even going to get into rule 3 here because, as I mentioned, it’s too open to interpretation.)

1)   hyper active
2)   neo natal
3)   post 1984
4)   hyper sonic
5)   inner Chicago
6)   anti inflammatory
7)   non violent
8)   over zealous
9)   mega ambient
10)  co author

Answers: 1) hyperactive 2) neonatal 3) post-1984 4) hypersonic 5) inner-Chicago 6) anti-inflammatory 7) nonviolent 8) overzealous 9) mega-ambient 10) coauthor

feet: plural of foot
feat: a deed notable especially for courage; an act or product of skill, endurance, or ingenuity
—Merriam-Webster

Feet and feat are homophones, which means they sound the same but have different meanings. Feet can mean the unit of measurement or the two body parts dangling from the bottom of your legs. Feat is an act you do that deserves awe.

Examples of feet
Stan bought three feet of licorice.
Stan’s feet are huge; he wears a size fifteen shoe.

Examples of feat
Stan pulled quite a feat when he finished his twelve-page paper in three hours.
Stan’s epic battle against the zombies was a courageous feat.

Quiz
Fill in either feet or feat in the blanks below. The answers are at the bottom.

1. Tina’s _______ can’t fit in my shoes because they’re too small.
2. Tina’s _______ of getting eight guys’ phone numbers in one night will go down in history.
3. Tina’s tape measurer goes to four _______.
4. “Wow! What a _______!” Tina said after she witnessed a stranger fend off a mugger.

Answers:

1. feet 2. feat 3. feet 4. feat

In US publications, Internet is usually capitalized. The argument is that it is a proper noun (like Rome or Richard or Ritz Crackers), and thus it should follow the capitalization rules for proper nouns and have the first letter capitalized. (Note, however, that web and website are not capitalized, but World Wide Web is.)

I can almost agree with this thinking. In a way, the Internet is sort of a place (and proper nouns are the official names for people, places, and things), but it comes to you instead of you visiting it, as you would, say, Texas. You can’t go to a server, touch the box, and say, “Hey! I’m at the Internet! I should get a post card for Grandma!”

I’m more aligned with the prominent UK style, which is to leave it lowercased. It’s not a brand name, and brand names get capitalized. And it’s not really a place, not like Texas or Rome. When I think of the Internet, I think of it as a technology. We don’t capitalize general names of technologies; think about radio or television. Why should the Internet be different?

As a US-based book editor, I’m a slave to style. So, I capitalize Internet. But I’m hoping we move away from the capitalization soon. To me, it doesn’t make sense.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section.

There are times in writing when you have to deal with dreaded accent marks. I feel for you. I really do. I’ve typed enough French essays to cry cedillas. So here’s a handy list of accent mark names and how to insert the darn things in Microsoft Word.

Common accent marks:

• á: accent acute
• à: accent grave
• å: bolle
• ç: cedilla
• â: circumflex
• æ: ligature
• œ: ligature
• ø: streg
• ñ: tilde
• ä: umlaut

Inserting accent marks
When I’m working with accent marks, I use the old-fashioned long way of inserting them because I’m not one for memorizing a bunch of shortcuts.

The long way
In Microsoft Word, go to Insert, then Symbol. Select Advanced Symbol. A small screen will pop up with a list of letters with accent marks. Simply select the letter and corresponding mark you want and click Insert.

Of course, you can always use keyboard shortcuts, too.

For PC users, here’s a list of shortcuts:
accent acute: CTRL+’, the letter
accent grave: CTRL+`, the letter
æ ligature: CTRL+Shift+&, a, or A
bolle: CTRL+Shift+@, a, or A
cedilla: CTRL+(comma), c, or C
circumflex: CTRL+Shift+^, the letter
œ ligature: CTRL+Shift+&, o, or O
streg: CTRL+/, o, or O
tilde: CTRL+Shift+~, the letter
umlaut: CTRL+Shift+:, the letter

For Mac users, here’s what to do:
accent acute: Option+E, the letter
accent grave: Option+`, the letter
æ ligature: Shift+Option+’ (uppercase); Option+’ (lowercase)
bolle: Shift+Option+A, the letter (uppercase); Option+A (lowercase)
cedilla: Shift+Option+C (uppercase); Option+C (lowercase)
circumflex: Option+I, the letter
œ ligature: Shift+Option+Q (uppercase); Option+Q (lowercase)
streg: Shift+Option+O (uppercase); Option+O (lowercase)
tilde: Option+N, the letter
umlaut: Option+U, the letter

April Fool’s day

This is how Merriam-Webster has it and is the placement most agreed upon. To me, though, it seems more fitting to have the apostrophe at the end to make it Fools’ (plural). I mean, certainly there is more than one fool who will be at the wrong end of mean and nasty pranks today. Alas, I am not yet an all-powerful guru, where I can change apostrophe placement and have the world listen. So for now, that’s how you spell it.