Up or Down? Lower or Raise? Redundancies in Directions

Yesterday, I sat on an adjustable-height table in a medical office. The medical person said, "Now I'm going to lower you down."

I said, "As opposed to lowering me up?" Wryly, I hoped.

But he just looked slightly puzzled and responded, "No, down, you don't need to go up."

Funny, the conventions that languages develop for casual conversation that include repetitions of meanings. For example, "lower" means "to move down," so "down" is unnecessary. Perhaps the redundancy has developed because people as a whole try their best to communicate clearly?  Or as a dramatic emphasis?  I'm sure there are doctoral theses on these questions.

• Lower you down  (means, move you down down)
• Raise you up (means, move you up up)

Our language has many other similar redundancies. Which ones do you notice?

This helicopter could lower you up or raise you down. Or some such. Helicopters are like magic.

He and I, Him and I, He and Me, or Him and Me?

Question 1:
When you and JoeBob are telling mom where you'll be on this fine afternoon, do you say:

A. Him and me are going to the movies.
B. Him and I are going to the movies.
C. He and me are going to the movies.
D. He and I are going to the movies.

Question 2:
OK, now if you're asking mom for money for popcorn, do you say:

A. Please give him and me $20.
B. Please give him and I $20.
C. Please give he and me $20.
D. Please give he and I $20.

Write down your answers now. You'll get a chance to answer a second time and then compare and contrast your answers.

I've never quite grasped why these are so hard for so many people--even many very well educated, literate people sometimes pick the wrong ones. My puzzlement peaked when a friend posted this week on Facebook: "I already dropped off Joe Bob and I's absentee ballots." "I's"?! Wow. The friend blamed it on doing Facebook before ingesting the morning coffee dose, but still--

I think the inappropriate use of "I" goes back to so many childhood episodes where you say, "Joe Bob and me are going down to the creek to look for frogs," and Mom would say for the thirty-seven-hundredth time, "Joe Bob and *I*." And so children grow up thinking that any grouping involving another person and oneself ALWAYS requires "I," which just isn't true. (Although, in the example given here, Mom was, of course, correct.)

The reason I don't find it complicated is because--well--it isn't. When in doubt, simply figure out which word you'd use if it were SINGULAR--that is, there's only one person involved.

Question 3:
I'll bet everyone will choose the right answer from among these two:
A. I am going to the movies.
B. Me am going to the movies.

and from these two:

C. He is going to the movies.
D. Him is going to the movies.

If you answered A and C, you are, of course, correct, and voila, now you know, when saying who's going to the movies, that it is "I" and "He," even if you're both going. So go back to Question 1 and see how you answer now.

Question 4:
So now, do the same thing here: pick the word that you'd use if the sentence were singular--involving only one person. Bet you get this right, too:

A. Please give me some money.
B. Please give I some money.

and this:

C. Please give him some money.
D. Please give he some money.

The answers are, of course, A and C. So now you know how to answer Question 2.

So that there's no confusion, the correct answers are:
1. He and I are going to the movies.
2. Please give him and me $20.

Remember: Pause and think which word you'd use if only one person were involved, and you'll then have the correct word to use even when there's someone else involved.

P.S. The same strategy works for other pronoun forms. For example, it would be, "I already dropped off my absentee ballot" and "I already dropped off Joe Bob's absentee ballot," hence, "I already dropped off Joe Bob's and my absentee ballots."

Always or Ever?

Another request from a comment on a previous post--which demonstrates that I'm more easily prompted into making more posts when people ask questions than when left to my own easily distracted devices^note. The question is:

I would like to know what is the difference in use between "ever" and "always", for example, in sentences like these:

• "This is the experience I have ever wanted"
• "This is the experience I have ever dreamt".

In short, the distinction is:
* always: at all times.
* ever: at any time.

Consider the difference between these:

• Have you ever eaten ketchup on vanilla ice cream? [Have you, at any time in your life, eaten ketchup on vanilla ice cream?]
• Have you always eaten ketchup on vanilla ice cream? [I notice that, each time you have vanilla ice cream, you put ketchup on it; have you done so at all times in the past?]

Therefore, when you have wanted something at all times in your life so far, it is "the experience that I have always wanted" or "the experience I have always dreamed of [dreamt of]."

