Arlene Miller's Blog, page 46

Fabulous and Fun! It’s National Grammar Day!

George Bush’s letter about National Grammar Day

March 4  is National Grammar Day, and this is our National Grammar Day Post — enjoy!

Facts 

National Grammar Day was established in 2008 by Martha Brockenbough. Who is she? She is the author of  Things That Make Us (Sic) and the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. As you see, President George Bush sent a letter commemorating the day.

Fears

Although there is no “grammarphobia” (fear of grammar) or “punctuatiophobia,” here are some things that might make National Grammar Day scary:

allodoxaphobia – fear of opinions

bibliophobia – fear of books

didaskaleinophobia – fear of going to school

epistemophobia and gnosiophobia – fear of knowledge

graphophobia – fear of writing

lalophobia – fear of speaking

logophobia – fear of words

metrophobia – fear of poetry

papyrophobia – fear of paper

scolionophobia – fear of school

scriptophobia – fear of writing in public

sesquipedalophobia and hippomonstrosesquipedalophobia – fear of long words

Faves

On the other hand, celebrants of National Grammar Day might have these traits:

bibliophile – lover of books

logophile – lover of words

philologist – lover of words

philosopher – lover of knowledge

Fests

Here are some other holidays you might want to celebrate:

January 23 – National Handwriting Day

February 5 – World Nutella Day (irrelevant, but who can leave it out!)

February 14 – Library Lovers Day

March 2 – Read Across America Day

March 8  – National Proofreading Day

March 13 – Smart and Sexy Day

April 2 – International Children’s Book Day

April 13 – Scrabble Day

April 14 – Dictionary Day

April 23 – English Language Day/ Talk Like Shakespeare Day (and his birthday)

May – Take a break

June – You need a longer break

July 17 – World Emoji Day

July 31 –  Paperback Book Day

August 2 –  National Coloring Book Day

September 8 – International Literacy Day

September 24 – National Punctuation Day

October 5 – World Teachers Day

October 18 – Dictionary Day

November 1 – National Authors’ Day

December 21 – Crossword Puzzle Day

Fanfare

Ways to celebrate National Grammar Day:

Buy a grammar book (hint, hint)
Buy a grammar mug or tee-shirt
Drink a grammartini:

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The Grammartini

National Grammar Day founder, Martha Brockenbrough, shares her grammartini recipe: 

2 1/2 oz gin

1/2 oz dry vermouth 

1 green olive (Some people use lemon.)

Pour the ingredients into a mixing glass filled with ice cubes. 

Stir  or shake for 30 seconds. 

Strain into a martini glass.

Drink

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Faux Pas

Here are two ways NOT to celebrate National Grammar Day (even after you have drunk a grammartini or two).

Correct a friend’s grammar on social media.
Correct a friend’s grammar in person.

Famous Words 

“Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense but the past perfect!” ~Attributed to both Owens Lee Pomeroy (1929–2008) and Robert Orben (b.1927)

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power.” ~Joan Didion, “Why I Write,” 1976

“A double negative is a no-no. ” ~Author unknown

“Do not be surprised when those who ignore the rules of grammar also ignore the law. After all, the law is just so much grammar.” ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Quotes courtesy of  The Quote Garden. 

 

Happy National Grammar Day, Everyone!

Next Week:  Part 2 of the “Exception”al Verbs

 

“Exception”al Verbs- Part 1

Don’t be mislead by the title of this post. We are not talking about verbs that are so exceptional that you should use them. We are talking about verbs that are exceptions to the rule. And often there are more exceptions than rules!

Specifically, we are talking about the three forms of a verb. They are used to form various tenses, but we are not talking tenses here. For more information about when to use each tense, refer back to  this blog post or this one.

Verbs have three forms:

Present tense: for example, walk
Past tense: for example, walked
Past participle: for example have walked (had walked, will have walked)

The “rule” (to put it loosely) is to add -ed to a present tense to make a past tense and a past participle: walked.

If the verb already ends in an e, all you have to do is add the d: bake/baked.

If the verb ends in a y, generally we turn the y into an i and add -ed: study/studied.

Many verbs do not follow this rule. Some of them have some type of “other” form that stays the same in both past and past participle forms. Here are some of those:

sit, sat, have sat
lead, led, have led
bring, brought, have brought (as a kid, I did think it was brang and brung!)
hang, hung, have hung
lay, laid, have laid
teach, taught, have taught
catch, caught, have caught
build, built, have built

You get the idea. And most of the time, people don’t have a problem with these. However, there are many verbs that have three different forms. The present is different from the past, which is different from the past participle. And with many of these verbs, people keep using the past tense form for the past participle. And I am writing this post because I am tiring of hearing it. My seventh grade students were big offenders, but many educated adults I know or have heard speak do the same thing. 

