1022. This week, we look at election terms like “president-elect” and “lame duck” and how they're used during a U.S. presidential transition. Then, I dig into my favorite kind of hot grammar news: people in Germany are angry about apostrophes!
1022. This week, we look at election terms like “president-elect” and “lame duck” and how they're used during a U.S. presidential transition. Then, I dig into my favorite kind of hot grammar news: people in Germany are angry about apostrophes!
The "election words" segment is by Karen Lunde Hertzberg, a former Quick and Dirty Tips editor who has crafted hundreds of articles on the art of writing well. She was an online education pioneer, founding one of the first online writing workshops. These days, she provides writing tips and writing coach services at HelpMeWriteBetter.com.
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about how to use political words like "president-elect" and "lame duck," and then I have my favorite kind of hot grammar news about a German apostrophe kerfuffle.
by Karen Lunde Hertzberg
It's hard to miss a United States presidential election year. You're bombarded with political ads every time you turn on your TV. On social media, heated debates about who should run the country suddenly outnumber your best friend's cat pics. Campaign signs have sprouted like dandelions on lawns across your neighborhood.
Well, today, we're actually going to have little respite from all that. Instead of arguing about who deserves your vote, we're going to dig into the world of election terminology. When does a regular Joe or Jane turn into a presumptive nominee? At what magical moment does one candidate earn the title "president-elect"? And why on earth do we call outgoing presidents "lame ducks"? (Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with their waddling abilities.)
So, ever wonder how our beloved yellow snail Squiggly becomes presumptive nominee Squiggly? Well, setting aside he's clearly not responsible enough to ever get that far, let's dig in.
"Presumptive nominee" is political-speak for "We're pretty darn sure this person's going to win the party's nomination, but we don't want to jinx it." Still, the term "presumptive" is important because nothing's a sure thing until after the party's national convention.
And given that "presumptive nominee" isn't a title so much as a descriptor, it isn't capitalized. And although we're past the "presumptive" stage for the current election, journalists are typically careful about when they apply the term to a candidate — they don't presume someone's a nominee until it's mathematically inevitable.
For example, the Associated Press only uses “presumptive nominee” once a candidate has earned enough delegates to win a majority vote at their national party convention. And in case you're wondering, it's the same for the vice president: a candidate's running mate is also considered presumptive after the primary votes are tallied but before the party's national convention.
Now, in the United States, presidential elections happen every four years in November. But the newly elected president doesn't take over immediately — that happens after the inauguration. That happens on January 20, or the 21st if January 20 happens to be a Sunday.
So before the inauguration, an incoming president is referred to as "president-elect." For the Associated Press, that designation kicks in as soon it's clear who won and the race has been called. But here's a word of caution: this declaration can sometimes take a few days or even longer to happen, especially in close elections.
So let's say it's November, and the presidential race has been called, and Squiggly will take office in January. As part of Squiggly's new title, you capitalize "President" but lowercase the suffix "elect" and always use a hyphen.
Today, President-elect Squiggly announced his cabinet picks. [Capital "president" hyphen "elect."]
If the term stands alone or follows a name, you use lowercase.
The president-elect scheduled a press conference tomorrow. [president elect, lowercase and hyphenated]
President Aardvark will appear alongside Squiggly, [comma] president-elect. [Also "president-elect" lowercase and hyphenated.]
After the inauguration, a president-elect officially becomes president, and their running mate becomes vice president.
In both AP and Chicago styles, you capitalize "president" and "vice president" only when they're used as a title. For example, "president" is capitalized in this sentence:
Yesterday, President Squiggly expressed a desire to make Tuesday the nation's official taco-eating day.
In all other cases, "president" and "vice president" are lowercase. For example, it's lowercase in this sentence:
The National Taco Appreciation Society applauds the president's initiative.
And want a fun fact for your trivia night? If you follow the Chicago Manual of Style, one government office is always capitalized: Speaker. That's true whether it's used as part of a title or not. For example, "Speaker" is capitalized every time in this sentence:
It's likely Speaker Zippy will call the Taco Day declaration into question. It's widely known that the Speaker is more of a hot dog fan.
