Blacklist

This is a column of words or phrases commonly misused by Chinese speakers. If you’re planning to be an English teacher, reporter or employee of a multinational company, then watch out for this page each week.

1. In his memoir, Henry Paulson recalled telling the president that it was impossible to spot a coming financial blowup.

Professor Zhu Shida (ZS): This is a perfect sentence. I came across it in a commentary in the International Herald Tribune. What strikes me is its laconism. It tells so many things with such an economy of words – thanks to the usage of the pattern “verb + participle.” Normally people say: In his memoir, Henry Paulson recalled that he once told the president that it was impossible to spot a financial blowup coming. We have two subject clauses in succession here. It is not concise, so it is not good. I have another example of the pattern: I doubt anyone ever died regretting that he had failed to take a vacation. I think we have to be a careful reader and try all the time to find the good points in other people’s writings to improve our own.

Terry Boyd-Zhang (TBZ): I agree that one of the best ways to become a better writer is to read. However, reading only IELTS or TOEFL passages that may be on the exam isn’t enough. A person should be reading real English literature, and you can now find many excellent stories, even at a simplified level.

2. The two-year anniversary

ZS: This is a mistake people keep making all the time, though I have repeatedly cautioned them: Would you say you celebrate your 20-year birthday? Definitely not. You celebrate your 20th birthday (many happy returns on the day). This is the same with “anniversary.” Anniversary means the yearly return of a special date. For instance, the 25th wedding anniversary. Would you say 25-year wedding anniversary? Definitely not, either. So, before the word “anniversary,” you will have to use the ordinal number. Next time, please remember: They celebrated the second (not two-year) anniversary of the founding of the NGO by going to the streets to offer voluntary service.

TBZ: It seems to me that this is an incorrect saying made popular by TV advertising. I think that sometimes, in the desire to write a CATCHY and EXCITING and COOL advertisement, the language suffers. And advertising, in general, hurts my brain. If you pay attention, many TV commercials do not make sense at all. On the other hand, you should overlook the error and support your NGO of choice because they are doing good work and need your participation.

3. Boho yet elegant

ZS: This is one of the subspecies of expressions often seen in fashion magazines. Boho is a buzzword, short for “bohemian.” Of no high-brow English, it is the fashionista’s way of talking about styles that are hippie-influenced, often made of lightweight beaded or fringed fabrics. It is the kind of style accepted by the bohemians who live in Greenwich Village in New York. Though boho does not look like standard English, it is fairly recurrent in fashion magazines. For instance, “boho yet” may well be completed with: elegant, classy, uptown, sophisticated, “very ’80s,” glittery. And you may well encounter such English combinations of “complicated yet” with: trendy, funky, soft, whimsical, no-fuss, edgy, rebellious, etc. As a matter of fact, this kind of antithesis is intended by magazine editors to cover a clientele as broad as possible for the products they advertise.

TBZ: I used to have a friend who would talk in the lingo of whatever job she was currently at, leaving those of us, who did not speak in those acronyms, out of the conversation. If you regularly read fashion, you will already know the term “boho.” If I were doing your copy-editing, I might circle it in red and you might fire me for not being young and cool. Are such short forms a result of instant text messaging – we want it fast and we don’t want to spell it out completely? Or simply a space-(and therefore money-)saving technique? There are so many “specialized” words of this sort that it’s hard to keep up, unless it truly is your field of interest.