I was disappointed yesterday when, while cruising Facebook, I noticed a national pharmacy company’s request for me to “fan” them. I simply cannot agree to become a fan of a company that thinks turning nouns into verbs is hip and thereby will increase its customer base. If they had instead asked me to “become a fan”, I may have indeed considered it, because I do shop there often.

I’m no stranger to nouns becoming verbs; we’ve all “Googled” for information. I must admit, it was refreshing to see that Twitter asks its users simply to “follow” other users on its site. I suppose “Twitter me” would make no sense.

However, the word “fan” is already both a noun and a verb, and to see it used in this way was particularly jolting. By the way, even the word “verb” is a noun.

I often wonder what it must be like for people who are just learning English. While they are trying to find words and phrases to get them through their days in English, we are simultaneously butchering and deconstructing our own language, making it difficult even for native speakers to understand each other. If we were to think about it in reverse, about the difficulties of learning Chinese, for example, as Americans we would be infuriated at the idea of their randomly adding new words as we page in vain through our phrase book.

If we want people to speak, write and, in general, communicate understandably in English, I’d like to suggest that we set a good example and use the language as it was intended: as a means to illuminate rather than obfuscate.

To imply is to suggest or express indirectly. To infer is to draw a conclusion. However, you’ll frequently see something like this:

The news story inferred that the defendant was guilty.

Even though some dictionaries support infer as a synonym for imply, the distinction is important. Without it, the meaning of the above example is unclear. Did the news story draw the conclusion that the defendant was guilty? Or did it simply suggest it? You really can’t tell for certain, can you?

When you’re striving for clarity in writing, it’s critical to use the right words. In the case of imply and infer, it helps to remember that the speaker implies and the listener infers.

According to the OED, “akimbo” means :

“with hands on the hips and elbows turned outwards” (origin, probably from Old Norse).

It might just be possible to achieve such a stance in a Science Fiction story (if an alien had arms protruding from its legs), but otherwise, you simply can’t stand “legs akimbo”.

Of course, as with many questions of grammar, it could be argued that it doesn’t matter that words are being used incorrectly, so long as the reader understands what the writer meant. It’s a long-running debate. Language is constantly evolving and new meanings are always emerging. But writers need to be aware of the technically correct usage of words because they need to write in different voices. If, say, they are writing a piece of colloquial dialogue, “legs akimbo” might well be fine, if that’s the sort of thing the character might say. If, however, they were writing in an authoritative, narrative voice, or penning a query letter to a publisher, then the phrase should clearly not be used.

Quite how you could get the phrase “legs akimbo” into a query letter to a publisher, meanwhile, is another matter …

Bring indicates action coming toward the speaker; take means action taken away from the speaker. So from your perspective, your kids will bring their homework to you to check, and then they’ll take it to school tomorrow. From your kids’ perspective, they’ll take their homework to you and then bring it with them when they go to school tomorrow.

The trick is to think about your location. Something coming your way is brought to you. Something going away is taken from you.

It can get confusing occasionally, and when it does you have to depend on the surrounding context to help you determine the point of reference. Check out these examples:

Be sure to bring a jacket with you in case it gets cold.

Be sure to take a jacket with you in case it gets cold.

Both can be correct. In the former example, the meaning is to carry the jacket with you to where you are going. It’s likely that this would be something the person you’re joining would say to you. In the latter example, the meaning is to take it away from your starting point. It sounds a lot like something Mom would say as you’re running out of the house.

To simplify the concept even more, think of it like this: you bring things here and take them there. It’s not an infallible method, but it works most of the time.

The natural landscape of South Korea has been largely re-engineered, with nearly every river damned or forced into concrete channels.

Of course, what the piece really meant to say was “dammed” – with a dam on it. Dammed and damned are two words that are often confused, not least because they are homophones; they sound the same. It’s also easy to miss an incorrect usage because the two words look so similar. The main evening news on the BBC recently displayed a graphic for a story about a “damming report” into the UK Ministry of Defence. The report had nothing to do with dams.

To add to the confusion, the words are often deliberately mixed up by writers for the purpose of creating witty or ironic titles.

The distinction is straightforward. Rivers are dammed and sinners are damned.