You will know what I mean by this list. Here are some common of the more common mistakes:

I ate , but I have eaten . Not I have ate some cake.
I began , but I have begun . Not I have began my speech.
I bit, but I have bitten . Not I have bit into the cookie.
I broke , but I have broken . Not I have broke the vase..
I chose , but I have chosen. Not I have chose that dress.
I drank , but I have drunk . Not I have drank all the water.
I forgave , but I have forgiven . Not I have forgave her for lying.
I froze , but I have frozen . Not I have froze the leftovers.
I rode , but I have ridden . Not I have rode a horse before.
I rang , but I have rung . Not I have rang the doorbell.
I ran , but I have run . Not I have ran a mile.
I sang , but I have sang . Not I have sang  in front of an audience.
I sank, but I have sunk . Not I have sank when I tried to swim.
I spoke , but I have spoken . Not I have spoke to her about it.
I stole , but I have stolen . Not I have stole the letters.
I swam , but I have swum . Not I have swam every day this week.
I wrote , but I have written . Not I have wrote him a letter.
I went, but I have gone . Not I have went to work today.

Those are some of the common ones that people tend to misspeak and miswrite. Although I have used the pronoun I with all the examples, of course the verb is the same with you, he, she, they, them, it, and we.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week. 

Grammar Diva News and Such

I will be the featured speaker at Napa Valley Writers, a branch of the California Writers Club, on Wednesday evening, March 8. 

Is there something you would like to see written about on this blog? Please send me an e-mail and let me know.

Do you have a favorite grammar/punctuation/language pet peeve? Send an e-mail, and maybe I will get enough new ones to do a new post about them.

Is there something you would like to say to this audience? Send me an e-mail about writing a guest post for this blog.

The e-mail is info@bigwords101.com.

 

 

Yes, We ALL Need to Proofread!

Proofread!

Every week I send out a blog post that I have proofread — at least once, but probably twice — and still, I get word from my readers that the post contains a typo. It is embarrassing, especially for someone like me, whose business is words and using them properly. I promise I will proofread this post at least twice!

The point is that we all need to proofread our writing, whether it is a written business letter, an e-mail memo, an advertisement, a social media post, or even a tweet. Oh, and it goes without saying that we authors need to proofread our books a zillion times.

Disclaimer: This is not a political or partisan post, but it will likely turn out looking like one! So, here we go . . .

When my writing contains a typo, my readers may notice and tell me about it. Social media and the internet in general have made errors much more public. I have a fair amount of readers of my books, my posts, etc. HOWEVER, when the leader of the free (well, so far it is still free ) world and his administration make mistakes, it is Big News — at least on the opposing political side (which is what I am familiar with), a side that is substantial.

I started to collect some of the things I heard about on the news, and then I researched a few other “typos” recently made by our current administration. 

I use the word “typo” loosely. There are a couple of different things that can be called  “typos,” sometimes euphemistically. 

Sometimes two letters are reversed. Sometimes the finger just lands on an adjacent key by mistake. Sometimes a word is repeated, or one is left out. Sometimes, maybe the wrong punctuation mark is typed. Okay, sometimes, perhaps the wrong “to” is used. These are typos.
Sometimes something is simply spelled incorrectly. Or the wrong punctuation mark is used, creating a grammatical mistake or something so unclear it is unreadable. Sometimes, people make up words. These are not typos; these are mistakes.
And then, of course, there is “fake grammar,” “fake punctuation,” and “fake spelling,” but these don’t exist.

Here is just a sampling of “They should know better”: (They means the president unless it says otherwise.)

