The Plural of Octopus: Octopi or Octopuses?

How do you make octopus plural? It’s simple!

The plural is octopuses. Why do some dictionaries also list octopi as a possibility? In Latin, some plurals end with an i. The problem is, octopus derives from Greek. The i was a mistake, but so many people adopted it that it became an acceptable alternative. Many people don’t like octopi, and you will rarely see it in edited works, but it does occasionally appear.

The clever octopuses snuck out of their tank at night.

Groups of more than two octopi are rarely seen in the wild.

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Examples

This seems extraordinarily unfair: A dull-looking fish lives for centuries while the cuttlefish, in their chromatic splendor, and the octopuses, in their inquisitive intelligence, are dead before they are 2?

The New York Times

Octopuses use tools; they play; they can solve problems and puzzles; and they may even engage in warfare with improvised weapons.

Quartz

Sealy also said that drainage pipes combine two things octopi love, which is a cramped dark space and fish.

Daily Mail

The plural of octopus is almost as fascinating as the animal. What more can you learn about plurals and spelling?

Is It Omelet or Omelette?

• Omelet is the spelling used in American English.
• Omelette is the spelling used in British English.

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An omelet (or omelette) is a type of egg dish, often served at breakfast or brunch. Neither spelling is wrong, but there are some guidelines for when to use which.

Omelet is the standard spelling in American English. In fact it appears about twice as often as omelette in American publications. But omelette beats omelet in British English. When you’re choosing which spelling you should use, pick the one your audience will be more familiar with and stick with it in your writing.

The British spelling, omelette, is actually the modern French spelling. (Omelets originated in France). The French have also had different versions of the word through time, including amelette and alemette. The spelling that’s used in the United States, omelet, first appeared early in the seventeenth century—so it’s not an American invention. It is, however, the spelling that was adopted by Americans, even though the rest of the English-speaking word chose to stay true to the French spelling.

Omelet vs. Omelette Examples

Egg white omelets don’t have the best reputation; entire articles have been written begging folks to stop ordering them.

The Huffington Post, US Edition

Where else can you find Migas de Puerco, a Wisconsin Farmhouse Omelet, Monte Cristo Benedict along with eight other Benny dishes, Pistol on Whiskey (sliced pastrami on marble rye), NLT, Naked Salad?

Chicago Tribune

An omelette with chanterelles can’t be missed and a suckling pig with clams was a success.

Eater Montreal

I know an omelette doesn’t technically have to have cheese to be an omelette, but I don’t know why you’d want to eat one without one (lactose intolerance excluded).

Lifehacker Australia

9 Adorable Animal Collective Nouns

Five hundred years ago, gentlemen used specialized vocabulary when referring to groups of animals. Most of the group names came from The Book of St. Albans, published in 1486. Their etymologies have been lost over the years, but why not have a guess?

A coterie of groundhogs

Around the eighteenth century, some French farmers called côtiers banded together to work feudal lands. A coterie is an exclusive group who spends time together pursuing common interests. What’s the common interest of groundhogs? They dig burrows and guard them with sentinels who whistle when danger threatens.

A crash of rhinos

The smallest rhinos weigh nearly 2,000 pounds. Rhinos running through the bush are sure to make a lot of noise! And given that rhinos don’t have the greatest eyesight, they might smash into things with more gusto than other animals.

A cry of hounds

You need only live next door to a beagle to understand this origin. A large dog barks at one hundred decibels. To put that in perspective, a jackhammer pounds at ninety decibels.

A skulk of foxes

Yes, foxes creep quietly and stealthily to sneak up on prey. But they also love to frolic, especially when they can trick silly golfers into chasing them.

A kindle of kittens

When Amazon invented the Kindle, were they thinking of cats? “To kindle” means to ignite emotions or feelings. Both good books and good kitties can do that, so it’s a good name for the electronic reading device and the fuzzy felines to share.

A parade of elephants

Parade comes from the French “display or show.” Elephants only have to spread their ears and sound a warning trumpet to let humans know who’s boss.

A prickle of hedgehogs (and porcupines)

A prickle is a pointed tip. Prickly can also mean irritable, but wouldn’t you be a tad miffed if you were known for only one characteristic? Hedgehogs are immune to snake venom. Did you know that? And porcupines are great climbers. They use their sharp, curved claws to get a good grip on trees!

