Bestsellers

2 October 2004

As I write this on 2 October, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is the bestselling fiction book in America according to New York Times Bestseller List. This is the first week King’s new novel has been on the list, entering it at number one. The number one non-fiction book also entered the list at the top position this week, America (The Book) by Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.1 The New York Times also maintains separate lists for advice/self-help books, for children’s books, and for paperbacks.

The New York Times Bestseller List is probably the best known and most influential of numerous such lists. A place on the list is a guarantee of even greater sales and scads of profit. But how does the Times compile the list? Besides the questionable placement of America (The Book) on the non-fiction list, is the list accurate? Does it actually reflect which books are truly the best sellers?

A quick check of the Amazon.com sales rankings and the Publishers Weekly bestseller lists shows some discrepancies. King’s book is number eight on the Amazon list (Amazon does not divide its list into categories). There is one fiction book that is ahead of The Dark Tower, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code which is in seventh place on Amazon and in third on the NYT fiction list. Trace, by Patricia Cornwall, which is number two on the NYT list is twelfth on Amazon’s with two other adult fiction books ahead of it. The Publishers Weekly top five fiction books are the same as those on the NYT list, except numbers four and five are reversed in order. Stewart’s America (The Book) is number two at Amazon and the highest-ranking non-fiction book on the online list. So the two lists agree on that score. Publishers Weekly and the NYT agree on the top sellers in this category.

Further discrepancies can be found in the advice/self-help category. The NYT lists Phil McGraw’s (TV’s “Dr. Phil”) Family First as number one. But it is number three on Amazon—behind He’s Just Not That Into You, by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, which is Amazon’s bestselling book at the moment, but only number two on the NYT advice list. Again, Publishers Weekly and the NYT agree here as well. One significant outlier is the Guinness Book of World Records 2005. The NYT lists this as number five on the advice list. Not only is the categorization odd, but USA Today lists it as number 138 and Amazon has it as number 365.

The biggest difference is on the children’s list. On Amazon, the bestselling children’s book is Lemony Snicket’s The Grim Grotto—number eight on the Amazon list. It does not appear on the NYT list at all—but this is because it was just published this week. I suspect that next week’s list will include it. Publishers Weekly compiles its children’s book list on a monthly basis, so the current lists are not comparable. (The NYT children’s list was created in 2001 because of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which was driving all the “adult” books off the list. Never mind that a large percentage, if not a majority, of Harry Potter readers are adults.)

So the three lists, while not exactly the same, are largely in agreement. The discrepancies are accountable to slightly different methodologies and different survey dates—the Amazon list, for example, is adjusted hourly and while the NYT and Publishers Weekly are weekly lists, they appear on different days. So, how do these groups compile the lists? On what are the rankings based? All three are based on surveys of booksellers (Amazon “surveys” itself). The exact methodology and which bookstores are surveyed are closely guarded secrets.

The New York Times sends a weekly survey out to some 4,000 booksellers across the United States. The survey form lists the books that the NYT expects will be the week’s bestsellers. Booksellers can add titles to the list, but it is not known how many actually do. This gives the edge to books that have large marketing budgets—they will almost certainly be listed on the survey and will be reported upon. It is very possible for a book to sell extremely well and never appear on the NYT list.

The major problem with this methodology is that it ignores several important outlets for sales. Online resellers are typically excluded. Book clubs, a major source of sales for publishers, are also left out. Specialty booksellers are also underrepresented. This is apparent in the category of Christian books. Christian books are about a quarter of all book sales in the US and are routinely ignored by the bestseller lists. The academic market is similarly ignored. While most academic books will never be bestsellers, textbooks are competitive with commercial markets in total sales. Publishers Weekly employs a similar methodology, surveying some 3,000 stores.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s list is often relied on by the publishing industry to identify these sleeper books. The Chronicle samples some 50 Bay Area bookstores. While not national in scope, it includes a high percentage of independent booksellers and captures many up-and-coming books which are chiefly marketed by word-of-mouth. Snow Falling on Cedars, Cold Mountain, and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood all appeared on the Chronicle’s list months before they made it onto the NYT list.

