Splitting Hairs and Infinitives – Another reading from Frank McNally’s Stylebook of Leviticus

A further reading from the Stylebook of Leviticus. Use ye not the word “disinterested” when ye mean “uninterested”; that is unclean. A judge may be disinterested; indeed, that is what the job requireth. But the judge should not also by uninterested, lest he or she falleth asleep during evidence, in which case the verdict will be unclean.

Use ye not “transpire” when ye mean “happen”; that is unclean also. For “transpire” meaneth to “ooze out” or “become known”. And if something oozeth out (especially at a crime scene) it followeth that an event hath already happened. Only then may it transpire, via Twitter, or Sky News.

Avoid writing “may” when ye mean “might”. That is an abomination. If thou sayest of pro-Brexit Britain, for example, that it “may have voted differently” in certain circumstances, thou impliest that it possibly did, somewhere, and the news hath just not transpired yet. In that parallel universe, “May” is not unclean; but verily, neither is she prime minister of the Britons.

‘Altercation’

Say ye never that a person hath “sustained” an injury. For although that may be be clean, it seemeth to happen exclusively in police reports, where it always followeth an “altercation”. General injury aside, the only other things anyone sustaineth, ever, are “gunshot wounds”. Unfortunate as that is if thou art the victim, it’s better English just to be “shot”.

Confuse ye not the word “biretta”, which is a hat worn by a clergyman, with “beretta”, a brand of handgun made in Italy. For if ye do, there may follow dire consequences.

As a rule, a "beretta" should not be used in church, except if the occasion be a wedding and somebody singeth The Wind Beneath My Wings. Then a beretta may be considered, and a disinterested judge will acquit.

Speaking of judgment, put ye not the letter “E” after the “G” there, for although this spelling gaineth ground in popular usage, it remaineth unclean. The same rule applieth to “acknowledgment”. There are, however, some words where the “E” is retained. If thou knowest these, thou art indeed knowledgeable (see what we hath done there?) and thy name will be blest among subeditors.

Confuse ye not "expatriate" – a person who merely liveth in a foreign land – with "expatriot", which implieth that the person is a traitor. And confuse not "exercise" with "exorcise", lest ye be like the Guardian scribe of old and report that a priest hath been called in somewhere to "exercise" a ghost, as if the ghost be a Labrador, or a hamster.

Fear not to split the infinitive. Depending on circumstances, and despite what the Pedantites claim, that may be clean. For did not Moses split even the Red Sea, after the Israeli yes vote in the referendum to leave Egypt? And having split the sea, could he not also have invited the Israelites to boldly march across it?

Yea, the Pedantites might have said unto him, wherefore splittest thou that infinitive, miracles or no miracles, transgressing the ways of the elders?

But Moses could have quoth the scriptures (Strunk and White: The Elements of Style), suggesting they be guided here by what soundeth right, viz: "Some infinitives seem to improve on being split, just as a stick of firewood does".

Sports scribes: use the verb “tuck” if ye must, but sparingly. For although a football player may be said to “tuck in his shirt”, it is less acceptable if he tucketh the ball anywhere, as it is said he doth with monotonous regularity.

Consider again Moses (Victor, in this case, who playeth up front for Chelsea). If he tucketh the ball “home” or if he tucketh it “away”, doth it not end up in the same place? And will thou not also then claim he hath “found the net”, although there was no prior suggestion in your report that the net was missing?

Broadcasters: shun the word “amount” when thou referrest to people. That also is an abomination. If certain RTÉ reporters attended the “Feeding of the Multitude”, they would surely speak of the “amount of people” there, just as they would the amount of food.

But people are always a number, even if the number be disputed. Reported attendance at the Feeding of the Multitude rangeth from 4,000 (Roman estimate) to “half a million” (event organisers, from the Judean Anti-Austerity Alliance), while the iPhone Crowd-size app put it at 5,107. But whatever it be, verily, it remaineth a number, and nothing else.

There endeth the Sermon on the Amount.