A business of ferrets

Years ago, hunters used ferrets to hunt rabbits. That’s a legitimate “business,” but the word ferret is actually derived from the Latin word for “thief.” Pet owners often catch them secreting away shiny doodads, but how can you blame them? They have to keep busy somehow.

A team of pigs

You might be more familiar with a team of horses than a team of pigs. A team is two or more draft animals harnessed together to pull. However, it also refers to groups of young animals. Sows can have up to six piglets per litter, so they too qualify for the label.

What do you see as you peer into cages at the zoo? Now you know exactly what to say! It’s reason enough to start planning your next trip to a wildlife preserve!

Conquering Email in the Workplace

Conquering Email in the Workplace How the right approach is a key ingredient to your future success.

Whether you are just starting your career or simply settling in at a new environment, the initial adjustment period can be a bit tricky. One important discipline that threatens the spirit of many new hires is deciding how to craft their emails appropriately. And by craft, I am alluding to all factors: the length, tone, style, closing signature and even who to copy. The pressure to fit in, collaborate efficiently, and to ultimately prosper can be daunting and anxiety-inducing. And, worst of all, email is one area of socialization in the workplace that typically comes without training of any kind, relying mostly on sink or swim Darwinism.

So, what is the right way to approach work emails and build your clout when joining a new team? While the best practices vary by trade and culture, here are some guidelines to help you sail the seas of corporate communication with confidence:

Step 1. Master the Objective & Avoid the Subjective

When you start a new job, no matter what your title is, you are essentially still in tryout mode, whether you realize it or not. Your number one goal should be to build trust. To this end, focus your energy on what you can control: proper grammar, etiquette and clarity.

Remember that email is intimate, but it is also very much extremely open to misinterpretation and that you are only granted one first impression with everyone you meet. Because of this, try to avoid symbols, all caps, and slang to reduce confusion and potential misunderstandings.

Finally, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone or propose a face-to-face meeting if a thread is dragging on. It will show maturity and is a great way to build trust and solve more complex problems.

Step 2. Modestly Inject Your Personality to Build Your Brand

As a general rule, you won’t likely get in trouble for keeping your tone in emails short and a little dry. But you could almost certainly get in trouble for being a little too cheeky, sarcastic, or for making personal references to something that may have occurred outside of work hours.

This being said, life is short, work is hard, and some calculated humor can go a long way towards building your relationships. Some guidelines:

Rule #1: Know your work culture deeply, and use this as your north star. Rule #2: Make sure you know everyone on the email chain if you go with an inside joke. Rule #3: Never insult a team member, client, or anyone else for that matter. (See rule #4.) Rule #4: Remember that emails are essentially permanent and you are always accountable for what you write!

Step 3. Maintain Your Discipline & Save the Spotlight for Other Mediums

In other words, keep repeating steps 1 and 2 with an understanding that email doesn’t have to work harder than any other medium to build your relationships. Being a rockstar in your work emails is not the same thing as being a rockstar in a meeting or phone call. Keep your writing focused, the grammar correct, and the aspirations high, and you’ll build your credibility one day at a time.

Top 5 Books on Copywriting

Words influence our thoughts, our decisions, and our actions. They have a palpable effect on our lives. You can accomplish anything by saying the right word to the right person at the right time. That’s the power of words. (And of good timing, but mostly of words.) No one is more acutely aware of this than copywriters—people who use words to persuade other people to do something, like buying a service or a product. But even copywriters can be influenced by words. In fact, if they want to be any good, they have to be. It’s just a matter of choosing the right words to be influenced by.

Tested Advertising Methods (Fifth Edition) by John Caples

“They laughed when I sat down at the piano—But when I started to play!” is often cited as one of the best advertising headlines of all time. It sat on the top of a very long ad for the U.S. School of Music, giving the readers precisely enough information to make them want to find out what happened when the protagonist started to play, and why the people were laughing in the first place. The headline was written in an era when long-form ads were printed regularly, long before sponsored content was invented, even before the first television ad was aired. The man who crafted it ninety years ago was John Caples, and he did it in his first year of working as a copywriter. Caples wrote many other great headlines, but to aspiring copywriters, his more important work is a book called “Tested Advertising Methods.” The reason it’s still one of the best books on copywriting is Caples’ willingness to go beyond simply teaching us how to write a killer headline. He also advocates a scientific approach to writing ad copy, constantly emphasizes testing, and always reminds the reader of the folly of resting on one’s laurels.

