November | 2012 | The Crabby Copyeditor

Can a tongue truncate? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking, and it is the very act of speaking that actually creates the truncations I’m writing about today.

Truncation, I’m sure you know, is cutting off something. When you truncate a word, you cut part of it off. Unless you are the most formal and stuffy person on earth, you truncate words all the time when you speak. Probably the only time you wouldn’t truncate a word or two when you talk is when you’re trying to teach someone how to speak your language, in which case, your listener needs to hear every syllable you say.

The less formally you speak, the more you are apt to truncate, which is fine. You just have to be careful about how you transfer those spoken truncations to the written word.

What do I mean? Well, again, if you’re a very formal person, you’re not going to truncate your words. In that last sentence alone, you can see that I’m not very formal in this post, because I truncated twice.

Did you catch it?

I truncated the word “are” by cutting off the “a” and replacing it with an apostrophe as I mashed it up against the word “you.” The “you” and the “are” in that sentence, if spoken, would have been said in such quick succession that they would have sounded as if they created one word. There is no such word as “youare,” though, so the sound is represented as “you’re,” and everyone knows what that means.

Now, what prompted me to write about truncations today is a book title I saw. Yes, a book title, which, in my mind, means some major publishing house needs to fire an editorial team. I’m not going to drop anyone in the grease by telling you the book title here, but suffice it to say that those editors have an interesting notion of what “till the end of time” could possibly mean.

“Till” the end of time. God help me, let’s look at the word “till” in some of its forms.

“Till the soil.” In this instance, “till” is a verb. A person who “tills” soil will use some sort of tool to dig up earth, cultivate it, get it ready to receive seeds or plants.
“Fill the till in the cash register.” Here, “till” is a thing, a noun. A till is a part of a cash register that has various sized compartments that separate different denominations and types of money.
“Glaciers melted and left till upon the land.“ As glaciers melt or retreat, they leave behind massive jumbles of rock, gravel, and dirt that compose moraines. Those materials, taken together, are called “till.” Again, a noun.
“Till” the end of time . . . Can you think of what “till” could mean in this instance? It doesn’t refer to any physical thing. It also doesn’t refer to any kind of an action, does it? Of course not. The problem with “till” in this instance is that the word is misspelled. The real word, the truncated word, is ” ‘-t-i-l”.

Notice that there is an apostrophe before the “t” to indicate a part of the word is missing.

The full word is “until.” It’s a preposition that represents the continuance of something. “Until the end of time” is the correct, full phrase. When spoken, “until” is often truncated so that only the last syllable is heard, which is fine. When written, however, if the writer doesn’t want to look like an idiot, the word should be either completely spelled out or written in its truncated form.

Can you see how people are making this error? It’s an easy one to make.

“Could have” is another phrase that’s easy to get wrong while writing. Say, “could have” out loud. Now, say it quickly. How does it sound? Sounds like “could of,” doesn’t it? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen writers write “could of.” Makes me crazy, especially when the writer is a media colleague, or worse, in the teaching profession.

There’s really no excuse for getting these truncations wrong. Truly. No excuse.

Writers, editors, I’m talking to you.

Have you ever noticed that people who cannot pronounce “athlete” typically cannot pronounce “veteran”? This seems especially true of anyone in the media, more so when the speaker is a sports broadcaster.

Yes, yes, I am an oversensitive soul when it comes to words, but you have to admit, when you listen to someone who is supposed to be a professional mispronounce words that are basic to h/her field, you hear “Idiot!” echo in your head. I know you do. I can’t be the only one with that particular soundtrack blaring between the ears.

The words I want to hear are “ath’-lete” and “vet’-er’-an.” Instead, I hear, “ath’-uh-lete” and “veh’-trun.”

Oh, god. Kill me now. I just cannot take it anymore.

In some small way, I can almost forgive sports broadcasters, the color announcers anyway, their mispronunciation of “athlete,” because many of those talking heads are former athletes with little to no actual broadcasting or journalism backgrounds, and I’m certain few – if any – ever majored in English. The pros, however, have no excuse, and as professionals, it is their responsibility to immediately correct their less studied co-hosts, post-broadcast or on a break, so everyone is correct. It is a matter of professionalism and professional courtesy. When I started in radio back in 1982 at 1390 WGWY – AM, it was my responsibility to not only get my stories correct, but also to ensure I communicated correctly. Even back then, we knew that our communication styles were not only a reflection on ourselves and our stations, but also our communities. It was, and still is, a broadcaster’s/journalist’s responsibility to use correct English, grammar, form. People, we knew and we know, repeat and reflect what they hear and see, and we are supposed to set an example for our communities. If we don’t know how to pronounce something, we are supposed to snag a pronunciation guide, a.k.a. Oxford American English Dictionary and Thesaurus, and find what we need. When we didn’t follow through, we heard about it from our station manager. It’s not that we ever had to sound snooty or formal, that was never the point. It’s that we were to issue our reports in the best form. Mispronunciations, especially those done for the sake of sounding “cool,” took all of us down a notch, and that’s a great way to lose listeners or at least create some haters.

Now, for the “V” word, my bone of contention, I must admit, extends only to those who are younger than the average World War II vet. I’ve had the privilege to listen to some of those people share their stories. The men I heard rarely had complete educations, so I could hardly begrudge them how they spoke. It’s the people who I know are educated, and again, especially my colleagues in the media, who not only mispronounce “veteran” as “veh-trun,” but they do so for effect, that earn my ire. Their pronunciation is an affectation used to make the speaker sound as though s/he is “one of the people.” As written, that might not seem to be such a bad thing, but when you realize that being “one of the people” means the reporter is trying to get down to the people’s level and be “one of them,” you understand that the mispronunciation is an actual insult to the audience. Think about that the next time you hear your favorite broadcaster say “veh-trun.”