Grammar Moses: Don't shine a light on me
Careless metaphors can be just as harmful as careless whispers.
Just ask George Michael.
Take this news release from the National Headache Foundation, which does important research and advocacy into the often debilitating world of chronic headaches and migraines.
"National Headache Foundation Shines a Spotlight on Migraine and Headache in June, Migraine and Headache Awareness Month" screamed the headline, including all of those capital letters.
For anyone who suffers from debilitating headaches - I used to spend a fair amount of time in the otherwise empty and darkened lactation room at work to sweat them out - the last thing you need is for someone to shine a spotlight on them.
Shooting yourself in the foot, which is what the PR person did in this case, would cause only slightly more pain.
If the headline weren't enough, you get another dose of it in the second paragraph of the release: "MHAM serves as a crucial platform to shed light on the impact of debilitating headache and migraine on over 40 million Americans."
The news release caught me at a bad time, mind you, so I'm probably overreacting.
Imagine news releases with the following headlines:
"Dark sky advocates shine light on light pollution" or "ASPCA won't let cat out of bag on award winners until banquet" or "Losing weight is a piece of cake, Jenny Craig clients say."
Sure, "shedding a light" is perfectly idiomatic. But it simply does not work in every case.
This is why it's important for every writer - and every editor - to have an editor. You need to look for the unintended effects of your writing.
What about us?
Bill Burns had a question whose resolution, he suggested, could save the world.
Would that I could save the world with a few keystrokes, Bill.
"'TGIF' came up in a conversation among some retirees," he wrote. "One said, '"TGIF" has zero effect on we retirees.' Another replied, 'Use "us" instead of "we." What, we're English teachers now? A conversation followed. Most thought 'we' sounded better. We knew we needed an object for the prepositional phrase. We agreed that we'd say 'zero effect on us' without the noun following, but in the original version is 'Oldster' the object and 'we' a modifier?"
There you go again, forcing me to write quotes within quotes within quotes.
Without writing a ponderous response about rules, I'll appeal to common sense.
An easy way to suss out what's correct is to remove extra words from the conversation:
"'TGIF' has zero effect on we."
Sounds idiotic, right?
"'TGIF' has zero effect on us" is clearly correct.
Write carefully!
• Jim Baumann is vice president/executive editor of the Daily Herald. You can buy Jim's book, "Grammar Moses: A humorous guide to grammar and usage," at
grammarmosesthebook.com. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com
and put "Grammar Moses" in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.