Lead is in pencils. The past tense of the verb lead is led.
President and precedent are two different words with very different meanings, although they are both nouns. (I will give him that.)
Bigly or big league? I don’t know. Apparently, it is big league, since bigly is not a word. However, I heard big league used where it really didn’t sound right. Bigly — if it were a word — would probably be an adverb. Big league seems like an adjective when the two words are used together. For example, “The crime in Chicago is big league.” I wish I remembered the context to which I am referring, but I don’t.
Non-sense? Ah, no. It is nonsense. (nonfiction, nonfat, etc.)
Look-up is not hyphenated as a verb. For example, “I am going to look up this phone number.” However, I saw it used as such.
I saw nucular in a Tweet. I don’t think that is a typo!
“SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE.” That sentence would be a run on — a comma splice, to be exact. And besides, it is shouting when you use all caps.
Names of the leaders of our allies should be checked to make sure they are spelled correctly. It is Theresa May of Great Britain, not Teresa May.
Okay. This is kind of a tough one, but the Secretary of Education should be more careful! It is W.E.B. Du Bois, not DeBois. Would you like it if I called you Betty Du Vois instead of Betsy DeVos?
Oh, and then she sent apologizes instead of apologies.
The inaugural poster has been withdrawn from sale. Why? “No dream is too big. No challenge is to great . . . “ I guess the challenge of using the correct to was too great.
The word congressman should be capitalized.
A tweet said pervail instead of prevail. Typo or misspelling?  You be the judge.

If you can figure out the meaning of either of the following two passages, please let me know!

“There’s nothing that would conclude me — that anything different has changed with respect to that time period.” — Sean Spicer

“Today I have authorized lethal drone strikes against Jerry Brown, a Colorado marijuana dealer and Miss Universe 1996.”  — Donald Trump

Proofread, proofread, proofread —  and let someone else look at what you have written!

Addendum: Frederick Douglass died in 1895, I believe. His last name is spelled with two ss‘s (I am not implying here that anyone spelled it incorrectly), and if his last name is made possessive, with three ss‘s. (Frederick Douglass’s hat). Just saying . . .

 

A Little Review of the POS (not the POTUS)

POTUS? President of the United States.

POS? Parts of speech.

Yes, I know you learned the parts of speech in school, but we are going to review and then have a “challenge.”

It depends whom you ask as to how many parts of speech there are in the English language. I say eight. It is usually about eight. I guess it depends how you group some of them.

The parts of speech are the categories into which words are put, depending on the role they play in a sentence (or a phrase). Many words fall into more than one category, depending on how they are used in a particular sentence. Here are the eight parts of speech:

1. Noun – Person, place, thing, or idea (you probably remember that one!): school, dog, boy, computer, happiness; proper nouns: Golden Gate Bridge, California , Susan

2. Verb – Action or state of being: to run, to study, to eat, to be, to look, to think.

3. Pronoun – (not to be confused with a proper noun, which begins with a capital letter and is a noun) A word that takes the place of a noun: he, them, us, everyone, this, those, himself, what, which.

*All you need to have a complete sentence is a noun (or pronoun) and a verb: I read. Actually, you don’t even need the noun or pronoun in the case of a command: Sit. In this case the subject is implied and is you (You sit.)*

4. Adjective – Describes a noun or another adjective: red, pretty, terrible, this, many. I group the articles (a, an, and the) with the adjectives, since they do modify nouns.

 blue dress (describes a noun)
bright blue dress (describes another adjective)

5. Adverb – Describes a verb, another adverb, or an adjective. Tells how, where, when, to what extent:  slowly, then, now, too, very

talk slowly (describes a verb)
very slowly (describes another adverb)
very blue (describes an adjective)

6. Preposition – Always appears as part of prepositional phrase. The phrase tells what kind, where, or when: in, out, below, with, by, for, along, to, at.

in the house
out the door
down the slide
along the river
at school
by the same author
after the party
with stripes

7. Conjunction – Joins two words, phrases, clauses, or sentences: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (FANBOYS)

tiny, yet strong
Jack and Jill 
chicken or fish?
I can’t go, so you can have my ticket.

8. Interjection – Usually an exclamatory word, but can be followed by a comma or an exclamation point: gosh, well, oh, darn, yikes, wow

Wow! Look at the size of that cat!
Oh, I have seen that cat before.

As I said earlier, many words can function as two or more different parts of speech,depending on how they are used:

play

I saw a play last night. (noun)
I play tennis every weekend. (verb)
I set up a play date for Jimmy. (adjective)

well

Timmy’s in the well! (noun)
I did well on the test. (adverb)
Well, how did you figure that out? (interjection)

So, that is our POS review. Here is the challenge: I used to teach the parts of speech to my 7th graders — not that they hadn’t learned it before — and to make it more fun, I had to give them something interesting to do.

Can you make a sentence that uses each part of speech only once? Your sentence would be eight words. Well, if you really think, you can see why this might not be possible. You can do it in 10 or 11 words because something has to repeat. Or does it? HINT: If you break a grammar rule — one that is sort of okay to break these days, you can do it. When you have figured it out, and written your eight-word sentence,  scroll down for the answer:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, so sneaky Nancy secretly waited for him.

