Epic fail.

Literally the best.

The most amazing.

The absolute worst.

These superlative descriptions are best reserved for, respectively, the sinking of the Titanic, invention of the wheel, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the 1918 flu pandemic.

Today, it’s hard to know where you stand when something as minor as burnt toast can be considered an epic fail, or a particularly good burger becomes literally the best thing ever. An affliction of modern discourse is our penchant for exaggeration. Having been a vegetarian for seventeen years, to me there are few foods that come close to the glory that is a nice thick juicy burger. But let’s not get carried away; I’ve had ups and downs, but my life would be pretty grim if a hunk of ground beef was literally the best thing ever.

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Envision a gothic fantasy tale, with a blood-sucking horror sitting at a piano. His cold, pale hands dance over the white, glistening keys of the ancient instrument as his haggard, wet breath exits his chest in a tremendous gray cloud of cold, damp vapor.

Your skin may have crawled a little while reading that, but not because the tremendous number of descriptors painted a vivid picture in your mind. In fact, you may have even been distracted by how many words were used to say something so simple. This is an example of the danger of over-reliance on adjectives in your descriptions.

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Welcome to another edition of Questions for a Language Ninja, where the Ninja explores common grammar and usage issues that, hopefully, at least one other person will find important. Let’s get going!

Q: Why is it that common expressions like “cheer up,” “clean up,” “mess up,” “calm down,” and “make up” don’t have an opposite adverb equivalent? Shouldn’t we be able to logically say “clean down?”

A: We should, and we would – if English language usage was governed entirely by logic. Alas, it is not.

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The Language Ninja is hoping you are having a splendid middle-of-February, and that your Valentine’s Day was a wonderful celebration of affection between you and the one you love most. For the Ninja, it was a day largely spent weeping. Let’s get started!

Q: When is it appropriate to use “I,” “me,” or “myself” in a sentence?

A: If you are an elected official giving a press conference or a director of marketing giving a presentation, it is mandatory that you use “myself” in any instance you might possibly be tempted to use “me” or “I.” No, it isn’t “correct;” it just makes you sound important.

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Remember the neutral male pronoun? In case that sounds like jargon to you, let me provide an example:

If a student hopes to earn an A on his final report, he should not only study all the previous course material, but also bring his teacher gifts and perform various other tasks that serve to boost his favoritism ratings.

While this is clearly objectively excellent advice, notice the consistently male pronouns. Am I writing to a class of only male students? Am I assuming that only the male students are required to perform brown-nosing acrobatics while the female students are naturally gifted enough to earn A’s on their own? Do only the male students care about their grades? This is so confusing!

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Happy holidays!

Let’s get this festive Questions for a Language Ninja party started with a few topics that really bother her questions from her legions of devoted fans:

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Welcome once again to Language Ninja’s Q & A, where the Ninj answers burning grammatical and common usage questions. This week, we bring you a Holiday Grab-Bag of grammatical gaffes. Let’s get started!

Q: What is the difference between the terms ensure and insure? Don’t they essentially mean the same thing?

A: Eh… sort of. Not really.

Basically, the verb to ensure means to make sure/certain of. The verb to insure, on the other hand, means to provide protection against some kind of difficulty. These two definitions may seem kind of similar, but when you consider that insure is used only within the context of easing a financial or personal burden, while ensure carries no such specific good/bad implication, the distinction becomes clearer. By oiling the springs on her homemade spike traps, Gladys ensures the projectiles will easily pierce through the hearts of her victims. 

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The Language Ninja is back, answering your burning grammatical questions. Of course, if the burning persists post-answer, see your doctor.

Q: What’s the difference between “who” and “whom,” and does it matter?

A: Well, the difference matters as much as any non life-threatening issue matters. The Ebola virus certainly doesn’t give a damn.

But, for those of you who either possess a high degree of intellectual curiosity or grammar-specific OCD, the who/whom distinction could be a weighty issue.

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PrintQuestion: Ninja, tell me truly. Is grammar important, really?

Answer: Yes, of course! With a caveat.

See, grammar exists as a structure for the efficient communication of ideas. When we uniformly accept the common standards for a particular language, we are able to say what we mean and mean what we say. However, humans made the rules, and humans can gosh-darned well break them, too. Screw you, academia!

Language is Fluid

Language is fluid; usages change and we may even begin to use basic terms in radically different ways. The word hack may seem innocuous enough, but there are no less than seven common definitions for this one little term, and we aren’t even counting the archaic falconry and cheese-making associations (“I’m still hacking[1] up my lungs from when I had to hack[2] my way out of my burning apartment with a Rachel Ray kitchen knife, after that hack[3] who hacked[4] into my life-hack[5] website dropped a lit joint on my shag carpet, then called a hack[6] and fled because he couldn’t hack[7] it”). 

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If you have any hipster sensibilities, you may be familiar with New York-based rock band Vampire Weekend and one of its most widely known hits: “Oxford Comma.” The very NSFW lyrics, from which I pulled the title of this post, don’t actually take a side in the classic grammatical debate of “to serial comma or not to serial comma?” However, it’s definitely a catchy tune. Though it may reveal the band’s decidedly ambivalent stance on the Oxford comma question, the song also serves as evidence of this debate’s pervasiveness. Who ever thought a grammar question would become part of American pop culture?

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