Common mistakes you see on WB

WINE TALK
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What are some common mistakes or misspellings you see here on Wine Berserkers? I thought it might help our evolution (hopefully) forward as a community to collect and to work through some of them here in one central thread, rather than thread by thread as the mistakes appear, which can sometimes seem petty, pedantic or unkind.

Let’s try to keep this to mistakes of the objective or mostly-objective type, not mistakes that are just a matter of opinion (e.g. “Everyone says Domaine X is great, but I think it’s terrible”). It’s even better if you have the opportunity to offer supporting evidence.

Let’s please not point out individuals who have made the mistakes, but just get to the mistake and correction themselves. And if you disagree with any of the corrections suggested in the thread, please chime in, preferably with some supporting evidence.

I’ll start with two:

“Piedmonte.” I see this written here often. The region in Northwestern Italy is “Piemonte,” (pronounced roughly like “pya-MON-tay”) and it is translated into the English-speaking world as “Piedmont.” Piedmonte is some hybrid of the two which isn’t correct in either Italian or English, as far as I can tell. Piedmont - Wikipedia

Coravin’d and other apostrophe errors. The butchery of apostrophes is now everywhere and in all strata of English writing, but just focusing on something specific to WB, let’s look at this example. It has become a common shortcut to convert nouns into verbs, both common nouns (“texting,” “gifted,” “messaging”) and proper nouns (“Googled,” “Facebooking”). While I’m not fond of that practice overall, it is too common and accepted now to fuss about. However, if you are going to use this convention and treat a noun like Coravin as a verb, you should still follow the general rules of grammar that would correspond to verb usage. Thus, “he Coravins most of his wines these days” or “last night, I Coravined a glass each of the 91, 92 and 93 Monte Bello to compare them.” There is no apostrophe after the n in any of the conjugations of the verb.

[Pobega is a tougher one. Writing Pobega’d is clearly wrong, since one never adds an apostrophe to make a verb past tense, but unless anyone knows of a verb which ends in “a,” then there may not be any good examples to follow. The closest example I can think of would be verbs which end in “o,” like veto, lasso or radio. In those, the past tense would be vetoed, lassoed and radioed. I guess if Pobega is to be a verb on WB, the past tense would probably be Pobegaed. The present tense is easier, “he Pobegas one bottle from each new case as it arrives.”]

I now yield the table to Robert Fleming or anyone who wants to go next.

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Bob Wood lives!

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I don’t have a wine problem. What makes you think that?

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Never begin a sentence with “however”. neener

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The past tense of Pobega is Pobegad. You only add the e to veto, lasso, etc. because you need to keep the final o a long vowel and you want the written word to match the sound. The final a in Pobega is already a short vowel so that concern doesn’t apply.

For similar reasons, the past tense of Coravin should probably be Coravinned, with a double n, although the use of the imported French word makes it more arguable.

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Chris, are you saying that when someone posts incessantly about spelling and grammar, we can no longer refer to it as having Seiber’d a thread? [scratch.gif]

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Excellent analysis. I am persuaded.

My understanding is that it is pronouned using the French pronunciation of the word “vin,” not with the last syllable rhyming with tin or win. If it were the latter, I see your point, that you would need a double n to preserve the pronunciation of the “i.”

Of course, the perfect solution would be just to treat Coravin as a noun, rather than a verb, but I feel like there is not much point swimming against that current these days.

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The faddish misuse of ‘varietal’ for ‘variety.’

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Pallette or Pallet. The word is Palate.

Counselor, you are a riot.

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It seems that an increasing number of threads on grammar are being posted in Wine Talk rather than Asylum

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winning.

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The use of happy in tasting notes or any other adjective detailing pompous terminology.

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This isn’t a general thread about grammar, nor am I saying everyone has to use perfect grammar at all times on WB. It’s a thread about mistakes (and not just grammatical ones) specific to Wine Berserkers. Things like “Pallette” and “Piedmonte” and “Varietal.”

I realize I’m opening myself up to some hazing by starting this (so what is new?), but I did think it might be both helpful and friendlier to work out some of these kinks in one thread, and without having to raise them as the mistakes are made thread by thread.

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A common mistake that I see being made is that people post glowing reviews of wines that I’m sure I would not like, and vice versa.

Ben

PS. Another mistake people make is using “vice versa” incorrectly. See above.

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It’s vs its

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I actually think this could be correct, provided we are talking about over-oaked wines that may taste like a wooden pallet. I have self-corrected. [tease.gif]

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…as in: “The palette of flavors was overwhelmed by the sense of a pallet hitting my palate.”

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Beat me to it. That’s pervasive.

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They can all be appropriate. For example, a post could promote the palate-pleasing pallet of products just procured from the palette of Piedmont and Portuguese producers in a wine pimp’s portfolio.

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Using parentheses in a sentence when they are not required.