Oh – interjection
so – conjunction
sneaky – adjective
Nancy – noun
secretly – adverb
waited – noun
for – preposition
him – pronoun

Problem: The major problem is the conjunction, which connects things, meaning you might have to put in two nouns. The rule that I broke is starting the sentence with the conjunction (so) instead of having it connect two things. It is sort of breaking a rule, but in informal writing, it’s fine to do.

But look:

Well, wait for her and very tall Joe.

Here, I avoided the issue by writing a command. That way I could avoid using the noun or pronoun as the subject and could use them as the prepositional objects and not have to repeat a noun or pronoun. So that is another way to do it.

Such challenges keeps the brain in good working order! If you have any other solutions or just sentences you have created, just send a comment!

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Grammar Diva News:

I will be the guest speaker at the March 8 meeting of the Napa Valley Writers, a chapter of California Writers Club. Looking forward to it!

 

 

 

Wh*t Did You Say? Symbols for C*ss Words

We are all familiar with the “bleeping” out of curse words on television and radio — well, most television and radio —  under FCC rules. Sometimes there is a beep, sometimes silence, but the terminology has changed from beep to “bleep.”

In writing, symbols are generally used to take the place of curse words, swears, cuss words — whatever you want to call them.

Often we see an asterisk to replace letters, especially vowels in the middle of a “bad” word (for example sh*t or f*ck).

However, there is no set rule. Much of the time a random series of symbols is used to replace an unspecified swear word, where the reader can supply  his or her own word.  Some common symbols used are %!@?, but you can pretty much do what you want there.

So either one of these is fine:

You’re such an %!@?!
“You’re such an a***hole!

Note that in the second bullet point, the number of asterisks doesn’t match the number of letters left out. That seems to be okay too, although a**hole would suffice, I am sure.

And yes, there is a word for this type of swearing! Actually two words: grawlix and profanitype.

This particular type of profanity is older than the “bleep,” and was first seen in comic books..

In a 1964 article for the National Cartoonist Society, Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker coined the term grawlix, which now refers to the string of  symbols that sometimes stands in for profanity. Anger and swearing is common in comics, but often not appropriate — thus grawlix.

We can go even farther back. Strings of various symbols were seen in the speech balloons of print comic strips as early as the 1880s! This early use was in  Rudolph Dirks’ The Katzenjammer Kids comic in the New York Journal. 

When spoken, the grawlix is read as “bleep.” Who remembers that movie What the Bleep Do We Know? some years ago — that movie about quantum physics taken from the book The Secret?

Of course, there is an alternative to the audio bleep or the visual grawlix: replacing the unacceptable words with gentler words, such as jerk (for a**hole) or freaking or frigging  or even f-ing (for f*cking) or gosh or darn for the now-mild damn, or jeepers for sh*t!

Your choice! @@!%#

 

 

Hyphens with Compound Modifiers: A Tall-Columned Building

What is a compound modifier? What is a modifier? Well, to modify is to change. In the English language adjectives and adverbs are generally the modifiers because they describe (and therefore change) things and actions.  A blue dress can be modified to a red dress with the change of the adjective, or modifier, from blue to red.

She quietly read a book can be modified to She quickly read a book with the change of the adverb from quietly to quickly.

Compound modifiers are two (or more) words put together to form an adjective:

That is a very well-traveled path.
The three-year-old boy was throwing his toys.
That two-foot-high wedding cake looked delicious.
She is a self-made woman.

Generally, these compound adjectives are hyphenated to show that the two separate words go together in describing something. Usually the phrase is clear without the hyphen, but the hyphen does make reading easier, and sometimes can clear up confusion:

The tall columned building was hundreds of years old.

Was the building tall? Or were the columns on the building tall?

The tall-columned building was hundreds of years old.

Now we know we mean the columns were tall.

The tall, columned building was hundreds of years old.

Now we know the building is tall and has columns. 

Some Exceptions:

Of course there are always exceptions. In fact, some style guides devote pages and pages to this issue. The bottom line is if you cannot figure out whether to hyphenate something or not — and it doesn’t seem to make any difference in meaning — and you cannot find it in the dictionary — or if dictionaries disagree — then take your best guess, but be consistent every time you use the modifier.