OK, now you actually have the experience, and it is better than expected. Here, the difference between ever and always is still useful, but more subtle:

• If, every time you imagined the experience, you imagined it in basically the same way (at all times, you imagined it the same way), you might say that it is "better than I always imagined."
• However, if you imagined it in several slightly different ways, and it is better than any of those ways, you might say that it is "better than I ever imagined" (better than, at any time, I imagined it).
• Or even--if you could never in your wildest dreams have imagined how good it would be--"better than I ever could have imagined".

So here's wishing all of you the experiences that you have always wanted and hoping that they are better than you ever imagined. And, if you ever put ketchup on your vanilla ice cream, write and let me know whether it is worse than I ever could have imagined.

^noteMaybe someday I'll look into the origins of the idiomatic phrase "left to my own devices"--if it ever occurs to me again to do so, because I almost always forget these things the next day.

Which or That?

The which-or-that battle is another of angst-ridden debates over which purists will commit hara-kiri--or murder.

One argument is that "which" or "that" doesn't matter, as they have become interchangeable in very common usage, and since language evolves, well, that's that. (But not which's which. Ha.)

I prefer the rule (possibly more of a guideline) that says that "which" precedes an incidental comment about the subject (that is, it's not important to understanding the sense of the sentence), while "that" precedes something that is crucial to understanding the sense of the sentence.

For example, someone compliments you on your hat. You can respond: "This hat, which I love dearly, came from Afghanistan." The meaning of the sentence "This hat came from Afghanistan" is changed in no way at all by the "which" clause. It doesn't restrict the subject--"this hat"--because there is only one hat on your head and you can say anything you want about it but there's still just one hat on your head.

Compare to someone complimenting you on your collection of hats, none of which you are wearing at the moment. You can respond, "The hat that came from Afghanistan is my favorite." The sentence "The hat is my favorite" does NOT make sense without the "that" clause, because no one will know which hat you are discussing. It restricts the discussion to a specific hat out of many.

If you want the official terms, you use "that" for a restrictive clause--it restricts the discussion to the specific thing described (from the pile of hats, we're restricting the discussion to the one from Afghanistan), and you use "which" for a nonrestrictive clause--it doesn't restrict the original subject of the sentence in any way (the hat on my head is my favorite; the fact that it is your favorite doesn't narrow it down or restrict the discussion in any way.)

"Which" and "that" are complicated because they are used in a variety of ways that depend on context. (Hmm, you say, why did she use "that depend..." in this sentence rather than ", which depend..."? Yes, it gets subtle. My primary point is that the usage depends on context; I don't want someone to discard that clause as irrelevant. If I wanted merely to emphasize that they are used in a variety of ways and merely point out in passing that context matters, I could have said, "...in a variety of ways, which depend on context.") Yes. Here, the difference is indeed subtle; you have to decide what it is that you're really trying to say and see whether removing the clause changes the essential meaning.

Compare:
Which house did Jack build? -- "This is the house that Jack built."

Is this the house where we're meeting? "Yes, this is the house, which Jack built." (The fact that Jack built the house has nothing to do with where the meeting will take place; it's just an interesting side note.)

The original question was posted as a comment to this post:

(1) This is a unique post THAT is an unusually useful one?
or
(2) This is a unique post, WHICH is an unusually useful one?

First, note the use of the comma with "which" as a nonrestrictive clause.

Next, to know which is correct, you have to figure out the writer's primary meaning. In fact, in this case, it's hard to tell. If you removed "an unusually useful one" from the sentence, leaving "This is a unique post," is the main meaning still intact?

I'd interpret the writer's underlying possible meanings as:

(1) This post is both unique and unusually useful. [Perhaps compared to other unique posts, many of which might not be useful, or useful but not unusually so.]
(2) This post is unique. By the way, it's also useful. [I admire the fact that it's unique. But I ought to mention in passing that I also found it useful.]

Does She or Doesn't She?

In today's lesson on the complete clarity of the English language, I received the following email from a friend:

"On Late Night with David Letterman, Soja's daughter Pico appears to do dock diving."

1. Soja is a dog. So is Pico.
2. Is Pico really doing dock diving, or does she just appear to do dock diving?

Perhaps she's the canine incarnation of Uri Geller, fooling a gullible audience into believing she's doing astonishing feats when in fact she's lounging on a couch in Peoria, eating popcorn.

Perhaps she meant:
"On Late Night with David Letterman, Soja's daughter Pico appears and does dock diving."