Say What?

From a transcript of a discussion at a conference:

“If I add up the 5.4% mortality, the 5.2% permanent dialysis rate, and 2.4% permanent paraplegia rate, I come up with a number of 15% of patients that either walked away dead or miserable.”

What did you say?

I was working yesterday on an article about ruptured eardrums and came across this sentence in one of the references I was using. There's nothing wrong with it grammatically or syntactically, but I just hope no one takes it literally.

Teach your children about the damage that can be done by putting foreign objects in their ears.

Help, quick, can we get an editor over hear?

I'm just saying

S pointed out to me psychologist John Rosemond's parenting column in the paper this morning. I usually try not to read him, unless I need either a good laugh or a dose of "Oh my God, what's with this guy?" But today's column begs for someone to comment.

The gist of his column was that helping children develop self esteem is doing them a serious disservice. To prove it he cites unnamed evidence that people with high self-regard tend to anti-social behavior. In fact, our maximum security prisons are filled with people with very high self-regard. Well that may be true, but self-esteem and self-regard do not mean the same thing. Here's what Webster's has to say:

Self-esteem: a confidence and satisfaction in oneself; self-respect
Self-regard: regard for or consideration of oneself or one's own interests

Hardly the same. What Mr. Rosemond did was...well here's a quote from Mr. Rosemond's column:

The supposed merits of high self-esteem were sold on the basis of rhetoric.

Well if that's true (?) then I guess it's fair for Mr. Rosmond to discredit self-esteem with rhetoric. What Mr. Rosemond did was employ a rhetorical trope known as dysphemism. A dysphemism is the substitution of one term with a harsher, more offensive, or more disagreeable meaning for another term. Self-esteem and self-regard are not synonyms. And erroneously equating them does not prove Mr. Rosemond's argument that people with self esteem can't be humble or caring toward others.

But the question arises, who exactly put the focus on self-esteem in the first place? Well Mr. Rosemond does provide an answer to that one:

In the 1960s, American parents stopped going to their elders for advice and began going instead to mental health professionals--people like me. To create a devoted client base, we had to come up with something new. So we cut from whole cloth a nouveau philosophy...

In the next paragraph he says, "Mind you, we made this up."

People like me (?)...we had to come up with something new(?)...so we cut from whole cloth(?)...we made this up.

Okay. This is the man who wants us to believe what he's telling us now? I'm just saying....

Proof that there is no past or future. There is only now.

And the people I send my money too are guardians of it.

This was in the letter that accompanied our Home Owners Association assessment bill:

The Board of Directors is very pleased to announce that there will be no increase in association dues assessment for 2009.

Vinings Estates, The Registry, and the Ridge residents' assessment will remain unchanged at $550 and is due in total by January 15, 2009.

The Cove and East Gate residents' assessment will remain unchanged at $365 and is due in total by January 15, 1009.

At least the people who live in The Cove are hoping there is only now, because the penalty on that could be pretty steep.

The last line says it all

I saw this sign in a fast food joint ironically called The American Deli.

Dear my customer
The fish suppliers has increased their cost incredibly high, we regret to inform you that we have no choice to raise our fish price for continuous service.

Thank you for understanding.

I'm sorry, what? I don't understand. Could you repeat that?

I just like the image

This quote came from an article in a medical journal reporting on a study done in Greece. It was clear throughout the article that the author (or perhaps the author's translator) was not a native speaker of English. I wanted to use the article as a source for a piece I was writing for a newsletter. But by the time I got to this sentence, I had already realized I couldn't use the article because the language problems made it an unreliable source:

The blood samples were collected from the antecubital vein between 8 to 10 a.m., in a sitting position after 12 hours of fasting and avoiding of alcohol.

But that's not why I'm sharing the sentence with you. I just like the image of the hungry yet sober lab tech assuming a sitting position to collect the blood sample. I guess it just depends on how much the tech wanted a drink. But I don't think I'd like that person getting near my vein with a needle.

Now the writer's lack of facility with the English language may excuse his use of a dangling modifier. But it certainly doesn't excuse the editor of a scientific journal letting it and even more serious language problems get into print.

P.S. If you miss a spotlighted post (over there in the sidebar) that everyone is talking about, you still have three days to find it. Just scroll down in the sidebar to where it says, "these sites are well worth a visit."

Another sign of the time

Maybe it's because I don't get my nails done. But there's something about this sign I saw outside a nail salon in one of our neighborhood strip malls (or as they're called now, outdoor malls) that seems to make it fall short of the desired advertising effect:

"The cleanest salon in town"

Is that really a problem?

