A Few Latin Words We Can Love Because We Made Them Easy

A Story of How We Make Latin Loveable

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the updated 3^rd Edition of The Frugal Editor

The age-old question we writers of English must face when we use words English has borrowed from Latin is almost never easy. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a case could be made that it spawned a highly sought-after profession, law. Or maybe it is the other way around.

I love using it as an example that—counter to general belief—English is not a “yes-or-no” kind of language. We’re good at borrowing words; we’re good at making up words. And we’re good at adapting them (or screwing them up) as need requires!

As we became better at dissecting English (did you learn to diagram?) and advanced to careers in writing we are surprised to learn there is something called style choice. We might first be introduced to it when we study journalism and take to checking “preferred” choices with the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook. If we venture into creative writing, we discover the Chicago Manual of Style is an essential resource, yes, better than Word’s dictionary! And they let us use a whole range of awful grammar in dialogue when called for! But the knowledge helps writers of every ilk. To relax a bit. Maybe a Latin word leads us to look up its plural and we come to see the wisdom for substituting good, old Germanic-based English. A lot of that is about what media (medium?) it’s to appear in. Sometimes we find we have already fixed the problem—hopefully for generations to come.

Here’s are a few of those Latin words you don’t much need to worry about. Maybe thanks go to Americans who don’t much cotton to rules. It’s a short list of Latin singulars with easy English plurals. Thank the recalcitrant among us! It saves us some embarrassment. We might even get to like Latin better. Here they are:

1.     When you use the word agenda, you probably are not aware that its original plural is agendum .The real beauty of some like this? Neither choice is “wrong.”

2.     The Latin plural word, criteria, can easily substituted for the singular criterium.

3.     Bacteria (plural) is so engrained in our language, it probably doesn’t occur to us to use the more ostentatious singular bacterium. Unless we are scientists. In which case, we get to stick to our choices—maybe based on our audience.

4.     When you use the word data, you may gleefully skip the temptation to look beyond that. Datum is so rarely used it might not occur to you to research it. I bet anyone who writes anything to be installed on the web runs across metadata several time a day. No need to just make it look silly by fooling around with the extra “um.”

Oh, a bonus here: If you write technical material, for academia or want your novel to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, you probably want to use indices for the plural of index, and appendices for the plural of appendix. Those are my preferences for my HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers because I figure my audience might prefer it, but you could use indexes and appendices any old time without losing any sleep over your choice. It’s a good thing, too. Indexes and appendixes warm my little editing heart.

MORE ABOUT CAROLYN

I often try to share something from my winningest book (including Reader Views’ Literary Award) in my series for writers with Readers Views website’s visitors and fans. Lucky you. Today it’s my The Frugal Editor from Modern History Press. Sometimes I share an edit or insight (like today’s column) that doesn’t happen to be in that book, and I plan to release a chapbook of fun career-words that writers need to know. Yep. It will feature lots of Latin because we writers are language folks who happily adapt to the habit of borrowing words. That work-in-progress (WIP) is A Vocabulary to Inspire and Facilitate Writing Careers. 

The Frugal Editor is the second multi award-winning book in my multi award-winning And, yes, you’ll find lots of opportunities to use the language you love in new and different ways—or help you love it more. Find it on Amazon in paper, hard cover, or as an e-book on its series page, something new Amazon is offering. This edition of The Frugal Editor has been fully updated including a chapter on how backmatter can be extended to help readers and nudge book sales. It’s at https.www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTXQL27T.