Jean Reynolds's Blog, page 5

Should You Worry about These Errors? Part 3

Instant Quiz

Can you correct the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.  

Although the workers decided not to strike, moral is still very low.

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Today I’m going to comment on five more errors discussed in a provocative post called “17 Grammatical Errors You Need to Stop Correcting” by Bill Murphy Jr. (You can read my previous set of comments here.)

11. Oxford commas
This is the rule about using a comma before the last item in a list: “red, white, and pink roses.” That comma is optional. (I like it, but I never insisted that my students use it.)
Murphy says, “Believe it or not, there are people who get really worked up about this rule. Don’t be one of them.” He’s right, and I’m applauding.

12. I.E. versus E.G.
Murphy explains that i.e. means “that is,” and e.g. means “for example.” He urges his readers not to criticize writers who get those Latin abbreviations confused.
My position is different – and simple: Don’t use them. Ever. “That is” and “for example” are perfectly respectable English phrases.

13. Split infinitives
Murphy is talking about expressions like “to boldly go,” which used to be considered bad grammar. He suggests being tolerant when other writers use them.  Once again I’m taking a stronger position: It’s a stupid rule. Ignore it.

14. Incomplete comparisons
Murphy is bothered by sentences like this one: “Our company’s products are better, cheaper, and more efficient.” Better than what?
I’m not bothered by these sentences at all. I don’t think we need to be that picky.

15. Into versus in to
There is so much gobbledygook in Murphy’s explanation that I stopped reading. (Does he really need to talk about transitive verbs?)
Here’s my take on in and into: I think about walking in a room (walking around it) and walking into a room (entering from the hall). If you understand the difference, that’s all you need to know!

In the last post in this series, I’ll be talking about Murphy’s final two errors – and grammar in general.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

The word you need today is morale.

Although the workers decided not to strike, morale is still very low.
CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Trooping Along

Instant Quiz

Can you correct the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.  

One of my students asked me a good question: “Instead of making us take notes, why don’t you just give us a handout with the information we need”?

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Today I’m going to give you a glimpse into what lexicographers do. (They’re the professionals who add, delete, and edit dictionary definitions.)

One recent Saturday morning before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I heard a startling remark during an MSNBC conversation between host Ali Velshi and journalist Erin Laughlin. Laughlin was saying that “So far, not a single Russian troop has been seen.”

We were hearing English change, right before our eyes. For some years now the word troop has been acquiring a new meaning and usage. I’m sure that lexicographers were very interested in that MSNBC broadcast!

Here’s what I mean. When I was growing up, troop always referred to a group of soldiers or Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts. I belonged to Girl Scout Troop 4 in Bethpage, New York. Sometimes several troops would get together for an activity. Five troops might include 50 or 60 Girl Scouts.

Nowadays, though, troops means “soldiers.” For example, here’s an excerpt from the December 15 New York Times. The subject is the American military withdrawal from Iraq:

Although Thursday’s ceremony represented the official end of the war, the military still has two bases in Iraq and roughly 4,000 troops, including several hundred who attended the ceremony. At the height of the war in 2007, there were 505 bases and more than 170,000 troops.

That 170,000 troops means 170,000 soldiers.

What’s so exciting (or disturbing, depending on your point of view) is that Erin Laughlin used troop as a singular word to mean “one soldier”: “not a single Russian troop has been seen.” That’s new! I haven’t heard anyone else use “one troop” that way. (Back in 1955, we would have thought she meant “not a single Russian military unit has been seen.”)

I can guarantee that Erin Laughlin’s remark was recorded and noted in a vocabulary log. If many more people start using troop that way, eventually we’ll get a new dictionary entry.

And that, folks, is how dictionaries are updated.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

You can hear the question mark in the student’s voice. That tells you to put the question mark inside the quotation marks. (If the student hadn’t been asking a question, you’d put the question mark outside the quotation marks.)

I had to stop and think about this question from one of my students: “Instead of making us take notes, why don’t you just give us a handout with the information we need?”  CORRECT

Here’s a sentence where the question mark belongs outside the quotation marks:

Did the recipe say, “two tablespoons of cornmeal”?  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Should You Worry about These Errors? Part 2

 

Instant Quiz

Can you correct the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.  

