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My name is Friday. I'm a cop. Used to work homicide, then spent a while on the Virtue Squad, busted up a big gang passive-smoke producers, white-sugar eaters, and insensitive-joke distributors. Did such good work they put me in charge of the Official English Enforcement Division.
First stop yesterday was the new Colorado Convention
Center. Some lamebrains there were talking about a deal
that fell between the cracks.
Think about that one
for a minute. You ever see a plank floor? What's between
the cracks? Planks, right? So if something falls between
the cracks,
then it's right on top, easy to pick up,
right? It's the stuff that falls through the cracks
that you lose.
They got charged with Reckless Misuse of Prepositions. It was an easy bust, so I guess I won't mind too much when some bleeding-heart judge lets them off with probation.
The next one galled me, though. Right on television,
some big-shot politico said his proposed new program is
centered around five parameters for revenue enhancement
and deficit reduction.
Let me tell you, I didn't even know where to start on
that one. You can center upon.
You can revolve
around.
But how in Tophet do you center around
?
That jerk ever see a circle? It's got one center, and that
center can't be around
anything.
And I've lost track of how often I've had to pop people
for Pretentious Parameter Pontification. They tell me that
a parameter
is a precise mathematical term for a
value which restricts the range of an expression. It might
be different if we didn't have perfectly good words like
scheme
and ruse.
As long as I'm on this job, revenue enhancement
constitutes Obfuscation with Intent to Commit Fraud. It
means tax increase,
or even more to the point, a
way to take money out of your pocket and put it in someone
else's.
Taking money from people under false pretenses
is swindling, and that's what you pay me to prevent.
Things like that really gall me, but any time you bust a major figure like that, you can figure the fix is in. Hell, he was out of the precinct house before I was.
It had been a long day, so I just stopped by a TV
station for an easy one. An anchor announced that US policy
in the Middle East is comprised of both diplomatic and
military approaches.
Comprise
is not some fancy synonym for
compose.
It roughly means embrace.
You could
say the policy comprises both diplomatic and military
approaches,
or that it is composed of both . . .
But you shouldn't say is comprised of
any more than
you should say is embraced of.
I try to explain that while I write the citations. Some wise guys tell me that they just don't know any better. But ignorance of the law is no excuse, and as long as we've got an Official English law, I'll be out there trying to protect and preserve.
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