Monday, December 8, 2008

Poor Semantic Word Choice in People Magazine

The December 8th issue of People magazine included the following:
I have to say that I have a problem with the choice of one particular word in the first sentence.

"Three months after her split with Michael Bolton, Nicolette Sheridan cozied up to another familiar face, David Spade, 44."

If you haven't guessed already, the word that bothers me is with. As far as I am concerned, when you split with someone, you are leaving for somewhere with that person (ex. John went to England with Megan). And for that matter, anytime the preposition with is used, it semantically implies togetherness. I believe a better word choice here would have been from, as in she split apart from him.

What do you think? Please comment.

1 comment:

THE GRAMMARPHILE said...

I agree! That should definitely be "from". (Or maybe I'm just bitter that David Spade always goes after these tall, hot blonde chicks when there's a cute, short, grammarphile brunette who would totally love to hang out with him! Haha. I've always had a peculiar crush on him!)

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