As someone who’s had a passion for language since I was a child, I’ve always enjoyed the nuances of language and how different people use it in different ways. While the subjectivity of language may at times be a source of miscommunication and even frustration in our personal and professional relationships, it’s also reflective of the plurality of expression, the variances in thought patterns, and the differences between cultures.

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Welcome to the very first Language Ninja column of the summer! Let’s pour ourselves a frozen peach iced tea, relax by the pool, and start tacklin’ some rules of grammar and syntax!

Q: Is “close proximity” redundant?

A: A bit, yes. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Ninja won’t go on and on at length about the subject.

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It may be a familiar trope in crime stories, but having a dead body in the trunk is a lousy selling point for an automobile. When Ford launched its ad campaign in Belgium, they wanted buyers to appreciate their excellent manufacturing and came up with the slogan “Every car has a high-quality body.” However translated into Dutch, one of Belgium’s three official languages, the ad became “Every car has a high-quality corpse,” which was less than persuasive. Thanks to a translation error, Ford’s new model sounded as if it was an accessory to a crime rather than something you’d willingly drive off the lot.

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Q: What do landing the perfect job, finding your ideal mate, and winning friends all have in common?

A: They all require you to know how to market yourself.

Yes, it’s the reason people sweat interviews (and first dates), spend hours drafting cover letters, and even pay others to assemble their résumés — we don’t always know the best way to sell ourselves. Marketing yourself is an essential skill to get where you want to go, but the process is often easier said than done.

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If you are someone who enjoys writing, you probably take pride in using your skill and knowledge of the language to craft a message that communicates exactly the intended point. The raw materials at your disposal—words—are not unlike those of a sculptor; some are easier to work with than others. So when you can master the harder materials—more obscure words—you might feel a special satisfaction.

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I was twenty when the overwhelming urge to head to the Southwest struck. I was a junior in college, living on a tiny island off the coast of Maine, and I was hungry to explore the alien landscape of slickrock and sandstone, to see arches and mesas and unimaginable rock formations with my own eyes. The canyons were calling to me, so in the spring of 1998, I took a Greyhound bus from Maine to Utah.

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Q: What is the difference between “less than” and “fewer than?”

A: This distinction is one of those linguistic phenomena that is more a matter of style than actual, understandable meaning. No matter which form you use, you will be understood perfectly, but that won’t stop people from calling you a moron on social media forums if you don’t use the “correct” phrase. Well, the Ninja is all for jettisoning useless style rules, but she prefers doing so only after those style rules are learned and understood. It’s the difference between presenting yourself either as an intellectual maverick, or just sounding like a failed reality TV star.

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When the phrase “extinction” is inevitably brought up in polite conversation, there’s a good chance that the first topics that jump into people’s minds are the declining mountain gorilla population or the sorry lack of Mexican grizzly bears in today’s wilderness.

Well, those may not be the primary examples that normal people usually consider, but the sad truth is that extinctions are silently occurring on a level far removed from many people’s minds—the extinction of language!

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Disclaimer: I’ve never been skydiving.

The first step of blogging, like skydiving, is making the commitment to do it. Once you’ve decided you’re going to skydive, you’ve got to decide on a method for your jump. Are you going in tandem? How about an accelerated free fall? Or should you static line that bad boy?

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As the subject of much woeful head-shaking among English teachers and grammar snobs, text and Twitter lingo have long been blamed for ruining the way we now communicate. (Because we were such bastions of language excellence before, I guess? #scapegoat)

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