Bailout? Or Bail Out? It Depends on the Sentence.

The news is full of references to a possible bailout of the financial markets. We should know this week whether or not Congress will vote to bail out the Wall Street financial firms that are melting down on a daily basis.

Certainly, the grammar issue is not as important as the financial one, but I'm no expert on the financial issue. I will point out that bailout (one word) is a noun, or possibly an adjective, as in "This bailout will be costly." or "This bailout legislation needs revision." Bail out (two words) is the verb form (bail = verb, out = adverb that describes the verb), as in "If we bail out these firms, who will be next with a request?"

The online NEWS ALERT from The Wall Street Journal got a little hasty with the grammar this week and posted this sentence:

U.S. lawmakers said a tentative deal has been reached to bailout the troubled financial system. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said bailout deal legislation still needs to be finalized, but that "I think we're there" on a deal.

If you put "to" in front of a word, you should be using the VERB form (creating an infinitive). If you use the word to describe a noun, you should use the ADJECTIVE form (used correctly here). The sentence above should read:

U.S. lawmakers said a tentative deal has been reached to bail out the troubled financial system. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said bailout deal legislation still needs to be finalized, but that "I think we're there" on a deal.

Belk's department store had an advertisement in Sunday's The Birmingham News that used "knockout" incorrectly. Knockout (one word) is a noun and should be used as a subject or object (with "a" or "the" in front of it). In the Belk ad, which was promoting the good cause of Wacoal's "FI(GH)T for the CURE" campaign, this was the sentence:

Help KNOCKOUT breast cancer.

Because this sentence should have used the verb form, it should have read as follows:

Help KNOCK OUT breast cancer.

Right next to the ad was an article about Friday evening's Presidential debate that quoted Fox News commentator William Kristol as saying correctly,

"There was no knockout, and maybe no knockdown, but McCain was on the offensive throughout."

The above sentence was correct because both words were used in NOUN slots. To use the VERB forms correctly, Kristol would have to have said something like this:

Although McCain was on the offensive throughout the debate, he did not knock out or knock down his opponent.

Next time you are in the checkout lane at the grocery store, check out the headlines on all those magazines to see if they are correct.