You’re Saying it Wrong with NY Times Bestselling Authors Kathy and Ross Petras
About This Episode
We often talk about the challenging ideas that come with a career in communication. We even talk about the words behind the ideas, which words conjure explicit experiences across cultures and communities, and we try our best to assess how we, as communicators, can face those challenges and adapt toward a space of understanding. But rarely do we talk about words in quite the way our guests this week have built their careers talking about words.
Kathy and Ross Petras are the New York Times bestselling authors of You’re Saying It Wrong, That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means, and Awkword Moments, A History of the World Through Body Parts, and numerous other non-fiction books. And for podcast fans just like you out there listening right now, you’ll want to check out their award-winning NPR.org podcast, also called You’re Saying It Wrong (awarded first prize for podcasts by the Public Media Journalists Association) about word histories, language controversies, grammar, and all things word-related.
This week, we’re clearing the air on the words that trip us up the most. From affect to effect to impact, our most common pronunciation peccadillos (go ahead, say “quay” aloud right now before you listen!), to the most important point: relax and keep talking.
Our tremendous thanks to Kathy and Ross for joining this week on Mission Forward!
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Narrator:
Welcome to Mission Forward.
Carrie Fox:
Hi there and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast where each week we bring you a thought provoking and perspective shifting conversation on the power of communication. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and Certified B Corporation.
And today I'm starting with a little story. So when my daughters were in preschool and early elementary school, one of our favorite shows was WordGirl. It's this great little PBS show where the super heroine, and I love that they call her a super heroine, WordGirl flies to the rescue when there's trouble in the city. And as you might guess, WordGirl uses her kick butt vocabulary to defeat the outlaws. I loved these happy little afternoons with my little girls. I loved that show and it is not too much of a stretch to say that I miss WordGirl.
I wish my kids hadn't outgrown that show. And I thought my vocabulary superhero was gone for good until I came across today's guests. Kathy and Ross Petras are like WordGirl and WordGuy for grownups. And their NPR show, You're Saying It Wrong, has become our family's go-to podcast on family drives. So if you are not familiar with their show or their books or their writing, we are going to change that today.
Katherine and Ross Petras are the New York Times bestselling authors of You're Saying It Wrong, That Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means and Awkward Moments along with numerous other books. They also, as mentioned, co-host an award-winning NPR podcast called, You're Saying It Wrong, about word histories, language controversies, grammar and all things word related. And today I'm pretty lucky that they are here with us. Kathy and Ross, welcome to Mission Forward.
Kathy Petras:
Oh, this is going to be great. And I want to call myself WordGirl from now on.
Ross Petras:
I think we should be called word siblings.
Carrie Fox:
That's right.
Kathy Petras:
Do I have to wear spandex?
Ross Petras:
No.
Carrie Fox:
So you two have to tell me how in the world did you land such a fun career as authors and NPR podcasts hosts? You all seem to do a little bit of everything. How did you land in this current career?
Ross Petras:
Well, it's funny. I started out as a foreign service officer in the state department and Kathy was in TV news. And I think it was overseas, and this was before the internet, I just kept reading and reading and I finally had read everything. So I started reading romance novels from Harlequin and I thought, "Gee, we could probably do better. If Kathy and I teamed up." So from the embassy in Saudi Arabia, I remember I sent Kath a letter and said, "Why don't we get together and write romance novels. I'll provide the international stuff and you provide the love?" And Kathy?
Kathy Petras:
Well we did. And we are not going to tell you what the pseudonym was because that was then. But thank you. So we started out with that and we ended up going into nonfiction pretty quickly.
Ross Petras:
Yeah, we did a couple on a pseudonym, but it just got tiring.
Kathy Petras:
It wasn't us. It really wasn't us.
Ross Petras:
Yeah.
Carrie Fox:
So I'm going to say, if my brother called me and said, "Hey Car, let's write a romance novel." I'd say, "You are trying to pull my chain again. You are trying to trick me into something." Did you believe him? You knew he was serious?
