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[howlersfound]

Can one really have too much of a good thing? ...wine, chocolate, adjectival endings?

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This is a matter for debate.

(Not the history of tuberculosis--rather, whether to pluralize “millennium” as “millenniums” or “millennia.”)

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It “shined” a spotlight? Bet that spotlight’s really shiny now, then!

source: politico.com

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NO! The word that should be here is RAVAGING.

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Wow, there have already been 72 Democratic presidential debates in February 2020 alone? For an average of nearly 4 per day? Incredible! Almost unbelievably, the media haven’t been giving this nearly enough attention, as I’ve only heard of one other in this month.

(I’m not even sure what to call this error. I'm not even sure where the “72″ comes from--have there been 72 debates throughout the entire history of televised Democratic presidential debating, perhaps? I couldn’t easily verify that, if it’s the case.)

(Screenshot taken from BuzzFeed at 4:30 pm, February 19, 2020.)

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They’ve bought a large amount of followers, have they? By the pound, maybe even the metric ton? How much is this substance known as “followers” worth these days, say per liter, if a more lowly individual were to be interested?

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Ah yes: cabbage’s, carrot’s, neo-nazi’s...a selection of nouns which each possess an equal amount of humanity, but none of which ought to be in the possessive voice.

(The so-called greengrocer’s apostrophe: possessives used as plurals. From a Newsweek video; screenshotted August 11, 2019.)

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Ah, so us had shown ourselves less courageous than the British, had us? My dear M. Houellebecq, you must feel so downcast, not least about the grammar choices of your translator.

(Pronoun case error: since the pronoun is here serving as a subject of the verb “show,” it needs to be in the nominative case (we) despite following a comparative.)

Article from the Jan. 2019 issue of Harpers Magazine; accessed Dec. 16 2018.

[howlersfound]

I wonder if I should be gentle with this one, because these errors might have been committed by someone whose first language isn’t English.

But there are a lot of errors, and they’re in the photo heading:

Here’s that text, with its problems marked in bold:

A man throws a bike in a burning truck during a protest of Yellow vests (Gilets jaunes) against rising oil prices and living costs near the Arc of Triomphe on the Champs Elysees in Paris, on November 24, 2018 Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images

Okay, discussion time. Here we have a prepositional idiom problem. If a man throws a bike in a burning truck, he throws a bike that is in a burning truck (already). A strange situation, that. The man in the above photo is throwing a bike into a burning truck.

The second issue is also a prepositional idiom problem. A protest is either against someone or by them. This is a protest by the Yellow Vests.

The third issue, which is the one that made me nearly certain that this writer has French as a first language, is that English titles (including organization names) capitalize each word, excepting prepositions, articles and coordinating conjunctions. So this ought to have read “Yellow Vests.” Furthermore, perhaps it would have been better to take a cue from the article copy itself and translate the name as “Yellow Jackets” instead, since this translation has the added benefit of being cute. And consistency is nice, but as its absence isn’t ungrammatical, this isn’t my primary gripe here.

Finally, if “Arc” and “Triomphe” remain in French, “of” should have remained as “de.” It really should be “Arc de Triomphe,” since that’s what it’s usually called in English; “Arch of Triumph” would still sound odd but would at least be in a single language.

But while my English is superior to M. Guay’s, I’m certain that his French is far superior to my own, which is why I’ve tried to keep my snark to a minimum here.

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JACKPOT: This article contains a WHOLE PARAGRAPH that’s just littered with problems.

(There are enough that we need a text quote in order to talk about it, but as the Slate editorial staff might swot it up a bit later, here’s a screencap.)

Here’s the whole paragraph:

We’ve known this is Trump’s mode of being forever, but coupled with the news that the president genuinely believed that his own Justice Department could be commandeered to prosecute James Comey and Hillary Clinton places it all in a different sort of light. Because it illuminates how abjectly and severely limited this man is, in his understanding of government, and governance, and law. And it’s a gift to those who stood by him for the judges, or stood by him for the tax cuts, or stood by him for national security, because now they must ask themselves if it was all worth it. The folks who wondered in 2016 whether blowing everything up might be fruitful and thought to themselves, “Well, heck, let’s try it,” are finally starting to get a taste of what drifting ash and falling steel beams really look like. And it looks small.

Okay, let’s get into this. The first independent clause is “We’ve known this is Trump’s mode of being forever,” which is fine. Let’s move on to that sentence’s second clause: 

“but coupled with the news that the president genuinely believed that his own Justice Department could be commandeered to prosecute James Comey and Hillary Clinton places it all in a different sort of light.”