Common, established compounds do not need to be hyphenated. For example: high school prom (not high-school)
Compound proper names used as adjectives are not hyphenated: For example: Supreme Court justice (not Supreme-Court)
If the first part of the modifier ends in -ly there is no hyphen:  gently falling snow, slowly moving car

And Finally, One More Important Thing…

When the compound modifier comes after the noun it describes rather than before it, it generally is not hyphenated:

I like well-done steak. I like my steak well done.

She has a three-year-old son. Her son is a three year old or Her son is three years old.

I saw a three-toed sloth. The sloth is three toed or The sloth has three toes.

There are exceptions: Self- is always hyphenated  in a compound whether it comes before or after the noun, as is all (sometimes). 

She is very self-conscious.

He is self-taught.

The self-made success told us her secrets.

I have an all-terrain vehicle.  This vehicle is all-terrain.

I am using all-purpose flour. The flour is all-purpose.

The all-women’s choir will sing. The choir is all women. (In this case I would not use a hyphen).

 

 

 

So What Happens to the Old Words?

Last week’s blog post talked about some of the new words recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The OED publishes four updates a year: March, June, September, and December. The next update will be in March 2017. Five hundred new words and phrases  entered the Oxford English Dictionary last quarter.

So with all these new words coming into the dictionary, are there “old” words being removed? Or is the OED growing and growing to an unmanageable size?

The historical Oxford English Dictionary is indeed ever-expanding, and does not remove words to make room for new words. However, there is a variation of the dictionary, the Concise OED, which does strive to maintain its size. In order to make room for 400 new words recently, this dictionary had to cut about 200. Maneuvering design and typeface made it possible to add 400 words while cutting only 200 and still maintaining legibility.

Here are some of the words that were axed by the Concise Oxford English Dictionary:

Growlery:  a place to growl in, a private room or den

Cassette player: a machine for playing back or recording an audio cassette

Eurocommunism: a European form of communism that advocates the preservation of many elements of Western liberal democracy

Glocalization: the practice of conducting business according to both local and global considerations

Script kiddie: a person who uses existing scripts or codes to hack into computers, lacking the expertise to write their own

Threequel: the third film, book, event, etc. in a series; a second sequel

Video jockey: a person who introduces and plays music videos on television

S-VHS: super video home system, an improved version of VHS

Millennium bug: an inability in older computing software to deal correctly with dates of 1 January 2000 or later (we can see why this is no longer needed!)

What are some of the reasons for cutting words?

cross-references or uncommon spelling variants,
obsolete technology
past current affairs
slang or informal words that didn’t quite stick (note that shorter slang words fare better than longer ones.)
words that don’t “look right” and just don’t catch on 

However, all these dropped words are still in the larger and complete Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionaries Online website.

But let’s turn our attention to the Oxford Junior Dictionary  . . .

There has been some alarm about this dictionary eliminating some “nature” words and replacing them with words that deal  with the solitary, technology-oriented lives of some of today’s children.

A group of authors called on the 10,000-entry children’s dictionary to reverse the decision to cut around 50 words connected with nature and replace them with words like analogue and celebrity. These words were replaced in 2007 when religious words like bishop, saint, and sin were also eliminated (with protests).

So blackberry has been replaced with broadband and and crocus with cut and paste. Other words taken out include hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, and panther. The protesting authors pointed to the decline in play and its connection with obesity, friendlessness, and anti-social behavior.

What does Oxford say about this? They say that they need to keep up with the times. Children live in less rural environments. The dictionary reflects the language as it is currently used, taking into account the words most commonly used as well as current school curriculum.

However, many words that do not appear in the Oxford Junior Dictionary do appear in the Oxford Primary Dictionary, which is more comprehensive and intended for children up to age 11. 

Getting back to the regular old Oxford English Dictionary, when does a word get added? If a particular word is used by a wide range of people to mean largely the same thing, the OED considers it part of the English language. However, sometimes the dictionary waits a while to see if a word dies out quickly or becomes part of the language. One such word was Twitter (and tweet). Although Twitter came into being in 2006, the word wasn’t added to the dictionary until 2013. 

The words that are “rejected” by the OED are kept on file. If the word becomes more relevant, the OED will eventually include it.  But . . .potential new words are a closely guarded secret at the OED.”

 

 

Some “Hella” Great New Words!

