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Are Companies Singular or Plural?

I admit, I can be lax – or at least flexible – about certain grammatical “rules” that are really more stylistic conventions. I’m not a grammar purist by any means. I think that works well both for this column and in my other writing and editing. I write the way most people speak, and I never sacrifice clarity for the sake of grammar rules. I’m fairly forgiving of mistakes, which keeps me from going insane when I’m copyediting the work of non-writers. But I do have a few pet peeves that drive me crazy. People (who are not British or Canadian) who write company names as plural cause me to toss my red pen across the room. In fact, as... [Read More...]

Martial Arts, Chinese Food…and Computer Repair?

I received a flyer in the mail the other day that was just too funny, on so many levels, not to share. The top of the flyer said, “Jackie Chan’s Chinese Restaurant.” Fair enough, although I tend to stay away from restaurants that use celebrity names but are not actually affiliated with said celebrities. Mickey Mantle’s restaurant? Let’s go! Wolfgang Puck’s? I’m in. Something tells me Jackie Chan of movie and martial arts fame has little to do with this place. Because I’m pretty sure Jackie Chan has proofreaders for his marketing materials. Stay with me and you’ll see what I mean. The flyer continued to advertise “Jackie Chans’s... [Read More...]

Things That Make Us [Sic]: A Grammar Book Review

Have you ever read a book whose ideas resonated so strongly, you felt compelled to call up everyone you know and tell them about it? You want to throw up your fist and shout, “Yes! Yes! That’s exactly how it is!” I often feel this way about novels (Atlas Shrugged is my latest infatuation), and sometimes about business and marketing books. (Seth Godin’s Purple Cow was the last one I read that had that effect.) As much of a logophile as I am, rarely does a grammar book hit me in such a way. Until I read Things That Make Us [Sic] by Martha Brockenbrough, founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. Not only does Brockenbrough... [Read More...]

Her website cited the Site as “The Best Sight in the City.”

Photo courtesy of Jen Jones Site. Cite. Sight. I caught myself confusing these words in a blog post the other day, and I figured if I do it, I’m sure others do, as well. If I’m not careful, I use “site” when I mean “cite.” Perhaps it’s because I get so accustomed to typing “site” when I’m referring to websites? Incidentally, “website” is a much higher-ranked keyword than “site.” Much higher. This is, perhaps, one of those instances where it pays to choose the better keyword over the more conversational phrase. Also, since writers strive to avoid ambiguity, and “site” can have multiple meetings, it makes perfect... [Read More...]

Showing and Telling for Article Writers

Warning: I’m getting into realms that can send fiction writers to insane asylums – showing v. telling. Do you need to show rather than tell in non-fiction, as well? The answer, as with so many things in writing, is a definitive, “Sometimes.” (And that’s the case in fiction, as well!) The examples I provide in my posts each week “show” finer grammatical points rather than simply “telling” you about them. I hope I create memorable examples that drive home the lesson. But if I just tossed examples out there with no context, they wouldn’t make much sense either. Showing and telling are both necessary. Showing in Non-Fiction A good... [Read More...]

All About Adjectives

I recently talked about adverbs as an important part of writing. If verbs are the action – the core of our stories and articles – and nouns are the characters, adjectives are the color and style. An adjective is, quite simply, a descriptive word. In some circles, adjectives are as badly maligned as adverbs. “Flowery” prose (never a compliment) uses too many adjectives. But a well-placed adjective paints a picture. It’s the difference between “a man,” and “old man,” and a “young man.” (That’s quite a difference there, right?) If not for adjectives, we’d never have “blue skies, fluffy white clouds and sun-drenched beaches... [Read More...]

NAGG Has Spoken: “It’s Twenty Ten”

It may be the burning grammar question of the new decade. Do you call the new year “two thousand ten?” Or “twenty ten?” NAGG, the National Association of Good Grammar, has adopted the year’s proper pronunciation as a pet cause, issuing a press release declaring that it should be pronounced “twenty ten.” Who is NAGG to say so? NAGG, a group founded in 1986 by technical writer and writing teacher Tom Torriglia, is devoted to cleaning up grammar across the country. Torriglia routinely calls publications about grammatically incorrect ads. Torriglia makes a cogent argument for his preferred pronunciation, “twenty ten.” He is quoted... [Read More...]

