Like and As

Which of these sentences are correct?

1. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. (This is a famous ad jingle?)
2. He spends money like a drunken sailor.
3. He lied on the witness stand, like one would expect a guilty person to do.
4. My cousin looks like Greta Garbo.
5. Robert likes to run his company as though he were a dictator.

Only sentences 3, 4 and 5 correctly employ the word "like."

Remember these two rules when considering the use of "like":
Rule 1: "Like" can be either a verb or a preposition but not a conjunction. Thus, we should not use it before a subject-verb combination (a clause).

In sentences 1, 2, and 3, we should use the conjunction "as" or "as if" in place of the word "like" because in each case "like" is followed by a clause. In these corrected sentences, we have bracketed the clauses and capitalized the subjects and verbs to highlight the grammatical structure:

1. Winston tastes good [as a CIGARETTE SHOULD].
3. He lied on the witness stand, [as ONE WOULD EXPECT a guilty person to do].

Rule 2: We should use "like" either as a preposition to demonstrate a resemblance between two things or as a verb to express a preference.

In sentence 2 the comparison of spending money .  In Setence 4, "like Greta Garbo" is a prepositional phrase. In sentence 5, "like" is the verb in the main clause, and "as though" is the conjunction launching the subordinate (dependent) clause.

Of course, in casual correspondence or in conversations we have more flexibility, and many idiomatic expressions using "like" are perfectly acceptable even though they do not follow these rules.  Consider also the expression "It looks like rain," which employs a perfectly acceptable idiom for the highly formal statement "It looks as though it is going to rain."

The bottom line: in formal contexts, we use "like" only as a verb or a preposition and never when we mean "as," "as if," or "as though."

Do any of these sentences correctly use the word "like"?

1. Like a man walking a tightrope, he teetered on the brink of financial ruin.
2. It looks like Arthur could become the next unit director.
3. He acts like he owns the world.
4. He carried an umbrella, like everyone should do on a rainy morning.

ANSWERS:

1. Like a man walking a tightrope, he teetered on the brink of financial ruin. [Correct because we are making a comparison.]
2. It looks as though [or as if] Arthur will become the next unit director.
3. He acts as if [or as though] he owns the world.
4. He carried an umbrella, as everyone should do on a rainy morning.

Worth Noting

Sometimes, it is worthwhile to recognize these amazing achievements:

During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, the U..S. produced:


147 aircraft carriers, 8 battleships, 40+ cruisers, 750+ destroyers, 1,102 convoy escorts/destroyer escorts, 400+ submarines, 34 million tons of merchant ships,

 212,000 fighter aircraft, 153,615 bombers, 43,045 transport aircraft, 93.578 training aircraft,

227,235 tanks and self-propelled guns,  914,683 artillery pieces,  657,318 mortars, 
4,744,484 machine guns, and 3,060,354 military trucks, and about 10,000,000 tons of concrete for runways. We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services.

Invaded Africa,

Invaded Sicily and Italy,

Won the battle for the Atlantic,

Planned and executed D-Day,

Marched across the Pacific and Europe,

Developed the atomic bomb and

Ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.


It's also worth noting that during the almost exact amount of time, the Obama administration couldn't build a functioning website.

Conundrum

Free people are not equal. Equal people are not free. (Think this one over and over and it makes sense!)

The definition of the word Conundrum: Something that is puzzling or confusing.

Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America :

1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.

2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.

3. They think they are victims -yet their representatives run the government.

4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.

5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.

6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

Think about it!  And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the USA in the 21st Century.

Makes you wonder who is doing the math.

These three, short sentences tell you a lot about the direction of our government for the past 7 + years and cultural environment it has created:
 

1.  We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.  Funny how that works.  And here's another one worth considering.

2.  Seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out of money.  But we never hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money!  What's interesting is the first group "worked for" their money, but the second did not! Think about it ... and last, but not least;

3.  Why were we cutting benefits for our veterans, no pay raises for our military and cutting our Army, Navy, Air Force & Coast Guard to a level lower than before WWII  but we were not stopping any of the payments or benefits to illegal aliens.

Are you among the few who are not missing something?

"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.�  ~Plato

Why did America drop the “U” in British spelling?

Whichever branch of the English language you are brought up with, you have to admit parts of it are an inconsistent mess. There are words that are spelled broadly the same but pronounced entirely differently—cough, bough, borough, through, brought—words that are spelled entirely differently but pronounced the same—write, right, two, too, to—and words that do the same job and have only slightly different spellings —obfuscate, obfusticate.

And of course, as with most things that are old and full of character, there’s a lot of beauty in that mess, but also a lot of room for people to argue over which aspect of the mess best exemplifies the true spirit of this living, breathing, evolving thing we all use every day.

One particularly vexatious argument concerns the lack of uniform spellings between British and American English. The simple reason for this is that England and America went their separate ways before anyone became unduly rigorous about spelling words the same way every time. The firm nailing down of language happened in earnest during the 1800s, on both sides of the Atlantic, and thanks largely to the reforming zeal of American lexicographer Noah Webster, it was with markedly different results in the U.S. than in Victorian Britain.

Seeking to wrest control of the language from the British ruling classes, Noah wrote three books that aimed to make a tidy pile of that mess we were talking about. One on grammar, one on reading, and one on spelling. His first—originally titled The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language, then The American Spelling Book, then The Elementary Spelling Book—became the standard textbook from which American teachers taught spelling for 100 years, and it was from reprints and reissues of that original text that Noah began to subtly refine words, spelling them according to how they sound.

So while British English still insists on a c in the word defense, Webster changed it to an s. Theatre and centre were simplified into theater and center. Plough became plow, axe became ax, catalogue became catalog, and flavour, honour, savour, saviour, candour, behaviour, colour, armour, demeanour, glamour, harbour and all the rest lost their u.

This was largely to differentiate those words from the ones that end in –our and sound like –ower. As in hour, flour, sour and so on. Some words still enjoy a dual existence, in that the U.S. Space Shuttle Endeavour kept its u, as it was named after Lieutenant* James Cook’s ship, HMS Endeavour. Glamour, being a Scots word, often keeps its u as well.

Ironically, the one word that Noah Webster failed in his attempts to get it spelled exactly as it rolls off the tongue is tongue itself, which he argued should be tung, but somehow this was a step too far, despite the loss of the concluding ue in words like catalog and analog.

I’d have stopped before the "e" was lopped off ax too, but it’s too late to try and graft it back on now.

*The reverse approach to Webster’s—saying things as they are spelled—can be found in this word, which the British pronounce “leftenant.”

Reprinted from a BBC America Article

http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2014/05/america-drop-u-british-spellings

Leading by Example

The light turned yellow, just in front of him.

The driver the right thing and stopped at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. A tailgating woman behind him furious she missed her chance to get through the intersection, honked her horn, screaming in frustration. 

Still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door, and escorted back to the booking desk. 

The arresting officer stood, waiting with her personal effects.He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, giving the guy in front of you the finger and cursing at him. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated  Christian Fish Emblem on the trunk, so naturally I assumed you had stolen the car."