Asymmetrical Information

Mindles, at least the adverse/averse mistake is understandable. One of my pet peeves is the phrase "I could care less", which means the opposite of what the person is trying to convey. I'm always tempted to say something like "Well, why don't you, then?" Which of course would be met with a blank stare.

My favorite is ensure/insure. If it doesn't involve a policy, use ensure.

-Brad

My major linguistic beef lately is people using the word "literally" when, in fact, nothing of the kind is the case.

"If worse comes to worse..." An endless sequence that gives me vertigo.

"Would of/could of/should of..."

I see nothing wrong with word incentivize. Everyone knows what it means, and in a technical context I think it's better than motivate.

Very unique. Quite unique. More unique.

Jim English
Chicago

"Incentivize" is cringe-making but at least it's a reasonable approximation of a verb form in American English. The Brits would "incentivate." But "to incent"? Far worse than "to impact," which is an old irritant I no longer even notice.

Insure/ensure/assure

Affect/effect

"Less" instead of "fewer" -- formerly the exclusive province of sportscasters, it has now infected all public forms of audio transmission

Two closely related gripes:
1. Inventing adverbial comparisons by combining the related adjective with "er" rather than use the perfectly serviceable "more" + adverb
2. When both adjectival and adverbial comparisons are available (slower; more slowly), using the adjective to modify a verb

And does anybody know the difference between its and it's? (she says in a wistful voice)

Orientate. This one gets to me like bamboo shoots under the fingernails.

nadezhda --

What's wrong with "to impact"? It's a nice old verb, with two senses (From the OED -- 1. trans. To press closely into or in something; to fix firmly in; to pack in. -- 2. intr. To stamp or impress (on something)) dating back to the 17th Century.

Now, admittedly senses 3a, 3b, and 4 only date to the (early) 20th Century, and therefore might be objectionable uses, but it seems odd to complain about the very existence of a verb that dates back at least 1601.

Of course, you do call it an old irritant . . .

My pet peeves:

the close relative of the less/fewer blunder, "amount" applied to discrete variables, as in, e.g., "amount of people"?

The ever popular "pro-active," usually used incessantly by those who also use "incent." As a clumsy back construction from "reactive," shouldn't this logically be "pre-active" (if indeed we need the misbegotten word at all)? "Pro" seems like the wrong prefix. Better yet, let's bag the whole adjective.

"Momentarily" - originally confined to half-educated departure gate attendants trying to sound important, now infesting the speech of all and sundry. I'd like to stay on the plane, not board it momentarily, if it's all the same to them.

I've given up on "media." Between molecular biologists adding "a media" and commentators discussing the actions of "a media," I surrender.

"Significant" - adopted from the medical literature (referring to statistical significance), now in some quarters adopting the role of a general honorific, as in "met significant milestones." What insignificant ones were met?

Teaching correct use of the apostrophe is easy. Just explain that if someone thinks an apostrophe belongs, then omit it. If they don't think so, include it. The five people in this country who have it straight now will continue to use the apostrophe correctly will then be joined by the other 285 million.

"Significant" - adopted from the medical literature (referring to statistical significance), now in some quarters adopting the role of a general honorific, as in "met significant milestones." What insignificant ones were met?

OB, by definition, the insignificant milestones we the ones we did not meet.

Artifact/artefact. I don't know how that one even got started.

"Visioning" and "envisioning." Evil, evil, evil.

All uses of "paradigm" should be eliminated for a decade. In 2015, we can reassess and start over with it. Maybe. Way, way too many people read Thomas Kuhn in school and think they learned something important. Just stop it. All of you.

Occam's Beard, I think it's a rule of English now that no noun can end in "s." Rather, it has to be "'s."

I think it's a rule of English now that no noun can end in "s." Rather, it has to be "'s."

Mike,

You're (should I say, "your", to comport with current usage?) forgetting the exception of possessives, which end in "s" without the apostrophe. Only plural's take the apostrophe; in which case be sure to include the plurals apostrophe.

Here's another one, while I'm on punctuation: use of quotation marks for emphasis. The unwashed seem to think that quoting something confers particular importance on it. As in, e.g., signs (sign's?) that say

"No parking"
at any time

How about the use of service as a verb when what is meant is serve? I have been known to point out that "service is what the bull does to the cow," but I don't think it does any good.

Jim

"Incent" is just one letter away from "incest," which is probably appropriate considering that the word (and others of its ilk) is the fruit of related words spending too much time intellectually cohabiting.

"Artefact" is merely the British spelling.

"Orientate" is a legitimate word. I questioned it when I first ran across it in the military some years back (more than 30), so I looked it up in the dictionary. Surely they meant "orient"? But, lo and behold, "orientate" is also an acceptable word.

