LAST NIGHT’S SLUGFEST consisted of ninety minutes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton calling each other names (“liar” popped up more than once) and declaring each other untrustworthy and unfit for office. Policy differences and other matters that should concern these two candidates were set aside so that each could impugn the basic character of the other! As Politico remarked, “It was the ugliest debate in American history.”
But I focus here instead on grammar: we now live in a world where supposedly trained, professional journalists and industry associates universally misuse use alternate to describe the multiple alternative movie endings found on some DVDs, or the bonus tracks of alternative takes found on many CDs
So it is that one candidate’s one statement shone for me:
Mrs Clinton said of Mr Trump, “I’m sorry I have to keep saying this, but he lives in an alternative reality.”
Brava!!! to Hillary for being one of the few people in America to know the difference between alternative and alternate and using at them correctly!
I will sleep better at night knowing this grammarian is leading our country . . .
At least Hillary knows the difference between ‘alternative’ and ‘alternate’—a rarity these days! Click To Tweet
Cartoon by the indubitable David Horsey for The Los Angeles Times.
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)