This kind of mistake is common

By Gene Owens Comments 0
Published: November 7, 2009

President Obama, explaining why he had delayed disclosing Iran’s secret project to produce nuclear weapons, was quoted as saying that "it is very important in these kind of high-stakes situations to make sure the intelligence is right.”

Buck isn’t sure whether the president was referring to one kind of situation or several kinds of situations, but he is sure of one thing: The sentence, as quoted in The New York Times, had its numbers wrong.

Obama was referring either to "this kind of situation” or "these kinds of situations.” Buck is inclined to pin the error on The New York Times and not on the president; several other sources gave a grammatical version of the quote, uttered at a news conference at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Capitol Hill newspaper "The Hill,” and Pittsburgh television station WTAE all quoted Obama as saying "these kinds.”

The president, a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, undoubtedly knows which is correct. "Kind” is a collective noun, since it refers to a whole category of things. But it is grammatically singular: A "kind” would be one category, and "kinds” would be more than one. "These” is a demonstrative pronoun, the plural of "this.”

Buck can’t figure out why this kind of error is encountered so often in everyday speech and writing. Maybe it results from mental confusion over which pronoun is appropriate for a noun referring to a single category that includes many different but related things.

"I left my teeth at home, so I can’t eat these kinds of corn,” said Uncle Hadacol, declining the corn on the cob and the creamed corn. "The only kinds I can eat are those that are ground or distilled.”

He can handle moonshine and hush puppies without his teeth.

Send questions for Buck to Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson, SC 29625, or e-mail him at BucksEnglish@aol.com. Please let him know what town you’re from.