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Pam Nelson: The Grammar Guide

 

Archive for September 2008

Number of comments in parentheses

26: Try a Triangle Grammar Guide quiz

Today’s quiz was inspired and aided by John Bremner’s "Words on Words." The five sentences on the quiz involve word choices. Some sentences appeared in print; others were composed to illustrate the point. Click here or on the question mark icon to begin. 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.

21: Found treasure

I happened across a copy of John B. Bremner’s "Words on Words" on a bookshelf in The N&O’s computer training center last week. It had been left behind in an editor’s office. I was excited to find this copy in good shape. My own copy at home is a bit worn, and the book is out of print. Now I have an extra copy to keep on my desk at work and to share with my fellow copy editors. Subtitled "A Dictionary for Writers and Others Who Care about Words," the book was published in 1980, but it still[.....]

21: Book review: "The Secret Life of Words"

"The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English" by Henry Hitchings. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 448 pages, September 2008. In "The Secret Life of Words," British writer Henry Hitchings examines words that have entered English from other languages. Through his look at words, Hitchings also explores the history and culture of English-speaking people and finds the connections between what was going on in the world and the words that English borrowed from other languages. This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Co.; is posted here to provide continuity; and[.....]

20: Candidates and their rhetoric

Speeches in this year’s presidential campaign are awash in a rhetorical device called antimetabole, according to an article in Slate. In this device, the speaker repeats words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order, as in President Kennedy’s "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." I learned about the Slate piece in an "On the Media" segment, which linked to this definition. Slate cited a Wikipedia article about antimetabole, which explains the word’s Greek origin. Follow the links above for more examples, and click here for a pronouncing guide.[.....]

14: Word watch: Anonymize

A discussion on the radio show "On The Media" about Google’s data gathering used this word: anonymize. You can click on the embedded link below to hear the talk between host Bob Garfield and Alissa Cooper of the Center for Democracy and Technology.     Here is the definition of anonymize from Wiktionary: to render anonymous. Merriam-Webster Online does not have an entry for the word. Neither does my copy of Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Dictionary.com has an entry and cites Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English. At OneLook.com, two medical dictionaries were cited. I believe the word[.....]

10: Who's a boomer?

I’ve heard a few journalists refer to Barack Obama and Sarah Palin as part of the post-baby boom generation. In fact, Obama, born in August 1961, and Palin, born in February 1964, were born during the baby boom years, 1946-1964. The baby boom, of course, is mostly made up of the children of the people who lived through World War II. Perhaps, Obama, born to a woman born in 1942, doesn’t qualify as a boomer under that criteria, and Palin was born in the very last year of the boom. (I haven’t been able to find whether her father[.....]

7: Looking into "maverick"

A reader sent a note last week about the word "maverick," which Republicans and the news media repeatedly used to refer to Sen. John McCain. The reader looked up the definitions and found this one: "especially a calf that has become separated from its mother." As the reader wryly noted, McCain’s mother, Roberta, was right there in the audience at last week’s Republican National Convention. (Here is an aside that really has nothing to do with politics: Wow, she’s 96 and she’s very pretty.) Of course, the Republicans use "maverick" to mean a politician who doesn’t go along with[.....]

1: Try a Triangle Grammar Guide quiz

Today’s quiz contains various grammar, usage, punctuation or spelling problems. Try the quiz and leave a comment if you wish. I’ve put no time limit on the quiz, which has the usual five parts. 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.

1: Book review: "Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences"

"Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences: A Guide to Avoiding the Most Common Errors in Grammar and Punctuation" by Janis Bell, W.W. Norton & Co., $21.95 hard cover, 128 pages) Janis Bell has written a useful book. She has been teaching writing and grammar for more than 30 years, and her book aims to teach writers how to avoid the common errors. The seven chapters in this slim book cover Case, Agreement, Verb Tense and Usage, Verb Mood, Modifiers, Connectives and Punctuation. I agree with her about the most common errors, although I add homonym misuse to the list. She assumes some[.....]