Sometimes one has to beg to differ with oneself

JUNE CASAGRANDE

Sometimes when I’m writing, I’ll glance at the page and see I typed

“it’s” where I meant to type “its.” That always gives me a chill,

because I know the difference. The one with the apostrophe stands for

“it is,” whereas the one without is a possessive.

Likewise, I sometimes catch “whose” in place of “who’s” and,

horrifyingly, “there” instead of “their.”

There’s no uncertainty in my mind about how to use any of these

words. They’re pretty requisite stuff for anyone who has the nerve to

write a grammar column. Yet knowing the difference doesn’t stop my

hands from splitting off from my brain and doing what they want to

do. Luckily, I usually catch these mistakes before anyone else sees

them.

Other times I’m not as fortunate. A week ago today was one of

those times.

In last week’s column I wrote that a lot of people “could care

less” about something. About a year ago, when I asked co-workers at

the Daily Pilot to e-mail me their language peeves, this one came to

my attention. I remember it well. But apparently not well enough to

avoid making the same mistake.

Three readers busted me, including someone who truly owes me one.

(Hi, Mario.)

As they pointed out, if I “could care less” about something, it

means I care at least a little, perhaps even a lot. Of course, people

use this expression to say that someone doesn’t care at all about

something. And if I don’t care at all, then it’s not possible that I

could care any less. That’s why the correct expression is “I couldn’t

care less.”

I wish I could say I couldn’t care less that three people caught

me making an embarrassing mistake, but that too would be wrong.

Unlike the time when a reader corrected me for using “shoe-in”

instead of “shoo-in,” this time I care. The reader was right that the

expression is “shoo-in,” but the context would have made it clear to

anyone that I was making a deliberate, albeit bad, pun about a man

who made horseshoes for a living.

Typing “misused expressions” into Yahoo, I come across one I never

noticed before. “To beg the question,” I read, is commonly used to

mean “to pose the question” or to “bring up the question.” Here’s the

website’s example of such misuse.

“Guevara’s book contrasts strongly with the results of his life’s

efforts. So that begs the question, how true are the prescriptions he

advocates in his writings?”

No, it brings up the question. It doesn’t beg it. “Begging the

question” is a term I remember from logic class that refers to a

specific type of logical error in argument. If I say that the reason

George Bush pardoned the turkey was because the turkey was to be

pardoned, that would be begging the question. As the website puts it,

begging the question, “consists of taking the premise of an argument,

that is, the ‘question’ at hand, as evidence for itself.”

The reason, as we all know, that George Bush pardoned the turkey

is because Karl Rove told him that to shoot it dead on national

television might not poll well in the blue states.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

JuneTCN@aol.com.