The odd-man out is the USA Today’s bestseller list. That paper surveys some 3,000 booksellers, but relies solely on actual sales figures. There is no statistical sampling or ranking by each bookseller. Furthermore, it lists the top 150 sellers—a deeper list than the others and it does not divide the list into categories. It mixes fiction, non-fiction, hardcover, paperback, children’s, advice, etc. all together. Because of this eclectic mix and the deep list, often classics make it onto the list. This week Animal Farm (145) and The Great Gatsby (146) make it into the top 150—buoyed no doubt by students buying them for their fall classes. The Catcher in the Rye is number 95; To Kill a Mockingbird is 68. Fahrenheit 451 comes in at an even 100. But before you become too encouraged by the discernment of the American reading public, note that How To Make Love Like A Porn Star, by Jenna Jameson, is at 88, down from 66 last week.

One firm, the Dutch market research firm VNU, runs a service called BookScan, that electronically records point-of-sale data on book sales from major chains, some independents, and from discount and department stores. While this is probably the most accurate list of what is actually sold, the data is not available to the public—unless you have $75,000 to spend for an annual subscription.

But perhaps the most interesting of the bestseller lists is Amazon’s. The Amazon sales rankings only include sales by the giant internet bookseller, but it has, by many orders of magnitude, the deepest list, rank-ordering over two million different titles. It is based on actual sales figures, but the rankings are adjusted to take into account sales trends. For example, a book that is currently selling 100 copies this week, sold 50 last week, and 10 the week before will be ranked higher than a book that consistently sells 100 copies each week. If the ranking were simply based on total lifetime sales, the list would quickly become stagnant with books like The Bible, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, and To Kill a Mockingbird topping the list. The exact algorithms are not published, but one can make some reasonable deductions about how they work. This allows the general public to track the progress of mid-list and back-list titles that will never reach the bestseller lists of the NYT or Publishers Weekly.

The chief caveat with the Amazon rankings are that these are results from one bookseller, and an online one at that. As such, its sales figures can be skewed. Books sold primarily through other outlets, such as university bookstores or at self-help seminars are underrepresented. (This is true for almost all the bestseller lists.) Books marketed to those in demographics that typically do not have online access will similarly be underrepresented in the rankings. And books that are chiefly impulse buys will typically be absent entirely.

The Amazon ranking is relative to all the other books in the online giant’s catalog. The top 10,000 rankings are re-computed every hour. The rankings of the top 10,000 to 100,000 are re-computed once a day. Rankings over 100,000 are re-computed once a week. But what do the rankings mean in terms of actual sales? The top ten Amazon books sell over 100 copies a day—that’s just at Amazon and doesn’t count sales through other booksellers. Amazon accounts for about 5% of all book sales in the US, so that means a top ten Amazon seller is probably selling around two thousand copies a day total via all outlets—a very lucrative book.

Those books ranked 11 through 100 sell around 30 copies a day, while those ranked 101 through 1000 sell about ten. Those ranked through 10,000 sell about two copies a day, and those ranked through 100,000 sell about a copy each week.

Below 100,000 the rankings are extremely fluid. The sales of one or two copies can significantly affect a book’s ranking, sometimes jumping several hundred thousand places from week to week. Comparisons of books at these rankings are not terribly meaningful.

1 For those readers in the US, I encourage you to check out The Daily Show on Comedy Central. It is a parody of a news broadcast (self-described as “fake news”) that has some of the wittiest and most trenchant social and political commentary on American television. For those overseas, a weekly version can also be seen on CNN International.

Book Review: Rosemarie Ostler's Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers

1 October 2004

Rosemarie Ostler’s Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers: A Decade-By-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century has been sitting on my shelf unread for many months. Purchased long ago with the intent to review it here, I just never got around to it. When I finally pulled it off the shelf I was delighted in what I found. This is a real gem of word books.

Ostler focuses on obsolescent and obsolete words and phrases, terms that are associated with a particular era. It is a compendium of American culture seen through the vocabulary of the times. Each chapter of Dewdroppers deals with a decade of the 20th century and the words and phrases that are associated with that period.

The terms in Dewdroppers weren’t all coined in the decade they are associated with and not all of them have disappeared from the language. But all of them are inexorably associated with their particular era. Reading the book is a nostalgic experience and one is bound to turn up nuggets of which one is unaware.

Ostler’s research is excellent. While a few of her etymological explanations are missing some important details (e.g., she omits the Monty Python connection in the origin of spam) there are no serious factual flaws in the book. Ostler provides no notes for the individual terms, but she does include the sources used for each chapter in endnotes.