Hella is an American slang term that originated in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has since spread to become native slang to all of Northern California. And since I believe Cartman uses the term on South Park, I guess it goes even farther geographically. I just read something about hella being added to the dictionary, but actually hella is an old word – coined in 2002, fifteen long years ago! It has been in certain dictionaries, I would assume, for a lot longer than this past year. If you aren’t familiar with the word, it seems to mean about the same as helluva, such as in,”I had a helluva good time!”  It does often describe the word good:  This pizza is hella good!

Every year thousands of new words are added to various dictionaries. Here are some of this year’s words. Don’t worry, slang still exists, and words are marked as slang if they are indeed slang.

Oxford  English Dictionary

Gender-fluid: androgynous; a person who does not identify with a single fixed gender.

Clicktivism: Signaling support for a political or social cause through social media, online petitions, etc., rather than by more substantive involvement.

Moobs: Yup, man boobs.

YOLO (“You only live once”): The view that one should make the most of the present moment without worrying about the future. 

Non-apology: A statement that looks or sounds like an apology, but does not acknowledge responsibility or express regret; an insincere or unconvincing apology.

Yoda: A person who embodies the characteristics of Yoda — an elder, sage, or guru.

Squee: A high-pitched squealing or squeaking sound produced by an animal, musical instrument, etc.

Merriam-Webster Online

Accentophile: A person who enjoys foreign accents.

Belignorant: Belligerent and ignorant.

Breakfunch: A small meal eaten between breakfast and lunch. (Then what is brunch?)

Confungry: Confused and angry.(Shouldn’t this be confangry? This sounds more like confused and hungry!)

Definotly: Definitely not. (I hope this didn’t come about because people cannot spell definitely!)

Equalist: A person who believes that all people are created equal regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or general beliefs. (Deal me in.)

Fabulize: To make fabulous.

Gayborhood: A neighborhood where the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people live and/or work.

Jokative: Causing laughter.

Mantrum: A man tantrum.

Misophonia:  Anger created by the sound of someone eating.

Shooista: A person very passionate about shoes.

Silent Generation: The generation born from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s. (Think about this one!)

Sillerious: Silly and serious.

Word of the Year

The American Dialect Society just named “dumpster fire” Word of the Year. Why? Because the phrase best represents the public conversations of 2016.

This society of linguists, grammarians, and word scholars has awarded this prize each year since 1990, when bushlips  (insincere political rhetoric,) won Word of the Year.  This year more than 300 members of the Linguistic Society of America voted at a standing-room-only reception during the society’s annual conference. (There’s a visual: standing room only at a reception of the Linguistic Society). Dumpster fire triumphed over normalize and  post-truth. There is even a “emojical” representation of the word:

Colons and Semicolons: Second Cousins, Not Siblings

It’s a colon! It’s a semicolon! What’s the difference? It’s a dot. It’s a couple of dots. Oh, one dot is a comma. I don’t know. Use either one of them. 

No.

Colons and semicolons look a lot alike, but they are not siblings in the family of punctuation. They are probably not even first cousins. They are hardly ever interchangeable. They have entirely different purposes. Actually, the semicolon is more a sibling to the comma, and maybe a first cousin to the period. The colon might be an only child and perhaps a first cousin to the period also.

My sensitivity to this issue began when I was giving some information to someone who was putting a catalogue together, and my name was in it. She said, “So I put your name and then a semicolon, and then the information about you. .” NO. You need a colon. You can’t just throw in any old punctuation mark. The semicolon does not belong in such a place.

So, what is the different between colons (:) and semicolons (;) ?

Colon

A colon introduces something. It has a relationship to what follows it. Often it introduces a list, whether the list is vertical or horizontal. A colon can also introduce a quote in a sentence. And occasionally you can use a colon (as you might also use a semicolon, but in different circumstances) to separate two parts of a compound sentence instead of using a period, or a comma and a conjunction. However, if you use a colon in this way, it implies that the second part of the sentence (after the colon) is either a result of or follows from the first part of the sentence. Here are some examples of these ways to use colons:

1.The following colors are among my favorites: blue, purple, and pink.

2. These are the ingredients for the cake:

Eggs
Flour
Milk
Butter
Cocoa
Baking powder

3. The mayor made this promise in front of the city council: “We will do everything we can this year to extend the hours that the library is open.”

4. The meeting is crucial and you should attend: we will be discussing raises and promotions.

Semicolon

The semicolon connects things rather than introduces them. They are really “stronger” commas. They can separate two closely related sentences if you don’t want to use a conjunction with a comma. They can separate items in a series that already have commas within them. They can separate the two parts of a compound sentence that already has a series or two that could complicate its meaning. Here are examples of these ways to use a semicolon:

1. I am taking a trip to Asia; my husband doesn’t fly, so he is staying home.

2. The guests included Diane Timmons, a noted artist; the museum curator; Joe Wall, an art critic; and Professor Smith, an art history instructor at the local college.

