Stop, Look and Listen: Don't Make Language So Complicated

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was testifying before a congressional committee recently about the impact of the economic stimulus package.

“How well a job did it do?” he asked before answering his own question.

That not only sounds awkward, it's grammatically wrong. (Those things often go together.)

But it's not unusual to hear such things in conversation ... and see them creep into the written word.

Sometimes you can figure it out by scrambling the sentence – in this case, answering the question – which gives us the adjective good: The stimulus did a good job.

Unless you insist on using the adverb well to modify the verb did: The stimulus did the job well.

Good-well.

I-me.

Who-whom.

They are often confused when people don't consider (or don't know) some technical aspects of the language: adjective vs. adverb, subject vs. object, etc.

Because it sometimes takes a few seconds to choose the proper form (case, mood, part of speech, etc.), the spontaneous spoken word isn't always perfect. Writers, who have time to reflect on the words they choose, don't have that excuse. Nor do their editors.

People are so fearful of the misuse of the object me that they often (incorrectly) use the subject I, as in, That's important to my wife and I.

That's important to I? Nope, the subject I doesn't work. Me is the object of the preposition to.

That, of course, requires some understanding of subjects, objects and prepositions.

Or check this lead sentence from a recent newspaper article:

Cary police are searching for three men whom they said entered an apartment late Tuesday, robbing the occupants at gunpoint.

Problems happen when writers randomly drop attribution (they said) into the middle of a sentence.

Let's scramble that sentence: Whom entered an apartment late Tuesday?

Nope, the object whom doesn't work. The subject who is required with the verb entered.

Why? Because the verb said in the original sentence is not looking for an object. It's part of misplaced attribution.

That would be different if the original sentence had been, Cary police said they are searching for a man whom they saw entering an apartment late Tuesday.

Because they saw him (an object, like whom) entering an apartment.

Reported speech (Cary police said) handles attribution at the beginning of the sentence.

Maybe the language ought to be easier to use. Or maybe we shouldn't make it so complicated.

Take the time to scramble complicated syntax to make writing simple.