What follows is a selection, by decade, of a few of the terms found in Dewdroppers:

1900-1919
In the early decades of the 20th century one could listen to ragtime on the Victrola, perhaps while reading a dime novel or looking at pictures in the rotogravure section of the newspaper. Or might venture out to a nickelodeon to catch a flicker, perhaps a newsreel followed by a two-reeler. But not all was fun and games. Doughboys were serving over there and getting a bad time of it from trench foot as well as from Jerry. The catchphrase of the period was twenty-three skidoo.

1920s
The Jazz Age of the roaring 20s was when a flapper might think a candy leg was the bee’s knees. It was the era of Prohibition and speakeasies, the rum runners and the G-men who confronted them, of cloche hats and raccoon coats, of the Red menace of Bolshevism, of Scopes Monkey Trial, and finally of Black Thursday.

1930s
The crash of ‘29 ushered in the Great Depression of the next decade, a time of Hoovervilles and the New Deal. It was the time of the Dust Bowl and the migration of Okies, of hobos and bindle stiffs. It was an age of acronyms, of NRA, TVA, and CCC. There were dance marathons where swinging cats and their hot patooties danced the jitterbug. It was also the time of the Bonus Army, the War of the Worlds, and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

1940s
The next decade was the era of WWII, of Axis and Allies, of liberty ships and victory gardens, of G.I. Joe and Rosie the Riveter. There was the phony war and Lend-Lease, America Firsters and Bundles for Britain. It was also the age of do rags, bobbysox, and zoot suits. The decade ended with the Berlin Airlift, the iron curtain, and the beginnings of the Atomic Age.

1950s
The 50s were the era of Levittown and the $64,000 Question. Fears of the decade centered around Sputnik, fellow travelers, and McCarthyism, but most of all around the H-bomb. There was another war this decade, this time against the Chicoms, a war full of bug outs and that ended with a DMZ. It was also the era of street rods and drag races, of beats and hipsters, of flipsville and kicksville.

1960s
The 60s were a bifurcated decade. It was the decade of Camelot and counterculture, of the Great Society and Vietnamization, of grunts and hippies, of afros and beehives, and of the Fab Four and Free Speech, America—love it or leave it and tune in, turn on, drop out.

1970s
The Me Decade was filled with Trekkies and future shock, leisure suits and disco balls, pet rocks and Rubik’s cubes. Musically, there was glam rock, disco, and punk. There were CBs with their good buddies and smokeys and Watergate with its plumbers and dirty tricks.

1980s
The 80s was a decade of yuppies, Valley girls, and computer geeks. The stock market was big, with insider trading, boiler rooms, and ending with Black Monday in 1987. There were parachute pants and Jheri curls, New Age ideas of auras and chakras, and urban trends of break dancing and rap.

1990s
The 90s came in with Desert Storm and went out with the dot-coms. We saw the Mother of All Battles and Y2K, neither of which lived up to their hype. There was spam and cyberpunks, Baldwins and Betties, microserfs and cybersquatters.

Dewdroppers is just a joy to peruse. Page after page is filled with interesting and nostalgic tidbits.

And if you’re wondering, dewdroppers (1920s) and slackers (1990s) are the same thing, the young and unambitious who are fond of sleep and criticized by the preceding generation. A Waldo (1980s) is an über-nerd, from the Where’s Waldo? series of children’s books.

Hardcover; 239 pages; Oxford University Press; 1 September 2003; $25.00

Word of the Month: Alcohol

1 October 2004

Usually our word of the month is linked thematically with a current or historical event or holiday that occurs during the month in question. This is not the case this time. Instead we selected a subject arbitrarily and that subject is alcohol, n., a class of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, specifically ethyl alcohol, an intoxicating liquid; from the medieval Latin, ultimately from the Arabic al-kuhul. The Arabic word referred to powdered antimony, used in cosmetics; applied in English to mean any powder produced by sublimation (1543); later applied to any distilled product (1642); finally to distilled liquors (1753); the specific chemical sense is from 1850.

What follows are the names of various types of liquor and other terms associated with alcohol and booze.

absinthe, n., a liqueur made from wine mixed with wormwood (modern absinthe is no longer made with wormwood); from the French name for the wormwood plant, ultimately from the Latin absinthum; 1842.

ale, n., a liquor made from fermented malt, hops, or other grains; originally distinguished from beer in that hops were not used in ale, but in modern use it differs because the grain used in ale is not roasted, resulting in a lighter brew; from the Old English alu, c.950.

aqua vitae, n., any alcoholic drink (1547), originally an alchemist’s term for any combustible liquid (1471); from the Latin meaning water of life, cf. whisky.

aquavit, n., a Scandinavian liquor distilled from potatoes; from the Scandinavian for aqua vitae, 1890.