Kathy Petras:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Ross? Yeah. The thing is though, I think I should interject and say we lived overseas when we were little kids. So I think that he and I were very close. We were used to working together. We used to write horrible plays together-
Ross Petras:
Yeah we used to do plays.
Kathy Petras:
That our parents had to watch.
Ross Petras:
I know. Over and over too.
Kathy Petras:
Oh, these are brilliant.
Ross Petras:
They were very bad plays.
Kathy Petras:
Yes they were. So I think that a lot of it is we were always like a team, which sounds corny, but it's true. So it was not a leap to go from brother and sister friendly team to brother and sister, working team.
Ross Petras:
And we both were always writing, even in our earlier jobs. I was doing mostly writing in the state department and Kathy was doing writing for the TV news. So it was an easy mix anyway, we were already writing so it was easy to move in together to do it.
Carrie Fox:
I have heard you on the podcast talk a bit about your dad says this and earlier you were saying your mom said it this way. How much of an influence did they have in your love of words?
Kathy Petras:
A lot. There's no question. Both of our parents were avid readers. When we were kids, we would get boxes of books. It was like the average present always entailed, books were somewhere in there. And like we were saying earlier, mom, which dovetails to what we're doing now with the word stuff. The word nerd stuff as we call it. Our mother was a stickler. She wasn't a jerk about it, but she spoke properly. And she was very aware of it and she always corrected us if we did something wrong. She wasn't like one of those people you go, "Oh eww, really judgy, judgy." But she was aware of it.
Ross Petras:
But I do think we're more liberal than our mom. I think that having been writing for so many years, I think we've gotten a little more tolerant of, quote unquote, errors. And we wonder, "What is an error?" I think we're really big on clarity more than anything else.
Kathy Petras:
Perfect. That's exactly it. You're right, you're right. Because our next thing is language is about communication. It's not necessarily about correctness. You just want to express yourself.
Ross Petras:
Yes. You also don't want to be a nervous wreck trying to correct, dot every.
Kathy Petras:
Yeah, really.
Carrie Fox:
Right! Right! And we talk about this a lot on this show that sometimes that limits a leader's ability to say something because they're so worried they're going to say it wrong. Either in literally the words they're using or in the context of their words that they're using. And it does feel like you let all that go and instead just say, "Let's explore this." And let's learn about it and have some fun in the process.
Kathy Petras:
Exactly. And let's calm down, like you just said, because it's true. If you're sitting there going like, "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, what am I saying?" You're going to blow it. You just are. You know it and I know it.
Carrie Fox:
So there's more to words here. You bring some really meaning psychology background to this too, in terms of how people speak and confidence builders. Tell me a little more about your background. So I'm thinking about all of the CNBC articles that you write.
Kathy Petras:
Oh, well.
Carrie Fox:
What? It's funny because when we started out writing we didn't really have that much money. So we also realized that we were also really good at getting jobs. At interviewing. We're not very good at keeping the job because we get bored.
Kathy Petras:
We could have kept them. We just got bored.
Ross Petras:
So we actually also began to talk about interviews and what works in terms of interviewing. And that was a really interesting aspect I think of our lives. A couple of times we got jobs that we really shouldn't have gotten because we didn't have the qualifications. But we have the talkativeness or gabbiness that got us the job. And that interested us I think in many ways throughout the years. But having said that, we both are real other sticklers of authenticity.
It's much better to look for a job and to speak with people who speak as, I'm not going to say culture fit because that's a loaded term. But what I'm really saying is that you tend to do really well, and I found this out years ago, when you do something that really fits with you. My dad wanted me to become a banker, I remember. And I am like the antithesis of banking, absolute antithesis. And I went. At first I went to all these interviews and dad was going, "You got to say this, say that." It didn't work. I did not get a job.
Then I was really interested in foreign affairs. I approached directly, outside of HR CEO or a senior vice president of a bank. We talked and we got to talking about foreign affairs, and he hired me against the wishes of HR. And that's why I think the key really is to be able to communicate well with people who you like and you want to like.
