Thursday, December 31, 2009
Citibank "Commits to Improve"
It’s the last day of 2009 – a strange year, one that started with all kinds of banks collapsing, merging, converging, and coming back from the brink. It seems like the worst is over – phew! So it’s not surprising that one of the bigger banks, Citibank (and my bank, it so happens), has recently launched a new campaign to re-gain or re-affirm customer confidence. Yet I’m stuck with this thought:
Is it possible to trust a bank that can’t even get a makeover-style marketing effort grammatically correct? Here’s Citibank’s new slogan:
“We commit to improve.” Pardon me? The Language Lady’s pen froze on her deposit slip when she caught sight of that one.
The big promotion – printed in bold blue letters against a white background – from wallet-sized cards to big posters hanging in branch windows makes a list of various worthy but vague promises like, “We promise to be there when you need us” and is summed up at the end with, “We Commit To Improve.”
Perhaps some of you readers are thinking, “So …?” But say it out loud: doesn’t it sound odd? You wouldn’t say, “We’re committing to improve,” would you? Or “We have committed to improve.” Of course not. Saying “We commit to improve” (IMPROVE, of all things!) is the verbal equivalent of trying to gain someone’s trust by holding out a filthy hand.
The slogan is wrong on so many grammatical levels:
• First, “improve” should be “improving” – that is, “We commit to improving.” Whenever we commit, we commit to some THING, and a THING falls into the “noun” category. There is a type of noun formed from the root of a verb + ing, and this is called a gerund. You can say, “We commit to better health” (better health = a thing) and thus, “We commit to improving (also a thing), though still not a great sentence. Here’s why:
• Look at that verb tense in “We commit” Anyone who read my “You Lie! (No, You’re Lying)” blog of October 5, 2009, will recall that using the present simple tense (“I speak,” “you lie,” etc.) is for facts or repeated actions. When we are in the act or process of doing something (and Citibank is in the process of improving) we use the continuous tense (“I’m speaking,” “you’re lying,” etc.) So Citibank’s saying “We commit” should contain a suggestion that they do this on a regular basis, like: “We always commit to improving;” or “We commit to improving on every Wednesday.” A “We commit” all by itself sounds as unnatural as South Carolina’s Senator Joe Wilson shouting out, “You lie!” to President Obama,; however, Language Lady readers have pointed out that Senator Wilson’s outburst was in acceptable Southern dialect -- but Citibank cannot claim the same.
• “Commit” can take the active voice when what is being committed is some external thing: “We are committing funds to this project.” But when describing a personal commitment, we use the passive voice: “I am committed to this relationship;” “she is committed to her job.” Citibank’s use of “commit” is wrong: although they are trying to convey personal commitment, they are using the wrong voice:
What Citibank meant to say was, “We are committed to improving.”
I know this year has been one of cutbacks and lay-offs. So is what happened here a case of Ed from Accounting being yanked from his cubicle to replace the recently laid-off Anne in Communications? How did this slogan fall through the editorial cracks like that? And is my money going to fall through similar financial cracks? Well??
Grammatical competence is a form of competence – and if a bank can’t be outwardly competent, then what? It’s possible to see what’s at risk here for 2010:
Citibank’s shoddy slogan wreaks havoc with consumer confidence, and the subsequent run on the bank spurs a domino effect in the entire banking system and it’s …. 2009 all over again.
Happy New Year!!
Sunday, December 13, 2009
A Question of “Of”
The Language Lady is always eager to answer readers’ questions. Today, I am printing a recent question from a reader, “Danny,” in California, who wants to know about that potentially tricky word, “of”:
Danny: It's widely agreed among linguists that "of" is superfluous in phrases such as "that long OF a game" or "not that handsome OF an actor" or "too big OF a task."
The rule I derive from this is that when "of" follows an adjective in such situations, it's superfluous.
But how about when "of" follows "much," as in "it wasn't much of a game" or "too much of a challenge"? If "much" in those phrases is an adjective, does it "violate" the rule? Or is it an idiomatic exception to the rule? Or in those cases is it not an adjective at all, but a noun?
The Language Lady: The short answer to your question, Danny, is: Yes!
That is, “much,” as in “It wasn’t much of a game,” is a pronoun; more specifically, a pronoun complement, which means that “It” and “much” refer to each other. (That’s why saying, “This is she,” is correct when you answer the phone (unless you’re a guy and you say, “This is HE.”) And in the sentence, “That was not much of a game,” the prepositional phrase, “of a game,” modifies “much.”
The other sentence, “He is not that good of an actor,” is – as suspected – wrong. It should be, “He is not that good an actor.” (OR: He is not much of an actor.)
