The consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly.

It’s a good title for an excellent study conducted a wee while ago at Princeton uni, on the effects of using more complicated words in your writing. The general gist of the outcome is the simpler your writing, the brainer your reader will think you are.

The study backs up what I’ve suspected for a long time: that overly complicated wording is the nouveau riche of the literary world. Flashing around all that glitzy language makes you look like you’ve got something to prove.

Truth be told, I love a fancy word here and there. I delight in the irony of obfuscate, and thrill when I’m called an erstwhile actor, or affectionately labelled a poltroon. But the sad truth remains that if you’re writing for communication, the simpler the word, the better (unless, of course, you’re writing exclusively for an audience of lexicographers).

Worth noting that the only readers studied were well-educated uni students, but the point, I believe, still holds.

You know how lower-level officials talk when they’re trying to sound important? It’s a pseudo-formality that combines overly complex sentences with misused terms and unnecessarily long words. “Irrespective”, “per se” and “vis a vis” all make regular, and incorrect, appearances, but nothing so instantly says, “I don’t know what I’m talking about” as a misused “whom”.

I actually find it endearing. But if you’d rather come off as mind-searingly brainy, than aww-look-at-you-tryingly cute, read on.

“Whom” is a word I reserve for very special occasions, like when I’m writing a snooty complaint email, or trying to look educated in front of my grandmother. Every other time, in modern usage ‘who’ mostly does the trick. It’s not strictly correct, but then in English, what is?

When to use ‘whom’, and why

Something most English speakers have internalised, but can’t necessarily explain (including me, mostly) is the difference between a subject and an object in a sentence. In a nutshell, a sentence’s subject is the person or thing doing something, and the object is having something done to it.

‘Whom’ should be used as the object of a sentence and ‘who’ as the subject. “To whom does this beer belong?” – in this sentence,’whom’ is the object – belongingness is happening to it. The beer is the subject because it’s doing the belonging. (Belongingness is totally a word.)

“Who brought this beer?” – this time, ‘who’ is the subject and ‘beer’ the object. The ‘who’ has brought the ‘beer’.

A quick way to double check yourself is to remember that who/whom are a pair like I/me and he/him. See all the ‘M’s? They’re the personal pronouns to be used as objects. The non-M words are the subjects. It means you can rewrite your sentence using another of these personal pronoun – if an M word sounds right, use ‘whom’. So “whom/who does this beer belong to?” becomes ‘this beer belongs to him”. ‘Him’ is an ‘M’ pronoun, so ‘whom’ is correct.

Remember though, that our stupid language means correctness doesn’t necessarily equal writing awesomeness. More often than not, you’re probably better off compromising your commitment to correctness in the interests of readability. But then, whom am I kidding?

Supermarket express aisle all around the world are my worst enemy. One look at that incorrect “12 items or less” sign and I get all white-ragey. It’s all I can do to stop myself yelling at the girl beeping my groceries.

To add insult to injury, the phrase has even been made into what looks like a terrible movie starring Morgan Freeman.

Seriously. It bothers me.

So if you want to be cooler than a supermarket aisle, here’s one simple rule: if you can count the things you’re talking about, use ‘fewer‘. If you can’t, use ‘less‘.

You can’t count time: Less time

You can’t count water: Less water

You can’t count fat: Less fat

You CAN count numbers of hours: Fewer hours

and numbers of cups: Fewer cups of water,

and numbers of calories: Fewer calories

Another good way of telling which to use is whether it’s a plural or not:

Less murder, fewer murders

Less advertising, fewer ads

Less sport, fewer sports

So now you know, let’s start a correct-supermarket-express-aisle-signs revolution!! Who’s with me?! Yeah.

Special thanks go to Pak ‘n Save in Gisborne for your heart-clenchingly accurate signs. Now we just have to work on the missing apostrophe in your brand name.

This is another one that gets people all angry.

Lynne Truss, Author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves reckons you can use apostrophes for plurals of letters, numbers, abbreviations, and even some plurals of words:

• 1980′s
• 1′s and 2′s
• If’s, and’s or but’s
• F’s, l’s E’s

Since grammarians continue to fight among themselves over this, I think we can pretty safely say that there isn’t really a right or wrong way. If what you’re trying to do is communicate, then stop worrying about correctness and challenge each situation for clarity. For example, I often add in illicit apostrophes to the phrase ‘do’s and don’t's, even if it means making my pedantic friends think less of me. I do it because those potentially incorrect apostrophes make the phrase way easier to read and understand than, ‘dos and don’ts’, (which looks like it’s talking about that early computer operating system).

Which is all good and fine. But since Ol’ Aposty is also used for possession, and to replace letters, you can make things a bit confusing if you play too fast and loose with the rules. What happens when you want to abbreviate 1980′s – does writing ’80′s confuse things? Which apostrophe would you rather leave out? Also, consider this:

MP’s plan failure

Is this headline about some ministers planning to fail, or about a poor minister whose plan has failed?

Judging these anomalies case by case is the right way to go, but in the interest of clarity, sticking to one style for each piece of writing will go a long way.