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Pam Nelson: The Grammar Guide

 

Archive for February 2011

Number of comments in parentheses

23: Let's learn about pronouns: Grammar Guide quiz No. 55

The latest Grammar Guide quiz involves pronouns. Some explanations in this quiz include grammatical terms such as "nominative case" and "bare infinitive." Those are for the true geeks among us. I hope even those with only casual interest in grammar and usage will find something of interest in the quiz and the explanations.  Click here to begin the quiz. As always, I welcome comments and e-mail messages. My plea for hits on the quiz I posted Sunday with posts on my own Facebook page and the Grammar Guide Twitter feed @grammarguide worked wonderfully well. I am grateful to all[.....]

21: Don't expect the lexicographers to referee

Columnist Barry Saunders finds fault with the word ginormous and wishes editors would not allow such coinages into the pages of dictionaries. John McIntyre, who writes You Don't Say at baltimoresun.com, explains that lexicographers are not legislators. They describe what is going on with language; they do not put a stamp of approval on coinages merely by adding them to the dictionary. Of course, I don't recommend using "ginormous" in a news story or in an academic paper. The New Oxford American Dictionary's entry for "ginormous" notes that it is "informal, humorous." That's guidance that writers can heed. And[.....]

20: Tricky word choices: A Grammar Guide Quiz (No. 54)

The latest Grammar Guide quiz involves commonly confused words — as you might have guessed, one of my favorite copy editing challenges. Some of the sentences on the quiz lend themselves to varied interpretation, so if you happen to choose the "incorrect" answer, you could argue that you read the writer's meaning differently. This quiz has 10 sentences, rather than the standard five. I've been saving up examples. As an enticement, I promise a little humor in some explanations. Click here to begin the quiz. As always, I welcome comments and e-mail messages. Tell your friends and spread the[.....]

9: Word nerd reading: Untranslatable expressions

I saw this feature in the March issue of Reader's Digest: Eight expressions that ought to exist in our native tongue but don't. The excerpt comes from a travel site called Matador Network. My favorite is "jayus" from Indonesian: "a joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh." Check out the list of "20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World" by Jason Wire. 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[.....]

6: The disappearing regional dialect: Raleigh

A story in The News & Observer's Sunday edition might be interesting to language buffs and fans of regional accents. Robin Dodsworth, an associate linguistics professor at N.C. State University, says that the Raleigh accent is gradually disappearing. She's also looking for natives of Raleigh to participate in her study. If you grew up in Raleigh — as far south as Garner or as far north as Wake Forest — and want to contribute your voice to Dodsworth's data, e-mail her at robi…@ncsu.edu.   This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The[.....]

1: Kayaker vs. canoeist: agent nouns and suffixes

A reader asks this interesting question: Two items in the news yesterday made me wonder, and I hope you have an answer to my question. The first Item referred to a man in a kayak as a "kayaker," the second item referred to a man in a canoe as a "canoeist." Both are paddling a watercraft, so why is one an "er" and the other an "ist"? Both kayaker and canoeist are agent nouns, words formed from other words to identify a person taking an action. I thought the answer could lie in the etymology of the suffixes -er[.....]