Vocabulary - Don't Settle for 'Anything Less'

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Don't Settle for 'Anything Less'

Q. Back in the early 1970s, Toyota advertised its LandCruiser by saying, "Anything less is just a car." The latest along this line is a current Wendy's commercial for a sandwich saying anything less is "just a sub." Am I missing something? Aren't these people telling us their product just meets minimum standards? -- Doug Johnson, Watson, La.

A. Given the high cost of gas these days, I'll take the car over the LandCruiser!

You're right. Interpreted literally, "anything less is just a car" means that the LandCruiser ranks just a hair's breadth above the ordinary lug bucket I was driving in the early 1970s -- a 1962 Chevy II with 116,000 miles on it.

Clearly Toyota was trying to suggest that the LandCruiser was in a class by itself, while its rivals were "just cars." What the ad really meant to say was, "Everything else is just a car." My hunch is that advertisers are so enamored of using "anything less" ("Don't settle for anything less!") that they sometimes use the phrase where it doesn't belong.

The true meaning of "anything less" becomes more apparent in sentences such as "Demand a salary of $100,000; anything less is an insult." And if I said of your surgeon, "Anyone less skillful is just a butcher," would you go ahead with the operation?

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Q. When I was an English teacher, I noticed that most students started using "a" and "lot" as only one word, "alot." Teachers under whom the students had studied in the years before they came to my classes had apparently taught it as one word. I always considered it incorrect and taught my students accordingly. Am I right or wrong?" -- Dee Thompson, Nashville, Tenn.

A. Funny you should mention this, because here's my darkest and deepest Word Guy secret: I wrote "alot" as one word until I reached college. My high school teachers, unlike you, ignored this indiscretion, probably because they were too busy circling my dangling modifiers.

The correct rendering is indeed "a lot." While "alot" is most commonly found in casual notes and memos, it does sneak into print sometimes, as in this sentence from a Florida newspaper: "Dalmatians are active and require alot of exercise and attention." This dog should have been spotted -- by a copyeditor.

Unlike "alright," which seems to be gaining grudging acceptance as a contraction of "all right," "alot" is neither all right nor alright. For some of us, avoiding "alot" requires a lot of exercise and attention.

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Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. To find out more about Rob Kyff and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.

This news arrived on: 06/18/2008

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