3. Last year I traveled to Mexico, Canada, the southern part of the United States, and Argentina; and France, Italy, and Greece are in my plans for next year.

You could not substitute a colon for a semicolon in those examples – or vice versa.

If you are doing some type of catalogue or list or dictionary, entries should be followed by a colon, not a semicolon:

Apple: A round, red fruit

Coconut: A tropical fruit with white meat inside

Orange: A thick-skinned fruit containing Vitamin C

And obviously you cannot substitute a semicolon for the other places you would use colons:

Digital Time: 3:45
Between title and subtitle of a book when writing the title in context: The Red Dog: The Story of Amos
The salutation of a business letter: Dear Mr. Plante:

There you have it . . . Cousins, maybe. But the semicolon and the colon are different animals.

Grammar Diva News

If one of your New Years Resolutions is better grammar, punctuation, writing, or speaking — or any combination thereof, please check out my books on Amazon (or wherever you buy books!), I am currently working on The Best Little Dictionary of Confused Words and Malapropisms, which will have just about every confused pair/group of words you can think of! It will be the third book in the series The Best Little Grammar Books, which will also include the two already published books, The Best Little Grammar Book Ever, Second Edition; and The Best Little Grammar Workbook Ever! They will each be able to be purchased separately. Look for the new Dictionary in the next two or three months. 

I will be speaking in March at the monthly meeting of the Napa chapter of California Writers Club.

Happy to announce that schools, including Goucher College in Baltimore, have been purchasing my two workbooks this month. 

Hope 2017 is starting off successfully for all!

 

Where Did New Year’s Resolutions Come From? And Where Did the Holidays Go?

In 2017 I promise to

Lose weight
Go to the gym three times a week
Be more patient with my children (my spouse, my friends, myself, my whatever . . . )
Eat healthier
Find love
Find a new job

Sound familiar?

Where Did New Year’s Resolutions Come From?

Although New Year’s resolutions are most common in the Western Hemisphere, they are found all over the word. We all know what they are: a promise to ourselves to do some type of self-improvement.

The ancient Babylonians were apparently the first people to make New Year’s resolutions, about 4,000 years ago. However, for them the year began not in January, but in mid-March when the crops were planted. During a 12-day religious festival known as Akitu, the Babylonians crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the reigning king.  They made promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any farm equipment they had borrowed.

The Romans began each year by making promises to the god Janus, for whom the month of January is named. The early Roman calendar consisted of 10 months and 304 days, with each new year beginning at the vernal equinox. It was created by Romulus, the founder of Rome, in the eighth century B.C. Over the centuries, the calendar fell out of sync with the sun, and in 46 B.C. the emperor Julius Caesar consulted with the most prominent astronomers and mathematicians of his time. He introduced the Julian calendar, which closely resembles the calendar that most countries around the world use today.

Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honor  Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look both back into the past and forward into the future. Romans celebrated the new year by offering sacrifices to Janus, exchanging gifts with one another, decorating their homes with laurel branches, and attending raucous parties.

In the Medieval era, the knights took the “peacock vow” at the end of the Christmas season each year to re-affirm their commitment to chivalry.

This tradition has other religious parallels. In Judaism. on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement),  the culmination of the Jewish New Year, Jews reflect upon their wrongdoings over the past year and seek forgiveness. And the practice of New Year’s resolutions came, in part, from the Lenten sacrifices of Christians. The concept, regardless of creed, is the annual reflection upon self-improvement.

Despite the tradition’s religious roots, New Year’s resolutions today are a secular practice. Instead of making promises to the gods, most people make resolutions  to themselves and focus purely on self-improvement. 

So Who Makes Resolutions? Who Keeps Them?

At the end of the Great Depression, about 25% of American adults made New Year’s resolutions. At the beginning of the 21st century, about 40% did. And those who make common resolutions such as weight loss, increased exercising, or quitting smoking are at least ten times more likely to succeed compared with those who do not make resolutions.

Here are the most common reasons for people failing at their New Years’ Resolutions:

Unrealistic goals (35%)
Not keeping track of progress (33% )
Forgetting all about it (23%)
 Making too many resolutions (10%)

A 2007 study by Richard Wiseman from the University of Bristol involving 3,000 people showed that 88% of those who set New Year resolutions fail despite the fact that over half of the study’s participants were confident of success at the beginning.