Mastering the Craft of Writing: How to Write With Clarity, Emphasis, and Style by Stephen Wilbers

Because copywriting is a form of writing, it goes without saying that copywriters need to know how to write with clarity. To be effective in their work, they need to know what to emphasize. And to write flawlessly, they need to know a whole lot about writing style. Exactly the things Stephen Wilbers wrote about in his book. They’re even mentioned in the book’s title. Wilbers’s approach in the book is to give us fifty-two techniques we can use to make our writing better. Among the topics he covers are eliminating wordiness, using strong verbs, structuring sentences and paragraphs correctly, using punctuation for effect, and dozens of other techniques that every writer should know.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath

This book is not about copywriting. However, if you rummage the Internet for lists of books about copywriting that professional copywriters would advise you to read, you’ll find Made to Stick on almost every one of them. The book, written by the Heath brothers in 2007, became an instant hit with people whose work has to do with communicating ideas and concepts. The Heaths’ book explores the world of ideas and concepts and dissects them to understand what makes an idea or a concept memorable and worthy. The writers boil it down to six traits, and if you read the book, you might learn how to make your own ideas stickier. And if that’s not important for copywriting, nothing is.

Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, and Lisa T. Davis

For all of its usefulness, the Internet is a hard place to survive, let alone thrive in. As any online marketer knows, the competition is tough, sometimes even dirty. Customers are always in danger of chasing after the next shiny thing that catches their eye, and keeping them on a website means keeping their attention fixed. You can achieve that with clever website design. But then what? Then, as the Eisenbergs and Davis point out in their book, the customers should take action. They should buy the product or subscribe to the newsletter—whatever it is you need them to do. With Persuasive Online Copywriting you can learn how to write effective copy that actually works online. The whole book is teeming with humor and wit, but its no-nonsense style drives the point that good copy is the copy that sells.

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joseph Sugarman

Joseph Sugarman. The man who once lived in Germany as a CIA agent, later founded JS&A, and put pocket calculators, cordless phones, and digital watches on the map. A true legend of marketing and advertising, Sugarman is the author of what might be the definitive copywriter’s manual: The Adweek Copywriting Handbook. You can find all the sound advice on copywriting you ever needed to hear in Sugarman’s book. It reminds us that we need to know the customer to write good copy, but we also need to be experts in the products or services we’re trying to sell. It says we should write quickly, come to terms with lousy first drafts, and learn to polish them. It teaches us how to create compelling copy that people will want to read. The book is a real copywriting handbook, helpful to both novices and all the Peggy Olsons and Don Drapers out there.

Avoidance Tactics: Common English Mistakes

by Laura K. Lawless, writer at eLearnEnglishLanguage.com

Everyone makes mistakes when writing, sometimes due to simple typos, and other times because they just don’t know any better. Most people can spot their own typos when proofreading, but that only works when you know that it’s a mistake—what about when you don’t? Even native speakers mix up words that either look similar or have similar meanings, but there are simple techniques that can help you avoid some of these common mistakes.

It’s vs Its

For some reason, it’s seems to have become the default spelling of these homophones, but there is a difference between the two spellings, and it’s easy to remember. It’s is the contraction of either “it is” or “it has,” so if you can replace the word with either of those two phrases, then you know the spelling must be it’s.

It’s early. – It is early.

It’s been over an hour. – It has been over an hour.

Its is a possessive like “my” or “his.” When you can’t use “it is” or “it has,” you can’t include an apostrophe.

I don’t know its name. NOT I don’t know it is name.

What is its purpose? NOT What is it is purpose?

Its’ does not exist, period.

Your vs You’re

Here’s another common mistake with an apostrophe, but in this case the word without the apostrophe is becoming the default—and often incorrect—spelling.

You’re is a contraction, so you must always use it when you can replace the word by “you are.”

You’re welcome – You are welcome.

I’m sure you’re right – I’m sure you are right.