“Coupled with...places.” That’s the main subject-verb pair here. “Coupled with” is being used as a noun. That’s such a weird error that I don’t really know what to call it. It’s a sentence that forgets what it’s doing so hard that it mixes up what parts of speech it needs.

The text then DOUBLES DOWN to refer to this non-noun with a pronoun in the next sentence, which is itself a fragment! “Because it illuminates how abjectly and severely limited this man is, in his understanding of government, and governance, and law.” At least, that’s what I think it does. Who knows what the antecedent of “it” really is, here? Maybe the “different sort of light” is the actual antecedent. But how could we tell? Whatever the antecedent is, it’s located in that trainwreck of a first sentence, so basically any WORD--not even restricted to nouns--is fair game.

And this lack of clarity only increases as the paragraph goes on. “It” becomes “a gift,” and one to a long, long list of Trump stans of various flavors. “It’s a gift to [them]...because they must now ask themselves if it was all worth it.” I hate this sentence for two reasons: firstly, because the word “it” appears three times and not all of the appearances mean the same thing; and secondly, because I find it impossible to see why the word “gift” is being repurposed to mean “wake-up call.”

The penultimate sentence is at least grammatical, and comprehensible on a second reading, but the first reading gives the reader a real speed-bump in the form of a clausal subject so lengthy that in the frantic search for a verb, the reader may easily seize upon the word “thought,” hoping that it is the main verb while it merely heralds still more words in the subject. Here is the subject-verb phrase:

subject:

“The folks who wondered in 2016 whether blowing everything up might be fruitful and thought to themselves, ‘Well, heck, let’s try it,’”

verb: “are.”

Mercifully, the final sentence is short and punchy, and stands out so beautifully against the preceding carnage that it looks a lot more excellent than it is. (I’m of the opinion that it’s fine to open sentences with conjunctions.)

Now I’ll go see if they’ve repaired the source material. 

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(”The Ghosts of Versailles,” Harpers Magazine, November 2018)

I can’t really summon up any snark for this, as the article from which it comes is insightful and generally very good.

But come on! Semicolons get a lot of hate, and perhaps they are sometimes overused--but surely it’s common knowledge that in a list in which the elements contain commas, the elements should be separated with semicolons.

Otherwise you end up with confusion like this: are we “still trying to deal” with the end of the Romanov dynasty? Or is the article somehow trying to say that that end is, alongside “the modern Middle East,” just one more gift of “the breakup of the Ottoman Empire”? (An odd assertion historically, yes, but a logical reading of the sentence as punctuated.)

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So soft...that what? THAT WHAT, MR. STARCK? With your near-limitless resources and amusingly fitting surname, could you not manage something as small as finishing a comparison?

(Comparative adverb used as intensifier. The error is in a quotation, so all blame falls upon Mr. Starck, rather than upon the Times. Error found on Sept. 11, 2018.)

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Grammatical and vaguely horrifying. 

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Oh wow Buzzfeed, how subtle. By implying that a treaty can be BETWEEN three entities, you imply that only two of those must actually count; who knows which one you mean, though?

(Usage error: you can only use between to link two parties. This sentence, having three, should read “...among the US, Mexico,* and Canada.”)

*We’re just going to let that unnecessary serial comma stand without comment, due to a long-held affection.

Article published July 1, 2018 and accessed September 6, 2018.

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Hey NYT, I guess the word “influx” doesn’t have enough of a sense of “in” on its own, right? You really need to use the preposition “in” to reinforce that in every way possible, right? (Instead of, I don’t know, using the well-established pair “influx of” instead?)

(Prepositional idiom error: the correct pairing for “influx” is “of.” Source: Cambridge Dictionary.)

Article published Aug. 14, 2018 and accessed Sept. 6, 2018.

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Seen on the New York Times website on Sept. 4, 2018

BREAKING NEWS: WORLD’S RICHEST MAN IS RICHER THAN HIMSELF

EITHER THAT OR HE IS SECRETLY NOT HUMAN, AND THUS CANNOT ACTUALLY BE CATEGORIZED AS “ANYONE IN THE MODERN WORLD.” THE HEROIC NYT IS SURREPTITIOUSLY WARNING YOU ABOUT THE LIZARD OVERLORDS

(Comparison logic problem: the comparative conjunction “than” should contrast two separate categories; the sentence should read “...than anyone else in the modern world” in order to create the two categories “Jeff Bezos” and “anyone else.” Otherwise the inherent inclusiveness of “anyone” will make the sentence imply a contrast between Bezos and himself.)