Julie and Ralph asked their wedding guests to throw rose pedals rather than rice.

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I’m working my way through 17 grammar errors that Bill Murphy Jr. thinks we can stop worrying about. (See his post here.)

6. Irregardless
Bill got this one right – and wrong. Irregardless is okay in casual settings, but you shouldn’t use it in professional writing. And he missed the mark when he described it as “technically not a word.” Of course it’s a word!

Look up the definition of “word” in a dictionary. Any group of letters or sounds with a consistent meaning is a word.

What Murphy meant was that “irregardless” is a nonstandard word.

Murphy makes another error when he declares no decent person would correct you. (I’ll skip the vulgarism he used.) If you’re an editor, you have my permission to go ahead and correct it.

7. Further versus farther
I not only agree with Murphy – I’d go a step further. Nobody cares which one you use. Attempts to give them different meanings fall apart very quickly. Stop worrying about this one!

8. Me versus I
Murphy made me happy when he explained this with a shortcut that I’ve been teaching my students for 40 years (with no need for grammar gobbledygook). Remove the other person from the sentence and see whether “I” or “me” still makes sense:

Greg helped me with the report.  CORRECT

Greg helped Donna and me with the report.  CORRECT

Again, though, I disagree that you shouldn’t correct this error. Isn’t that what editors are paid to do?

9. One or two spaces after a period
Murphy thinks this battle isn’t worth fighting. I do. Professionals don’t expect other people to clean up after them. If you’re getting paid for your writing, someone else is going to have to remove those unwanted spaces. Even worse, you’re going to come across like a dinosaur.

Professionals respect their equipment and use it properly.

10. Em-dash overuse
Here’s Murphy’s position: “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as em dash overuse. I understand that other punctuation might often be more technically correct, but I think of it as all-purpose punctuation that fits the way people read today.”

All I can add here is – hooray! I love dashes. Bring ’em on! (If you’re wondering what an “em-dash” is, I used to be bothered by that too – but now I know what they are. And I just typed one for you.)

I’ll do 11 -17 in a future post (and I’ll add a gripe or two). 

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

The word you need today is petal. (A pedal is something you press, usually with your foot.)

Julie and Ralph asked their wedding guests to throw rose petals rather than rice.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Singular or Plural?

Instant Quiz

Can you improve the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

Currently we hold our budget meetings on Thursday mornings at 9:30.

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Grammar Day was March 4 this year. I always abstain from the annual Grammar Day celebrations, and all of my friends know why: I think grammar is bogus.

Grammar rules and terminology rarely help with a writing problem – quite the opposite, in fact: grammar often leads to confusion.

Monday’s New York Times is a good example. The news summary on the front page featured this sentence:

Angry over blackouts and rising electricity bills, a small but growing number of Californians is going off the grid.

Obviously “a number” requires a singular verb – is. Except that in this case it doesn’t. The actual article got it right:

Angry over blackouts, wildfires caused by utilities and rising electricity bills, a small but growing number of Californians in rural areas and in the suburbs of San Francisco are going off the grid.

In English a number is plural, but the number is singular.

A number of Californians are going off the grid.  (are is plural)

The number of members keeps dropping.  (keeps is singular)

Grammar – as I said earlier – is bogus. It’s not a set of guardrails to keep you from making a mistake. Instead it’s an attempt to explain – in fancy language – what the English language is doing. The language always comes first, and then grammarians rush in to try to explain what’s happening.

Often that process doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Grammarians may have to do some fudging to come up with a plausible rule to explain the crazy usages that have found their way into English.

But if you can’t rely on grammar rules, how can you be sure you’re writing correctly? Luckily there are some common-sense answers.

For starters, you can do what I’ve done (and continue to do): read some good books about English usage. I highly recommend Theodore Bernstein’s books, for example.

(Did you notice that I said usage rather than grammar? Usage does not claim to be a divinely inspired answer to our questions about language. It deals with language problems in a practical way: how do today’s educated speakers handle a particular issue?)

Another strategy is to make sure you have as much experience with English (preferably good English) as possible, especially if you’re an international learner. Read! Watch TV! Talk with a native speaker!