Armagnac, n., a brandy from the Armagnac region of France, 1850.

arrack, n., a liquor distilled from fermented coco-palm sap or coconut juice, ca. 1602.

bathtub gin, n., homemade liquor, 1930.

beer, n., a liquor made from malt, hops, and other grains; from the Old English beor, ca.1000. The word was rare until the 16th C. when hops were introduced into the process and beer was used for the hopped beverage.

bitter, n., a type of beer, characterized by its taste, 1857.

bootleg, v., to trade in illicit liquor, from the practice of hiding bottles in one’s bootlegs, 1889. Also used as an adjective for illicit liquor or other articles. Also bootlegger, one who bootlegs.

booze, n., alcoholic drink, American slang from 1859. In earlier use to mean a drink of any type, 1732. From bouse meaning drink, liquor, or to drink.

bourbon, n., a type of American whiskey, originally from Bourbon County, Kentucky, 1846.

brandy, n., distilled wine. Originally brandwine, from the Dutch brandewijn, or burnt wine. Brandwine dates to 1622; the form brandy from 1657.

burgundy, n., red wine from the Burgundy region of France, 1672.

cabernet, n., a type of wine grape, from the French, 1833.

champagne, n., wine from the Champaign region of France, especially sparkling wine from this region and more generally sparkling wine from anywhere, 1664.

cider, n., fermented drink made from apples, c.1315. From the Old French sidre; ultimately from the Hebrew shekar, meaning strong drink, via the Latin and Greek.

cognac, n., brandy made in the town of Cognac, France or more generally to any French brandy, 1687.

dry, adj., related to prohibition of alcohol, favoring prohibition, 1870.

ethanol, n., 1900, also ethyl alcohol, 1869. Chemical compound, C2H5OH, that is the intoxicating compound produced by fermentation.

gin, n., grain spirit flavored with juniper berries, 1714. A clipping of geneva, meaning the same thing, 1706. From the Dutch genever, ultimately from the Latin juniperus.

grappa, n., brandy distilled from pits, stalks, and skins of grapes that have been pressed for wine, from the Italian, 1893.

hooch, n., American slang term for cheap or inferior liquor, from the name of the Hoochinoo Indians of Alaska who made a type of strong liquor. Hooch dates to 1897; the use of hoochinoo to refer to liquor is somewhat older, 1877. From the Tlingit Hutsnuwu, meaning grizzly bear fort.

lager, n., light-colored beer, brewed after the German fashion, suitable for long-term storage, 1855. A clipping of lager beer, 1853. From the German lager, meaning store, + beer.

liqueur, n., a sweetened and flavored alcoholic beverage, 1742. From liquor.

liquor, n., alcoholic beverage, originally a liquid of any type. The alcoholic beverage sense dates to ca.1300. From the Old French and ultimately the Latin.

malt, n., 1) name for barley or other grain used to produce alcoholic beverages; 2) Scottish term for drink in general, c.1547; 3) whisky made from malt, often malt whisky, 1718. From the Old English.

merlot, n., type of black wine grape, from the French, which in turn is from merle, or blackbird, an allusion to the grape’s color, 1825.

mezcal, n., alcoholic drink made from the agave plant, 1828. From the Spanish. Tequila is a variety of mezcal.

moonshine, n., illegally distilled or smuggled liquor, 1782. Probably so called because it is manufactured under cover of darkness.

pilsner, n., a lager beer with a hoppy flavor, 1877. Originally it referred to beer brewed in the town of Pilsen in Bohemia, but now is used to denote beer brewed in the Pilsner fashion.

porter, n., a type of beer brewed with partially charred or browned malt, resulting in a dark color and bitter taste, 1727. A clipping of porter’s ale or porter’s beer, a reference to the fact that the beer was originally popular among the laboring class.

poteen, n., illicitly distilled liquor made in Ireland, especially from a small, private still, 1812. From the Irish poitin, or little pot, a clipping of uisge poitín, or little pot whisky.

prohibition, n., the banning of the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages, esp. the nationwide ban in the United States that lasted from 1920-33. First used in this sense in 1851.

proof, n., a measurement of the strength of an alcoholic beverage, a full (100%) proof beverage has a specific gravity of 0.92 and is 49.5% alcohol by weight (57.3% by volume). Proof is measured by percentage, with pure alcohol being 200% proof. From having a proved or tested strength. 1705.