Your is a possessive adjective, so it can’t be replaced by “you are,” but it can be replaced with another possessive like my, his, or our.

This is your book – This is my book. NOT This is you are book.

Here are your keys – Here are our keys. NOT Here are you are keys.

I vs Me

I suspect the reason so many people don’t know whether to use I or me is that when we were kids, parents and teachers were always correcting us: “No, not ‘Me and John’ —say ‘John and I!'” So we started thinking that whenever we say “John and ___”, that blank has to be filled with I. In fact, it’s not that simple.

I is a subject pronoun, which means it has to be the subject of a verb:

John and I like swimming.

John and I are going to the park.

You know that I is correct because if you take out “John and” you still need to say I, not me.

I like swimming. NOT Me like swimming.

I am going to the park. NOT Me am going to the park.

So when do you use me? When it’s the object of a verb or preposition.

They told me to go swimming. – They told John and me to go swimming.

The park is only for me. – The park is only for John and me.

Again, if you take out “John and,” you immediately realize the right word to use: “They told me to go swimming,” not “They told I to go swimming.”

Between you and I vs Between you and me

Like to, about, for, etc., between is a preposition, which means it must be followed by object pronouns: between you and me.

Since between has to be followed by more than one person, you can’t take out “you and” in order to make it obvious that me is required instead of I, but what you can do is replace it with a plural pronoun: “we” or “us.” We is a subject pronoun like I, and us is an object pronoun like me. Would you say “between we” or “between us”? Of course, you’d say “us,” so of course you need “me.” Between you and me, I’d be thrilled if no one ever said between you and I again.

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About the Author

Laura K. Lawless is a language lover, writer, and online teacher. Her blog eLearnEnglishLanguage.com is full of tips to help native English speakers avoid simple and silly mistakes.

Happily Ever After, or Not: The Influence of Mother Goose

May 1 is Mother Goose Day, established in 1987 by Gloria T. Delamar upon the publication of her book, Mother Goose; From Nursery to Literature.

The day is a time for reflecting on fairy tales, acting them out, making and wearing Mother Goose costumes, or reading fairy tales aloud. It also could be a time to consider how much these stories have influenced modern writing. Of course, this includes works such as Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series, based on L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz books, or novels like Brom’s Child Thief, which paints a much darker picture of Peter Pan and the lost boys. There are countless novels based on fairy tales.

Consider, for example, romance novels. In many fairy tales, we meet a prince who is at first a frog—until he receives a kiss. For the heroine, it is rarely love at first sight. The same holds true in romance novels, which often follow a general pattern: the heroine and hero meet and at first don’t like each other, or at least the heroine doesn’t like the hero. She thinks he’s too arrogant or too self-centered—in some way, he’s a frog. Gradually, however, as they spend more time together and learn more about each other, these feelings change. Maybe the hero isn’t as arrogant as it first appeared. In fact, maybe he’s a pretty good guy, somebody worthy of love. And soon the two characters do fall in love, and in fairy-tale fashion, live happily ever after.

Fairy tales have influenced modern writing in many ways. Many of the tales are dark, providing a nearly endless supply of ideas for horror and revenge novels. For example, the wicked stepmother appears as a man in novels like Emma Donoghue’s Room. Undoubtedly, the story was influenced by tales like “Cinderella,” in which the central character was kept prisoner and maltreated. There are echoes of “The Pied Piper” in various revenge novels like Stephen King’s Carrie, in which the main character seeks revenge just as the Pied Piper did when those who hired him refused to pay him for ridding the city of rats.

Most often, the themes of fairy tales are transparent. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” regrets his folly in asking for help when he doesn’t need it. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” shows the folly of pretense. Such themes appear in countless modern novels.

According to Bill Gray, “there are fairy tale elements in some of the great Victorian novels, for example Jane Eyre and Great Expectations, not to mention darker works such as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula itself.” Gray goes on to site the influence of fables in Orwell’s Animal Farm and in the works of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

It’s not difficult to think of many modern novels that rely on fairy tales. In many cases, such themes are also observable in fantasy novels. So-called “Sword and Sorcery” novels certainly fit the category, as do those with magical creatures such as elves and dwarfs.

To celebrate Mother Goose Day, perhaps you and a group of friends can try to think of the fairy tales behind your favorite modern novels. Have fun!