Watching the national news (which in the U.S. has an elderly audience), I saw a commercial for Celebrex, an arthritis medicine. And I was startled to hear this sentence:
“Patients taking aspirin and the elderly are at risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers.”
Really? Patients are taking the elderly along with aspirin? Perhaps they’re misguided atheists who don’t know they’re supposed to be taking babies.
Doesn’t anybody vet these commercials for grammar?
UPDATE: The same error is in print on the Celebrex site:
Serious skin reactions, or stomach and intestine problems such as bleeding and ulcers, can occur without warning and may cause death. Patients taking aspirin and the elderly are at increased risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers.
Commercials?
What’s this “commercial” you’re referring to?
b&
I believe they are also known as “advertisements”. I never see them myself.
Oh — you mean the things adblock stops?
You mean there are people who don’t use adblock?
b&
Apparently, I have no idea why.
Adblock works for commercial television? (which is what Jerry is talking about). I gotta get me a copy – please provide link.
I despise commercial TV and if I want to watch a certain program I will record it and speed through the commercials. Have done for years.
I watched no TV at all aside from the PBS NewsHour until I got a DVR. Can’t stand the ads..Now I’m hooked on Breaking Bad, The Killing, Daily Show, eft…
Television?
Oh — you mean one of those ancient devices that looks like a computer without a keyboard, except it can’t do anything except play YouTube videos — and even then, only a small number of live streams?
Do they even make those things any more? I thought they went extinct about the same time they stopped making CDs.
b&
Yeah, it is a clumsy construction, probably due to time constraints. However if you say it like this:
“Patients taking aspirin, and the elderly, are at risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers.”
Then it works, but you are right that it won’t win any prizes for composition.
See the update above; they made the same error in print on the Celebrex site.
OK, they blew it. 🙂
And all that’s necessary is to rearrange the order. “The elderly and patients taking aspirin are at risk…” Just carelessness.
Highly inflected languages, like German, avoid the confusion that’s rampant in English. “The elderly” would be in the subjective case, so you would know immediately not to ingest them. The confusion inherent in English makes it fun, as all these comments prove.
Or Latin, super 3D mega inflected language where word order is for flare not practicality because all related nouns agree and cases are used.
As Marella indicates, we avoid ambiguity in English by paying attention to word order, keeping sentences short and not introducing lots of subordinate clauses. It’s rare that actual confusion occurs, even in the Celebrex ad when you consider the context. I worry far more about the thought underlying the rhetoric.
Now, why would you go and inflect such a thing upon us?
b&
I thought it would be beneficial to the entire conjugation.
That’s a somewhat radical preposition, wouldn’t you agree?
b&
I did it for the clause.
You could also say “Patients and the elderly…”
Clearer yet, ‘The elderly, and patients taking aspirin. . . .’ This is more a matter of careless syntax than ‘bad grammar.’
Oh dear.
You do realize you set yourself up in this one…I mean it’s a set up right?
And yet we all know what they mean.
I can’t remember who said it but it went something like this: Yes, I know what you meant, but also know where you’ve been and where you’re going.
I’ve always thought that was a great reply to the “You know what I meant” line.
The point is meaning doesn’t require a grammatical sentence. Meaning comes from inside our heads. We theorise about the meaning then we compare it to reality to see if it makes sense. If it does then we “get” it.
That doesn’t work so well in the United States. When theorizing about what the republican intends, when compared to reality, it is the meaning that makes the least sense that must be chosen.
We don’t need grammar, syntax, diction because there are “other ways of knowing”.
“The point is meaning doesn’t require a grammatical sentence. Meaning comes from inside our heads.”
Tell that to a lawyer. An ungrammatical, and thus, ambiguous sentence in certain contexts (like a contract or a constitution)can have loop holes large enough to drive a bus through. And rest assured, someone will drive a bus through it.
Shouldn’t the elderly come with a safety warning? “Not to be taken internally.”
