In a list of names, when should you use "I", and when should you use "Me"?

I confess to having blundered my way through whether it should be Rob, Tom, and I on the podcast, or a podcast with Rob, Tom and me. In other words, in a list of names, of which I am one, should I be using "I" or should I be using "Me"?

A general rule to help you know which to use when is to remember that if an action is being done to or for you, then use "me." Here, you're the object of the sentence. If it's you doing the action, then use "I." In this case, you're the subject of the sentence.

So, in the example in the sketch, the kind owners of the cottage are lending the bike to us both—I'm not the one doing the lending but instead am receiving the bike—so it should be:

"The kind owners lent a bike to Nicky and me."

Conversely, when we cycle off, it's both of us doing the cycling, so here it should be:

To be sure you're nailing it, try removing other names from the list. Often, it makes it obvious which to use. For example, when phrased as "The kind owners lent a bike to I," and "Me cycled to the beach," it's pretty straightforward which is right or wrong.

Also see: Affect effect, less fewer, tandem, by monkeys, Oxford commas

Me or I

RAS Syndrome is Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome. It's when an acronym is followed by a word that's also part of the acronym.

PIN number - Personal Identification Number

ISBN number - International Standard Book Number

HIV virus - Human Immunodeficiency Virus

RSVP please - Répondez S'il Vous Plaît — Reply please

While, in principle, the following word is redundant were we to spell out the acronym, that we tend to include it in everyday speech means it's usually serving a helpful function. Quite often, it's clarifying what you're talking about given many people won't know what the acronym actually stands for (see TLAs).

By the way, ATM is technically an initialism, while PIN is an acronym.

I'd guess you've probably come across RAS Syndrome, too. However, I didn't realise there was a name for it until recently, even though it was coined in New Scientist magazine back in 2001.

Also see acronym or initialism, TLAs, Capitonym, pleonasm

RAS Syndrome

What does biweekly mean to you? How about bimonthly or biannually?

While each of us will have our own, perhaps unambiguous, reaction to it, the word biweekly is interpreted as "twice a week" or "once every two weeks." I know this from personal experience of confusing people en-masse. The dictionary even carefully, if unhelpfully, defines it as meaning either. It's a strange quirk of the English language. But it's so handy, what to do? An excellent, concise solution is the word fortnightly.

Fortnightly has the helpful unambiguous quality that it means "once every fortnight," so "once every two weeks." And it's also just one word. If something happens "two times a week," I think you need to spell it out or use "twice a week" or perhaps "every Monday and Thursday." Or perhaps semi-weekly might give you some mileage.

The same source of confusion applies to the words bimonthly and biannually—to be sure of being understood correctly, it's best to avoid them. Phrases like "every second month," "every two months," "twice a month," or "two times each year" are helpful here.

Ambiguity in how we talk about time is also illustrated in some of my favourite research done by Lera Boroditsky. For example, if I say, "The meeting on Wednesday has been moved forward by two days," when is the meeting now? It turns out that people are split on whether the meeting is now on Monday or on Friday. And I remember a fascinating example of the Kuuk Thayore aboriginal people in Australia who don't use words like left and right, and instead, always use the cardinal directions like north, south, east and west—"Oh, there's an ant on your southwest leg". There's a taster in her talk, How Language Shapes the Way we Think.

Fortnightly

A pleonasm is the use of redundant words, often in established phrases or idioms.

I tried to write something, but it's hard to beat this excellent excerpt by the comedian George Carlin from When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops — spot the pleonasms:

"My fellow countrymen, I speak to you as coequals, knowing you are deserving of the honest truth. And let me warn you in advance, my subject matter concerns a serious crisis caused by an event in my past history...At that particular point in time, I found myself in a deep depression, making mental errors which seemed as though they might threaten my future plans. I am not over-exaggerating.

I needed a new beginning, so I decided to pay a social visit to a personal friend with whom I share the same mutual objectives and who is one of the most unique individuals I have ever personally met. The end result was an un­expected surprise. When I reiterated again to her the fact that I needed a fresh start, she said I was exactly right; and, as an added plus, she came up with a fi­nal solution that was absolutely perfect.

Based on her past experience, she felt we needed to join together in a com­mon bond for a combined total of twenty-four hours a day, in order to find some new initiatives. What a novel innovation! And, as an extra bonus, she presented me with the free gift of a tuna fish. Right away I noticed an immedi­ate positive improvement. And although my recovery is not totally complete, the sum total is I feel much better now knowing I am not uniquely alone.”

Other examples people have shared with me include one-year anniversary, and revert back. The other day, I wrote "new discoveries", which Grammarly helpfully suggested shortening to "discoveries." I also wrote "we haven't met before" before deleting "before" along with a face-palm.

Pleonasm

Remarkably, when we describe a noun we almost always, unconsciously, arrange adjectives in this order: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose.