Kathy Petras:
So much out there right now is with coded words, with loaded words, as Ross said. I think that nowadays words are much more important in a weird way than they used to be. I think it's A, context and B, history I guess behind them. Or what the unsaid meaning. And I think that we have to on one hand, like Ross what you were saying before, you can't get up there and panic. But I think you have to think. You have to be aware of where the word came from and what it might mean to someone else. It's almost like an empathy thing when you're speaking now I think.
Carrie Fox:
Yes. I'm curious. So to that point, there are so many words that we've heard say, "Well consider the intention behind using a word." Like master, for instance, master bedroom, master brand. Find another way to say primary bedroom or primary brand because of what a word originally meant. How much do you see in the work that you do coming through of wanting to sunset certain words? Or saying, "Maybe we don't have to over-engineer this so much."
Ross Petras:
This is really interesting. Prior to the podcast I looked up some of your articles. And you mentioned, "Maybe we should sunset the word competitive." Okay. I deal a lot with the University of Toronto with the library. And I actually went around and talked to, I think it was about 15 women who worked there and 15 men or 10 men who work there. It was fascinating. Every single woman I talked to said competitive implies male. It Implies masculine. They don't want want a job in a quote, "competitive environment." Most men, including me until I read the article, thought, "Competitive, it's fine."
Which, I don't want to overdo gender differences, but it was a really interesting dichotomy. And I began by thinking, "Well maybe we should just leave competitive in there." I ended up saying, "Challenging or collaborative environment," I think I would go for instead. So I do think that words are definitely loaded. I think we have to be aware that sometimes we don't know what's loaded. We have to listen I think a lot more than we do.
Kathy Petras:
But I got to interject now. But on the other hand-
Ross Petras:
I saw that look on your face, Kathy. I saw that. I knew you were coming.
Kathy Petras:
I couldn't help it. On the other hand, what drives me a little bonko sometimes is I see things and they're wrong. I saw incorrect backstories now about phrases or words that don't apply. Rule of thumb. I don't know how many times I've seen someone share on Facebook, on X now, or whatever. That rule of thumb, it was about you could beat a woman with a stick. It's not the case at all. That's not true. Rule of thumb did not come from that. It's a fine, fine saying. So I think that there's a little too much sometimes. So again, I think it's what Ross's saying, I think we have to weigh and judge and think. I think it's just that. Be aware.
Carrie Fox:
Right. And it comes back, right, to that empathy of how will people receive it? And understanding as much as we can around the background of it. I love that. Thank you.
All right, so I want to talk about pronunciation a bit because another quick little anecdote before we start. This weekend, my husband and I watched Rustin. Have you seen Rustin yet? Just came out this past weekend? Okay. So it's the new movie about Bayard Rustin. And so for folks who don't know civil rights leader, peace activist, he served as a special assistant to Martin Luther King Jr. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.
There are a lot of reasons why we wanted to watch this movie, including the fact that there is a school just down the street from us that is named after him. And for years I have been saying Bayard Rustin. Turns out I've been saying it wrong, it's Bayard Rustin. So as we think about all the kids that go to that school who now have to re-engineer how they say, Bayard Rustin. But it made me think, there is so much that we say wrong. That we mispronounce in the English language. That we mangle in the English language. And it sounds like you've had some fun. You wrote a whole book about this, you have a podcast about this. What are some of those words that we mispronounce most often in the English language?
Kathy Petras:
I'm going to start with the one, it's not commonly used. But the one that spawned the book, because Ross and I mispronounced it all the time, which is the word detritus. Which we always went around happily going detritus. "Look at all that detritus on the beach." And we learned that for most of our adult life we had been saying it wrong, which is why we wrote the book actually.
Ross Petras:
And here's another embarrassing one, Q-U-A-Y. This really embarrasses me because I always pronounced it kway. It's not, it's kee. And that is egregiously mispronounced by many, many people. And what really interests us the most doing the book is that almost everyone you know will mispronounce one or two of the common words. And that was one of mine.
