Good news! If you're running behind on your taxes, you can always file an extension.

Many of those with editors, however, say you can file an extention. And they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

You'll find dozens of botched references to extention on Google News. For the record, it's extension. Extention isn't a variant.

My only stand is on behalf of better writing. I take no sides in the debate over capital punishment, which gives rise to today's point.

Too often, articles on Google News say someone is to be executed by lethal injection or is sentenced to be put to death by lethal injection. In each case, lethal is redundant. An injection that kills is lethal to begin with.

This type of redundancy also shows up in references to past accidents and disasters: deadly tsunami that killed ...; deadly crash that killed ...; fatal crash that killed ...; fatal accident that killed ... As awful as these events are, there is no need to point out in the same sentence that something that kills also is deadly or fatal.

I am passively considering a career change. I'm passively pursuing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian situation. I'm passively engaging others in debate about better writing.

What is it that possesses bureaucrats to say they are actively considering, actively pursuing, actively engaging? For example, the paper told me this week my governor is actively considering a tax on 401k plans.

Is this like a submarine movie in which the captain searches with active and passive sonar? Can the governor passively consider a tax hike and then—ping!—switch to active consideration?

Of course not. It's bureaucratic jargon, garbage that's invading our language. You consider or don't consider, engage or don't engage, pursue or don't pursue. It's redundant and silly to say actively before any of these. To illustrate, try saying passively, the antonym of actively, instead.

Don't blame the bureaucrats. They can't help it. But there's no excuse for this junk appearing in articles, most of them—surprise, surprise—about government.

Here are some examples from Google News: actively considering; actively pursuing; actively engaging.

"Worst of all is the kind of jargon employed as an obfuscating technique in bureaucratic or political contexts," Fowler's Modern English Usage says in its lengthy entry on jargon. "Genuine communication in such areas of life has never been more important in our inflammatory and dangerous times."

I'm actively considering sending the author a thank you letter.

It's called the wayward apostrophe, the superfluous apostrophe or the errant apostrophe. I call it the #@%*&$@ apostrophe. It's the erroneous use of an apostrophe in common plural words and in other contexts.

You've seen it: a carved sign declaring The Smith's live in the home; a scrawled banana's for sale; a menu listing fresh prawn's. Some usage guides call this a greengrocer's apostrophe, as it shows up so often in the produce section (orange's, grape's, apple's).

Fowler's Modern English Usage says it once was proper to use an apostrophe to create a plural when a noun ended in a vowel. Since the mid-1800s, it says, grammarians have condemned this. "But it continues to appear, to the amusement of educated people, in signs and notices," it says.

"Superfluous apostrophes are a symptom of unedited prose and of the inexperienced writer," The Cambridge Guide to English Usage says. "As applicationsof the apostrophe begin to shrink, expert writers and editors are also less certain about its use."

Garner's Modern American Usage notes the wayward apostrophe often finds its way into the word says. Google News turns up plenty of articles with say's.

"The only possible cure is increased literacy," Garner's says.

After a storm, tornado, hurricane, flood, etc., bureaucrats assess damages. Speakers of English assess damage.

After a flood, one bureaucrat was quoted in the newspaper offering "a statement of damages from the storm events we had." He added that more money "would help us to recover some of the costs for the damages that occurred."

This kind of bureaucrat-speak is why God created paraphrasing, GrammarHell.com suggests. We'll simply wince at storm events and deal with damage/damages.

Garner's Modern American Usage notes that "the singular damage refers to loss or injury to person or property; the plural damages refers to monetary compensation for such a loss or injury."

The Associated Press Stylebooksays simply, "Damage is from destruction ... Damages are awarded as compensation for injury, loss, etc."

A tornado causes damage, followed by lawsuits seeking damages over shoddy construction.

Damage/damages errors are distressingly common as people follow the bureaucrats spewing this jargon. A quick run through Google News finds many, many examples of flood damages, storm damages, hurricane damages, tornado damages, tsunami damages, etc., etc., etc.

What a disaster.

Trying to bloc out time for a vacation? It'll never happen.

An alliance or alignment of people, groups, nations, investors, voters, etc., is a bloc. Block applies in any other case in which block or bloc is used. 

Odds are when you read voting block, Soviet block, communist block, Eastern block, economic block or political block, someone has made a boo-boo. 

Block as a noun covers "a quantity, number, or section of things dealt with as a unit," such as a block of time, according to Mirriam-Webster OnLine. 

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage lists people among the things that can be dealt with as a unit. Thus GrammarHell.com can't complain when the newspaper, as it did recently, says that candidates are "divvying up blocks of support." It's correct if the people within the blocks aren't aligned.

