Another beautiful day. Bright sun, and it got up to about 70 in the afternoon, I think, though it was much cooler by the time I took my afternoon walk, which has suddenly become an evening walk.

The wind’s blustery, which is too bad, because it means the trees that turn their leaves early are shedding them now. So when the great crescendo of the visual chorus that is autumn arrives at last, they’ll have no “voices” left. The perfect weather for fall is still and dry for a couple months.

Not that I’ve got any business complaining about high winds, considering what’s going on in southern California.

Today I want to strike a blow for precision in language. I want to smash, and smash vengefully, a common error that seems to be growing more and more common.

How often these days do we read a sentence like this: “In lieu of the senator’s statement, advocacy groups organized a massive letter-writing campaign”?

This is bad. Don’t do this anymore.

What the writer meant to say was, “In view of the senator’s statement…”



“In lieu of” and “in view of” are not the same thing.

The phrase, “In lieu of” is defined by Merriam-Webster this way: “in the place of; instead of.”

If someone says, “During the war, we ate margarine in lieu of butter,” he’s using the words properly.

Why do people make this mistake?

Because they’re trying to use a fancy, frenchified word in lieu of a perfectly good, easily understood English one.

When in doubt, use the simple word. When not in doubt, the simple word is still usually the best bet.

Now read this post again. Read it over and over until you understand it.

The world will be happier for it.

Or at least I will.

Writing is No Longer Manly with the Possible Exception of Australian Travel Writers, reports David Thayer.

Marvin Olasky has an interesting column in light of our recent discussion of modern Christian fiction, both here and elsewhere. He says we need more salt than sugar in our Christian novels.

. . . contemporary Christian fiction [are stereotyped] as the marriage of tract and melodrama, homilies decked out in purple prose. Some Christian authors, rebelling against that, have moved toward literary fiction, with some good results and more dull ones. But we still have a long way to go to develop popular fiction—action-adventure, mystery, romance—that isn’t poorly written and sometimes downright embarrassing.

I think Christian fiction will need a master, some bestselling or otherwise popular author who writes un-embarrassing stories, in order for this opinion of the whole industry/genre to be put down–or will even that be enough? Not that it matters, I suppose. We can write great stories without the support of current public opinion.

Here’s an example for a discussion on word usage. Philip Klein, writing for the excellent American Spectator, has an article on Mrs. Clinton with the title, “Hillary Slaps Iowa Voter.” I first heard of this article in a passing comment on the radio.

“Oh my soul!” I said. “She slapped someone at a rally?”

No, she didn’t. She argued, patronized, and told a voter he didn’t know what he was talking about. The voter said, “[She] was basically calling me stupid. That I can’t think on my own.” He also used a vulgar verb closely related to “slap” to further describe his feelings, but there was no swift-moving hand or skin contact.

So read the article and tell me what you think. Is the headline an exaggeration?

“In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation. It exists on the lowest scale, and, in the art of fiction, belongs as much to the producer of “railway novels” as to Balzac, Thackeray or Tolstoy; yet it almost always marks the great creative artist. Whatever a man has it in him to do really well he usually keeps on doing with an indestructible persistency.”

Goodness, that’s something to pray after. Mark Bertrand comments on this quote from Edith Wharton.

Roy over at Writing, Clear and Simple identifies a word commonly misused, especially by journalists, in our day.

It seemed to me a matter of some importance.

A crisis, as a matter of fact.

Today, when I left work, it was raining. Big, fat drops. It wasn’t supposed to do that.

When I got home, it was not raining here. So apparently we hit the lottery back at the school (rain is much needed up here). The skies are cloudy; we could still get some. But since the rain at work was undocumented rain, rain not authorized by the weather forecasters, I think it will probably remain in the shadows.

Where rain generally falls, come to think of it.

Today I shall rail against a great evil in our society. Oddly enough, a quick web search seems to indicate that nobody has written about it before. Since such a thing is unthinkable, I can only blame a world-wide conspiracy, orchestrated, perhaps, by the Bilderbergers or the Tri-Lateral Commission. If this post mysteriously disappears and you never hear from me again, you’ll know why.

I want to talk about the difference between “intervene” and “intercede.”

The error usually involves someone using “intercede” when he wants to say “intervene.”

I shall explain.

“Intervene” means to come between. The UN intervenes, for instance, in civil wars in the Third World (those little girls aren’t going to prostitute themselves, after all). Federal officials intervene in labor disputes. Bad weather intervenes to stop a ball game.

One form of intervention is called “intercession.”

(This is the problem, you see. All intercessions are interventions, but not all interventions are intercessions.)

To “intercede” is to plead with someone on someone else’s behalf. If someone is suing you, and you hire a lawyer to make them an offer to settle out of court, the lawyer is interceding. In the Christian faith, we intercede for others when we pray for their needs, and we ask others to intercede for us. Christ intercedes for us with the Father.

“Intercession” means pleading someone’s case. Asking for a break for them. Nature never intercedes. Fate never intercedes. Armies never intercede, since they use force, not negotiation or pleading.

There’s someone at the door. I’ll just answer it, and then I’ll be—