I should try and not pick on sports writers

What does "try and. . ." mean? The correct expression is "try to . . .". It's try not to pick on. Or it's try to find, not try and find. It used to be the only time I regularly saw "try and" in print was in student papers. It's a colloquialism that students pick up and carry over into their writing because it's what they've always heard. But I see it more and more in the writing from professional health writers that I'm editing. Then this morning on the Buckeyextra web site run by the Columbus Dispatch I saw the following sentence in an article by Dispatch sports writer Ken Gordon:

"Hines' ascension into a prominent role is just one example of how 14th-ranked Ohio State (3-1) has altered its defense to try and get more speed on the field."

You would think that even if the writer doesn't know the difference, the editor should have. There are a lot of other common errors that can rob sentences of meaning. There's also a very useful catalogue of those errors on the Washington State University web site.

Interactivity

A long time ago, when computers and the Internet were still wedging themselves into our lives, I was amazed at how easy someone had made it for us to simply answer questions and upload information about ourselves online -- and how seemlessly we began doing it. Even just saying "yes" seemed ominous. I remarked to colleagues that somewhere in cyberspace someone was conditioning us to simply type in whatever we were asked to type in. Not that I heeded my own wariness. I was as eager as the next person to type in my name, place an order on line, answer a survey.

Now our Google toolbar will fill in forms for us and hand out credit card information without us even having to open our wallets. How many of us are paying a monthly $7.99 charge or $12.00 charge or. . . on our credit card statements that buys us some service we don't even remember we have? Who did we talk to when we ordered it, and who do we talk to to cancel it? And are we even sure all of those companies that are collecting the money are still in business?

We've given Microsoft free access to our hard drives because it's easier than trying to remember to download updates on our own. We let McAfee or Norton Utilities have free access. Who are they? And why can any of them simply shut down our computer at will to "reconfigure" the updates? Why does Dell want me to upload my hard drive to their server in cyberspace -- so I'll be protected when my system crashes? Do I know anybody at Dell? And why does Quicken check to see if I've got the latest financial tools and urge me to go to their website every time I start the program? For that matter, why do they want to pay my bills for me? Do I know anyone at Quicken?

What prompted this reflection was watching my local morning news today. The price of gas in Atlanta rose 11 cents overnight and another 4 cents in a half hour during the broadcast. It's because of Ike, and I just wish I had filled up yesterday. Wouldn't it be great if I could get some kind of warning? And then they said it. If you want instant alerts on what's happening with gas prices, all you have to do is sign up on 11alive.com and they'll send you an alert when there's going to be a change in the price of gas. I didn't sign up, but I assume they'd send it to my mobile phone if I asked. It seemed like it was the perfect solution to a serious problem. Thank God for the Matrix.

Would you buy a used car from these people?

I got an email this morning from a company called Books4mobiles.com. They said they wanted to publish my books on their Web site for free. Then they would sell the books to people who want to read it on their mobile phone and I would get a 40% royalty. Here's a blurb from the email:

"This exciting new website allows you the valuable opportunity to sell your books with ease. We do all the work and you recieve a new income stream direct to your pocket."

So I went to take a look at the Web site. I took these quotes at random from multiple pages where they were telling me about this great opportunity:

• Million of people have a mobile phones, why carry your favourite book,when you can read the book on your mobile phone.
• When submitting your work for publishing either for the mobile phone or print, they are a few checks to be done.
• The cost of publishing your work costs is Free.
• Please contact of sales team if you are interest.

To be fair, they said the books that people submit need to be free of grammatical errors because they do not have a service that can check grammar.

Did you say Books4mobiles? Or was it Books4illiterates? Either way, please keep your stream out of my pocket.

Whoops

See what happens when editors don't think, or at least don't fact check.

First, go here.

Now see this.

My hat is off to Ishmael.

P.S. I certainly hope that by the time anyone sees this, the newspaper has realized it's error and taken the picture down. But it was there.

How is that fair?

S broke her wrist a while back. She fell off the stool at her mother's house and spent the night at the emergency room. That was Saturday night, so we couldn't get in to see the hand doctor until Monday. When we did, he said she needed surgery in order to put a plate in, which happened late Monday evening. She was supposed to go home afterward, but due to some complications they admitted her to the hospital Monday night. They released her mid afternoon on Tuesday. All that's preliminary to the real topic.

We got the bill from the hospital about a week after she came home. It was a copy of the bill that was sent to the insurance company. The total bill for the surgery and one night in the hospital was $20,476.50.

Yesterday we got the final bill. Our "account balance" that is now due is $170. Now that's not bad. Insurance is a good thing. But as I looked at the bill, I saw that the insurance company had paid a total of $6,931.25. Because the hospital and insurance company have a contractual arrangement, the total adjustment in the bill was $13,375.25. The hospital wrote it off, or at least I'm assuming they did.

On the original bill there was a statement that said if the insurance company did not pay the claim, we would be responsible for the full 20+k. Health care reform anyone?