Among other meanings for block: a solid piece of material (block of wood); a heavy stand used for chopping; an obstruction. Block as a verb means, among other things, to obstruct, to mount or mold on a block or to sketch roughly.

It might help to keep in mind that bloc is never a verb. You'll never bloc out time.

An article says a certain state normally has so many millions of dollars each year to disperse to law enforcement. Unless officials plan to toss bills into the wind, letting cops run for them, the writer meant disburse.

This is a common error and warrants an especially involved entry in Garner's Modern American Usage. Disburse means to pay out, as from a fund. Disperse means to scatter or spread widely or in all directions.

Those with editors are as confused as anyone. You'll find dozens of errors (mixed in with some correct uses) when you run these queries in Google News: dispersed, disperse, dispersing money; dispersed, disperse, dispersing funds.

It works the other way as well. You'll find plenty of erroneous references on Google News to crowds that disbursed or disburse.

One grammar guide tells me Star Trek Capt. James T. Kirk should be reprimanded for splitting an infinitive when he says, "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Heresy, I say. Would it mean half as much if Kirk had said, "to go boldly where no man has gone before?" Yech.

A split infinitive occurs when a word, usually an adverb, separates the infinitive marker to from the verb (for more on infinitives, click here).

In general, you want to avoid splitting infinitives. But don't go nuts doing it. "Knowing when to split requires a good ear and a keen eye," Garner's Modern American Usage says.

Click on the following examples and you'll see that to flatly reject doesn't convey the same meaning as to reject flatly. Thus, a split is justified to preserve meaning.

Click on these examples to see how splitting an infinitive preserves flow: to always be prepared; to be always prepared.

According to The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, the consensus is: 

• Do NOT split an infinitive if it creates an inelegant sentence.
• Do split an infinitive if it avoids awkward wording, preserves rhythm or achieves the intended meaning or emphasis.

Check out this article I found online.

The simplest grammar, it says, can be taught to a common songbird. That's if you believe research some supposed expert has put forward.

The simplest grammar, long thought to be one of the skills that separate man from beast, can be taught to a common songbird, new research suggests.

Starlings learned to differentiate between a regular birdsong "sentence" and one containing a clause or another sentence of warbling, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature. It took University of California at San Diego psychology researcher Tim Gentner a month and about 15,000 training attempts, with food as a reward, to get the birds to recognize the most basic of grammar in their own bird language.

So do these results disprove famed linguist Noam Chomsky's theorythat "recursive grammar" is uniquely human and key to the facility to acquire language?

Are these songbirds actually 'learning' grammar?

 Thanks Alan Cordle and Foetry.com! 

If you weren't aware foetry.com (whose dedicated members doggedly pursue cronyism and cheats in the pobiz) has closed up shop. In there three years, foetry.com exposed some major universities, publishers, and well-known poets who were involved in contests and complicit in rigged contests-causing students, friends, and lovers to win.

This caught me off guard. Indeed, while posting seemed to be down on the site, no one thought they'd cease operations. Heck -- it had been months since I'd even posted.

This is from Feotry's site:

We would like to thank all of our members who helped Foetry.com pursue its mission by providing information, research, intelligent discussion and debate, by writing letters, raising consciousness, and by lifting up the voice of ethics and outrage the PoBiz has disenfranchised.

...

We believewe have made an impact on the PoBiz and helped bring some much needed attention to the fraud, favor-trading, and corruption that have led to the marginalization and commodification of American poetry and the homogenization of its poets.

Foetry.com has done all it can do in its present form. It has chiseled a small crack in the façade of the academic poetry industry, and allowed people to peer in on the poet-making machinery. What we saw was almost universally dissatisfying. But we were not all of one mind regarding what to do about this dissatisfaction. We, as poets, had never dealt with issues of ethics, activism, and philosophy before . . . not within our own little space of ambitions and inspirations and pecking orders. Not within our own tribe.

It's always hard to see clearly how one's own tribe functions. We are still trying to understand the relationships among personal ambition, tribal order, and money-flow (in the PoBiz). Foetry.com has helped us realize that these relationships and their long-term impacts cannot be left in the shadow of our ignorance. Not if the art (as opposed to merely the product) of poetry is to survive.

But the subtler understanding of these relationships and their impact on the social order of poets as well as on the artistic quality and self-definition of American poetry is still slowly evolving. Our tribe (American poets and PoBiz consumers), has not decided if or how to come out of its cave yet. But that small puncture in the wall made by Foetry.com and the many others who have raised their voices against the current system of poetry production (the PoBiz) is letting a little light in.

...

Until that time comes, find a way to keep fighting the good fight. Don't give up. Don't expect someone else to do it for you. Believe in the value of your voice, in your outrage, in your desire for change. In your ability to make things happen.

Anyway—you can check out the site here.