And you can make a resolution that you’ll always, always have someone look over your writing before you submit or post it.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Currently is unnecessary. “We hold our budget meetings” means it’s happening NOW.

We hold our budget meetings on Thursday mornings at 9:30.   CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Should You Worry about These Errors? Part 1

 

Instant Quiz

Can you improve the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.

Linda, Jack, and myself will be presenting the new budget at next week’s meeting.

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My friend Jenna just sent me a list of mistakes that don’t matter, created by Bill Murphy at Inc.com.

I always have fun with these lists! There’s usually a mixture of good and bad advice, and that’s certainly true of this list. (For starters, most of them have nothing to do with grammar, and a number of them aren’t wrong and never were. I’ll explain those points in a future post.)

Let’s talk about items 1 – 5 today:

1.  Bill Murphy wants us to forget about “his or her” and use their instead. Bravo, Bill! I’ve taken a vow that I will never use the unspeakably clumsy “his or her” again.

Scared to do it? Listen: nobody will even notice. I just published an academic book, and there’s not a single “his or her” anywhere. I used they every time The copyeditor didn’t change any of them.

2.  Who vs. That: Murphy says that you shouldn’t worry about this one. I’m usually careful with it, but I do use who when I write about someone’s pets (or my own). Again, nobody’s going to notice.

3.  Less vs. Fewer. Murphy says you shouldn’t worry about it. I agree, and I’m going to push this  further than he did. It’s a bogus rule. In 1770 a writer named Robert Baker said that he thought “less” should be reserved for uncountable nouns (like coffee, snow, and smoke). Suddenly a rule was born!

English had been using less for countable nouns (“less potatoes”) for almost a thousand years before Robert Baker made his suggestion. What do you think are the chances of breaking a language habit that’s been around that long? Nil.

Many people overuse fewer – another argument for using less. (People, stop saying “fewer than one!” Gack!)

4.  Skipping the -ly in adverbs. Yes – sometimes.

In May, when the Kentucky Derby comes along, I’ll be writing a post about this line from “My Old Kentucky Home”: “The sun shines bright/On my old Kentucky Home.” Stephen Foster didn’t think he had to use brightly, and you don’t have to either.

5.  That vs. Which. I think Murphy missed the boat with this one. He quotes a rule that I find weird: “Use that if cutting the clause would change the meaning of a sentence.” I’m a pretty smart person, but that rule sounds like gobbledygook to me.

Here’s a rule that I (ahem!) invented that works great for me: Never let a comma touch the word that. It’s a rule of thumb and doesn’t work 100% of the time. But my goodness – it’s untangled so many punctuation problems for me!

It solves the that vs. which problem in the wink of an eye: I recommend taking the downtown shuttle, that runs every 30 minutes between 7 AM and 7 PM.

Nope! There’s a comma next to that. I’d change it to this: I recommend taking the downtown shuttle, which runs every 30 minutes between 7 AM and 7 PM.

We’ll do 6 – 10 in my next post.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Be careful not to overuse myself. It comes in handy in sentences like this one: “I was able to install the updates myself.” Otherwise you should use I and me: myself can sound pretentious.

Linda, Jack, and I will be presenting the new budget at next week’s meeting.

(If you’re wondering whether I or me is correct, put your thumb over Linda and Jack. That shortens the sentence, and you’ll instantly know that I is the correct word: “I will be presenting the new budget.”)

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Sometimes I’m Inconsistent!

 

Instant Quiz

Can you correct the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.  

After I talked to my Doctor, I decided to get a booster shot against Covid.

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Yes, sometimes I make rules for myself – and then happily break them! More about that in a moment.

Let’s talk about Latin first. I wasn’t a serious student in high school, and I don’t remember much from my four years of Latin. (Before you judge me, let me ask how interested you would be in Caesar’s Gallic Wars if you were fifteen years old!)

One thing did stay with me, however: the non solum…sed etiam pattern in Latin. It translates into “not only…but also.” Here’s an example:

Jane non solum studet difficile sed etiam iocum esse cum.

Jane not only studies hard but also is fun to be with.