If you try mixing them up in a different order it just doesn’t sound right. Compare, for example, a super little Italian coffee, to an Italian little super coffee. Or as Mark Forsyth points out in The Elements of Eloquence: How to turn the perfect English phrase, you can have a great green dragon, but not a green great one.

Ordering adjectives

A capitonym is a word that changes meaning and sometimes pronunciation when capitalised.

For years as a kid, no joke, I couldn’t understand why there was a polish club at the bottom of our road. Yes, it was a Polish club.

Capitonyms are also heteronyms when they change pronunciation as for polish and Polish.

Capitonym

We all know that you make an acronym by taking the initial letters of a set of words and putting them together. So Random Access Memory becomes RAM, or the United States becomes the US. But I only found out recently that these two examples are actually different.

An acronym is when the initials of a set of words are said as a word, like laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), radar (radio detection and ranging), sonar (sound navigation and ranging), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

An initialism, by contrast, is when a set of initials are pronounced as letters when you say them, like FBI, CIA, US, BBC or CD.

This sketch was revised for my book Big Ideas Little Pictures. Here's the original.

Acronyms and initialisms

This one rewards a little close attention—looking at each of the words and figuring out their different meanings or sounds.

I’ve always loved heteronyms and how we can have a single word spelt the same and yet pronounced quite differently — like read — and how that clearly makes English a crazy language to learn. And, as you probably do too, I pretty much woke up at night thinking how you could sort words into groups of the same or different spelling and the same or different sounds and begin to make sense of these curious groups of words like homographs, homophones and heteronyms.

Words with different spellings and different sounds generally just mean different words.

There are nice buckets of other words too, like, contranyms — words that can be their own opposite. And also aptronyms (good for nominative determinism).

I did think a third axis of the same or different meaning may give the complete picture but would probably just serve to confuse things.

Some Greek: homo—same, hetero—different, graph—written, phone—sound

Mad props to the incredible poem The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité. The poem gives an amazing number of examples of some of the craziness of the English language. Here's an excerpt from the start:

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
   I will teach you in my verse
   Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
   Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
   Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
   Just compare heart, hear and heard,
   Dies and diet, lord and word.

Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it's written).
   Made has not the sound of bade,
   Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
   But be careful how you speak,
   Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak...

Homonyms, homographs, homophones, heteronyms… 

The Oxford comma is the comma after the penultimate item in a list. It’s normally a matter of style — you can happily choose to leave it out — though in some cases it can clarify what would otherwise be an ambiguous meaning, as in this well-cited book dedication “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.” Or, more pertinently, in a recent legal case where ambiguity hinging on the lack of an Oxford comma is costing a dairy firm a $5m overtime payment to its drivers.

The Oxford comma

Muphry's law states that when criticizing spelling or grammar, you’ll make a mistake yourself.

Muphry's Law is a variation of Murphy’s law which is: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

Muphry's Law teaches me to be humble and more tolerant of errors.

Muphry’s Law

— and much nicer than using parentheses (). And —to go the full mile —why not use an en dash when you’re separating your page numbers 1–5 or months May–Sep next time?

Most writing tools and OSes have tricks to do these automatically for you.

Know your dashes: the hyphen, en dash and em dash

A contranym is a word that can be its own opposite.

Contranyms — like a heteronym, portemanteau, palindrome and semordnilap — are neat things to look out for. Like how you can dust something to pick up dust from a surface and dust that surface to remove dust from it.

I learned this from Kathryn Schulz’ excellent article, What part of “No, totally” don’t you understand, about how “no, totally” came to mean “yes.” 

Contranym

The best reference I found on quotations was the quotation section in Larry Trask’s Guide to Punctuation. Alongside clarifications [ ] and suspensions … it contains rules on fun things like quotes in quotes, when to capitalise, dealing with mistakes [sic], adding emphasis [emphasis added], and punctuation inside or outside. On this last point he suggests:

"You may follow your own preference in this matter, so long as you are consistent. If you opt for logical punctuation [putting the punctuation outside the quote], you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are on the side of the angels, but you should also expect some grim opposition from the other side [that prefers punctuation on the inside]."
— Larry Trask

Quotiquette: The etiquette of quoting

Two properties distinguish when to use less and fewer in English.

Use less if it's measured by mass, for example, less sugar, and fewer if the nouns are countable, for example, fewer sugar cubes.

Use less if the nouns don't go plural, for example, less furniture, and fewer if the nouns pluralise ok, for example, fewer chairs.

Hopefully, this will help clear up any confusion.

Also see: Affect Effect; stationary stationery; Compliment complement, the pedants are revolting (reddit)

Less and Fewer

Except in a sentence. Generally, I think this is helpful. Simpler, cleaner, and still clear. If it’s not clear, or if you’re writing a book or an article, keep the colon.

Use styling instead of colons

When should use affect or effect in English? Affect is a verb — you affect someone or something. Effect is a noun. 

In this sketch, the person is affected (verb) by being pushed into the water with the effect (noun) being a large splash.

Grammar sketches