three words that begin with the letters dw

[a tale of grammar and . . . other things]

The time: Sunday morning.

The place: Bluesky.

“Is this right?” a friend asks via private message, offering the following excerpt from an article published in one of our nation’s more distinguished newspapers:

But at Mr. Keller’s two most ambitious restaurants, there have been signs over the last several years that the food, as well as the jokes, have grown tired.

No, this is not right, I answer. That concluding “have grown tired” should be “has grown tired.” The phrase “as well as the jokes” is not an addition to the subject “the food”; it’s an interruption, a digression, and the number of the verb is determined by “the food,” which is indeed singular. And, thus: “has,” not “have.”¹

Thinking to make a wee copyediting lesson out of this, because why not, I offer the text to the assembled public parties as a kind of pop quiz, and I’m pleased to note here and now that a hefty swath of people recognize the problem immediately and offer up the correct solution.

See also, I augment, in that way I have, speaking of interrupting phrases and digressions: “to say nothing of” and “not to mention.”

Now then, I continue the lesson, if you want the verb to be “have,” you need to make the subject truly plural, as in “there have been signs over the last several years that the food and the jokes have grown tired.”

Easy enough, no? Yes.

Till I decide to up the ante by adding:

I’d be perfectly happy to write “There have been signs over the last several years that the food (and the jokes, I might mention) have grown tired” and stand there in my rightness (to paraphrase Pres. Bartlet), but oh how that irks people.²

But before I add that, though, me being me, I pop over to Google to scratch the little itch in my brain that needs to confirm the spelling of Martin Sheen’s character’s name on The West Wing. (As I’ve occasionally noted, copy editors don’t need to know everything, but they need to possess the good instinctual sense that something might be wrong and then look it up.)

And thus I did indeed confirm that Martin Sheen’s character’s name on The West Wing is indeed Josiah Edward “Jed” Bartlet, not “Bartlett,” which perhaps I already knew but better safe.

(“Just be wrong,” Jed barks at one point at his wife, Abbey,³ played by the divine Stockard Channing. “Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it.” In case you were wondering what indeed I was paraphrasing.)

But hold the phone a sec, we’re not done here.

Reading on, I learn that the fictional Josiah Edward “Jed” Bartlet is meant to be a descendant of the real-life Josiah Bartlett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

And there my copyeditorial brain goes into overdrive.

Why on earth, I wonder (aloud), is Jed named Bartlet with two t’s while the original Josiah was Bartlett with three t’s?⁴

These things happen, helpful people leap in helpfully to explain: Sometimes family names change over time through personal preference or birth certificate carelessness; it’s entirely plausible that at some point the family name shifted from Bartlett to—

Yes, but. Yes, but.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, I assert, but fiction must be more plausible than truth, and tidier, and t’s need to be crossed, all two (or three) of them. If the family name indeed shifted from Bartlett to Bartlet, there must be a reason and we need to hear it, possibly via an entire season’s story arc, with multiple views of Martin Sheen striding down the hallways of the White House with his aides in tow, explaining the Bartlet(t) family saga while he does that suit jacket flip thing that I have on occasion attempted, without success, to replicate. It can’t just . . . be. Unspoken. Unacknowledged. That’s not what fiction means.⁵

(What’s the true reason for the name switch? I’m going to go out on a limb and posit that Aaron Sorkin decided to name his fictional president after the actual Declaration signatory but neglected to look up the spelling of the actual Declaration signatory’s name, nothing more complicated than that.⁶)⁷

No matter, I go on to say, I always loved watching The West Wing, one of the most exuberantly overwritten TV series I can think of.

For instance, I note, the bit that begins:

Jed: There are three words, and three words only, in the English language that begin with the letters dw.

Josh Lyman: This is a pretty good illustration of why we get nothing done.

Which I’ve always cherished as the start of an especially amusing scene.

But: “Is that an actual quote?” I’m immediately asked. “Because I just thought of four.”

Dwindle, dwarf, dwell, dweeb, I am quickly informed.⁸

Oh! Well, let’s go back to the scene:

Jed: Can anyone name them for me, please?
Sam Seaborn: Three words that begin with dw?
Jed: Yes.
Sam Seaborn: Dwindle.
Jed: Yes.
Toby Ziegler: Dwarf.
Jed: Yes.
Toby (to Sam): C’mon, Princeton, we’ve got dwindle, we’ve got dwarf. Dwarf, dwindle . . .
Leo McGarry: Fold.
Josh: Fold.
CJ Cregg: Last card down.
Jed: “Witches brew a magic spell, in an enchanted forest where fairies . . .”
Toby: Dwell, dwell, dwell! Dwindle, dwarf, and dwell!

Not a dweeb in sight.

So, then, who’s unaware of the existence of the word “dweeb,” Jed Bartlet or Aaron Sorkin? I’m going to go out on yet another limb and suggest that, again, the lapse is Sorkin’s. Otherwise I insist that we’re missing a crucial later scene set somewhere in the private presidential quarters:

Abbey Bartlet (with two t’s): Dweeb.

Jed Bartlet (with two t’s): What?

Abbey: Dweeb.

Jed: Why are you—

Abbey: Dweeb. A fourth word in the English language that begins with the letters dw.

Jed: Oh, for the love of—

Abbey: Just be wrong. Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it.⁹

Callback!

---

Taking care of taking care of business:

Thank you for being here, and thank you especially for subscribing, if you’ve done that, and I thank you especially especially for being a paid subscriber, if you’ve been moved to become one.¹⁰ Though I note, as always, that my Substack content is free to all readers and will remain that way.

Alternatively, if you’re moved to support me and my work somehow and would like to have something solid in your hands to show for it, do consider, especially with the holidays coming up, purchasing The Book or The Game, the latter of which especially, IISSM, makes a great stocking stuffer.

1. “Which I can prove to you with this very simple chart.”

—Ruth Sherwood, Wonderful Town

2. It irks people because they want to detach the parenthetical phrase, as would be done with the interrupting phrases just noted, leaving one with, again, “the food have grown tired.” I assert, though, that the parentheses do not negate the and-ness of the word “and” and thus the verb is correctly plural. (Neither would em dashes negate the and-ness of the word “and.”) Is the construction as I have constructed it not only irksome but irritating? Sure. But it’s correct. That’s half the fun of it. Irritating “R” Me.

3. Not “Abby,” because apparently nothing can be that simple. And it’s short for “Abigail.”

4. Did I almost write “Bartlet with one t when the original Josiah is Bartlett with two t’s”? You bet I did. Would you have noticed?

5. “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”

—Miss Prism, The Importance of Being Earnest

6. If anyone knows otherwise, please inform me and I’ll be happy to offer a post-publication correction.

7. It’s a fun little morsel of copyeditorial knowledge that The Odd Couple’s Felix is named Ungar in the original play and the film but Unger in the TV series. Was the name adjustment the result of some late-night eureka! moment of Neil Simon’s? I doubt it. I think that someone, at some point, misread Ungar and jotted down Unger, and the rest is profoundly trivial history.

8. Dweeb’s been knocking around since the early-mid 1960s, in case you were wondering. Also, I have latterly learned, there are at least two other words in the English language—we’re discounting dwelling and dweller and dwelt and dwarfish and dwindling, etc., right off the bat, as mere variations on a theme—beginning with the letters dw: dwale (another name for belladonna) and dwine (meaning to languish or pine away). Isn’t the internet amazing?

9. Can’t you just hear Stockard Channing, in that Stockard Channing voice of hers, climbing the scale with “and get used to it”?

10. Sallie thanks you as well!