I'm currently involved in the kind of problem my father colorfully describes as a "goat rodeo."
I've always loved that saying, but I so also wish goat rodeos were as fun as they sounded.
What was most interesting and new to me was that the argument wasn't just about "verbing nouns," but also about "contact" being too vague. People argued you should say someone "called," "wrote," or "told" someone else something.
Part of me wonders if the increase in the number of ways we have to communicate helped drive the acceptance of "contact" as a verb. Now we can also fax, text, and message, for example. 2/X
Acceptance has been gradual, however, so if all these new ways to communicate were part of what led to greater acceptance, it was probably only a small part.
In 1988, 65% of the panel said this sentence was fine, and in 2004, it was up to 94%.
Check out the whole podcast (episode 945) to learn more about the usage panel and what happened to the American Heritage Dictionary. 3/3
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(We're still working on the transcript.)
In my poll from a few days ago, nearly all of you thought it was not wrong to use the verb "contacted" in the sentence "She immediately called an officer at the Naval Intelligence Service, who in turn contacted the FBI."
I was surprised to learn that decades ago, people objected heartily to using the word "contact" as a verb.
This came up when I interviewed Steve Kleinedler, formerly of the American Heritage Dictionary for the Grammar Girl podcast this week. 1/X
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/111/058/750/727/767/635/original/89cb39d234c26060.png
What was most interesting and new to me was that the argument wasn't just about "verbing nouns," but also about "contact" being too vague. People argued you should say someone "called," "wrote," or "told" someone else something.
Part of me wonders if the increase in the number of ways we have to communicate helped drive the acceptance of "contact" as a verb. Now we can also fax, text, and message, for example. 2/X
@c8565328 Wow, that's an amazing display of stick-to-itiveness!
Congratulations and thanks for all the great information and entertainment over the years.
@65e2bee5 True. Our toaster over has replaced our big oven too. I guess I would categorize that as an appliance rather than a gadget though. Where does one draw the line? #DeepThoughts
I just almost made an apostrophe error in a paragraph about apostrophe errors. Time is a flat circle (or something like that).
#AmWriting #AmWritingTooLateInTheDay
I have noticed that I am doing a weird thing (for me) in ChatGPT: I type my sentences in all lowercase and usually without punctuation.
I'm mirroring how I type a Google search instead of how I type regular sentences, even though I'm using plain-language sentences as prompts.
Have any of you noticed you are doing this too?
#ChatGPT
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