Tag Archives: English

New in New York

A recent discussion on New York City’s public radio station repeatedly referred to “a new initiative” to reduce the number of traffic accidents. As someone who walks around the city every day, dodging bicycles (illegally) on the sidewalk and aggressive drivers in pedestrian crosswalks, I should have been listening carefully. Yet my mind drifted, caught by the phrase “new initiative.” I wondered whether there was such a thing as an “old initiative.”

My dictionary lists four definitions for “initiative,” the most appropriate in this context being “an act or strategy intended to resolve a difficulty or improve a situation; a fresh approach.” That last bit fits poorly with the adjective “new,” because then you’re talking about a “new fresh approach.” It’s worth noting, though, that the dictionary’s sample sentence refers to a “new initiative.” Why?

I was still trying to figure out the answer to this question when my husband snapped a photo of this sign:

So much better than an old tradition.

Traditionally, a “tradition” is a custom passed along from generation to generation. How do you know you’re creating a “new holiday tradition”? By employing a soothsayer? If so, how much does that career pay? For some reason, it’s not listed in the Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the US government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. I can’t imagine why. After all, this is a city in which the marketing campaign for a building under construction referred to the structure as “prewar.” (For non-NYers, let me explain that “pre-war” in a real estate ad generally means “built before World War II.”) Given the state of the world, it’s likely that everything, everywhere, at any point in time is pre- some sort of war, but still, you have to wonder what the builders foresaw.

Mulling all this, I finally came up with a theory. The desire to distance oneself from the past with a “new initiative” or to control the future by establishing a “new tradition” is hardwired into New Yorkers’ psyches. Notwithstanding the fact that the city sports a record-breaking concentration of psychotherapists plumbing our personal pasts, the city that never sleeps never stops changing, too. New Yorkers reinvent themselves and their city. It’s our tradition. Maybe we should slow down and savor what we already have. A change like that, though, requires initiative. New or not.

Please tell me . . .

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Please tell me that two apostrophes are missing from this sign, and not the verb “are.” Even though it’s unlikely that Fido and Mittens can read, I’d also be happy with direct address, created by a colon after “cats”:

Please tell me that the employees of this store are not making neat rectangles out of little humans:

Fold how?

I understand the “wash” part, as I subscribe to a theory I discovered in an Angela Thirkell novel: that kids are born with a bag of dirt inside that leaks out little by little, beginning anew every time they emerge from the bathtub. But the rest is a mystery. Fold? Doubled over at the waist, or vertically from left to right? Also, what’s with the “n”? Why use this contraction of “and,” which is more a grunt than a word? Maybe the workers are too busy bending kids’ hands and feet (and then keeping the limbs in place) to add the missing letters? And what’s the market for folded babies and toddlers? Okay, as an experienced mother and grandmother, I can actually answer that last question. After a long day chasing little kids around, having someone fold them neatly is, unfortunately, appealing. Wrong, but appealing.

Pregnant Persons

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On the subway this morning I heard a recorded announcement begging riders to give up their seats to “elderly, disabled, and pregnant persons.” In my experience – and contrary to New Yorkers’ reputation for callous disregard of others – all sorts of people leap up to offer seats to those with gray hair (me, for example) and to others with obvious physical needs. Still, I was pleased to hear the reminder.

A kinder, gentler MTA

I must confess, though, that I spent the whole ride thinking about the phrase “pregnant persons.” The writer wanted three adjectives (elderly, disabled, and pregnant) to modify the noun persons. But because only females can give birth, the gender-neutral term, pregnant persons, sounded odd.

I considered alternatives. Substituting pregnant women doesn’t work, because then you’re being polite only to females, as the other two adjectives attach to women. With that wording, a fragile 90-year-old guy is out of luck, as are men of any age who have broken legs or other conditions that make standing on a moving train a bad idea.

Nor can you simply turn those adjectives into nouns, ceding the seat to the elderly, disabled, or pregnant. This wording reduces complex human identity to one characteristic. I’m old, but age is just one part of me. I imagine that wheelchair users and others with physical issues feel the same way. (For a longer discussion of age-related terms, check out “Euph and Old Age” in this blog. Here’s the URL: http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=479.)

