Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [38]
There are, however, two other grounds for regarding the unattached hopefully with suspicion. The first is that, as in the Stevenson quotation at the beginning of this entry, it introduces a possibility of ambiguity. Gowers cites this sentence in reference to a cricket match: “Our team will start their innings hopefully immediately after tea.” It isn’t possible to say whether hopefully refers to the team’s frame of mind or to the time it will start batting.
A second objection is to the lameness of the word. If a newspaper editorial says, “Hopefully the actors’ strike will end today,” who exactly is doing the hoping? The writer? The actors? All right-minded people? Too often the word is used as no more than an easy escape from taking direct responsibility for a sentiment and as such is better avoided.
hors d’oeuvre for an appetizer. The plural is hors d’oeuvres.
hovercraft (no capital). The name is no longer a trademark.
Howards End (no apostrophe) for the 1910 novel by E. M. Forster.
Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Hudson River, but Hudson’s Bay Company.
hue and cry, not hew, for an uproar. Though it may have its place occasionally, in most contexts the expression at least tilts toward the clichéd.
humerus is the spelling for the bone between the elbow and shoulder. The plural is humeri.
I
I, me. “It was a bizarre little scenario—the photographer and me ranged on one side, the petulant actor and his agent on the other” (Sunday Times). At least the next sentence didn’t begin “Me turned to the actor and asked him . . .” Make it, obviously, “the photographer and I.”
Probably the most common problem with I and me, and certainly the most widely disputed, is deciding whether to write “It was I” or “It was me.” The more liberal authorities are inclined to allow “It was me” on the argument that it is more colloquial and less affected, while the prescriptivists lean toward “It was I” on the indisputable grounds that it is more grammatical. A point generally overlooked by both sides is that “It is I” and like constructions are often somewhat graceless and wordy. Instead of writing “It was he who was nominated” or “It is she whom I love,” why not simply say, “He was nominated” or “I love her”?
Things become more troublesome still when a subordinate clause is influenced contradictorily by a personal pronoun and a relative pronoun, as here: “It is not you who is [are?] angry.” Is is grammatically correct, but again the sentence would be less stilted if recast as “You are not the one who is angry” or “You aren’t angry.” See also IT.
idée fixe (Fr.) for an obsession or fixation. The plural is idées fixes.
idiosyncrasy. One of the most commonly misspelled of all words, especially in the plural, and it is always misspelled in the same way: “Most of the statistics about Texas reflect the idiosyncracies of the Lone Star State, not George W. Bush’s achievements or failures” (Economist); “At the same time, the international fashion world . . . has accepted the idiosyncracies of the British” (New York Times); “Moses’s idiosyncracies were subject to the sort of jocular condescension that attends the cracked verbal clarities of Yogi Berra” (New Yorker). Note that the penultimate consonant in the examples should be an s, not a c.
i.e. See E.G., I.E.
if. Problems often arise in deciding whether if is introducing a subjunctive clause (“If I were . . .”) or an indicative one (“If I was . . .”). The distinction is straightforward. When if introduces a notion that is hypothetical or improbable or clearly untrue, the verb should be in the subjunctive: “If I were king . . .”; “If he were in your shoes . . .” But when the if is introducing a thought that is true or could well be true, the mood should be indicative: “If I was happy then, I certainly am not now.” One small hint: if the sentence contains would