The reason is, the prepositional phrase, “of an actor” is trying unsuccessfully to modify the adjective, “good.” But prepositional phrases cannot modify adjectives – only nouns or pronouns: a street IN London; the building ON the corner, a friend OF mine, etc.
In the above sentence, “good” describes both “He” AND “actor.” (These are all subject “complements,” since they all refer to each other.) Any “of” – as you said -- would be superfluous, tacked onto the wrong part of speech.
Which is why saying, “Not that big OF a deal” is so cringe-worthy. It should either be “Not that big a deal” or “No big deal.”
Danny: It's widely agreed among linguists that "of" is superfluous in phrases such as "that long OF a game" or "not that handsome OF an actor" or "too big OF a task."
The rule I derive from this is that when "of" follows an adjective in such situations, it's superfluous.
But how about when "of" follows "much," as in "it wasn't much of a game" or "too much of a challenge"? If "much" in those phrases is an adjective, does it "violate" the rule? Or is it an idiomatic exception to the rule? Or in those cases is it not an adjective at all, but a noun?
The Language Lady: The short answer to your question, Danny, is: Yes!
That is, “much,” as in “It wasn’t much of a game,” is a pronoun; more specifically, a pronoun complement, which means that “It” and “much” refer to each other. (That’s why saying, “This is she,” is correct when you answer the phone (unless you’re a guy and you say, “This is HE.”) And in the sentence, “That was not much of a game,” the prepositional phrase, “of a game,” modifies “much.”
The other sentence, “He is not that good of an actor,” is – as suspected – wrong. It should be, “He is not that good an actor.” (OR: He is not much of an actor.)
The reason is, the prepositional phrase, “of an actor” is trying unsuccessfully to modify the adjective, “good.” But prepositional phrases cannot modify adjectives – only nouns or pronouns: a street IN London; the building ON the corner, a friend OF mine, etc.
In the above sentence, “good” describes both “He” AND “actor.” (These are all subject “complements,” since they all refer to each other.) Any “of” – as you said -- would be superfluous, tacked onto the wrong part of speech.
Which is why saying, “Not that big OF a deal” is so cringe-worthy. It should either be “Not that big a deal” or “No big deal.”
If I Were in the (Subjunctive) Mood
Dear Language Lady, I’m not a language guy per se and certainly not a grammar guru, but since I do write, I am mindful of usage – past and present. I am thus curious about your take on “If I was you” vs “If I were you”. As I understand it, this is the subjunctive mood (designating contingency rather than fact) and is thus correctly stated as, “If I were you”.
The sentence “I was acting as if I were you” uses both the regular past tense and the subjunctive.
-- Gerry (Canada)
Dear Gerry –
You’re a language guy to me if you can spot your English subjunctive! I was given a thorough grounding in grammar in elementary and middle school, but I still did not learn about the English subjunctive until I took foreign languages in high school and college. Even then, “If I was you” and “If I were you” both sounded right to my ears.
The reason both are used is due to basic language change: that is, it seems that teachers stopped teaching the English subjunctive decades ago – even before they stopped teaching English grammar all together 30-plus years ago. So the older generation continued saying, “If I were you,” while the younger generation began saying, “If I was you,” since no one explained the subjunctive rules to them. And when enough people say something for a long enough period, then that too becomes standard, acceptable English – even if it still seems “wrong.” Language, as with all things, changes (alas).
The textbook, “Grammar In Use”/Intermediate by British linguist Raymond Murphy, Cambridge University Press, 2007, which I use -- and love – for my English as a Second Language students, accepts both forms. On a more grass roots level, googling “If I were you” elicits 356 million results, as opposed to “If I was you” -- and a whopping 2.6 billion! The people are clearly speaking.
For a good explanation of the English subjunctive, I recommend the site, EnglishClub.com. (Click on: englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-subjunctive.htm)
This site says that “If I were you” is correct in all situations, while “If I was you” is correct in informal, familiar situations. I’d like to think so too, but “if I was” and other forgotten-subjunctive occasions appear in writing (books, articles, etc) so often, the formal and informal situations are no longer clearly defined.
Historically, English has done a lot to get rid of the subjunctive, which is why it is so hard for us native speakers to learn how to use it in other languages. Meanwhile, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, for instance, use present and past subjunctive all the time – as in “What do you want me to say?” and “I hope you’ll be surprised;” or German, along with the others, jumps in on the subjunctive bandwagon with a sentence like, “If she had more time, she would write more grammar blogs.” Portuguese even uses the future subjunctive following “if” and “when” in instances like, “If you want, we can go,” and “When you arrive, we will eat,” etc. to express a future uncertainty.
English, meanwhile, just avoids all this language subtlety by mainly sticking with verbs that sound like our regular present and past tenses: “She hopes you will like the present” and “I wished you would open it now” would both take the subjunctive in Latin languages.
