Day 5 - 316 -- Which Word was That??!!

Well -- I don't generally do this here, but I just have to write about something that irks me. I was looking through handwritten notes from a conference I attended a while back. I find the marginalia that I leave beside the main messages can be rather telling --  names of people that I want to share a new way to see an old problem; projects that can be informed by new information; and things that tell me I was tired or hungry or just ready to go for a walk. It was one of the latter that caught my attention today. It was a word that the learned speaker used followed by question marks and exclamation marks. <sigh>

I can be a grammarian. Communication is important and without following the rules of a language or sentence structure or punctuation, miscommunication occurs -- often. Remember the book by Lynne Truss, "Eats shoots and leaves"? That about says it for written messages. What my note had referred to was a spoken error -- one I hear far too often. So -- let me explain. If I say, "A strong wind blew on Sunday," I'm speaking about a specific incident. If I add, "It happened again on Tuesday and Wednesday," then I've mentioned three separate occurrences or in this case 'incidents'.  Now where people run afoul of the rules and use a completely inappropriate word is when the are referring to more than one incident. Somehow, even with those who work in epidemiological research, the error happens.  For some inexplicable reason, the word incidents becomes replaced with incidence. The latter refers to a rate of disease spread -- how many new cases over a set period of time. So, not even remotely related to more than one incident. The egregious error -- yes it gets worse -- is the attempt to pluralize this word. Instead of using the plural incidents, the speaker (and sometimes writer) states 'incidences.' It makes my ears bleed. That was the gist of the margin note found today.

Where the heck do I take this one in terms of song.  Never fear -- I found one that fits. The melody is a bit morose sounding but the lyrics are amazingly visual and creative (and they use the word correctly). <smile>  Enjoy!

Hampstead Incident -- Donavon