dvdj

Comments by dvdj

• dvdj commented on the word unique

  To use advertising copywriters as any kind of benchmark for educated grammar, let alone literacy, would be downright laughable if it weren't so absurd. Today's copywriters inspire an imaginary essay title: "How Has Advertising Copy Gotten so Rotten?" I see their faux pas every day, including a Travelers Insurance TV commercial that displayed the company's tagline, "In-synch." The hyphen is misplaced, unless we think comparable phrases should be hyphenated all of a sudden, such as "in-tune" or "in-place." It's a verb phrase, not a compound noun. While any absence of grammatical grace in ad copy often can be attributed to the "creative" staff's penchant to go for attention-getting effect, the "in-synch" example doesn't accomplish anything that a corrected, hyphen-less display wouldn't also effect, so the only conclusion is that nobody -- NOBODY -- at the agency or client was exactly an honors English student and can't distinguish between a verb phrase and a noun. As a copywriter would say, "Amazing!"

  July 6, 2009

• dvdj commented on the word short-lived

  The fallacy of dictionary panels contending that common usage magically transforms an error in grammar or pronunciation into proper form is that they are helping empower, or at least endorsing, those who are ignorant of the rules of grammar or of pronunciation to set the standard, which is to say lower the bar, for the rest of us. To aver that the prevalent mispronunciation of "short-lived" with a short "i" instead of the correct long "i" is not in error puts the people who adjudge such matters in error.

  Everybody today seems to mistake the phrase "hone in on" for the correct "home in on." Do these tone-deaf dictionary panelists suggest that the definition of hone should be adapted to fit the malapropisms that permeate the speech patterns of "common users"? The alarming attitude of dictionary panelists who think that way implies they are comfortable with subliterate influences defining literacy down, to paraphrase a famous coinage by very erudite late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

  Witness the corrupted phrase, "while away the hours." Does that even make sense? No, because the original phrase is "wile away the hours," a logical statement meaning to make time seemingly go by faster we fool time using our wiles. There is a singular, even mystical, beauty to language used with precision that, ironically (another word constantly misused to mean coincidental), those who administer dictionaries are helping to uglify.

  July 6, 2009

• dvdj commented on the word unitizes

  Unitizes is a dictionary word that means combine into a single unit: The iPod unitizes entertainment hardware and software into a tiny, portable device that is a logical progression in the food chain of personal electronics that is rooted in the Sony Walkman that debuted in 1977 (I was at the press conference and still have that collector's item).

  July 6, 2009

• dvdj commented on the word himâ

  There are technology businesses that use the name Mediaware, but, to my knowledge, I coined it as a word to connote the digital merging of hardware and software -- hence, mediaware. I used it first as the name of a column for a trade magazine I edited in the 90s, then used it as the title of a technical journal I founded in 2002 as editor and publisher for a digital-media trade association. Our tagline, "mediaware is everyware," summed up that magazine's premise that the proliferation of digital media will continue apace and increasingly influence human behavior, a la the iPod, which itself is the embodiment of mediaware in how it unitizes hardware and software in a single device. In fact, I searched the word "unitize" on Wordnik, and it needs to be added, which I will do presently (ie, momentarily).

  July 6, 2009