dilemma

SoCS — If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

Fandango9 Comments

I’m a little confused by Linda G. Hill’s instructions for today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. First, she says that the prompt is “last thing that broke/you had to fix.” But, then she goes on to say that we should “think about the word that best describes the last thing that stopped working for you and use that word any way you’d like.”

So are we supposed to write about the last thing that actually broke that we had to fix? Or are we supposed to use the word that describes the last thing that stopped working and write about that word?

For example, if the last thing that broke that I had to fix was my toaster, should I write about that broken toaster and what I had to do to fix it?

Or, since my toaster is old, should I write about the word “old” because it describes the last thing that stopped working?

Do you see my dilemma here? Well, I guess I’ll do both.

The last thing I broke was my hip when I fell off a ladder. What did I have to do to fix it? I had to have emergency surgery for a partial hip replacement and go through nine-months and counting of physical therapy to fix it.

What word would I use to describe falling off a ladder and breaking my hip? I think it would either be “careless” or “stupid.”

The Horns of a Dilemma

Fandango58 Comments

A229D0F7-A122-45A0-8B9A-EA4980863545Yesterday I read a very good, witty, and entertaining post from a blogger I follow. I so enjoyed the post that I “liked” it and I wanted to write a comment complimenting the blogger.

But I didn’t write that complimentary comment because throughout the otherwise excellent post, the blogger used the word “than” when the correct word would have been “then.”

The blogger would write something like “But than…” or “And than…” and proceed to say what happened next.

I so wanted to post a comment that said something like this:

I really enjoyed you post, but you need to understand the difference between “than” and “then” and use them correctly. “Than” is used to form comparisons between two things, as in “I’d rather have a slice of pie than a salad.”

“Then” is used to express a sense of time or what comes next or used to be, as in “First I’ll have a salad and then I’ll have a slice of pie.” Thus, to write “And than I sat down to watch TV” is wrong. It should be “And then I sat down to watch TV.”

As I said, I never posted a comment because I didn’t want to sound like a pedantic asshole, even though I probably am one. And I didn’t want to make the blogger feel bad.

On the other hand, I felt as if I was depriving the blogger of a “teachable moment.” Wouldn’t it have been beneficial to that blogger to point out that he or she used the wrong word multiple times in an otherwise great post?

The post received a lot of love. Plenty of likes and more than three dozen comments. But not one comment mentioned the “than/then” issue.

What would you do? Would you bite your tongue and let the blogger continue to potentially misuse the word “than” in future posts? Or would you have let the blogger know so that he/she wouldn’t keep making that same mistake?