What about the use of "hopefully" to mean "I hope" instead of doing something with hope?

For fun with adverbs, you can always create "Tom Swifties", e.g., "My goodness, what large teeth you have," she said bitingly.

Dave Barry on apostrophes and quotation marks:

Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?

Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business signs to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM'S.

Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
—Tips for Writer's

Within the world of economics, incentivize is a perfectly valid word. Using a phrase like "short-sellers are perversely incentivized" is more succint and direct than any alternative I can imagine.

When I was 20, I was a rigid language snob. An authoritarian, so to speak. As I age and learn more about the history of English, I am becoming a lot more "market based" in my attitudes towards the evolution of language.

Yes, sorry, Mindles, but I like incentivize, too. Do you have a better single word for "create incentives"?

Do you have a better single word for "create incentives"?

"Motivate"
"Induce"
"Stimulate"
"Encourage"
"Predispose"
"Goose" (?)

What's wrong with "create incentives", apart from it's not being cool business-speak? And why does the alternative have to be a single word? Recast the sentence, if necessary.

"Incentivize" and "incent" are examples of "verbing," and are every bit as ugly as "hoteling." Users should be boiled in oil ("oiled?").

(I know, I know, Shakespeare "verbed" a great deal, and enriched the language in so doing, but those who struggle to make subject and verb agree in number ("agreeivize," if we need a single word) are enriching the language only in an agricultural sense.)

Just explain that if someone thinks an apostrophe belongs, then omit it. If they don't think so, include it.

Actually, this touches on a serious aspect of the problem. As more and more errors of the "between you and I" type become widely visible, it gets harder to go by "what sounds right".

...it's a rule of English now that no noun can end in "s."

Mike, you also missed the exception of nouns that already end in "s"; I believe the plural of these nouns is formed by adding just an apostrophe. For example: "Betty couldn't choose between the two dress'."

OB, "oiled" already means covered with oil, it can't be used for boiled in oil. Maybe we can follow the Germans' example and just run the words together: oilboiled. Oh, and it's not "agreeivize" (what a horrible word!), it's "agreeify".

I don't like "incentivize", either, but it means more than just "create incentives". It can mean "add incentives to" ("incentivize the contract"), or "galvanize by adding incentives" ("the salesmen were incentivized").

Actually, I think part of the attraction of these neologisms is that it's much harder to misuse them (because their use hasn't stabilized yet); so people can throw them around without paying much attention to (a) grammar or (b) the exact meaning. ("No, Jim, I just said we would incentivize your contract. I didn't say anything about giving you a raise.")

PJ,

I agree (?) that "agreeivize" is truly appalling; I cringed when I wrote it, in part in recognition of my hitherto unsuspected (and certainly unwanted) gift for coining colossally ugly neologisms. By comparison, "agreeify" almost rolls off the tongue, as opposed to being forcibly ejected.

You're right about "incentivize;" I'd forgotten about the sense of "adding an incentive to," in the absence of which the phrase "incentivizing a contract" makes even less sense than it does now. As for "incentivizing the salesmen" I still like the Old English "goose" (as in, "he goosed the salesmen into exceeding the quotas"). Clear, direct, instantly understood.

I prefer "orientificate" to "orientate". (By extension, I also prefer "orientification" to "orientation". The former seems to capture the essence better.)

A few that I've seen in (nominally) formal writing:

operationalize - to put into operation.

efforting - working on: "Joe is efforting that initiative now."

solutioned - solved? (I'm sure it is a surprise that I couldn't figure this one out from context.)

Misuse of "comprise" gets my hackles up and I fear broadcasters and print journalists between them have driven this one beyond recovery.

So I thank you for providing me the opportunity here to bear witness for the ages the the whole comprises its parts, it is not comprised of them, nor do the parts comprise the whole.

I've waited so long for this moment.

Very unique. Quite unique. More unique.

I always respond with "slightly unique".

As for ensure/insure, my wee wifey came close to getting fired from a word-processing job for presuming to correct that one.

Incentivize a transitive verb is very hard to find a substitute for. My employee may be motivated by many things but I am responsible only for the ones with which I incentivised him.

That is incentivisation lets you indicate responibility and also the meeting of motivation with reality. For example an employee might be motivate by a desire for money but is incentivised to sell widgets rather than oodjamaflips by a commission structure.

I would be very interested in an alternative word or phrase that made such distinctions as easy as that.

How hard is it just to say "give an incentive to?" I'm an MBA student, and no matter how many times I hear "incent" or "incentivize" from my peers, they still sound like made-up words...

In the immortal words of Calvin, "Verbing weirds words."

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