Why can’t I take the elderly internally? Ageist sexism!
Calm down. It’s just that the elderly are meant only for topical application.
I have frequently been accused of being a grammar Nazi, and on some occasions when I have embraced that accusation, been accused of misusing the term “Nazi”. However, when I encounter bad grammar or usage on the internet, this quote tends to stifle a lot of complaints:
“I think you must learn – if you’re in any filmmaking – you must respect the single frame. And there are twenty-four of those per second. If you don’t respect that single frame you’re in the same boat with a writer who does not respect a sentence or a phrase or a single letter or whatever. You have to find the smallest unit and you have to love it and believe that one will make a difference. One frame to me will make the difference between whether the thing’s funny or not.”
— Chuck Jones
After all – how can anybody argue with the man who created the Coyote and the Roadrunner?
If you compare a Roadrunner cartoon with today’s cartoon shows – especially the ones inspired by anime like Dragon Ball Z, Chuck’s statement hits you like a ton of bricks. Not only are the scripts asinine, but the animation is soooo cheap, even with all the computer help available these days, that they just about nauseate me.
A number of times I’ve seen framed cellulose originals from classic cartoons of that age, including Warner Brothers and Disney. And they truly do deserve to be framed, as worthy illustrations unto themselves.
And there are modern animations, especially feature films, with comparable quality from the artists.
But there’s also a hell of a lot of dreck out there, too — by sheer volume, it’s basically all dreck.
b&
Oh, yes. I’m not blaming the artists. This belongs squarely in the laps of the executives who think it’s fine to serve up any old dreck because the kids can’t tell the difference. Maybe they are correct, but I’m pretty sure their stuff is not going to be cherished 50 years from now the way Chuck’s stuff is.
Once, during a discussion about great comedy teams, people were mentioning Hope & Crosby (the “Road” films), Martin & Lewis, Rowan & Martin, and so forth, and I threw in Jones and Maltese which was entirely lost on the group. Then I mentioned some of the cartoons which Michael Maltese had written and Jones directed, and everyone then knew what I meant: Rabbit Seasoning, One Froggy Day, Duck Rabbit, Duck!.
And you are right about SOME feature films. The Iron Giant will be beloved long after Brad Bird finally succumbs to entropy.
Agreed. And I remember some breathtaking scenes from Shreck as well. Pixar’s done some good stuff, too — and they’re a computer animation shop; no paintbrushes, and probably not even any Wacom tablets.
As usual, the artist is much more important than the medium….
b&
Disney in their Mickey Mouse days used to animate properly. I always used to hold The Flintstones in contempt (and that goes for anything else from Hanna Barbera too) because they were so obviously made on the cheap – e.g., if someone was walking and talking, only their lips and their legs moved. (And I suspect it was repeating on an endless loop like a GIF).
But for an excellent modern animation that’s visually beautiful check out “Rango”. It isn’t really for kids, it has a lot of pop culture and movie references that will go right over their heads.
Iron Giant will be remembered because the script is great. As a parent and grandparent, I’ve seen a lot of kid’s movies a lot of times. When a kid’s movie is bad, it is bad × 50. I still enjoy Iron Giant.
Of course. They should not be taken orally. They are too large to swallow. Similarly, they also should not be taken seriously.
They don’t need none stinking grammar!
Maybe they were confused between literal and figurative meanings since the term, “literally”, literally lost its meaning.
My son works at Google, I’ll speak to him about literally doing something about that.
I know! When I heard that, it figuratively killed me! 😉
+1
I’m just bothered that they used the word they were defining in the definition.
What are people still doing watching the news? In the UK we only do it for the weather updates or if we see something local.
We have comedians do tell us what’s going on now. They’re probably the most honest of all TV people.
The Daily Mash? Best news in the UK
Meant to add that their headline for the Dawkins Muslim thing was “Dawkins momentarily forgets all religions are enemies of reason and progress”
Nice! That could be taken so many different ways… 🙂
Agreed – I get The Daily Mash every week.I was sorry when David Mitchell left, but he went on to bigger and better things anyway so WTF ?