Although my husband (who never studied Latin) sometimes uses this pattern, I dislike it. I would probably go wild with this sentence I just gave you and and come up with something like this:

You might expect a serious student to be a serious person as well. But Jane makes straight A’s–and she’s fun to be with.

I just searched my new book about Bernard Shaw. I used “not only” a mere three times in the book – and always without the “but also.”

Here’s one of those sentences. (It’s about Freddy Eynsford-Hill and Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.)

Not only does he talk with one of his social inferiors: he marries her–and then goes on to do something else that’s equally unthinkable: he becomes one of those “inferiors” himself–a shopkeeper.

Recently I was discussing all of this with a writer friend – who promptly pointed out that this is a mouthful of a sentence. I’m the one who’s always railing against cramming too much into a sentence – and look at what I’ve done! (Even worse, there are two colons.)

Damn it – I like this sentence. I think it has a lot of energy. The language is actually very simple: all but four words have only one or two syllables. (I just received the page proofs for this book, and I’m happy to report that the copyeditor didn’t touch this sentence.)

Writing rules (even the ones I make up myself) have limited usefulness. You have to go with what works. (Did you notice that my sentence about Jane ended with a preposition? Was that a problem for you? Did you care?)

If I were writing for a more general readership, there’s a simple fix for that fancy sentence about Freddy and Eliza: make it two sentences.

Not only does he talk with one of his social inferiors: he marries her. And then he goes on to do something else that’s equally unthinkable: he becomes one of those “inferiors” himself–a shopkeeper.

It’s okay to have fun and feel free with language!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

You need to lower-case doctor. Jobs and roles don’t get capital letters unless they’re part of a name: “After I talked to Dr. Wilson….”

After I talked to my doctor, I decided to get a booster shot against Covid.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

If and When You Read This

Instant Quiz

Can you correct the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer. 

I’ll be packing my cloths for the trip tonight.

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A recent article in the New York Times explored reasons why fewer New Yorkers are riding the subways:

In a fall survey, 90 percent of New York subway riders who had not yet returned to the trains said that their concern about crime and harassment was a major factor in when and if they would return.

I’m a former New Yorker who rode the subways for years. It provides a vital service for the city, and I hope it will soon come roaring back.

Meanwhile, though, I have a complaint about the Times: “if and when” is redundant. It’s a cliche that professional writers should avoid.

If those former subway riders indeed come back, there’s going to be a when eventually. We’ll see a statement like this in the Times: “Ridership was up 10% in May.” When did the riders come back? In May.

Simple, isn’t it?

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

The word you need in today’s Quiz is clothes.

I’ll be packing my clothes for the trip tonight.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Sidney Poitier

Instant Quiz

Can you correct the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer. 

Although it was a miniscule error, my boss kept complaining about it.

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Several people have been asking questions about obtaining permission to reprint. Instead of taking you through the steps, I’m going to tell you a true story about a particularly thorny permissions problem I ran into myself.

Sidney Poitier – the superb actor who died last week – is the hero of this story.

Some years ago I wrote a study skills textbook for college students. Early in the writing process I spent several Saturday mornings in the biography section of local library, scanning the early chapters to look for true stories from famous people about their early learning experiences.

I struck gold with actor Sidney Poitier’s memoir This Life. (He’s since written another one.) Poitier described arriving in New York City from the Bahamas as an ambitious 17-year-old with little education and limited funds. He supported himself washing dishes and dreamed of becoming an actor – but he couldn’t read well enough to get through an audition.

A Jewish waiter saw Poitier struggling to read a newspaper and offered to help. Years later, Poitier vividly remembered those reading lessons. One especially helpful skill was learning how to figure out the meaning of a word from the context. It was an impressive story, well told, and I gladly paid the Alfred A. Knopf publishing company $100 for permission to copy Poitier’s story in my chapter on reading.

Happily, my study skills book eventually went into a second edition. But not so happily, I had to redo all the permissions, and the Poitier selection became a problem. Knopf no longer owned the rights – they had been transferred to Poitier’s law firm.

