Lake Superior State University published its annual list of “Banished Words” that meet the institute’s qualifications of “Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.”

Recipients of the honor of being shuffled out the lexicon door are

• SHOVEL-READY
• TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY
• CZAR
• TWEET
• APP
• SEXTING
• FRIEND (as a verb)
• TEACHABLE MOMENT
• IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES….
• STIMULUS
• TOXIC ASSETS
• TOO BIG TO FAIL
• BROMANCE
• CHILLAXIN’
• OBAMA-prefix or roots?

Of course, “teachable moment” holds a special place in my heart, by which I mean “stuffed in the Devil’s mouth next to Judas Iscariot”. I do, however, like the recently-promoted-to-verb “friend” as I believe most words could become verbs if we encouragemented it.

I had decided to leave political musings off the website because there was too much going on changing form day to day, and by the time I thought to put up news it was already olds. Not only that, but that’s not what I want to do with this blog. There are plenty of other places to get wry political insight.

HOWEVER

The English nerd in me loves this and can’t resist posting it. From 236.com, I give you

Diagramming a Sarah Palin sentence broke our heads in half
Easy, girls, bad grammar ain’t contagious.

Sarah Palin’s command of the English language is suspect. Her unscripted answers to Katie Couric’s questions suggest the she has memorized 15-20 prepositional phrases, and is only capable of repeating them in no particular order. But, ya know, incomprehensible run-ons are her style. At a debate during the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial race, one opponent, Andrew Halcro, called her responses “political gibberish.”

Exhibit A: After Halcro asked how she would pay for health care, Palin said this:

“I can’t tell you how much that will reduce monetarily our health care costs, but competition makes everyone better, it makes us work harder, it does allow reduction in costs, so addressing that is going to be a priority.”

Whoa. After watching about five videos by Yossarian the Grammarian, we diagrammed that Sarah Palin sentence. Gibberish or an endless parade of subordinate clauses? You decide:

Lots of entries this week!

• Else considered buying a new boyfriend
• Aaron will achieve becoming his terrier in the future.

Again, “awesome.”

• She ordered events as they occurred in time.

I teach English as a Second Language for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students – grammar & writing classes and reading & vocabulary classes. God love them, they try really hard to understand English, but with all the rule-breaking and twists and turns there are times I want to throttle an OED. Sometimes, though, I come across sentences that are unutterably beautiful and others that are slightly hysterical. Were they written in error or were my students touching the heart of the language?

Here are this week’s selections: