"Not in My Back Yard!" "Or Is It Not in My Backyard?"

Things That Matter Enough
by Carter Jefferson

Having lived a fairly long time, I am pretty used to the language shifting under my feet, and I don't get usually get as mad as Lynn Truss does when I see something weird in print. But not too many years ago some idiot start spelling "back yard" as one word -- "backyard." It has caught on, and now I see it everywhere. It even made first place in the AHD4.

"Front yard" hasn't suffered that indignity -- the space is still there in AHD4 and nearly everywhere else. Gross discrimination, I say.

Everybody should know, but some don't, that what's in the dictionary is not what words ought to be, but what enough people say or write -- including illiterates, thoughtless types, and people even you wouldn't like.

Think of the way this sounds: "The swings are in the back yard." Note that when you speak there's the tiny pause between "back" and "yard." Of course, you might say "It's a backyard swing," without that pause and it would sound just right. But a "back seat driver" still takes the pause, so all compound adjectives don't follow the same pronunciation rules.

Of course, all those people in Weston, Massachusetts, who stopped the bike trail from coming through can't say "Nimby" anymore; they have to say "Nimb," right?

Last night, however, I learned to my immense joy that the New Yorker, which is pretty careful about words, still spells "back yard" the way it ought to be spelled. It's at the end of the third paragraph of an article in the financial section of the Aug. 11 & 18 issue called "The Permission Problem."

Of course, it may be a typo, and some proofreader is in big trouble. But maybe not. Just for now, I'm going to believe they meant to spell it that way. You could, too, and then we'd take back that lost ground, swing and all.

You think these things don't matter enough to comment on? Fine. You're not me.

A Constant Good Read

The well-known political commentator, James J. Kilpatrick, is retired, but he continues to publish a column, sometimes focusing on the activities of the US Supreme Court and more often on language, grammar, and syntax.

His current column is especially interesting in light of the constant admonition to write tight, J K Rowling and her assorted adjectives, adverbs, and dialog tags aside.

Kilpatrick offers, "Often just an extra word or two will make the difference between prose that glides and prose that stumbles."

Here's an example from the current column ...

The Washington Post often contributes to the adjectival goo: "President Bush nominated Deputy Treasury Secretary Samuel W. Bodman yesterday as his second secretary of energy, tapping an administration veteran to lead the Energy Department at a time of unstable oil prices and rising nuclear proliferation concerns." The sentence falls not trippingly. How about, "unstable oil prices and rising concerns over nuclear proliferation"?

Kilpatrick always provides a good read about language, and he even sometimes presides over a session of The Court of Peeves, Crotchets & Irks.