Guide to Grammar and Style -- L
From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.
Comments are welcome.
English is an unusual language in that it
derives from two main language families, Latinate and
Germanic. Its origins are Germanic; in the fourth or fifth
century, Old English or Anglo-Saxon was
a Germanic dialect. (You wouldn't be able to read a word of it
without a class in Old English.)
The picture changed some time after 1066, when the Normans --
French-speakers -- invaded England. For a few centuries, the
peasants continued to speak a Germanic English while the nobles
spoke French (a Romance language, derived from Latin). Over
time, though, the two vocabularies began to merge; and where Old
English speakers and French speakers had only one word each for
something, speakers of the new blended English often had
two, one based on the Germanic original long used by the
peasantry, another based on the French import that had currency
in the court. (Later still, a great many words entered the
language directly from Latin without stopping along the way at
French, and sometimes we have near synonyms from all three
origins: kingly [from Germanic könig],
royal [from Latin by way of French roy], and
regal [directly from Latin rex, regis].)
There's a moral behind this history lesson: even today, a
millennium after the Norman Invasion, words often retain connotative traces of their origins.
Words of Germanic origin tend to be shorter, more direct, more
blunt, while Latinate words tend to be polysyllabic, and are
often associated with higher and scientific diction. If you want a memorable
example, compare the connotations of shit (from the
Germanic scitan) with those of defecate (from the
Latin defaecare).
The practical lesson: you'll sound more blunt, more
straightforward, even more forthright, if you draw your words
from Germanic roots. An extensively Latinate vocabulary, on the
contrary, suggests a more elevated level of diction. Choose your
words carefully, then, with constant attention to your audience and the effects you want to
have on them.
Less
means "not as much"; fewer means "not as many." You earn
less money by selling fewer products; you use
less oil but eat fewer fries. If you can count
them, use fewer.
A yucky vogue word.
Look for something precise.
In formal writing, avoid using like
as a conjunction. In other
words, something can be like something else (there it's a
preposition), but avoid "It
tastes good like a cigarette should" -- it should be
"as a cigarette should." Quickie test: there should be no
verb in the phrase right after like. Even in phrases such
as "It looks like it's going to rain" or "It sounds like the
motor's broken," as if is usually more appropriate than
like -- again, at least in formal
writing.
I trust I needn't comment on the barbarous, slack-jawed habit of
using like as a verbal crutch: "It was just, like, y'know,
like, really weird, like." It's bad enough in speech: I
encourage people to try to go an entire day without saying
"like," and few can manage. If you use it in writing, though,
you should be afflicted with plagues and boils. Shame on you.
Don't use listing
as a noun where list will do. A phone book is a
list of names and numbers, each of which is a
listing.
Use the word
literally with care, and only where what you are saying is
literally true. "We were literally flooded with
work" is wrong because the flood is a metaphorical one, not an actual
deluge. Don't use literally where really,
very, or extremely will do.
There's nothing
inherently wrong with long words, but too many people think a
long word is always better than a short one. It doubtless comes
from a desire to impress, to sound more authoritative, but it
usually ends in imprecision and gracelessness -- and, what may be worse,
if you use long words improperly you sound like an ass. (Look up
malapropism in your dictionary, or, better yet, read
Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play, The Rivals.) Words like
functionality and methodology have their
proper uses, but they're not the same as function and
method. See also Anticipate, Utilize, Obfuscation, and Vocabulary.