The distinction likely exists for clarity's sake. In a legislative institution like the House of Representatives, where everybody has something to say (and the things they say are recorded for posterity), using the word lowercase "speaker" could be confusing — are we talking about the Speaker of the House or just the speaker currently holding the floor?
It's not a universal rule though. If you follow AP style, then "speaker" is only capitalized as part of a title, even when you're talking about the Speaker of the House, as in
The speaker has expressed resentment over his Hot Dog Fridays initiative failing to pass mustard … er, muster.
Presidents who have left office are referred to as "former." And you shouldn't capitalize "former," even when it's part of a title.
It turned out the sandwich left in the Oval Office belonged to former President Aardvark. [lowercase "former"]
Finally, again, why on Earth do we call certain presidents "lame duck presidents"?
Well, the term refers to a president who has either chosen not to run for re-election or has been defeated in an election and is serving out the remainder of their term.
But "lame duck" isn't just for presidential elections. According to Etymonline, it originated in 1761 and referred to "any disabled person or thing." It was also Stock Exchange slang for a "defaulter." The modern use of "lame duck" to refer to a defeated or retiring candidate serving out their term didn't hit the American English scene until 1863. A few years later, Abraham Lincoln's friend and biographer, Noah Brooks, told of Lincoln showing his annoyance with politicians by saying that "a senator or representative out of business is a sort of lame duck. He has to be provided for."
So there you have it, a crash course in political lingo that'll make you sound like a Washington insider at your next dinner party. Go forth and impress your friends with your newfound electoral eloquence.
That segment was written by Karen Lunde Hertzberg,a former Quick and Dirty Tips editor who has crafted hundreds of articles on the art of writing well. She was an online education pioneer, founding one of the first online writing workshops. These days, she provides writing tips and writing coach services at HelpMeWriteBetter.com
by Mignon Fogarty
I was absolutely delighted to see a story this week about Germans getting all upset about apostrophes. I love stories like this! Usually it's the French Academy going off about how much they hate English words like "email" sullying their language, but this time it's actually the "permissive" Council for German Orthography telling the citizenry that it's fine to use apostrophes to make names possessive, which is a decidedly English practice, and German sticklers getting all upset about it.
So let's back up. What is orthography, and why does Germany have a council about it?
Well, the word itself means "correct writing," and it's usually thought of as the rules for spelling, but it also covers things like whether properly spelled words are capitalized, have apostrophes and hyphens, and in German, umlauts.
So I started reading about German orthography, as one does, and realized that "Oh, no, no, this is not at all something new." It turns out controversial changes to German spelling rules go back to at least 1996 when an international group that included people from multiple German-speaking countries — Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Lichtenstein — signed an agreement making changes to the language that people then fought about for years, especially teachers.
The biggest changes were about when to use the double "s" symbol called the "Eszett" or the "sharp s" that looks a lot like a capital B, but there were also some capitalization changes, and changes that involved breaking apart some of those long compound words that German is known for. And people had been talking about German spelling reform for decades before these changes were actually made.
So in 2004, our apostrophe-loving Council for German Orthography seems to be what emerged on the other side of these battles, and it is also an international group, including members from seven different countries.
So I ran almost the whole web site for the Council through Google Translate to figure out that the members meet twice a year, with some break-out working groups, and they set orthography rules and also publish a dictionary. Since their formation, I believe they've published official updates to the language three times: in 2011, 2017, and now again in July of 2024, and it's this most recent update, approving what Germans actually call "the idiot's apostrophe," the "Deppenapostroph," that caused the uproar.
So here's the deal with the apostrophe. Germans don't use it to make words possessive like we do. If they want to write that this is "Evas Flower Shop," they just put an "s" on the end of "Eva." There's no apostrophe like we'd do it. Or at least there WASN'T officially … until now.
But apparently, Germans have been doing their own thing and writing names this way for a while, which is why there's a derogatory name for it. And which is why the Council finally said "Fine, this thing is widespread, people obviously want it or feel like they need it, so … fine."
But it turns out even this isn't completely new. Going all the way back to the first set of rule changes, the Council said it was OK to use the apostrophe in proper nouns to clear up possible confusion between names like Carlo and Carlos. For example, the difference between Carlo's Tavern and Carlos's Tavern.
