November 25, 2024

Direct Objects

TOPICS: ,

English has two kinds of objects: direct and indirect. In "I sent Joe a letter," the letter is the direct object — the thing receiving the action — unlike Joe, which is an indirect object in this example. This week's podcast looks at direct objects.

Click player above to listen to the podcast

Adjectives as noise
Posted by June on November 25, 2024
LABELS: ,

Adjectives are controversial. Rightly so. About four times out of five, you can improve a sentence by cutting one out:

Joe is dating a beautiful supermodel.

Joe is dating a supermodel.

Clearly, the noun “supermodel” does not need to be propped up by an adjective. It’s powerful enough on its own.

Adjectives exist for a reason. You can’t just take the adjective out of the sentence: “She is beautiful," without its adjective, loses its meaning. But before a noun, an adjective can come off like a weak attempt to convince your reader of something he should be able to see for himself.

So adjectives have enough problems of their own. Yet marketers, it seems, are determined to bludgeon them into complete meaninglessness. They do this by using adjectives as mere noise. In marketers’ hands, adjectives are born to be ignored.

Take, for example, this Kashi brand cereal flavor: Island Vanilla.

Really, Kashi? Is that supposed to mean anything other than “vanilla plus some extra syllables to make it sound like something more than plain-old vanilla”?

Here’s another Kashi flavor I like: Harvest Wheat. Again, what does that adjective tell me about what I can expect when I open the box? Nothing. “Harvest wheat” is just wheat.

Kashi isn’t alone in this practice, not by a long shot.

Ragu has a flavor called Garden Vegetable, as opposed to what? Factory Vegetable?

Luden’s makes Wild Cherry cough drops, which we can only presume are superior to those awful farmed cherries.

And Kettle Chips come in this flavor: Backyard Barbeque. (You can almost taste the chain-link fence and kiddie pool.)

And what might a blind taste test tell us about the difference between chocolate and Dutch chocolate, between vanilla and French vanilla? About ranch and cool ranch?

Examples of this kind of hot-air blowing are too numerous to count. And while it’s standard marketing procedure, I think we should all be wee bit insulted by it. When marketers slap meaningless words onto product names in this fashion, it’s worse than telling people “Don’t think.” It’s telling people: “We know you don’t think and we’re so confident about it that we’re going to rub your noses in it.”

Okay, maybe that’s a little hypersensitive. But it’s still an insult to consumers and an act of violence against simple, clear nouns.

June Casagrande is a writer and journalist whose weekly grammar/humor column, “A Word, Please,” appears in community newspapers in California, Florida, and Texas. more

The Best Punctuation Book, Period

A Comprehensive Guide for Every Writer, Editor, Student, and Businessperson

The most comprehensive punctuation guide ever, “The Best Punctuation Book, Period” doesn’t just cover the basic rules. It delves into gray areas of punctuation left unclear by the other rule books, showing how the rules differ in four different editing styles. There's also an A to Z reference of commonly mispunctuated terms. more

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies

A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite

What do suicidal pandas, doped-up rock stars, and a naked Pamela Anderson have in common? They’re all a heck of a lot more interesting than reading about predicate nominatives and hyphens. June Casagrande knows this and has invented a whole new twist on the grammar book. more

Mortal Syntax

Mortal Syntax takes on the 101 most frequently attacked usage choices. Dedicating one short chapter to each, Casagrande brings her subject to life, teaching English usage through lively and amusing personal anecdotes. more

It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences

Your story may be brilliant. Your insights may be groundbreaking. Your characters may be so real you can almost touch them. But they're not worth a thing if you can't bring them to life in well-written sentences. more

  • Should you capitalize 'city' in 'city of Boston'?

    M Actually, Chicago capitalizes City if you're talking about the government entity but not if it's talking about the area, so the City of Boston's ordinance vs. the city of Boston's population.

  • 'All told' or 'all tolled'?

    PJB Toll also means to add up. So, all tolled, as in, accounted for, is still correct.

  • Should you pronounce the T in 'often'?

    David Merriam-Webster online lists the spoken T first. I'd say it's a toss-up.

  • Is There an Apostrophe in Presidents Day?

    Janet Earl When I was in school we celebrated two presidents birthdays, Lincoln’s and Washington’s and it was my understanding that since they were so close they were combined into one holiday. That was maybe in the 1950’s or 1960’s.

  • Another sentence structure to hate

    Marina In general I agree with you about this sentence structure, but for examples like this one you'd need to include a query to the author for technical accuracy. The first version of the sentence allows for the possibility that some, but not all, lye-based products clear debris out of pipes. The edited version means that lye-based products as a category do so. That edit needs fact-checking.