One solution is to rearrange the sequence, so that you’re talking about pregnant women, and elderly and disabled persons. That works, but it’s awkward and may too easily be misread as excluding women from the more general category, persons.

So what’s a train-riding grammarian to do? I’m voting for something like this: “Please give up your seat to anyone who has difficulty standing.” But I’m open to suggestions from every person, including pregnant ones.

Have a Good Whatever

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The New York Times reports that Starbucks has unveiled the 2015 holiday coffee cup, a Rothkoesque shading of reds adorned only with the corporate logo.

Noncontroversial coffee cup available here! Or at least that’s the goal.

The official line is that the company wants to encourage creativity and doodling on cardboard vessels in those willing to pay far too much for a beverage. (Okay, “pay far too much” isn’t part of the official line. It’s my observation.) According to Starbucks, the goal of the 2015 cup is “to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories.” In other words, aim for everyone and offend no one.

Of course, critics immediately blasted the company for “erasing Christmas” and even “hating Jesus.” I must confess that I’ve never thought of turning to a coffee cup for spiritual inspiration. Plus, the official symbols of Christmas in New York City, as far as I can tell, are the giant tree in Rockefeller Center and brightly decorated, strident pleas to spend money on presents. So at first the Starbucks controversy puzzled me.

But then I realized that Starbucks’ new cup is part of a trend toward meaningless generalities. Employees in local stores used to wish that I “have a nice day,” or, from the over- perky, that I “have a really great day.” Counting my change and trying to remember the next item on my to-do list, I paid little attention to these fervent hopes for my wellbeing. But somewhere in my consciousness was a bit of gratitude, and I did notice when the comments changed. Now shopkeepers generally tell me to “have a good one.” A good what? Not that I was crazy about “nice” or “really great” day, but seriously, were those expressions too controversial? And is the next step, “have a good whatever” or, with a nod to Seinfeld, “a good yada yada”?

Sir Isaac Newton held that every action is balanced by an equal and opposite reaction. The rise in blandness, it seems, makes extremism not only possible but inevitable. In other words, that plain red coffee cup sets the tone of the US presidential campaign. Who knew?

To boldly split

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Some grammarians groan when they hear the Starship Enterprise’s mission “to boldly go” into television ratings history —not because they hate science fiction but because they object to the split infinitive. That’s what I thought about when I saw this sign, which appears on construction sites all over New York City:

To anonymously report.

An infinitive is the verb, the whole verb, and nothing but the verb – except for to, which grabs onto the infinitive most of the time. In the sign, to report is the infinitive and anonymously is the word that interrupts it.

A side point before continuing: grammar terms, like wire coat hangers, reproduce at an exponential rate. Give a couple of grammar terms a bit of privacy, and soon you’ll have a dozen more. Split infinitives may also be called cleft or interrupted, and infinitives without the to are known as bare. These terms make me wonder what, exactly, is being interrupted. Paging Sigmund Freud.

The rule against split infinitives dates to a 19^th century grammar text, which declared that the prohibition would “prove to be as accurate as most rules, and may be found beneficial to inexperienced writers.” Not exactly a rave review. On the opposing side, playwright George Bernard Shaw went so far as to ask that an editor who objected to split infinitives be replaced by “an intelligent Newfoundland dog.”

My position on the subject? Split an infinitive whenever you want. I promise to not report you to the Grammar Cops.

Of Mice and Man

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Okay, I lied. This post is about man as a singular form. No mice appear. To be clear, mice appear regularly in New York City, but this post is mice-free. Instead, this post is about man-ly signs:

One guy does everything.

The construction manager must be on a tight budget if only one man is on the job. No wonder there’s danger! I’d cause all sorts of danger too if I had to do all the work myself. (Oh wait – I do have to do all the work myself, but no one ever got a concussion from a dangling modifier.)

Here’s another:

Man and Ladies.

