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Pam Nelson: The Grammar Guide

 

Archive for September 2006

Number of comments in parentheses

26: Doing our homework

Today’s story about teachers reassessing the value of homework made me think again of my school days. I have thought over the years about what would have helped my generation (middle baby boomers) become better writers. I don’t know if homework would have helped, but more writing would have. My mother, an English teacher for 40 years, believed in having students write and revise and revise again. It meant a great deal of work for her, but her students did well in freshman composition in college. I wonder if that model would have helped others. But it’s not too[.....]

24: National Punctuation Day

Oops, I forgot National Punctuation Day. Celebrate with great apostrophes every day! This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Co.; is posted here to provide continuity; and is copyright © 2011 The News & Observer Publishing Company, which reserves the right to remove this post.

9: The whole comprises the parts

Some usage guides use this way of steering writers away from “is comprised of”: “Comprise is best used in the active voice.” That doesn’t help writers understand the meaning of “comprise.” Here is a sentence in the active voice: Egerton plays hostess and she, Jarrell and a handful of others comprise the house band, Germantown Strings. But “comprise” is closer in meaning to “contain” or “include,” not “make up.” The best way to remember how to use “comprise” is to remember that the whole comprises the parts, instead of the parts “comprising” the whole. So the band comprises its[.....]

3: Kudos is all Greek to me

I noticed “kudos” in The News & Observer today, so I can write about the plural/singular dispute. You might not have been aware of such a dispute. It’s one of those usage geek things. (Actually, “kudos” appears in the paper regularly as the name of a list in the Business section.) The use in today’s (Sept. 4) edition is in a letter to the editor. Please note that I am not finding fault with this sentence. It’s just a way to get into the subject: “Kudos for prominently displaying (news story, Aug. 30) the findings of a new report[.....]

2: Hopefully, I can explain this

An editor told me that he noticed “hopefully” in a G.D. Gearino column, which I happened to have copy-edited. Here is the sentence: And hopefully she doesn’t remember that the other patrons cheered as she and her pals were escorted out of the building. Strict grammarians (some say language snobs) object to this use of “hopefully.” They say that the word means “in a hopeful manner,” not “it is to be hoped” or “we hope,” as Gearino means it in his sentence. [More:] The second use of the word became in vogue early in the 20th century but has[.....]