english

All my writing life I've had rather tedious arguments with purists over one of the unresolved arguments in english grammar. Which is correct: "The Penn Pike is installing signs…" (collective singular, CS) or "The Penn Pike are installing new signs" (collective plural, CP).

All my life I've run into passionate adherents of both. My mother of English/Scots upbringing was a CPer, but my father of German birth and education was a CSer. It was a family argument, and I decided very early in life that both were right.

The second sentence in the Wall Street Journal lead story on the front page (Jan 7) had us wondering if we'd gotten behind the latest in journalistic English. The report ran under the byline of Washington reporter Elizabeth Williamson.

It might help the sale of newspapers if they employed people who can speak a bit of english. Every day we hear reporters talking about an "oil spill" in the Gulf of Mexico. You might expect a PR guy for BP to call it a "spill" but this is ridiculous coming from independent reporters.

A spill is losing a small amount of something from a container. You spill a bit of rice from a rice container, or you spill some gasoline from a jerry-can. An oil tanker can have a spill from a collision or a grounding that causes a leak.

After Tiger Woods wrecked his car on a neighbor's fire hydrant and a tree recently in Orlando FL the celebrity golf champ was cited by police for the misdemeanor charge of "Careless driving". A more serious variant is "Reckless driving."

In Ontario, a supposed English-speaking territory of Canada this same traffic offense is called "Undue care and attention".