I’d suggest that liquidizing the elderly before consumption should probably reduce stomach bleeding or ulcers.
Soylent senior?
Soylent Gray!
😉
+1
b&
Ha! That’s even better!
That is too funny. I’m pretty sure that the folks doing the vetting are 12 years old and in New Delhi.
Perhaps what they’re trying to say is, “Patients taking aspirin, and the elderly in general (whether or not they’re taking aspirin) are at risk…”
What they are really trying to say is, “Elderly patients taking Celebrex, and any patients taking Celebrex in addition to aspirin…”, but they made an amateurish attempt to whittle down the word count to save time.
This kind of stuff used to happen a lot when sending telegrams (because you paid for each word in your message). One story goes that a young newspaper reporter was assigned the task of updating celebrity bios, so he sent a telegram to Cary Grant’s manager saying, “How old Cary Grant?” Cary happened to see this, so he sent a reply, “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?” 🙂
Pre-twitter twitter.
Here look, I’ve solved it. They just need to show this instead. I did it in old school mapping not that fancy EPC stuff the kids like with its XORs & such.
Or, they could have just done the tiniest bit of word-smithing. “The elderly and patients taking aspirin are at risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers.” There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?
But I’m left wondering what on Earth it could be that’s worse than ulcers and stomach bleeding that could convince somebody to take whatever nostrum it is they’re hyping….
b&
I once took too much alleve and had dire results but damn it, I had neck pain!
I once took aspirin because my head had pain and then it went away! 😉
Your head or the pain went away? 😀
Yes!
Neck pain? Don’t talk to me about neck pain. I once swallowed a Viagra pill and it got stuck in my throat. I’ve had a stiff neck ever since.
Speaking of Viagra, I rather like this headline:
“Stiff Discipline After Schoolboys’ Viagra Prank”
http://rense.com/general43/stiff.htm
That’s my problem! My arthritic hip would have been fixed long ago if I’d just been taking some elderly!
I’ll bet the 12 year olds in India speak and write more grammatically than most Americans and Canucks these days:-((
On a local (Ontario) hiking trail we recently saw a sign that said Dogs should be IN control. My dog was thrilled with that!
Hey, that’s YOUR fault for teaching your dog to read. 😉
:-))
If these patients have been under the care of Dr. Lecter, they no doubt take the elderly with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
For my atheist fix I’ve been reading David Hume’s work on my Kindle. Luckily the Kindle has a built in dictionary. I had to look up hundreds of arcane words! I’m astonished at the decline of the English language since the 1700’s.
Nah, don’t be that way….we have all kinds of awesome words – like “cool”, “pwn” neat phrases like “crap on a cracker”…. 😀
Back in 46 BCE, Cicero lamented the decline in the quality of oratory over the previous hundred years thus: “…practically everyone…in those days spoke correctly. But the lapse in time has certainly had a deteriorating effect in this respect.”
Writers, speakers and teachers of every age have frequently complained about the “deterioration” of language compared to previous supposed “golden ages”. I, for one, am glad that English has dropped five of the original eight noun cases from Proto-Indo-European. I’m sure that during the era when Grimm’s Law was altering the pronunciation of the Germanic languages, people complained about that.
You give me no choice but to quibble because you brought up my my favourite historical time AND my favourite linguistic law. The first quibble is somewhat tongue in cheek, the second is a minor correction.
Firstly, I’ll grant Cicero the right to kvetch about oratory. He was an amazing orator that no one can top, but remember what happened: poor Cicero’s hands and head ended up on his beloved rostra where he made his famous orations because he just couldn’t keep his big orator mouth shut during a time of political upheaval!
Secondly, Gimm’s Law is the result of analyses of stops and fricatives in Indo-European languages like the well known example, pater, piter, vater, father. This law did not alter pronunciations of languages but described on how they changed.
