Not Saying What We Mean to Say

Anyone who knows me knows that one of my pet peeves is when people say (or write something) thinking that it means one thing but it means something completely different. An example? Well when people write something along the lines of, "Your going to have to go to the store" rather than writing the correct, "You're going to have to go to the store". The difference is subtle and in this age of word check and e-mail shortform, it's very easy to overlook something so trivial but it can distract a reader (at least some of us) from what the meaning is that we're trying to get across.

I guess some of the problem stems from the fact that we often use words or phrases because they have become popular and we say them without really ever having considered how to spell them. If you read through both of those previous sentences you'll find that if you know what the word is you'll pronounce it correctly but if you don't know what you're spelling you likely won't. One way in which I keep the difference in mind (especially when writing words as contractions... and this was something my high school English teachers always drilled into my head) was to break it up into its root parts to see if it makes sense when read that way. So for example, if you break up the word into its parts in the previously written sentence, the contraction (which is the correct usage of the word) would be read as "You are going to have to go to the store" Then it makes sense and you will likely not make the same mistake.

Well that likely works fine in the case of contractions and commonly used words like that but what about words that are popular but that you generally don't use all the time but have become popular through pop cultural references? Part of the blame for those mistakes can be attributed to George Lucas. Why do I blame Lucas for this? Simply because he introduced some of these phrases to the average person and now the average person uses these phrases without thinking about what they mean. Now when George Lucas released his original "Star Wars" films he didn't refer to it as his trilogy (which basically means three stories) until much later. There was the introduction of the first of several phrases which Lucas has made popular these days.

Now my English teacher in 9th and 10th grade was Mrs. DeRoo and she made sure that we knew our Greek and Roman word parts so I know that 'tri' in trilogy refers to three so a trilogy of films is a series of three films. Similarly, a trilogy of books refers to a three book series. So then when someone refers to a four book series as a trilogy in an online review you can't help but feel a little disappointed that people don't think about what they are writing, that too on a site largely dedicated to literature like Amazon. It just proves that now many people will refer to a series (regardless of how many books or films it entails) as a trilogy. Similarly, Lucas is to blame for the popularization of the terms 'prequel' and 'sequel'. Thankfully most people know what these words mean but what it has also given rise to is the term 'reboot'.

In computer parlance, rebooting means to start over and in movies that's also more or less what the term means. However, the term is generally applied to a film series that has been running for quite some time and is suddenly shedding all of the history that had heretofore been established and was starting from scratch. Now in the case of films like the recent Batman or James Bond films, that's a fair use of the term but relating it to "Sherlock Holmes" is a bit of a mistake since though there have been many Sherlock Holmes films, this is still an independent film to the previous films. Still, it just shows that once a phrase catches on in the public's mind it is very hard to get them to use anything else.