In my congratulations article yesterday, I fully supported Bernard Salt, the well known Melbourne Demographer and KPMG Partner, on his manners article in last weekend’s Australian property supplement. It was pleasing to see a younger executive than me getting stuck into the sliding manners standards of the next generation. This trend can only be contained if us mature people become more proactive in informing them of their poor habits and to educate them better.

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I congratulate Ita Buttrose on releasing a long overdue book on manners and etiquette including a comprehensive critical assessment of Australian’s decision to totally disregard and ignore good manners in the public, private and business arenas, but where more people tend to act in their own self interest.

Ita would not have written such a detailed book on restoring better manners and etiquette if she, like me, had not been concerned how over the past 20 years the standard of manners in Australia keep on rapidly deteriorating. Its obvious these problems start in the home and school. All parents must take a hard look at they way they educate and manage their children’s behaviour.

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John Elliott criticises deterioration in Melbourne mens dress code.

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Thank you Luke for your excellent contribution; you’re not a bad pilot either.

Shirley Green has a real bee in her bonnet about the use of slang, such as ‘servo’ for service station, in newspaper reporting, specifically the
Adelaide Advertiser. We’re all proud of the ability of Australians
(Aussies) to modify and abbreviate words and thereby enrich our own version of English and our literature, but I think she’s right. Let’s keep the vocabulary of published news and opinion, whether written or spoken, simple but complete, leaving it to the reader to abbreviate it in the retelling: “There was a barney at the local servo this arvo,” is perfectly fine over a beer.

Not a day goes by without me hearing a common clanger or two. Here are a few of them:

* The use of the word ‘same’ when ninety-nine times out of a hundred
it should be ‘identical’. No two people can have the same car unless they share it but they may have the same model of car;

* ‘centred around’ when it must be either ‘centred on’ or ‘revolve
around’;

* ‘more regularly’ when it should be ‘more frequently’; and,

* the one that really grates, ‘hone in’ when it can only be ‘home in’,
like a homing pigeon not like with a knife.

Finally, have you mastered lay and lie? One the few places that you can see ‘lay’ used correctly (instead of ‘lie’) is on the electronic sign on the security x-ray scanner at Melbourne Airport: “Please lay your bags on the conveyor”. You lay tiles and concrete and bags on conveyors but you lie down after a big lunch unless of course it was yesterday when you lay down afterwards.
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The battle against ‘haitch’ received some heavyweight support recently in The Age from author Robert Drewe. Read the full article by clicking here

Please help me maintain the rage.

Thank you James for reminding me about the common usage of ‘good’ for ‘well’ in response to “How are you?” The appropriate retort is: “I know you have been good but are you well?” I hope we never get to the point of seeing cards which say “Get good soon”.

James also mentions the use of ‘unorganised’ instead of ‘disorganised’.
Similar confusion occurs between being ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’; the former showing no interest (which is what most people mean to say) and the latter simply expressing neutrality or indifference.

David and James alerted me to the cowardly use of ‘myself’ instead of ‘I’ or ‘me’, which I hadn’t noticed as being as prevalent as it obviously is. The misuse stems from a lack of confidence but shouldn’t deter one from trying.

There is much confusion between the two but either is still better than
‘myself’: please desist immediately.

Several of you cited examples of sloppiness. A common and growing example in written English is the use of ‘lead’ when ‘led’ is the word intended. I have the impression that most (mis) users don’t even appreciate that there is a difference.

Claudia Rowe and others criticise mispronunciation and specifically the
omission of letters, the most grating being the Pauline Hanson inspired
abbreviation of our nation’s name to ‘Austraya’. It’s awful but the
British have been doing it for centuries. Think of the names of many
British cities of more than two syllables and you’ll find some of the
letters are missing when an English person pronounces them: Birming’m,
Edinbr’h, Portsm’th. Our American cousins tend to pronounce every syllable as if their life depended on it: Bir-ming-ham. But let’s not give up yet: keep the L (pronounced ‘ell’ not ‘lell’) in Australia.

My ‘groan of the week’ is about the almost universal usage of ‘For Free’: it’s just ‘free’ for god’s sake.

Finally, and here the battle is lost, do you realise that when someone tells you that they are ‘nauseous’ they mean (or should mean) that they are causing you to feel sick or disgusted? They meant to say that they are or feel ‘nauseated’.

