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As a licensed pedant, regularly ready to correct commonly-believed statements that are not actually true, I find nothing irritates me more than the abuse of this power: when it's the "correction" that's false and the commonly-believed statement that's actually true.
I wrote about a bunch of these way back here, but here's another one: a video clip from an intellectual UK quiz show. The clip begins with some clever self-referential jokes about rhetorical questions, but then quizmaster Stephen Fry, for whom my respect has dropped significantly now that I've seen this, poses the stumper "How many states are there in the USA?" for the sole purpose of dropping the buzzer on the sap who says "50" on the grounds that there's only 46 because four of them are called "commonwealths".
It's true that four of them are called "commonwealths" and they even have the right four, but that doesn't mean they're not states. The question to which the proper answer is "46" is "How many of the 50 U.S. states are officially called states?" Not "How many states are there?"
This is not just a matter of casual reference, but of legal definition. The U.S. Constitution speaks of states. It says, for instance, that "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State" (Article 1, Section 3). There's nothing about commonwealths. If the so-called commonwealths were not legally states, they wouldn't be entitled to senators. That would mean we could kiss Mitch McConnell goodbye, but we'd also have to boot Elizabeth Warren.
There's 50 states, not 46. Don't make corrections unless you're actually correct yourself.
I wrote about a bunch of these way back here, but here's another one: a video clip from an intellectual UK quiz show. The clip begins with some clever self-referential jokes about rhetorical questions, but then quizmaster Stephen Fry, for whom my respect has dropped significantly now that I've seen this, poses the stumper "How many states are there in the USA?" for the sole purpose of dropping the buzzer on the sap who says "50" on the grounds that there's only 46 because four of them are called "commonwealths".
It's true that four of them are called "commonwealths" and they even have the right four, but that doesn't mean they're not states. The question to which the proper answer is "46" is "How many of the 50 U.S. states are officially called states?" Not "How many states are there?"
This is not just a matter of casual reference, but of legal definition. The U.S. Constitution speaks of states. It says, for instance, that "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State" (Article 1, Section 3). There's nothing about commonwealths. If the so-called commonwealths were not legally states, they wouldn't be entitled to senators. That would mean we could kiss Mitch McConnell goodbye, but we'd also have to boot Elizabeth Warren.
There's 50 states, not 46. Don't make corrections unless you're actually correct yourself.