pulque, n., an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the agave plant, from the Spanish, the ultimate origin is unknown, probably from a Native American word, 1693.

rum runner, n., a liquor smuggler, 1920.

rum, n., an alcoholic beverage made from products of sugar cane, especially molasses, 1654. Of unknown origin, possibly a clipping of rumbullion and rumbustion, both also of unknown origin, which date to a few years earlier.

rye, n., American name for whiskey made from rye, a cereal grain, 1835. The word for the grain is from the Old English.

sangria, n., red wine diluted with lemon water and served chilled, 1961, from the Spanish for bleeding. Formerly sangaree in English usage, 1736.

sauvignon, n., a white grape used for wine, from the French.

schnapps, n., any of a variety of liqueurs with high alcoholic content, from the German for a dram, mouthful, 1818.

scotch, n., whisky from Scotland, especially that which is made from malt, 1835.

shiraz, n., a red wine grape from France, from the once-held belief that the grape was originally from the city in Persia of that name, 1927. Also called syrah, after the French name for the grape.

sour mash, n., American whisky made from fermented grain mash, 1885.

speakeasy, n., a bar or store where illegal alcohol is sold, 1889. From the idea that it should not be spoken of loudly.

spirits, n., a distilled alcoholic beverage, 1685. From an earlier sense meaning a distilled liquid containing the essence of a substance.

tequila, n., a variety of mezcal, an alcoholic beverage distilled from the fermented sap of the agave, 1849.

vodka, n., an alcoholic beverage usually distilled from rye, but also from barley, potatoes and other substances, 1802. From the Russian for little water.

Volstead Act, prop.n., the act of Congress that enforced the 18th amendment to the US Constitution that prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Officially called the “National Prohibition Act,” it was sponsored by Andrew Volstead, a Republican representative from Minnesota, and passed in 1920. It was annulled by the 21st Amendment in 1933.

wet, adj., relating to alcohol, c.1700.

whiskey, whisky, n., an alcoholic beverage distilled from any of a variety of grains, from the Gaelic uisgebeatha, 1715. The American spelling is predominantly whiskey, with whisky being preferred in Britain.

white lightning, n., American slang term for illegally distilled whiskey, 1921. 

wine, n., fermented juice of grapes, from the Old English win, ultimately from the Latin vinum.

zinfandel, n., a variety of wine grapes used in California, 1880.

Book Review: Geoffrey Nunberg's Going Nucular

1 September 2004

This month we review a book that could have been included in last month’s “Summer Reading” review list (except I hadn’t finished reading it at that time).

It is Geoffrey Nunberg’s Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times. Nunberg is a professor of linguistics at Stanford and the book is a collection of his radio commentaries on language that he gives regularly on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air.

Going Nucular comprises some sixty-five short essays on language and usage. The essays were all delivered on the radio during the period from 2001 through 2003 and many deal with the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and how we altered our use of language to describe the attacks and their effects. (Nunberg includes the date the essay was delivered on the radio. This allows the reader to associate the topical subject with the appropriate period. One only wishes that other authors of compilations, like William Safire, would do the same.) Individual essay topics include the history of the word appeasement, use of the word Gallic and French bashing, the use of the language of courtly love in business writing, whether infidel is used appropriately to translate from the Arabic, and, of course, the pronunciation of nuclear.

But despite the backdrop of terrorism and war, the essays are hardly dark and foreboding. Nunberg’s essays witty and his humor a bit droll. He describes the Web, for instance, as “a tool that enables people who have a life to benefit from the efforts of those that don’t.” His essay on whether to call those resisting the US in Iraq as guerrillas, insurgents, or resistance is titled “We’ll Always Have Kirkuk.”

The title essay is what it hints to be, an examination of the pronunciation of nuclear, especially how several recent presidents have pronounced the word. Eisenhower pronounced it /nuc-u-lar /, probably on a model with molecular and particular. The word was a new one for Ike, learned in his middle age, and he probably looked to these other words for guidance on how to pronounce it. Other presidents have not had this excuse.

Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer by training, learned the word as a young man. He tended to pronounce it as / new-klee-uh /. This is more likely an artifact of his Georgia accent rather than mis-education.

Our last two presidents have pronounced it / nuc-u-lar /. (Clinton used both the / nuc-u-lar / and / new-clear / pronunciations about equally; Dubya limits himself to / nuc-u-lar /.) Both men are well educated and don’t have the excuse of not knowing how to pronounce it. Clinton went to Georgetown, Yale, and Oxford. Dubya to Andover, Yale, and Harvard, and his parents never used the / nuc-u-lar / pronunciation.