In those pre-Internet days, it was no small feat to learn who Poitier’s lawyers were – and that was only the beginning of my struggles. The permissions fee was too small for the firm to be concerned about. I called multiple times, explaining that my book was about to go into production and I desperately need that permission form. Each time they promised to take care of it – and promptly forgot.

One morning I went through my spiel for about the twentieth time (it seemed that someone different answered the phone whenever I called). I was put on hold. After several minutes, someone came on the line and asked what I wanted.

I was getting fed up with telling my story over and over – but common sense won the day, and I politely explained what I wanted.

“Can you tell me more?” the voice asked. And suddenly it dawned on me that I was talking to Poitier himself. The attorney’s office had patched my call through to his home phone.

I explained how impressed I’d been with his story about the dishwasher and newspaper lessons. Poitier gave me his fax number and asked me to send the chapter to him so he could see what I’d be doing with his story.

Three days later I opened my mailbox and found the signed permission form there. He was the only author who didn’t ask for a permissions fee.

A great and generous man.

(Because I’ve been hearing so many questions about modes of development, I’m adding a postscript. If I’d described the permission steps in a general way, this would have been a process article. Today I’ve told you a story that happened once, so it’s a narrative.)

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Minuscule is misspelled! If you think about “minus,” you’ll spell it correctly every time.

Although it was a minuscule error, my boss kept complaining about it.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

An Interesting Sentence!

Instant Quiz

Can you improve the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.     

Although my mother doesn’t like this dress, five different people complimented me when I wore it yesterday!

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Today we’re going to look at a sentence that seemed simple to me – until I started an online conversation about it. Ray Lewis is an English teacher who saw something I didn’t!

I think you’ll be interested in our reactions – but there’s more. I think our online conversation makes an important point: often there are multiple ways to think about language.

(Note: PTSD is an acronym for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A person who’s lived through a horrible experience may suffer aftershocks – PTSD – for a long time: depression, rage, and fear, for example.)

Let’s get started! Here’s the sentence we’re talking about today:

People with PTSD will be severely affected in their daily life, study and work.

Here’s my reaction:

The word “affected” is wrong here. It’s a word that writers should usually avoid. It’s too vague. Will life be better – or worse – for people with PTSD?

Here’s my suggestion for improving the sentence:

People with PTSD are going to have difficulty in their daily life, study, and work.

Soon after I posted this, an English teacher named Ray Lewis raised an objection:

I don’t see that the meaning of affected is ambiguous here, because of the clear connotation of ill-effects given by the use of the adverb severely.

Of course, without that adverb it might be more difficult to determine that weren’t talking about beneficial effects. However, the context of any preceding text may well make this clear too.

Here’s what I think: BRAVO, Ray! You’re absolutely right.

Ray’s comments underline an essential truth about language: the meaning usually comes through, even if the experts have quibbles.

Language is almost bulletproof. As Ray noted, often there are clues to the meaning (in this case, the word severely). And he made another important point: context often has important clues for us.

I’m going to add one more comment: I always encourage writers to use strong verbs. Affected is a wishy-washy word. I’d say that PTSD destroys relationships, ruins lives, destroys careers…you get the idea.

Thanks for a stimulating conversation, Ray!

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Five different people means exactly the same thing as five people. Don’t use different unless it adds something useful to a sentence. (Today it doesn’t.)

Although my mother doesn’t like this dress, five people complimented me when I wore it yesterday!  BETTER

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go

Fire Them!

Instant Quiz

Can you improve the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.     

Be sure to preregister for Dr. Pinton’s presentation: we’re expecting a large turnout.

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Someone just posted a question online about the “lexical meaning of hate speech.”

What – I want to know – is the difference between meaning and lexical meaning?

Good writing never sounds pompous. Develop the habit of writing straightforward sentences. Treat unnecessary words like unnecessary employees: get rid of them.

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

There’s no difference between register and preregister. Don’t add -pre to a word unless it’s necessary!

Be sure to register for Dr. Pinton’s presentation: we’re expecting a large turnout.  BETTER

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
“A useful resource for both students and professionals” – Jena L. Hawk, Ph.D., Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College

“Personable and readable…Jean knows her subject forwards and backwards.” – Adair Lara, author of Hold Me Close, Let Me Go