Transcript More on English usage
More on English usage
For BDCOL Students
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Plurality, Possessiveness, at al.
It’s
means “it is,” while
its
means “belongs to it.”
Its’
is not a word at all.
The exploding Titan hurled
its
warhead farther than CINCSAC would have liked.
It’s It’s
easy to see how the F-15 got
its
only a lot of reading if you do it.
nickname “Rodan.” The ABL program will be a fiasco unless
its
power problems can be solved.
Similarly, there is no apostrophe in the possessives
theirs
,
ours
,
hers,
or
yours.
Yours, Mine, and Ours
is not my favorite movie, but it is
hers.
As usual, the error was
theirs
, but we were blamed for it.
There’s
a subtle perfection in everything I do.
Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “
There’s
came here.
no there there.” I guess she never
Data, media
more common all the time and is widely accepted now; it’s so sad). One data point is a
datum
and
criteria
are plural words (though treating “data” as singular gets ; television or sand painting is a
medium
, and one of a set of criteria is a
criterion
. These
data are
presented in an unnecessarily confusing way.
Force protection should not be the only
criterion
Their promotion influence.
criteria
for judging military success.
seemed mainly to involve alcohol tolerance and family In effect, Schelling said that with nuclear weapons, the
medium is
message.
the The
media have
blown my role in the food fight completely out of proportion.
Lt. Cdr.
Data is
a
medium
, but Lt. Worf is an extra large.
More on plurals
• • • • • Plural nouns which end in “s” are made into possessive adjectives by adding an apostrophe. Singular nouns are normally made possessive by adding ’s, even if they already end in s (except for Jesus or ancient Greek or Roman names ending in -is or -es).
He said he believed in
states’
rights, but he was vague about what he meant by that.
Strauss’s
“Also Sprach Zarathustra” became one of
Elvis’s
trademarks.
The
AWACS’s Achilles’
heel.
lack of defensive systems may be its
Miscellaneous Pet Peeves
• • To
beg a question
means to evade it or to pretend that it has already been answered, it does not mean to raise it. This is a very common error. To say someone is begging a question is a criticism.
Focusing exclusively on target selection why we are bombing at all.
begs the question
of • • • • Your conclusions
raise
an interesting Linebacker II have worked in 1968?
• People do not
try and
do things, they
try to question
: would do them.
Try to
remember this.
The Pave Tack is down, so we’ll have to
try to
bomb visually.
Please happens.
try not to
embarrass me in front of the IG team this time.
If you really think that will work,
try
it,
and
we’ll see what
Feel and believe
• People
feel
emotions and sensations, they need to discuss what they feel.
believe
ideas and facts. At SAAS, you will often have occasion to write about what leaders and theorists believe, think, assert, maintain, argue, and predict, but rarely if ever will you • • • Clausewitz
believed
that the defense was the strongest form of war.
• Stalin
felt
betrayed when Germany attacked, though it seems hard to
believe
.
Napoleon
felt
ill on the day of Waterloo, but he
expected
that he would win anyway.
I
feel
uneasy about my presentation. Will the general
think
it is worthless?
Reference
• • • • •
Reference
is not a verb! You do not reference things. That’s why the English language includes the time-tested and perfectly good word
refer
. (And try not to use
evidence
as a verb either.) For more information,
refer
technical manual.
to the specs in the You may
refer
to the Dean as “El Supremo,” but address him as “Your Magnificence.” I cannot in good conscience write you a letter of
reference.
His frequent
references
to Spice Girls lyrics did not impress the Senate committee.
Impact
• • • • • • • •
Impact
things like meteors, bombs, and wisdom teeth (and there’s often a better choice even then). is a nice, chewy noun, but it makes a lousy verb except when referring to
Interface
is an occasionally useful noun that should almost never be used as a verb.
The movie had a lasting
impact
on me, but it didn’t
influence
my friends much at all.
crater.
The
impact
of the crash destroyed the The asteroid
struck interface
between the computers.
the Moon at a shallow angle, leaving an elongated
impact
I asked her if she wanted to
interface
slapped me.
with me during the project, and she
Utilize
is a non-word that you should never way of saying
use
employ, it’s just a clumsy, three-syllable (and the Air Force should be ashamed of ever having taught it to you).
When the captain started talking about optimal asset “
utilization
,” we all tuned him out.
Since you
used
the word
utilize
in your paper, you will have to rewrite it.
Often and nowadays
• • Do not use the word
“to include” oftentimes
in place of
including
where
often
will suffice (which is pretty much everywhere), or say . If all the other officers jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?
• Air Force doctrine documents
often
more bright colors than bright ideas.
include • The CINC should be given greater authority,
including
the right to set his own ROE.
• BDCOL students LOVE the term “nowadays” for “now’ or “today.”
Specialized Terms
• • • •
Scud
is not an abbreviation, it is a NATO codename, like Therefore it should normally be italicized, not capitalized.
Fulcrum, Alamo,
or
Backfire
. The SS-1
Scud
TEL is a lot cooler looking than the smaller FROG-7 launcher.
It now appears that no Patriot ever actually intercepted a
Scud
warhead during the Gulf War.
Russian exports of
Flankers
, SA-10s, and
Kilo
-class subs to China worry Taiwan.
Suffixes
• Postwar British military aircraft have names and alphanumeric suffixes, like Tornado GR.1. There’s also a Jaguar GR.1, a Harrier GR.1, and so on, so you can’t just refer to a “GR.1” unless the aircraft type is obvious from the context (it’s the same as calling an F/A-18D a “D”). Similarly, you usually shouldn’t call a Mirage F 1 simply an “F-1”; the F-1 is a pointy Mitsubishi attack aircraft.
Semi-colon
• • • • • • • A semi-colon is used to separate related but complete sentences (or sometimes items in a long list). To separate a sentence from a related sentence fragment, you must use a colon or a comma instead.
Someone once told me that if the engine says “Pratt & Whitney,” the ejection seat better say “Martin Baker”; suddenly I understood what he meant.
Galtieri made one crucial strategic mistake: underestimating Britain’s willingness to fight.
The briefer finally got to the point, none too soon judging by the JFACC’s expression.
Ellipsis points (those three little dots that indicate a pause or mean you have left something out of a quotation) have spaces between them. So do consecutive initials in a person’s name.
sore.” “Look at my throat . . . it’s as red as the
Daily Worker
and twice as
J. F. C.
Fuller had three of everything, including Christian names.
Dashes
• • • An em dash (—) is longer than a hyphen (-). It can be written as two hyphens (--), or in Word you can make one with Insert Symbol or CTRL+ALT+ (using the “-” key on the keypad) if AutoCorrect isn’t doing the job. Dashes don’t need spaces around them.
The general looked at me--or, rather, through me--as she listened to my feeble explanation.
They shot down every TBD —but to no avail, for the Dauntlesses had arrived overhead.
More Misuse of English – learn the subjunctive!
• • • • • • • A term still violated constantly by every TV news writer in America:
May have
means “it’s possible that it did (or was) so, I’m not sure.” You should say
might have
if you mean “if things had been different, it could have been so.” That
may have
been the greatest mistake of my life, aside from volunteering for SAAS.
Lowering the flaps
may have
when we look at the tape.
made the difference —we’ll know Lowering the flaps
might have
have followed the checklist.
made a difference —he should If it weren’t for Chamberlain, the Confederates
might have
the Battle of Gettysburg.
won They of TF30s.
might not have
died if the F-14A had real engines instead I guess it
might have
my comps were done.
been better to have started drinking
after