Tack vs tact

Tact: social gracefulness.

Tack: the direction of a ship's movement, or, metaphorically, an approach to a problem.

So when someons says they want to try a different tact, they probably mean tack.

Mischievous

Turning on my local public radio station this morning to listen to Car Talk, I instead heard one of those insidious pledge breaks that I am so tired of. The droning voice, referring to the Car Guys, said he liked the mischievious way they answered questions.

According to the Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary (online version), that spelling and pronunciation, while they are common and go back to the 16th century, are non-standard.

It's mischievous, not mischievious.

Secretary of Education

I heard Charlie Rose interview Secretary of Education Arne Duncan the other day. Duncan has good ideas about education, but he might want to take a refresher course in grammar before he makes too many more public appearances.  

On two different occasions in the interview Duncan used "I" as the first person objective case. I don't remember the exact quotes, but in one case he said that his mother had a big influence on "my brother, sister, and I."  There is another problem with that construction, but I'll leave that as an exercise.

Flesh out vs flush out

Flesh out: put some meat on the bones by providing more details.

Flush out: drive from hiding by forays into possible hiding places.

When applied to plans, legislation, and so forth, these metaphors have different meanings, but I think that some people fail to distinguish between them. 

For example, someone might say, "Secretary Geithner has given an overview of how he wants to deal with the bad paper that banks are holding but I'd like to see that plan flushed out."  The speaker probably means fleshed out, but maybe Secretary Geithner is hiding details that he already knows but doesn't want to say. In that case, the flushing metaphor might be appropriate.

The which switch

Have you noticed how people use "which" to rearrange their thoughts in mid sentence? Today a reporter describing J P Morgan Chase's recent report on its real estate loans said the following:

Then there's jumbo, which we don't know how much of JPM's business is composed of that.

You can convert that into a grammatically correct sentence as follows:

Then there's jumbo; we don't know how much of JPM's business that comprises.

By the time you've said "which," however, it's too late.

Vagary

Today I heard someone complain about Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's financial plan. The worst thing, according to this commentator, was the vagary of the plan. Checking Merriam-Webster, I formulated the following distinction:

Vagueness: lack of clarity or definiteness.

Vagary: an erratic, unpredictable, or extravagant manifestation, action, or notion.

The commentator meant vagueness.

Information is available by phoning

When people want to tell you that you can obtain information by calling 555-1212, why don't they just say so?  If you start a sentence with "Information is available," just about the only way to proceed is to say "at . . .."

I'm not sure how to diagram "Information is available by phoning 555-1212." I know what it means, but it's awkward at best and probably defective.