Front page

Pam Nelson: The Grammar Guide

 

Archive for August 2008

Number of comments in parentheses

23: Error correctors make a big error

The Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL) received some attention in the news media and from the justice system recently. Two members of TEAL, which makes a crusade of correcting errors on public signage, have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic sign at the Grand Canyon. Read a news story about it here. I heard about this incident from Friday night’s "Worst Person" segment on MSNBC’s "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." If you can stomach Olbermann’s liberal bent, click on the embedded video below. This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of[.....]

23: What you can grow

This sentence led a reader to call us last week: Since she quit her job in March, her goal has been to continue growing the business. As I indicated with italics, the offending phrase was "growing the business." The reader, who was quite animated, wanted us to stop using this bit of business jargon. In her mind, you can grow flowers and you can grow a beard, but you cannot grow a business. In "Garner’s Modern American Usage," Bryan A. Garner writes, "Recently, however, grow has blossomed as a transitive verb in nonfarming and nongrooming contexts. It is trendy[.....]

16: Don't fear the apostrophe

Two advertisements caught our eyes this week. They have apostrophe problems, but different ones. The first, pictured below, falls into the old trap of using an apostrophe to make a plural. The shopping center mentioned in this ad, which came as a direct mail flier, is Clayton Corners (multiple corners). The second ad appeared on television. It has a more unusual apostrophe problem, as you can see below. We use apostrophes to make nouns possessive, a vestige of a time when English was a more inflected language, when words changed form to indicate their function in a sentence. Pronouns[.....]

12: Looking into "saber rattling"

I heard a television commentator refer to recent statements from U.S. politicians about Russia’s invasion of Georgia as "saber rattling." That led to my thinking about why we use what sounds like a 19th-century term to refer to a 21st-century act. It turns out, however, that "saber rattling" entered the English language in the 1920s, according to several dictionaries. The idiom refers to threatening behavior intended to frighten or to an ostentatious display of military power. The Oxford English Dictionary also gives "aggressive blustering" as a meaning. The TV commentator used it to label the politicians’ statements as threats[.....]

10: Pronoun madness

Yes, there are much more important issues than this, but a few readers do notice when we mix up who and whom. Here is an example from Friday’s 2A, a spot where we promote stories coming up in print or features online. Of course, the sentence should read, "Go online now and see whom you selected as the Triangle’s Best Bartender." The test is to rearrange the sentence and to try another pronoun: You selected him as the Best Bartender. The object of the verb "selected" needs to be a pronoun in the objective case. I use "him" in[.....]

7: Guess the most common words

This is fun. Click here to see how many of the 100 most common words in English you can guess in five minutes. 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.

6: Try a word quiz on Triangle Grammar Guide

Today’s quiz is one of those that a regular commenter has called a "spelling" quiz. True, some of the choices in the sentences on the quiz are between two homonyms, but at least one sentence will ask quiz takers to choose from two words that are often confused but have different uses. I put a timer on this quiz, just to try out that function of the quiz-writing software. Three minutes is probably much more than anyone would need to complete the five sentences, but if you find the time is not sufficient, please send me a message or[.....]

6: Rules for word order

I ran across this Professor Grammar video on YouTube that explains the English grammar rule on word order for adjectives before nouns. The professor uses the acronym OPSHACOM for opinion, shape, age, color, origin and material. I have linked to the video below if you want to watch. Warning: It’s corny and slightly annoying, but the lesson is good. The video lasts about six minutes. Here is another site that explains adjective order and it has a practice quiz. And this About.com page on English as a second language uses a slightly different explanation for adjective word order.  [.....]

5: Word choice: Emigrate and immigrate

A reader called writer David Menconi to object to a word use in Menconi’s Arts & Living profile of singer Aline Simone. Simone was born in the Ukraine in 1975, to dire circumstances because her parents were on the outs with the ruling Soviet regime. Her family immigrated to America when she was an infant. The caller, who left no name, contended that the verb should have been "emigrated." Menconi had originally written "emigrated," but in proofing the page, I changed the verb to "immigrated," relying on the Associated Press Stylebook and other usage authorities such as Theodore Bernstein,[.....]

4: Apostrophes plague the sign-makers

My husband visited the North Carolina mountains for a few days and came back with these images of signage mishaps. The second sign is particularly odd. It’s on a manufactured item, so presumably hundreds more are out there with the same mistake.               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.

4: A dictionary's new entries

The annual update of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary includes about 100 new words, according to Merriam-Webster Online. The print version of the dictionary will be out in September. I am a bit late with this news. The Web site asked for reader submissions of their own favorite "mondegreen," which is a word or phrase that results from mishearing something said or sung. One of my favorites was from church. When I was a child and the congregation sang The Doxology ("Praise God, From Whom All Blessings Flow") I always heard "Praise him all preachers here below." Makes sense, right? The[.....]

2: Triangle Grammar Guide quiz

Today’s quiz is different from previous Triangle Grammar Guide quizzes. In each of the five parts, you will see two sentences and must choose the correctly written (or, at least, the better written) sentence in each pair. I fully expect to hear from you about better versions of the correct sentences and appreciate any comments you have. After the quiz, you’ll be directed to the grammar blog, and you can leave your comments on this post. (Don’t read the comments before you take the quiz if you don’t want to be influenced by others’ comments.). This quiz has another[.....]

2: What does "in tandem" mean?

This headline brought a note from a reader: ‘Extreme Makeover’ helped, but ministry now struggles Refurbishing was in tandem with work on member’s home The phrase "in tandem," the reader said, doesn’t mean parallel or side by side. It means one after the other. The headline refers to two projects that occurred almost simultaneously. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, tandem comes from the name for a carriage that was pulled by two horses hitched one after the other, and as a adverb, it refers to one behind the other. It also applies to the famous bicycle built for[.....]