Стивен Пинкер - The Sense of Style - The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

refute

prove to be false (

She refuted the theory that the earth was flat

.)

allege to be false, try to refute (*

She refuted the theory that the earth was round.

)

Refute

is a factive or success verb, like

know

and

remember

, which presupposes the objective truth or falsity of the proposition. Many writers, including a slim majority of the Usage Panel, accept the non-factive “try to refute” sense, but the distinction is worth respecting.

reticent

shy, restrained (

My son is too reticent to ask a girl out

.)

reluctant (*

When rain threatens, fans are reticent to buy tickets to the ballgame

.)

The Usage Panel hates the “reluctant” sense.

shrunk, sprung, stunk, sunk

past participle (

Honey, I’ve shrunk the kids.

)

past tense (*

Honey, I shrunk the kids.

)

Admittedly,

Honey, I shrank the kids

might not have worked as the title of the Disney movie, and past-tense

shrunk

and similar forms are venerable and respectable. But it’s classier to distinguish pasts from participles (

sank–has sunk, sprang–has sprung, stank–has stunk

) and to avail oneself of other lovely irregular forms like

shone, slew, strode–has stridden, and strove–has striven.

simplistic

Naïvely or overly simple (

His proposal to end war by having children sing Kumbaya was simplistic.

)

simple, pleasingly simple (*

We bought Danish furniture because we liked its simplistic look

.)

Though not uncommon in art and design journalism, using

simplistic

for

simple

sets many readers’ teeth on edge, and can insult something it means to praise. See also

fulsome, opportunism.

staunch

loyal, sturdy (

a staunch supporter

)

stop a flow, stanch a flow (*

staunch the bleeding

)

Dictionaries say that both spellings are fine with both meanings, but it’s classier to keep them distinct.

tortuous

twisting (

a tortuous road, tortuous reasoning

)

torturous (*

Watching

Porky’s Part VII

was a tortuous experience

.)

Both come from the Latin word for “twist,” as in

torque

and

torsion

, because twisting limbs was a common form of torture.

unexceptionable

not worthy of objection (

No one protested her getting the prize, because she was an unexceptionable choice

.)

unexceptional, ordinary (*

They protested her getting the prize, because she was an unexceptionable actress

.)

Unexceptional

means “not an exception.”

Unexceptionable

means “no one is able to take exception to it.”

untenable

indefensible, unsustainable (

Flat-Earthism is an untenable theory; Caring for quadruplets while running IBM was an untenable situation.

)

painful, unbearable (*

an untenable tragedy; *untenable sadness

)

The hybrid sense “so unbearable as to be unsustainable” is accepted by the Usage Panel, as in Isabel Wilkerson’s “when life became untenable.”

urban legend

an intriguing and widely circulated but false story (

Alligators in the sewers is an urban legend

.)

someone who is legendary in a city (*

Fiorello LaGuardia became an urban legend

.)

See also

hot button, New Age, politically correct.

The

legend

pertains to the original sense “a myth passed down for generations,” not the journalistic sense “a celebrity.”

verbal

in linguistic form (

Verbal memories fade more quickly than visual ones.

)

oral, spoken (*

A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

)

The “spoken” sense has been standard for centuries and is by no means incorrect (the famous Goldwynism wouldn’t work without it), but sometimes it is confusing.

The differences between two other families of similar-sounding words are so tortuous (and torturous) as to need a bit more explanation.

The words affect and effect come in both noun and verb versions. Though it’s easy to confuse them, it’s worth mastering the distinction, because the common errors in the third column will make you look like an amateur.

Word

Correct Use and Spelling

Incorrect Use and Spelling

an effect

an influence:

Strunk and White had a big effect on my writing styl

e.

*Strunk and White had a big affect on my writing style.

to effect

to put into effect, to implement:

I effected all the changes recommended by Strunk and White.

*I affected all the changes recommended by Strunk and White.

to affect

(first sense)

to influence:

Strunk and White affected my writing style.

*Strunk and White effected my writing style.

to affect

(second sense)

to fake:

He used big words to affect an air of sophistication.

*He used big words to effect an air of sophistication.

But the most twisted family of look-alike and mean-alike words in the English lexicon is the one with lie and lay. Here are the gruesome details:

The imbroglio arises from the fact that we have two distinct verbs fighting over the form lay: it’s the past tense of lie, and it’s the plain form of lay, whose meaning—just to torment you further—is “cause to lie.” It’s no wonder that English speakers commonly say lay down or I’m going to lay on the couch, collapsing the transitive and intransitive versions of lie . Or are they collapsing the past and present tenses of lie ? Both have same result:

*to lay

to recline (an intransitive regular verb)

*He lays on the couch all day.

*He laid on the couch all day.

*He has laid on the couch all day.

Don’t blame the usage on Bob Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay” or Eric Clapton’s “Lay Down, Sally”; careful English writers have been using it since 1300, right up to William Safire’s “The dead hand of the present should not lay on the future” (no doubt triggering a flurry of mail for his UofAllPeople file). Intransitive lay is by no means incorrect, but to the ears of many, lie sounds better:

PUNCTUATION

The main job of punctuation is to eliminate the ambiguities and garden paths that would mislead a reader if print consisted only of vowels, consonants, and spaces. 58Punctuation restores some of the prosody (melody, pausing, and stress) that is missing from print, and it provides hints about the invisible syntactic tree that determines a sentence’s meaning. As the T-shirt observes, punctuation matters: Let’s eat, Grandma has a different meaning from Let’s eat Grandma.