"The weatherman predicted strong wind and hale."

New England weather can be fierce, but I've never heard of it being described as "hale and hearty". (And, while we're on the subject, why does "hearty" so often follow "hale"?r) Is a strong wind a hale wind, as opposed to a sickly breeze?r

Do you find it jarring to see a homophone instead of the intended word? Not in intentional wordplay, of course, such as "What's worse than raining cats and dogs?" "Hailing taxis." Puns and other forms of verbal chicanery turn on the unexpected word replacing the expected word or familiar phrase. "Hailing taxis" has the added benefit (if benefit is the correct word) of being correctly spelled for either meaning of "hailing", either frozen precipitation or verbal salute. Of course, taxi drivers can give us a frozen stare or digital salute in return. But I digress.

As you've seen countless times, spell checking software will not object to homophones being used in place of the correct word. Surely not all writers whose works confuse us with "their", "they're", "there" are using dictation software to transcribe their thoughts. (If the authors were, then the software would probably get the right word more often than the human!)

Will reading aloud what one has written help?r Probably not. Another set of eyes might find the word, such as Jenny asking her father, "Gee dad, what had the pine done that was naughty?" Sure enough, I'd written "naughty pine" instead of "knotty pine." Tempted as I was to reply something along the lines of "It got board.", "It lost its pitch.", or even "It was needling me.", I thanked her for pointing out my mistake. Wouldn't you want someone to point out an "Oops!" before it found its way into electronic immortality?

All opinions expressed are mine, and are not necessarily those of my employer. Comments are welcome; spam is not. Contrasting opinions are welcome; attacks are not.

"Chasing Windmills"

Today I received an email message from a person whose opinions I almost always respect. Today, however, the first sentence contained the phrase "chasing windmills". While there is a possibility, however remote, that a windmill might attempt to escape, what the writer was thinking of was probably "tilting at windmills", a reference to Don Quixote, or possibly "chasing rainbows". Either way, the sentence as written was enough to start me thinking about what teachers call mixed metaphors.

In another recent message, the writer talked about "fighting upstream about finding time". (I sighed.) "Fighting a losing battle"? Sure. "Swimming upstream"? Sure. Either one. The "swimming upstream" metaphor has particular appeal in this case because of the metaphor of time as a river or stream. I couldn't help think of the song that contains the line "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all [of us] away."

The sentences "It's not brain surgery." and "It's not rocket science." have become clichés. In fact, some people have intentionally combined them for humorous effect: "It's not rocket surgery." Fine. The speaker and the listeners know that clichés should be avoided, and that the usage was intentional.

An Internet search for "mixed metaphor list" will give many examples, some intentionally funny, and others probably not.

All opinions expressed are mine, and are not necessarily those of my employer. Comments are welcome; spam is not. Contrasting opinions are welcome; attacks are not.