So the change is really just to say that you can do it for any proper noun, not just when leaving it out might be confusing. And as you might have noticed, it's still a little complicated because it's only for proper nouns — names — and not for other nouns. So Germans can now properly use an apostrophe to make "Peter's Tavern" possessive, but they still aren't supposed to use apostrophes to make something like "that man's tavern" possessive.
Now, there are a couple of things I find particularly interesting about this story.
First, it's fascinating that in English, the thing about apostrophes that causes the kind of outrage and news stories that Germans are currently enduring is official bodies NOT using apostrophes. For example, North Yorkshire Council dealt with all kinds of backlash when it said it was going to remove apostrophes from place names like "St. Mary's Walk" to "avoid problems with computer systems." It became an international story and caused such a problem that they actually later said they were going to keep the apostrophes after all. Other reasons companies give for dropping apostrophes are for domain name consistency, since you can't have an apostrophe in something like petestavern.com; for search engine optimization; and just for cleaner branding. For example, some people think the logos for companies like Papa Johns, Starbucks, and TGI Fridays look better — cleaner — without the apostrophe.
And when I was a professor, a shocking number of my students would spell the contraction "can't" without the apostrophe, as if it were "cant'" the word for the private language used among criminals instead of a contraction for "cannot." And I have no idea why. I asked them, and nobody could tell me. But the trend in English definitely seems to be AWAY from the apostrophe.
And second, the Germans who don't like the change grumble about English corrupting their language, and that may be the influence today, but the possessive apostrophe actually isn't our invention! In Old English — which, remember, is a Germanic language — we just used "s" and "es" for possessives the same way Germans still do it. The possessive apostrophe infiltrated our language from either Italian or French, depending on whom you ask, and people called it a mistake in English for a long time. Shakespeare barely used them for possessives, for example. When I talked to Ammon Shea about apostrophes, he told me that in Shakespeare's first folio, about 96% of the words we'd put apostrophes in today didn't have them. So my German friends, we are, together, all victims of apostrophe-pushing Italian or French printers. We just succumbed hundreds of years earlier than you did.
Finally, I have a familect story from Karen who shared this with me as a voice recording on Threads.
Hi Grammar Girl.
I have a familect story for you from my favorite show. In "The West Wing," there's a scene where speechwriter Sam Seaborne tells Leo McGarry that he is acting like a "nervous ol' Yalia."
Everyone looks at him really perplexed and he says, "It might not be a real word, it's just something his mother used to say." I've always wanted to know where the writers got that. Maybe it's a Sorkin family familect? Anyway, I thought it'd be a good one to look into.
Thanks, Karen! I love a good mystery, and when I tried to search, I couldn't find anything about this word, so maybe someone in the audience can help. Who knows about being a nervous old Yalia? Let me know!
If you want to shed some light on this or share your own familect, you can do it in a voice chat on WhatsApp or send me a voice message on Threads like Karen did, or you can still call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL, and all of those are in the show notes.
Next later this week, I have an extra special interview with writing inspiration extraordinaire Anne Lamott, who talks about her life in writing and how YOU can shed your demons and become the writer you want to be, and she's also involved with a writing retreat that's coming up fast, and I don't want you to miss it. It's called Writers Rising and it's October 25 to 27 in Hollywood, but there's also a really well-thought-out online version too, so even if you can't make it in person, you should check it out. Besides Anne, speakers also include Cheryl Strayed and Marlon James, and besides craft advice and inspiration, you'll have time for your own writing and meeting other writers and make professional connections with Penguin editors and literary agents. It sounds amazing, and if you use my code, you'll get 10% off. So check it out, go to WritersRising.com. That's WritersRising.com and use the code grammargirl10, that's grammargirl one zero. And you'll hear a little more about it in a couple of days in my interview with Anne Lamott. I swear after I finished talking with her I felt like I could write anything.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Davina Tomlin and Nat Hoopes in marketing; Holly Hutchings in digital operations; Dan Feierabend in audio; Morgan Christianson in advertising; and Brannan Goetschius, director of podcasts, who just had his 20th high school reunion.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip-a-day book "The Grammar Daily."
That's all. Thanks for listening.