Kathy Petras:
I got to say, I still think kway though too. I really do.
Ross Petras:
I like kway better.
Kathy Petras:
Yeah. I can't help it. I look at it and I don't think, "Kee." I really don't. The other one that I hear all the time is the word tenet T-E-N-E-T. And not everybody, but so many people say tenant as in the tenant in apartment building. It's tenet.
Carrie Fox:
There's no N in there.
Kathy Petras:
But I think the brain immediately wants to throw in the N. It doesn't seem right, oddly enough. And that's one thing Ross and I have found often is that a lot of mispronunciations are because the way the word is spelled or whatever is not the norm. And your brain helpfully screws up and tries to make it to what you think sounds right. And it's wrong. But in your head you're going, "Well it should be this."
Ross Petras:
Which leads to the problem sometimes that people pronounce something and then they write it incorrectly. And again, neither of us are real sticklers on this. But one of my real pet peeves and I always say should have, I should have done this, I should have done that. But then I see written out, should of, O-F.
Kathy Petras:
Yeah, that drives me nuts.
Ross Petras:
Which is wrong. And I think that's one where I'm going to stick my, I don't think you should write that at all.
Kathy Petras:
In terms of [inaudible 00:15:40], this one drives me crazy because my husband actually says this sometimes and I'm just like-
Ross Petras:
Don't tell me. I know it.
Kathy Petras:
It's mischievous. And he says mischiev-ious. And I just go like, "No, there's not an I there." It just makes me want to cry. What were you thinking?
Ross Petras:
I was thinking of the other one. This isn't a big deal, but we used to go to an Italian restaurant a lot when Kathy and I lived in New York. And we would order what we said was bruschetta, which is that Italian pizza-like thing. And it's bruschetta with a ka sound. That's the one problem English has, which most languages really don't. English is such amalgam of languages that we get all these foreign terms in there. And then we blithely either mispronounce them or mangle them. Eventually the mangled term usually takes charge. I would bet that bruschetta is going to become broo-sheh-tuh, not broo-skeh-tuh.
Carrie Fox:
All right, how about is it GIF or is it JIF?
Kathy Petras:
That one we get a lot heat on. Everybody says GIF as do we. However, we did say in the book that the guy who designed who it, started it all out, said it was JIF. He was a JIF boy and I figured he's the one who invented them for heaven's sake.
Carrie Fox:
So I guess we should listen.
Kathy Petras:
No, I don't think we should. I think everyone should just say GIF.
Carrie Fox:
It just sounds better the other way.
Ross Petras:
Oh, can I say that quay though? You asked about kway, kee. It used to be qu-kee. And then the English, it likes getting words from Latin and French because it looks more prestigious. It looks better. So we if we pronounced kee, but we took the French pronunciation, which is Q-U-A-I, which is where I should have known it. Because in diplomacy, Quai d'Orsay, is the seat of the French diplomatic service. But we took that Q-U-A-I from the French and then was called a spelling pronunciation. I looked at that and said, "Oh it's kway." That sort of thing.
Carrie Fox:
I don't know how you do anything other than just research words all day. There's so much to learn. All right, nu-cle-ar, nu-cu-lar. I understand is one of the most mispronounced, is that right? People get tripped up on it?
Kathy Petras:
Nuclear. Well, especially when in the days of George W., forget it. You couldn't not hear that. The other one that we hear a lot is, we call it the Magic E. The words that end with an E. And they're usually from the Greek, like hyperbole. And again, Ross was saying spelling pronunciation. People see it and think it's hyper bowl, but they know the word hyperbole. But it doesn't jibe. It's like this is one word, this is another word. Do you know what I mean?
Carrie Fox:
This is like a PSA for reading. Right? The more we read and see those words, probably the more sense it makes.
Kathy Petras:
Yeah. Right. Although segue.
