Russian Roulay?

He is too articulate to make that mistake. "It is like playing Russian Roulay", he declared. The word is spelt 'roulette' and pronounced 'roo-let'. A roulette is a small wheel or castor. Russian roulette is a gambling game in which, after bets are placed, the gambler puts a loaded revolver to his head, and pulls the trigger, hoping of course for the luck of the empty chamber. It is used to refer to a very risky action. The Wordsmith's rule ... if you are not totally comfortable, do not use foreign constructs.

Equipment Are ?

We will never tire of writing about subject/verb agreement. We recently received a press release from a government agency in which was written "All the equipment are ... " Please pay attention to subject verb agreement. Equipment ALWAYS takes a singular verb. So "The equipment is available for use", or "the pieces of equipment are available". In the latter case the subject is the word 'pieces', so the verb form must be plural.

For questions and comments, email: the speechcoach_ja @yahoo.com.

Oops!

Last week the printer's devil got the better of us. The 'Olympic Accents' piece should have read:

We love Usain Bolt, and we don't want anyone to say anything bad about him. However, his handlers have to work with him on that phony American accent. He and some of the other Olympians, like many others thrust into the spotlight, need to know that you can sound like a wonderful intelligent Jamaican, without the American accent. Jamaica Olympics Association - training needed. We don't want the detractors to start on Bolt.

We regret the error.