Keep your gripes and groans coming please.

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I’m not pedantic when it comes to claiming what is English and what is not. After all the Oxford Dictionary from its inception set out to capture English as it was spoken on both sides of the Atlantic and continues to accept variations from wherever the language is spoken.

Winston Churchill, one of the greatest lovers and users of the English language, ridiculed the slavish adherence to the so-called rules of grammar. He said “Pedantic English is something up with which I will not put”. What I object to is the sloppy use of English caused by laziness; using a word that seems near enough rather than trying to find the correct word.

I’m currently driven nuts by the almost universal use of ‘less’ when, more often than not, the correct word is ‘fewer’. Understanding the difference is easy. If they can be counted, use ‘fewer’; if it can’t, use ‘less’. So, smoking fewer cigarettes means that I inhale less nicotine – perhaps one day anyway. So the next time you see that sign in the supermarket check-out lane that says “10 items or less” borrow a Texta pen from the staff and correct it to “10 items or fewer”.

Another teeth-gritter is the excessive use of “impact” because people can’t fathom the difference between “effect” and “affect”, which I admit is not so easy but can be mastered. A useful rule of thumb is that if you have written “the impact was/is/will be” then “effect” would have been correct and if you have written “(something) was/is/will be impacted” then you could have used “affected”. “Impact” is best saved for use when something was/is/will be really impacted, like Kevin Bartlett being run into by John Nicholls.

Others that annoy me are “could of” instead of “could have”; “hung” when someone is unfortunate enough to be “hanged”; “comprised of” when “comprise” or “comprises” is elegantly simpler; and of course the ghastly “revert back” when “revert” says it all.

I am interested in the poor and incorrect use of English that bugs you.
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What bugs you – and me too

Thanks to Bree, the title of this column has been corrected to Using Proper English.

Aaron is bugged by homophones which are words which sound the same but have different meanings e.g. ‘formally’ and ‘formerly’; ‘principle’ and ‘principal’. The pair that annoys me the most is ‘compliment’ and ‘complement’; I can almost guarantee that whichever one should have been used, the writer will choose to use the other one. I compliment Aaron for raising this and hope my comments complement his.

A related problem is the confusion between verb and noun as with ‘licence’ (noun) and ‘license’ (verb) and ‘practice’ and ‘practise’. The Americans solved this by spelling both to end in ‘se’. This prevents the frequent and irritating mistake made by most restaurants in Australia in telling us they are licenced instead of licensed.

Confusing ‘infer’ and ‘imply’ is a common mistake, which I infer from Chiefly’s comment bugs him. Easily fixed: the sender implies and the receiver infers.

I agree with Gabrielle and Ben: the apostrophe is a disaster area. Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss (Profile Books, 2005) is the authority on this little mark. The author even provides a ‘punctuation repair kit’ of stickers so that you can obliterate or add apostrophes on shop signs.

I sympathise with Irene about the confusion of ‘pick’ with ‘choose’ but agree that, alas, the battle is lost. The battle may also be lost for the once clear distinction between historical and historic. Statistics of what happened in the past are purely historical but when Carlton wins the flag this year, that event should be remembered as historic!

I don’t agree completely with those who complain about the so-called Americanisation of spelling and its hastened advance by Microsoft’s spell-checker for two reasons: American English is a valid alternative and, if you object to it in your own Word documents, I understand that you can select another version of English including Australian English. I have come to prefer program over programme. As for the use of ‘ize’ instead of ‘ise’ I have to point out to Di that organize is the only spelling listed in the Shorter OED whereas our own Macquarie Dictionary prefers organise.

Finally, I can’t hold back from venting my complete distaste for ‘haitch’ when the correct and only possible pronunciation of the letter H is ‘aitch’; I’m not aware of any dictionary anywhere which states otherwise. The nuns teaching in Catholic schools have a lot to answer for. I’m no shrinking violet when it comes to displaying my Australian origins but I cringe every time I hear that awful sound. For some reason those who have to express the letter H the most often, HR professionals, seem to be the worst offenders. The ABC is not a haitch-free zone either.

PLEASE KEEP YOUR COMMENTS COMING.

View video featuring JDE on the Channel News and article in the The Australian newspaper.

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