Potpourri

Plum pudding, roast goose, latkes, wood fires, potpourri . . . the holidays are a season of olfactory delights. At this time of year, when Ms. Picky was a girl, her thumbs would be bruised for weeks from pushing cloves into oranges to create pomander balls. Others made potpourris of flower petals or buds, spices, herbs, and dried fruit rinds. Today, Ms. Picky has noted with some disdain, the wonderful bowls of natural potpourri are gone, having been replaced by packaged, shopping-mall varieties that seem all to have an unfortunate synthetic aroma. “Où sont les neiges d’antan” indeed!


All of that notwithstanding—that the home-made blend may have gone the way of the dodo bird—the word “potpourri” has stayed with us, as a metaphor for collections of odd bits and pieces of things—besides flower petals and spices—that might not have a unifying theme but that are combined nevertheless. In the spirit of the season, today Ms. Picky addresses a potpourri of grammatical topics. . . .

Farther and Further

Both these words mean “more far,” but  farther refers to physical distance: that is, “more far” in terms that can be measured in distance, and further refers to more abstract differences: for example, the difference between two people’s points of view.

Paris is farther from Luchon than from Toulouse.

Your information couldn’t be further from the truth!

Off Of

Alas! Ms. Picky doesn’t even know where to begin on this one. Off is a preposition, and of is a preposition. Not only is the use of two prepositions in place of one superfluous, but this particular superfluity is generally further misused as a substitute for from. 

Incorrect:
He made a lot of money off of that idea.

Correct:
He made a lot of money from that idea.

Tortuous and Torturous

Tortuous means twisting, winding, or circuitous. Torturous means inflicting pain or anguish. Big difference!

The road up to the mountain monastery was tortuous.

The interrogation was torturous.

Forward and Foreword

Forward is a direction, the opposite of backward. A foreword is “a word before,” an introduction to a book, usually written by someone other than the author, to provide some context to the material that follows.

“Let us not dwell on the past,” he said; “let us move forward.”

If only he could get someone with a big name to write the foreword
for his book, his readership would be greatly expanded.

And, Finally . . . 

When Is a Comma Splice Not a Comma Splice? . . .

Question: Is there any circumstance in which one may correctly join two independent clauses with a comma?

Answer: Only one: In an echo question.

Echo Questions:

You’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?

You really like her a lot, don’t you?

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Journalism Wall of Shame

The Journalism Wall of Shame displays errors in grammar, punctuation, or language that have appeared recently in the press. Submissions are welcome. Please include the publication's name and date, the story title, and the reporter's name. The publication of these errors in no way places blame for them on a particular person. Sometimes it is the reporter, sometimes an editor, sometimes a headline-writer, but—somewhere in the system—somebody should have known better. 

“‘But absent of a disastrous auction, I think we trend higher—if only into year’s end,’ Weiss adds.”

—“Italy Could Trigger Early End to Santa Claus Rally,” Lee Brodie, cnbc.com, December 27, 2011

(In the construction above, the unfortunate reporter has been placed in the position of quoting a grammatical error, and has been civil enough not to include a bracketed [sic] to indicate that the error is the speaker’s, not the reporter’s.) The construction, analogous to “that being the case,” or “that being said,” is an ablative absolute and should have been “absent a disastrous auction. . . . ” The of is not only superfluous but incorrect.

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