What Time I Am Nauseous, or, Thoughts on Blogging
I tend to be a bit of a grammar freak. Bad grammar, lack of punctuation, mis-capitalization, and any number of other potential linguistic lapses bother me. For that reason, a good deal of blogging - not to mention IMing - can cause me serious consternation. This is a subject I have written on before.
But there is one simple reason I like following grammar’s rules. They are the tools of effective communications. They make combinations of words precise in their meaning, elegant in their style, and effective in message. Rules of grammar are pointless on their own; they exist only as tools of communication.
It is with that in mind that I state, quite truthfully, that I appreciate folks that correct my grammar. But sometimes I get stubborn…and sometimes I think about small stuff WAY too much.
Take my recent post reviewing “Expelled.” In my long-winded introduction, I referred to the movie “Red Dawn” and its negative effect on my gastrointestinal stability. And more than one person noted to me that I used the word “nauseous” when I should have said “nauseated.”
You see, the word “nauseous” to me seems almost onomatopoetic. I can’t say it without feeling the sound go up through my nose and make my sinuses swirl, making it profoundly appropriate for the idea it is attempting to communicate. “Nauseated,” on the other hand, sounds clinical and clean, something you would find on a hospital chart - making it grammatically correct, but inadequate for powerful communication.
Now, I must admit that I first used that word thinking it was correct. It was a grammatical mistake. But now that I know that, I’m stubbornly refusing to change it.
And yet, in spite of my stubbornness, I am bothered by my stance. More people commented on my grammatical gaffe than commented on the content of what I had to say. So this I must ask myself, in the attempt to improve my communication ability: Is my attempt to use the best word distracting from what I’m really trying to say? It seems that blogging would be an excellent chance to use the most compelling word over the most correct one, but communication is about connecting with your audience - am I writing for a bunch of grammar mavens?
Communication can be a strange beast. Ah grammar, how do I love thee?
(Thoughts on good grammar, and critiques of my grammatical structure, are welcomed in the comments section. This rant is brought to you by a very long day in which every creative shred in my being has been taxed to the utmost.)
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:59 am
As one of the commenter’s, I wanted to throw my side in for the world to view:
I am not a strict adherer to tradition definitions. By that I mean that I do not mind word usage that slowly paints in a new definition for an old word. In fact, I think that process is rather “cool”. You might ask then, “Why all the fuss over ‘nauseous’”? And here is my defense (or apologetic, if you prefer).
“Nauseated” and “nauseous” are at the opposite ends of the cause and effect spectrum. “Nauseous” describes something that is producing nausea while “nauseated” describes someone who has nausea. The former is the cause; the latter the effect. Since these are by “definition” opposed to each other, I have a difficult time allowing the denotation slide to the erroneous connotation.
If this were allowed, how would we know what the writer or speaker really meant? We might as well replace half of our words with “Smurf”. “Papa Smurf, will you smurf me a smurf of smurf please?”
Here’s the final conundrum–while I am not alone in my stance against “nauseous” to be the effect, according to the American Heritage Diction, it probably should not be the cause either:
Traditional critics have insisted that nauseous is properly used only to mean “causing nausea” and that it is incorrect to use it to mean “affected with nausea,” as in Roller coasters make me nauseous. In this example, nauseated is preferred by 72 percent of the Usage Panel. Curiously, though, 88 percent of the Panelists prefer using nauseating in the sentence The children looked a little green from too many candy apples and nauseating (not nauseous) rides. Since there is a lot of evidence to show that nauseous is widely used to mean “feeling sick,” it appears that people use nauseous mainly in the sense in which it is considered incorrect. In its “correct” sense it is being supplanted by nauseating.
If all this discussion makes you feel, um, “sick to your stomach”, rest assured that very few people care about this to the level that Gabe and I do!
Michael