Men achieved their goals more often when they engaged in specific goal setting.
Women succeeded  more when they made their goals public and got support from their friends.

Things to Do on New Year’s Eve

 In Spain and several other Spanish-speaking countries, people bolt down a dozen grapes right before midnight, symbolizing their hopes for the months ahead. In many parts of the world, traditional New Year’s dishes feature legumes, which are thought to resemble coins and herald future financial success. Because pigs represent progress and prosperity in some cultures, pork appears on the New Year’s Eve table in Cuba, Austria, Hungary, and Portugal. Ring-shaped cakes and pastries, a sign that the year has come full circle, are part of the feast in the Netherlands, Mexico, and Greece.  In Sweden and Norway, rice pudding with an almond hidden inside is served on New Year’s Eve: whoever finds the nut can expect 12 months of good fortune.

Other customs that are common worldwide include watching fireworks and singing songs, including  “Auld Lang Syne” in many English-speaking countries. 

In the United States, the most iconic New Year’s tradition is the dropping of the giant ball in New York City’s Times Square at midnight, an event that began in 1907. The ball has gone from a 700-pound iron-and-wood orb to a brightly patterned sphere 12 feet in diameter, weighing nearly 12,000 pounds. Some towns and cities across America have developed their own versions of the Times Square ritual including public drops of  pickles (Dillsburg, Pennsylvania) and possums (Tallapoosa, Georgia)

How Have Resolutions Changed?

Americans’ Resolutions for 1947 – Gallup Poll

1. Improve my disposition, be more understanding, control my temper

2. Improve my character, live a better life

3. Stop smoking, smoke less

4. Save more money

5. Stop drinking, drink less

6. Be more religious, go to church oftener

7. Be more efficient, do a better job

8. Take better care of my health

9. Take greater part in home life

10. Lose (or gain) weight

Americans’ Resolutions for 2014 – University of Scranton

1. Lose weight

2. Getting organized

3. Spend less, save more

4. Enjoy life to the fullest

5. Stay fit and healthy

6. Learn something exciting

7. Quit smoking

8. Help others in their dreams

9. Fall in love

10. Spend more time with family

P.S. Weight loss has obviously become important to us. As a nation, we’re the heaviest we’ve ever been. And along with the extra pounds come physical conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, as well as social stigmas like bullying and weight discrimination. But Abigail Saguy, a sociology and gender studies professor at University of California, Los Angeles, points out that bodies — especially women’s bodies — have always been imbued with some kind of social meaning, and she suspects that people are more interested in enjoying the elevated status of a socially acceptable body than improved health outcomes.

Where Did the Holidays Go?

It all started when we began to see Thanksgiving decorations several months ago. Well, actually perhaps it began around Labor Day when pumpkins started showing up in stores. And now, several months later, it is just about over. Most people are breathing a sigh of relief. A few love the season and hate to see it go.

I would think most of the people who love it and hate to see it go are those with kids — small kids — and intact marriages, and families who get along — for the most part, anyway. The holiday season is a whole lot easier for those people. And add to it a love of decorating, a love of baking, a love of entertaining, and just a love of being busy and spending time with people you love — and you can see why there are those who really love the holidays.

People who are glad the holiday season is over, I would think, fall into two groups:

Those who consider it too much.
Those who have too little.

Those who consider it too much: Even if you love to shop and wrap and bake and entertain and decorate and look at pretty lights, it gets tiring, and many people love it, and love when it is over as well. Maybe there are family issues, or too many people to visit, people who are now alienated from parts of families, people who are far away — or too far away to see at all. Then, there is the money spent, the stress of it all.  Ah! January 1!

Those who have too little: I am not talking about having too little money, although that could certainly put a damper on the holidays. I am talking about those with no family, or estranged family. There are more people in those circumstances than I had thought, I somewhat being among them. Perhaps they have no siblings, no living parents, no children, children who are estranged or occupied with spouses’ families, newly divorced or widowed, and the list goes on. It is a very difficult time of year for lots of people. That is where good friends come in. They become our family. But for many, it is a relief when January 1 comes, and we don’t have to worry about the holidays for another 9 or 10 months. 

Regardless of the kind of holidays you had this year, I hope 2017 is a happy and successful year for you all!

Happy New Year from The Grammar Diva!

Thank you all for reading and commenting on my blog posts

and for your support during the past year!