To be fair, this sign should read (1) Gentleman and Lady or (2) Gentlemen and Ladies or (3) Men and Women. Or, judging from the fact that nearly every garment on display in the shop is a business suit typically worn by a man, the sign could also change to Men and Woman.

One more, from an earlier post:

This store sells clothes for one kid. Just one kid.

The placement of the apostrophe signals a singular noun, so the store sells to one kid (no word on the gender). With such a limited market, I’m not surprised that the store is now out of business.

Keep Clam And . . .

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My friend Catherine told me about a shirt with the slogan “Keep Clam and Proofread On.” In the spirit of keeping clam, I submit this sign, which the Department of Sanitation of New York (DSNY) taped to a lamppost on West 72nd Street, just before the Pope’s visit.

He said?

The photo quality isn’t great, so I’ll repeat the text of the numbered items and the paragraph at the bottom of the sign, which begins with an underlined statement:

For Wednesday, September 23, 2015, regular set-out and pick-up time (black bags).
But, for Friday, September 25, 2015, DSNY will pick up the garbage (black bags and recyclables) on Thursday evening from 4:00 o’clock to 12:00 midnight.

Nothing on Friday morning at all. Most likely 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. start on Thursday, he said the 4 – 12 shift.

I think we can all agree that the best response to this sign is huh? The numbered items attempt clarity, thoughtfully including the month, day, and year in case anyone was in a coma and emerged just in time to see the Pope, missing the media blitz the rest of us encountered. But item number two could be reworded. I’m being picky here (what else is new?) but I’d prefer to see “instead of Friday” replace But, for Friday. At a minimum, I’d dump the comma, which to my ears breaks the flow of the sentence.

And then that last paragraph! Who is he? Probably not Pope Francis, who is interested in workers’ rights but unlikely to concern himself with rescheduled sanitation shifts. Furthermore, is it from 4:00 o’clock, as item two says, or a 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. start, as the last paragraph states?

Moral of the story: Don’t cut and paste, and proofread clamly, in case you find a Type O.

NIMS and NOMS

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We New Yorkers, have, upon occasion, been known to be a tad self-absorbed. Common wisdom holds that Londoners see their city as the center of the world and New Yorkers view theirs as the world itself. Nor are we New Yorkers known for patience. I read somewhere that telemarketers receive special training so they can convey their messages to New Yorkers at double the pace they employ for other locations. And, this just in: New Yorkers also like to complain.

Add self-absorption, impatience, and irritation and you get a phenomenon known as NIMBY – “not in my backyard.” NIMBY occurs all over the world, of course, but in New York City, where backyards aren’t common, it’s more often NIMS – “not in my street,” or NOMS, “not on my sidewalk.”

Check out this NOMS sign:

Note the italics.

I might not have snapped a photo of this sign had it not italicized THESE PREMISES. The italics add emphasis and imply that you are free to loiter somewhere else, just “not on my sidewalk,” or NOMS.

A variation, which I’m still trying to decode, appears on this sign:

Let Fido poop on the sidewalk. Just not my sidewalk.

Around tree?

In a flush of optimism (no pun intended), I first saw this sign as a request to steer dogs to the stretch of curb around tree. (An impatient New Yorker, the sign-writer had no time to add the.) But this sign appears in New York, so I must conclude that instead of offering canine accommodations, the sign-writer wants dogs to go on somebody else’s sidewalk or street. It’s a NIMS/NOMS.

Slightly off topic, but too good to omit, is this sign:

Blessed or punished?

The tenuous connection to NIMS is the fourth statement, Private Property. Implied by that phrase is “go somewhere public” (NIMS). But I have to admit I snapped the photo because of the five exclamation points, each a vehement finger stab in the eye. (How New York is that?) The sign also attracted me by including one our language’s strangest words, sanctioned, which means (a) official permission and (b) punishment. You have to love a language in which a word may be its own antonym.

And you have to love New York City, or at least I do, for displaying signs like these.

Grammarian in the City

Snarky remarks on language I see and hear in New York City

Tag Archives: English

Please tell me . . .

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To boldly split

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Of Mice and Man

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NIMS and NOMS

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And in confusion . . .

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