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Grammar Moses: Words gone wild!

You might recall a recent column in which a priest "consummated" a marriage at the altar of his church.

I'm sure that gave a few of you the vapors.

James Johnson of McHenry wrote to tell me of a similarly ironic mistake in word choice.

"In the late 1990s my wife and I were regular attendees at U.S. Army Band concerts. They introduced a new website. A short section on band history referred to their activities in Washington following the 'assignation' of President John F. Kennedy. I quickly emailed the webmaster-sergeant to fix this, which was done within the hour."

JFK, the stories go, wasn't particularly circumspect about his dalliances. But I seriously doubt that he marked the occasions by having the U.S. Army Band crank out a stirring rendition of "Hail to the Chief."

For the record, an "assignation" is a sexual tryst. It's safe to assume the copy writer was searching for "assassination."

Chemical-free?

We received some blowback from a recent health story on sunscreens for infants that included the term "chemical-free."

Now I remember from chemistry class that a valence is not a dust ruffle but an atom's power of attraction. Oh, and that every tangible thing in the universe is composed entirely of chemicals.

Among those who called us on it is L. Dean Hufsey of Elgin.

"What (the doctor) meant to say was that all sunscreens used on infants and toddlers should be free of 'additives,' such as fragrances, colorants and thickeners, and contain only the basic sunscreen ingredients - zinc oxide, titanium dioxide and water."

Hufsey is correct. It's raised our awareness and caused us to rethink the wording we'll use. Though I don't suspect we'll be talking about baby sunscreens again anytime soon.

Take it or leave it?

We've talked before about the silliness of many turns of phrases, idioms and proverbs.

Sometimes, common headlines don't make a lot of sense, either, when you think about them hard enough.

Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire, both a student and teacher of English, asked me for a ruling on "Disaster leaves four dead."

Don't disasters "take" lives?, Dann asked. Don't they "leave" behind survivors?

I see Dann's logic here. Disasters leave destruction in their wake. Lives are taken, but bodies are left.

After much pondering, I favor a shorter sentence with a more active verb that also takes care of Dann's issue: "Disaster kills four."

Mea culpa

Here are a couple of quick admissions that we've offended the grammar gods.

• Michael Martz of Mount Prospect pointed out that twice in one story in the news section we used "waive" when we should have used "wave."

That's mighty peculiar, given that most of the waiving in our paper seems to happen on our sports pages.

I'm looking for an upside to using the wrong homophone, but "consistency" rings hollow.

• Jackie Geisler of Palatine noted that in a piece on suburban flooding we wrote "reeked havoc" instead of "wreaked havoc."

If you've ever been in the middle of a suburban flood, you know it can reek. But in this case, "wreaking" was the correct word.

I am not a belt and suspenders guy, but I'm here to tell you dictionaries and critical thinking are just as important as spell check, and you should never rely completely on one.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbau-mann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.

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