Carrie Fox:
Seh-goo, people say.
Kathy Petras:
With segue, you see the word S-E-G-U-E and you don't think seg-way. Do you? I wouldn't. I know it, but I don't think you automatically think of seg-way.
Ross Petras:
You just said one that drives me up the wall too. You said jibe, which is correct. That doesn't jibe with that. I don't like it when people say that doesn't jive with that, which is a different word. The V instead of the B.
Kathy Petras:
Yeah, I'm with you.
Carrie Fox:
I'm going to pick out two of my favorites from your book, That Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means, because these are things I have problems with all the time. And I see in many of our clients when they are writing. And the first one is impact. And I often see it perhaps confused or used with effect and affect, and somehow impact gets wrapped up in there too. But this is page 95 of your book when you talk about impact, there's a quote from Bill Clinton. And he says, "You have to see the connection between what we do and what it impacts on us and how it impacts around the world. So I ask you to support that." Impact. Seems like a lot of folks have a hard time with this one.
Kathy Petras:
Yeah, it's so funny because remember years ago when impacts first started becoming a verb. It was used to be mainly a noun and it was like, "There is an impact," and there was, "This impacts." And I was one of those people who didn't like it, but I've admitted defeat. And it's being used, "Impacts on us," and how Bill Clinton said it. I think it's just horrible. I'm sorry. I think it's so clunky. It's just like why do this? As we said in the book, why can't you say, "How it affects us?" There's so many other words you can use in this case, but we're wedded to those kind of words. Impact sounds like, I was going to say business-y, it sounds important. It's impact.
Ross Petras:
But I'm going to interject here. This is where it's fun working with a sibling because we can argue about it as well. We did write it and we did write how to correctly say it and how not to say it. But then again, basically we're talking about what's called a transitive verb where it directly affects the noun. You don't need an 'on' or an 'in' or anything like that. And then we're talking about an intransitive where you need an 'on' or an 'in'. Classically, "it impacts" you don't need to say on. Increasingly, and we've talked about this earlier, I think before the show, words are changing. Language is changing. So I think Kathy is right. It sounds uglier for us to say impacts on, but it would not be generally considered incorrect nowadays.
Kathy Petras:
Is correct the point though, Ross? This is where I'm going to disagree with you now as your sibling. No, you're right. It's technically fine, but it sounds ugly. And if you can say something more gracefully, why not?
Ross Petras:
I think Kathy has summed it up perfectly just there. As a sibling. No, I think she has. I think we can argue that it could be generally accepted, but it sounds a lot more elegant the other way. And why not be more elegant? I agree.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Okay. Effect. Affect. Folks have a hard time with this one.
Ross Petras:
That's a biggie.
Kathy Petras:
Yeah.
Ross Petras:
That's a biggie. And I think that needs to be, basically we need to distinguish between the two. But I mean the problem with effect and affect is they kind of overlap a little bit. So that's where you're going to get into a problem. This affects me. Then if I want to effect someone, that means I'm doing it. I'm going to effect a change and I'm going to change how it affects me. That would be the best way to sum it up.
Carrie Fox:
And what's interesting-
Kathy Petras:
Nicely done.
Ross Petras:
I'll wait for Kathy to disagree.
Carrie Fox:
No, I heard her agree.
Ross Petras:
You did? Okay.
Carrie Fox:
I'll often see people, me included, try to solve this one by just switching the word. Well, instead of effects me or the effect of this. Impact, gets dropped in there instead. The impact on us or whatever it is. The interchangeability. I'm not sure that we're supposed to, but the interchangeability of those words.
Kathy Petras:
Well that's actually the one thing I think more people should do. I'm a big believer in that. If you're not sure, switch it out. I still have trouble sometimes with the I and the me. I over correct myself. I think so many people think I is correct when it really should be me, but we've got it drummed in our heads that it should be I and blah blah blah. And I'm one of those people who says myself a lot in that case because it's like, "I'm not sure, quick make the change." Don't notice.