The English subjunctive still hanging on in two cases: one, is with what I call business-type, more formal verbs: insist, request, demand, recommend, suggest; even there it is only visible with the 3rd person singular, as in “My boss insists that everyone BRING a laptop (not: “that everyone brings”);” or “They requested that she SIT in the corner (not: that she sits).
The subjunctive is more clearly seen in such cases with the verb, “be”:
“I ask that you BE quiet (not: ”that you are”)”; “The president suggested that all be at the meeting on time.”
The other place the English subjunctive is still hanging on (albeit by the proverbial thread) is in the hypothetical case with “if” and “as if”: “If I had a million dollars …” “as If I knew the answer …” “If /as if she understood the problem,” etc. All of these hypothetical clauses take what sounds like past tense; however, it is really the past tense (“you” form) AS the subjunctive form.
This usage is more apparent with the verb “to be” – particularly, when used in phrases like, “If I were you;” and “He wishes she were here.”
For the moment, Gerry, you may proudly stick with your “If I were you” (I think it sounds more elegant) but simply refrain from correcting any friends or colleagues who say the other form – they’re correct, too – though I wish it weren’t/wasn’t so.
The sentence “I was acting as if I were you” uses both the regular past tense and the subjunctive.
-- Gerry (Canada)
Dear Gerry –
You’re a language guy to me if you can spot your English subjunctive! I was given a thorough grounding in grammar in elementary and middle school, but I still did not learn about the English subjunctive until I took foreign languages in high school and college. Even then, “If I was you” and “If I were you” both sounded right to my ears.
The reason both are used is due to basic language change: that is, it seems that teachers stopped teaching the English subjunctive decades ago – even before they stopped teaching English grammar all together 30-plus years ago. So the older generation continued saying, “If I were you,” while the younger generation began saying, “If I was you,” since no one explained the subjunctive rules to them. And when enough people say something for a long enough period, then that too becomes standard, acceptable English – even if it still seems “wrong.” Language, as with all things, changes (alas).
The textbook, “Grammar In Use”/Intermediate by British linguist Raymond Murphy, Cambridge University Press, 2007, which I use -- and love – for my English as a Second Language students, accepts both forms. On a more grass roots level, googling “If I were you” elicits 356 million results, as opposed to “If I was you” -- and a whopping 2.6 billion! The people are clearly speaking.
For a good explanation of the English subjunctive, I recommend the site, EnglishClub.com. (Click on: englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-subjunctive.htm)
This site says that “If I were you” is correct in all situations, while “If I was you” is correct in informal, familiar situations. I’d like to think so too, but “if I was” and other forgotten-subjunctive occasions appear in writing (books, articles, etc) so often, the formal and informal situations are no longer clearly defined.
Historically, English has done a lot to get rid of the subjunctive, which is why it is so hard for us native speakers to learn how to use it in other languages. Meanwhile, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, for instance, use present and past subjunctive all the time – as in “What do you want me to say?” and “I hope you’ll be surprised;” or German, along with the others, jumps in on the subjunctive bandwagon with a sentence like, “If she had more time, she would write more grammar blogs.” Portuguese even uses the future subjunctive following “if” and “when” in instances like, “If you want, we can go,” and “When you arrive, we will eat,” etc. to express a future uncertainty.
English, meanwhile, just avoids all this language subtlety by mainly sticking with verbs that sound like our regular present and past tenses: “She hopes you will like the present” and “I wished you would open it now” would both take the subjunctive in Latin languages.
The English subjunctive still hanging on in two cases: one, is with what I call business-type, more formal verbs: insist, request, demand, recommend, suggest; even there it is only visible with the 3rd person singular, as in “My boss insists that everyone BRING a laptop (not: “that everyone brings”);” or “They requested that she SIT in the corner (not: that she sits).
The subjunctive is more clearly seen in such cases with the verb, “be”:
“I ask that you BE quiet (not: ”that you are”)”; “The president suggested that all be at the meeting on time.”
The other place the English subjunctive is still hanging on (albeit by the proverbial thread) is in the hypothetical case with “if” and “as if”: “If I had a million dollars …” “as If I knew the answer …” “If /as if she understood the problem,” etc. All of these hypothetical clauses take what sounds like past tense; however, it is really the past tense (“you” form) AS the subjunctive form.
This usage is more apparent with the verb “to be” – particularly, when used in phrases like, “If I were you;” and “He wishes she were here.”
For the moment, Gerry, you may proudly stick with your “If I were you” (I think it sounds more elegant) but simply refrain from correcting any friends or colleagues who say the other form – they’re correct, too – though I wish it weren’t/wasn’t so.
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