Glossary of Usage: M

mad more importantly
material, materialistic more so
mean much, many
moral, morale myself
G1: write the rule. Do not just write "G" or "Glossary of usage" in your corrections. Find the appropriate section in the alphabetized list below, read it, write the rule (or a short version of the rule), and correct the error.


mad: in formal usage, mad means "insane," not "angry." Once a forceful figure of speech that implied a person had lost rational control and was acting like someone in an insane asylum, mad has been cheapened by overuse. Find a more precise word.


material, materialistic: not the same. "Materialistic people value material things."


mean: do not use mean for "cruel," "unkind," or "heartless." It means "common" or "average." In a social and moral sense, mean indicates "humble, lacking in dignity, worthy of contempt." Poor people in ghettoes are said to live in mean dwellings or circumstances. A selfish or heartless act is called mean because it is below normal standards of moral decency. Cruelty, thus, is one kind of meanness, but cruel and mean are not synonyms.

WRONG: My parents are mean. They won't let me go out with my friends.

A better word here might be strict.


moral, morale: moral is an adjective meaning "ethical" or a noun ("a man of good morals"; "the moral of a story"); morale is a noun meaning "spirits" ("team morale was low").


more importantly: as a sentence-starting phrase, more important is better grammatically than more importantly, but both are loose, vague and trendy. Find better transitions.


more so: a redundancy for more.


much, many: use much for mass nouns and many for count nouns:

WRONG: We saw much fish.

RIGHT: We saw many fish.


myself: not to be used as the subject of a verb--

WRONG: She and myself are partners. RIGHT: She and I are partners.

--nor as the object of a verb or preposition unless the subject and object are the same:

WRONG: She phoned him and myself. RIGHT: She phoned him and me.
RIGHT (SAME SUBJECT AND OBJECT): I mistakenly addressed the letter to myself.

Myself is a reflexive pronoun; it avoids repetition when a subject and object are the same:

Exhausted, I took myself out of the game. I was only lying to myself.

It is also an intensive pronoun, adding emphasis to another pronoun:

I made the decision myself, with no influence from anyone else.

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