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I’m not a grammar Nazi. I don’t wander around with a copy of Strunk & White‘s Elements of Style in my satchel, waiting to pounce on the first individual to dangle a modifier or end a sentence with a preposition. (Okay, fine. I do carry a copy of Strunk & White. But I don’t lie in wait to pounce….) And I’ll almost guarantee you that I’ll break more than a few rules of grammar in this post. (Hint: I already have. Twice. Make that three times now.)
But today, I noticed something that bothers me. It makes the little prickles on the back of my neck rise. It is the chronic misuse of the noun “graduate,” specifically in conjunction with the modifier “former.
I’ve seen it in headlines on newspapers across the country, in Facebook posts, and on at least one tee-shirt. While I don’t go as far as my old friend, Sandy Halperin, and insist that the verb “to graduate” be limited to its transitive form, I cannot abide by “former graduate” because it is not only bad writing, but it says the exact opposite of the intended.
So let’s clear this up once and for all.
Graduate is a binary state. Either you are or you are not a graduate. Once you have become a graduate, you cannot be “ungraduated” from your institution, at least not without good cause. The phrase “graduate” needs no modifier to indicate that the individual graduated years ago. If you do wish to indicate the passage of time, you’ll need to use more words. For example: Class of 2012 Graduate Joe Blow.
But if Joe has, in fact, received a diploma from the University of Biteme, he will forever be a graduate of the University of Biteme. The only — and this is the only — way he can ever become a former graduate is for the university to rescind his diploma. This very rarely happens.
What would help headline writers and copyeditors with this needlessly troublesome little word, (which is, after all, a scant three syllables long), would be to modify it appropriately in the other direction. If you wish to describe someone as a “recent” graduate, that is perfectly okay. I even encourage you to do so because it will bring a much needed bit of clarity to the word. “Graduate” is in the past–any time in the past. “Recent graduate” means it happened sometime in the relatively recent past.
Or: Why we need frontiers to succeed as a species.
One of my favorite television shows is AMC’s Mad Men. For the three people on the planet unfamiliar with the hit drama, the story revolves around the lives and work of a group of advertising executives at the height of the Madison Avenue golden age, also known as the 1960s.
The show is the brainchild of Matthew Weiner, Mad Men tells the story of an era of wonder, hope and progress through the jaded filter of Don Draper and his band of cohorts. So spoiled as a generation were these people by modern marvels like the microwave, color television, and the electric typewriter, they often failed to notice the Space Race and man’s inevitable march toward the stars.
I fail to notice it, too. But that has more to do with the constant march in reverse where exploration is concerned, and less to do with the wonder I demonstrate each morning when I push the largest of the three available cup sizes on my Keurig.
I clicked with great interest this Space.com story about the Boeing Corporation‘s latest and greatest spaceship, which the headline promised had undergone a very successful test. As I waited for the page to load, my mind conjured up images of sleek, gleaming slivers of metal and carbon nanotubes streaking through the sky. Of course, the latest and greatest spaceship should be powered by an ion pulse engine, so of course the beast seems to hover in mid-air by some sort of magic.
Then the page loaded, and what did I see?
Where was my shiny new spaceship? What about those ion pulse engines? And why was there a picture of an Apollo-era capsule crashing towards the desert floor?
Then it hit me. This is the latest and greatest. We’ve given up on the space race because we’ve given up on progress. We’re too comfortable, too laid back. Why do we need to fight for anything at all when what we have is so easily obtainable?
So I decided right then to give you a preview of the coming technological innovations:
1.) Don’t mess around with those silly bullets anymore! No! You need the latest and greatest in MUSKET technology! That’s right, load it yourself, pack in the powder and let ‘er rip! (And if you’re really lucky, you’re a fast enough on the reload to actually hit your target in the next volley. That is, of course, as long as your target isn’t a ravenous, rabid bear who closes the distance between the two of you before you manage to reload.)
2.) Gas stations are a drag. So is that awful smell! Avoid it all with the Buick Steemer. We at Buick pride ourselves on being the first to market with this new technology. A cast-iron pot sits above a fire pit. You fill the pot with water and the truck behind the driver’s seat with firewood. Strike a flint, stoke the flames, and in roughly two hours, you’re chugging your way to work powered only by WATER!
3.) Don’t you get tired of dialing numbers on those little glass-screened keypads? All that clikittyclickclick gets old. The audophone is for you. This do-it-yourself project is perfect for everyone. Two empty bean cans, a spool of twine. And voila! Mr. Watson, I need you!
4.) First, there was bipedal motion. Then came crudely fashioned strips of animal flesh wrapped around the feet. Now, the latest development in the evolution of human movement. Get rid of that 747. Park the yacht. And put away the keys of that Porche. Are you ready for…the stone wheel?
Yeah…I didn’t think so either.
So, Boeing, here’s a little message from little ol’ me to big ol’ you. Innovate already. I’m tired of us getting our collective asses kicked by communist China. Hell, North Korea’s on the heels of the technology you just “debuted” in the desert.