I saw “metaphor” used literally in a photograph of Greece. It said “Metaphor” in large red letters on the side of a truck. I took it to be symbolic.
In that usage, “metaphor” would be an “autological” word — a word that is self-referencing, one that either describes itself or provides an example of at least one of its properties (the way that “sesquipedalian” is a sesquipedalian word; or “polysyllabic” is polysyllabic, or “unhyphenated” is unhyphenated, or “TLA” is a three-letter abbreviation).
The opposite of “autological” is “heterological” — that is, a word that is not self-referencing, one that does not describe itself or provide an example of one of its properties. “Big,” for example’ is a little word; and hyphenated ain’t (hyphenated, that is).
Now “autological” is itself autological, in that it is an example of an autological word and, thus, self-referencing.
But here’s the paradox: Is the word “heterological” autological or heterological? (It doesn’t reference itself … therefore it does reference itself … therefore it doesn’t … therefore … ?)
That’s the type of question, if you think about it too long and hard, you can meet yourself coming around the corner.
I hear Russell’s Barbershop Quartet warming up in the wings….
b&
Speaking of barbershops, paradoxes, and recursion (which we are, kinda), I still recall my first visit to a grown-up barbershop, and the sense of wonder induced by the nested, reflecting images in the opposing, parallel mirrored walls. The images went on and on, in perpetuity until the eye could no discern detail. A great scientist like Einstein never loses that sense of wonder. Me? Lasted until I discovered I could sneak a peak at the Playboy being “read” by the balding guy sitting across from me and three stools down. Pity, my attention has never been wholly undivided since.
Or, as my ol’ grandaddy used to say “BS is BS”. Is it legal to say “B… S…” on a neo-atheist blog?
Whereas in the Greek case cited by Jim above, it just means “movers”- it’s a furniture moving truck (or a delivery company.
Wiki:
“The English metaphor derives from the 16th-century Old French métaphore, which comes from the Latin metaphora, “carrying over”, in turn from the Greek μεταφορά (metaphorá), “transfer”,[2] from μεταφέρω (metapherō), “to carry over”, “to transfer”[3] and that from μετά (meta), “between”[4] + φέρω (pherō), “to bear”, “to carry”.[5]”
I don’t read Greek; saw the picture in a book on linguistics.
It makes it even funnier when you understand that there is a literal meaning to “metaphor” if you read it as a literal Greek word but metaphors themselves cannot be literal. 😀
I’ve never metaphor I didn’t like.
It should say patients and the elderly.
The elderly should certainly be de-clawed before consumption, I’m sure Wile Coyote has an ACME kit for that.
A misuse of a phrase that I sometimes hear several times a day is using “begs the question” to mean something like “demands or requires that a certain question be asked.” It’s supposed to mean something quite different: basing a conclusion on an assumption that is as much in need of proof or demonstration as the conclusion itself (something to which the religious are prone).
It’s rarely used in the correct sense. Usage ultimately determines meaning, so I’ll have to get used to it.
I wouldn’t call that a grammatical error, per se, but it’s certainly an error in fluency. While we all know what they meant, the exact construction used is just confusing enough at first glance to cause a little mental hiccup in the reader’s mind. This is therefore Bad Writing.
When this happens, sometimes a complete rewrite is really necessary to sort out the mess. None of this band-aid nonsense.
How about:
If you are taking aspirin or are elderly, Celebrex may cause gastric bleeding and ulcers.
The turn of phrase “risk for” suggests that whoever wrote this is not a native speaker of English. The idiomatic phrase is “risk of”, as in “there is a risk of a tornado tomorrow”.
“Risk for” is idiomatic when it follows the preposition “at”: “at risk for…”
Typing as a software engineer; it should be “or” instead of “and”
🙂
Uh, what seems strange to me ( as a non-American) is that a company is out there on TV pushing its drugs to potential patients so they’ll run to their doctor and demand that they be given whatever the pharmaceutical company can make the most profit on, under current patent laws.
