Grammar Quirks: Goldie Goldbloom on Sentence Filtering

Grammar Girl: What’s your favorite word and why?

Goldie Goldbloom: Awww, don’t make me choose between my babies! Writers shouldn’t play favourites with books or words because favourtism will rise up and bite you in the tender bits. But I’m fond of slang words from other countries and languages. Maybe malarkey isn’t an Irish word, but for the purposes of this response it is. Yiddish is full of the most juicy words and expressions that have made their way over to English. Shlemiel! Guastafesta! Bludger! Malarkey! Those words literally taste good in your mouth when you say them. Try them out. They have far more oomph than, let’s say, idiot, wet blanket, beggar, lies.

Grammar Girl: What’s a word you dislike (either because it’s overused or misused) and why?

Goldie Goldbloom: "Parameters." "Leverage." "Influencer." Shudder of utter and unmitigated horror at what the world of words has become. First there was the "game changer" and then it became the "disruptor." What was wrong with the perfectly humble and honest "good idea"?

Grammar Girl: What word will you always misspell?

Goldie Goldbloom: When I have to use the word "accommodate," I cringe. I type it in. The red line thingy tells me I have it wrong. I retype it differently. It’s still wrong. I erase it and write "make comfortable" instead. And then, being Australian but having lived in America for a long time, my spelling is all messed up anyway. Jeweler? One L or two? Neighbour? A U or not? This would all be OK if I could settle on one country’s spelling but nah. I’m wrecked.

Grammar Girl: What word (or semblance of a word) would you like to see added to the dictionary? Why?

Goldie Goldbloom: "Swullocky." It’s in my first book, "The Paperbark Shoe," and I invented it to describe the way clouds look when they are hanging low and it’s about to rain. I still use it. Every day that goes by, historical words that describe natural phenomena vanish from the lexicon because people don’t spend as much time outside, observing.

Grammar Girl:...

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