Ross Petras:
That would be technically an incorrect use of myself though, actually, Kathy.
Kathy Petras:
In which case?
Ross Petras:
That had a big impact on myself.
Kathy Petras:
No, on me. I wasn't saying there. Okay.
Ross Petras:
Oh, I thought you were substituting impact.
Kathy Petras:
No, I was saying globally that sometimes substitution is a good idea when you're panicky and you find a safe way to get out of the morass of possible problems.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Okay. That's good. Okay. Is it in regard to, in regards to, or with regard to?
Ross Petras:
It's in regard, not regards to. You can send your regards in regard to that wonderful person you met yesterday.
Kathy Petras:
But with regard to is something else?
Ross Petras:
Yes.
Kathy Petras:
With regard to what I saw yesterday, blah, blah, blah.
Carrie Fox:
So are in regard to and with regard to interchangeable?
Ross Petras:
They can be.
Kathy Petras:
Not really.
Carrie Fox:
With regard to, in regard to. Yeah, they can. They're very interchangeable. The key thing is plural. You don't make a plural out of it. With regard to and in regard to, can both be used normally. I use with regard to or in regard to, and I don't particularly like it. I will say, "In regard to your statement of yesterday, in regard to that letter," but I'm not wild about it. But you should never put the plural in. Otherwise, you can use both interchangeably.
Kathy Petras:
I tend to think you'd be better off saying about.
Carrie Fox:
There we go. Even simpler. Yes, there we go. Just find a different option. So there is no shortage of content that you could write about and learn about. And you have done so well in so many of your books. How do you decide? You talked earlier about coming across that one word and it spawned your earlier book. How do you decide where to put your energy when you're writing a book?
Kathy Petras:
That's a toughie. I think it's incredibly unscientific on one level where it's stuff that Ross and I are aware of or that bothers us. Or that we've been told by others, bother them. On one level. And what else? What do you think?
Ross Petras:
There are surveys too. The most mispronounced words of 2023 or whatever. Most misused words, you can look at those as well. But the one interesting thing about language is it rapidly changes. So you're taking snapshots of misused words. Things overnight, will change. So like Kath said, a lot of it's unscientific. We hear it a lot and we decide to put it in.
Carrie Fox:
What are you working on now?
Ross Petras:
We're actually working on a book. We're just completing it right now, which is a history. It's outside of words. It's a history of psychoactive drug use. Anything from coffee to opium in history.
Kathy Petras:
It's a history of the world through mind-altering drugs.
Carrie Fox:
Wow. Have you talked to Michael Pollan yet?
Kathy Petras:
We should, shouldn't we?
Ross Petras:
We should.
Kathy Petras:
It's completely off the wall. This was just something, it was a break book for us. This was just fun. It was just something to do that was completely different that because we are slightly polymaths, Ross and I.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah. Oh, that's very cool. I'm actually reading his book right now, This is Your Mind on Plants. And he talks about caffeine and opium and everything you've just mentioned. Oh, that's so fun.
Okay. I had mentioned to you, and I'll reinforce to folks listening. This show is going to drop right around the holidays. And I highly recommend getting anyone that you love or care about in any way, one of Ross and Kathy's books, because they are so much fun. They are just delightful little guides. And as noted, listen to their podcast too. So as we're wrapping up, Kathy, Ross, anything else you want to share with us or anything you want to leave us with today?
Kathy Petras:
I think for me, I just want to say language is fun and I think we worry so much about it, we lose that. But it's wonderful to find the right word at the right moment and communicate. That's what it's all about. So just calm down, keep talking. It's all good.
Ross Petras:
I like that. Keep talking. I think that's Kathy's and my motto right there. Both of our spouses say, "What do you guys talk about all the time?" We never stop talking. Therefore we like words for that reason. How else can we do it?
Carrie Fox:
That's fantastic. Well, you'll keep talking. I'll keep listening and we'll see you next time on Mission Forward. Thanks so much.