Though I’m sure the doctors involved have attended seminars on this, sponsored by the company at a golf resort in the Bahamas. With medical research reports also paid for by the company with negative results just happening to not be included.
Unfortunately we have this in NZ too. ‘Ask your doctor if Maxicrap is right for you’. I’d happily see them banned or at least, if that’s too much of an infringement on the commercial sector’s right to push profitable quackery under the guise of ‘free speech’, any product so advertised should automatically be removed from the list of approved drugs for use in public hospitals etc.
I’m sure Ben Goldacre has some illuminating things to say about this sort of thing…
That was, of course, a reply to MikeN above…
As an American living in New Zealand, I think I can contribute something meaningful to this conversation. P.T. Barnum is quoted to have said, “Americans like to be hornswaggled. Americans will even pay money to be hornswaggled.” My guess is that pharmaceutical companies have glommed on to this idea and milked it to their advantage. Other international companies have found that they, too, can fool a lot of people a lot of the time and use ungrammatical advertisements to their benefit.
Regrettably (and as I’m sure you’re aware) P T Barnum’s quote seems to apply to all other nationalities as well.
Reminds me of a sign I saw posted some years ago on the side of a building in downtown San Antonio where a commercial park lot adjoined an alleyway. The sign read “No parking violators will be towed.” Just like that; no punctuation. Perfect place to part!
Does anybody vet these commercials for grammar? Short answer, no. There are no rules for writing commercials (except those imposed by company lawyers who fear possible lawsuits by gov’t regulators). Outside of lawyerspeak, the only “rules” are: 1)does the commercial sell? 2)is it too offensive?
Oh, and 3), does it make claims that are so blatantly untrue as to be fraudulent.
One that I presume got past the lawyers here is a building system with “the patented Bug** steel framing – proven to resist a magnitude 9 earthquake”. Which is completely meaningless. My old timber house has ‘resisted’ a Magnitude 9 quake. When the big one hit off the east coast of Japan (remember that one with the tsunami?) it survived undamaged. (So did every other house in New Zealand, Bug steel framed or not. Actually we didn’t even feel it…) The magnitude is irrelevant, it’s the intensity that does the damage. That’s why the smallish 6.3 wrecked Christchurch, because it was point-blank.
Then of course there are all the energy drinks that are ‘cholesterol free’ (because sugar doesn’t contain cholesterol) and the vitamin pills that are “proven 5 times more effective” (than what? they don’t say. a placebo?) If an advertising exec. told me it was a nice day I’d (a) check the weather and (b) check my watch to make sure it wasn’t the middle of the night.
(**Not the actual trade name)
Patients taking aspirin, and the elderly, are at risk of stomach bleeding and ulcers.
Learn to love the humble comma!
The problem with taking the elderly, along with aspirin, is that the elderly tend to need more time preparing for them to be swallowed successfully. I find that the aspirin works just fine on it’s own.
What’s wrong with saying, “People taking asprin are at risk of stomach bleeding and ulcers”, or is it only patients and the elderly? How old does one have to be to qualify as elderly?
“at risk for”???
Should this not be “at risk of”, or “at risk from”???
In every language, it is the little words that will get you!
The grammar here really isn’t so bad. The compound subject is surely clear for most readers. Though construction does seem a tad awkward, any possible ambiguity really is minor because to take “the elderly” as the object of the verb is just senseless. It might have been averted by switching the subjects around (but the need isn’t pressing): “The elderly and patients taking aspirin are at risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers.”
grammar isn’t taught anymore, along with other omissions, like art, music……too many of those who allocate the money, seem to think it’s better spent on drones, bases, weapons, bailouts etc etc.
I can remember parsing sentences … but not exactly how to.
Well, I am not sure I agree, if it was spoken, and it was spoken. If written, yes, unclear, but no one SERIOUSLY thinks you would take the elderly with aspirin?
“the elderly are at risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers.” Yes?
A rare occasion where I disagree with you!