In the case of the latest two presidents, Nunberg suggests two hypotheses. The first is that it may be a “faux bubba” pronunciation used to make them seem more like good ol’ boys. Clinton has less reason to do this; he is legitimately from poor, Southern roots. Bush, while raised for significant portions of his childhood in Texas, was sent to elite Eastern prep schools at an early age and even while in Texas, as the son of a wealthy politician and oilman, would have had little contact with the “bubba” class.

The second is that they adopted this pronunciation to distinguish themselves from the military and national security professionals. By deliberately mispronouncing the term, the presidents were demystifying the power of nuclear weapons and asserting that they, the ones with their fingers on the nuclear button, could pronounce it any way they pleased.

Which, if either, is correct, is unknown. An important clue would be to see how Dubya pronounces the phrase nuclear family. Unfortunately, no one has caught him using this term.

If you are looking for profound or in-depth insights into the English language, however, you won’t find them here. While the essays are interesting and deftly written, they are too short and Nunberg, while a keen observer, usually doesn’t delve beyond the superficial. Still, the essays are a fun read and avoid the misinformation often found in essays about language.

Hardcover; PublicAffairs Publishers; May 2004; $18.95.

Prescriptivist's Corner: The Subjunctive Case

1 September 2004

The Prescriptivist’s Corner is back after a hiatus. This month, we are addressing one of the most misunderstood aspects of English grammar, the subjunctive mood. A mood is a form of a verb that affects the meaning of a sentence. English has three moods, the indicative, the imperative, and the subjunctive.

The indicative mood is the most common, used to express factual conditions, e.g., God helps us. The imperative is used for commands, e.g., Help us! And the subjunctive governs the hypothetical, wished, proposed, or demanded, e.g., God help us!

The subjunctive mood was common in English until about 1600, when it started falling out of use. It had all but disappeared when, around 1900, the subjunctive began staging a comeback. This comeback was first witnessed in American English, then in Britain and in other forms of English.

It is more often found in formal writing than in regular speech. In ordinary speech, with the exception of some idiomatic constructions, the indicative is usually used. Because of this, there is some question about the viability of the subjunctive’s resurgence. It could be a last hurrah before it fades into grammatical oblivion.

In English, with its lack of inflections, the subjunctive is chiefly seen by the dropping of the s in the third person singular present tense:

Tony wears concrete overshoes. (indicative)

Vinnie suggests that Tony wear concrete overshoes. (subjunctive)

And it is also formed by the use of be and were to replace am/is/are/was:

Vinnie’s consigliore is a fine strategist. (indicative)

Vinnie wishes his consigliore were a fine strategist. (subjunctive)

Other forms of the subjunctive include placing were or be at the head of a clause:

Were Vinnie to increase the payout, his numbers game would be more competitive with the state lottery.

In American English one also can form the subjunctive by placing not before be and following it up by a past participle:

Vinnie knew that Tony was a rat when he insisted that he not be followed to the meet.

The subjunctive is used in the following situations:

Counterfactual conditions. One uses the subjunctive when describing a condition that does not actually exist.

If it weren’t for an infusion of cash from his Vegas operation, Vinnie would have had trouble making his monthly payment to the Godfather.

Wishes. One uses the subjunctive to describe something one hopes to happen.

Vinnie wished that Tony the Rat leave the family feet first.

Demands and suggestions. One uses the subjunctive when describing requests, demands, and suggestions.

Vinnie insisted that the watches be real Rolexes and not knock-offs.

Statements of necessity. One uses the subjunctive to describe actions mandated by a particular situation.

The party going on next door made it necessary that Vinnie use the silencer.

Idiomatic expressions. Certain fossilized expressions are in the subjunctive:

• be that as it may

• so be it

• come what may

• far be it from me to

• so help me

• perish the thought

• powers that be

• serve you right

• suffice it to say

• woe betide

• as it were

Sometimes people use the subjunctive when there is no counterfactual or hypothetical condition:

Vinnie asked Tony if he were apprehensive about the meeting.

This is an example of hypercorrection and the indicative should be used instead:

Vinnie asked Tony if he was apprehensive about the meeting.

The concept of the subjunctive is not difficult to grasp and the grammatical forms are fairly simple. Using the subjunctive properly in formal contexts will lend a credibility and gravitas to your writing. But you may want to avoid it in ordinary speech as it can label you as a pedant.