My Baby Is Not an It

Some grammar rules are just plain dumb. I’m the first to admit this. For instance, the use of “he” as the default singular pronoun (i.e., everyone should proofread his own work) is not only sexist, it’s a bit silly. That’s probably why the grammatically incorrect “they” and “their” has fallen into common usage as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. While it still makes many English teachers and grammar purists cringe, it’s a case of common sense overriding stodgy old rules. But I’d like to talk about a less publicized, equally offensive grammatical convention: referring to a baby –or a pet — as an “it.” Ex: The... [Read More...]

Funniest Grammar Links of 2009

It’s the end of a long holiday week. If you’re a writer who needed to reach sources for interviews – hope you had lots of fun with that. Some people actually did work this week, but many did not. It’s 20 degrees outside here in the Northeast, and even North Carolina got a smattering of snow early this week. My expressive cousin described it as “that dandruff you see on the ground.” This makes us work-at-home types extremely happy, because we can sit around in our new “Lambie” slippers (the oh-so-cool successor to the passé bunny slippers – get with it, y’all!) and our fluffy robes and still earn money. Granted, we may be working... [Read More...]

If We Collaborate, Maybe We Can Corroborate the Existence of Santa Claus

Grammatical mistakes and word misusage (speaking of which — is that a word? MS Word says it is…) are all around us. I always have my eyes and ears open for what those in the parenting community might call a “teaching moment.” I hadn’t thought of these particular words being confused until I heard them mis-used twice in one week. So, here we go… Collaborate and Corroborate. They sound very similar, are spelled practically the same except for those pesky three letters and, to make matters worse, their meanings are actually similar in that they both imply people doing something together. “Collaborate” means to work together,... [Read More...]

We’ve Got Letters: Quotation Marks, Revisited

A British-born reader and copyeditor recently wrote to our fearless leader (Deb Ng, in case you missed it) regarding my post about quotations and punctuation. He’s given us permission to share his letter, which I’m happy to do here: Dear Deb, I hope you don’t mind me writing to you about this – I didn’t want to post it as an open comment in case it upsets anyone – but I believe the writer of Quotations and Punctuation: A Tale of Cultural Differences (in your Grammar Guide section) has made a slight mistake with reference to the use of quotation marks in British English. It may be important for any of your readers who... [Read More...]

In Defense of Adverbs

Earlier this week, I discussed verbs in our “Parts of Speech” discussion. Verbs create the “meat” of our writing. In fiction, they move the plot forward. In articles and speechwriting, they tell the story. They’re the “do-ers.” If the adage “90 percent of the work is done by 10 percent of the people,” pertained to words, verbs would be that 10 % in the thick of things. Adverbs, on the other hand – they’re like the pretty yet vacuous receptionist or (so as not to pick on one gender exclusively) the boss’s son. They dress things up in the office, but few people really see the point of their existence. At worst, they weigh... [Read More...]

Let’s Get to the Action: Verbs

This post is the second in my series on “parts of speech.” Workshop teachers often instruct aspiring fiction writers to begin their stories: “in media reas” (in the middle of the action). Without verbs, a story would have no action. How dull would that be? Verbs – Verbs are action words. Nouns can “do” verbs. Dogs bark. Writers have blogs. Friends are the friendliest. (Thanks to Moose A. Moose, Nick Jr.’s resident mascot and musician). Those are the basics. Now let’s explore types of verbs. Intransitive verbs: These powerful verbs work with a noun to express a complete thought: Dogs bark. No other words are necessary. Transitive... [Read More...]

Using the C-Words Properly

I’d like to talk about a few commonly confused words today. The usage rules for one of them had me so confused I simply stopped using the word for several years. Only recently did I realize it’s hard to go wrong when you use the word. The words in question? COMPOSE and COMPRISE What tripped me up about these two words? Apparently, in many cases, they can be used interchangeably. But comprise can be used in instances where “composed of” would not make sense – and vice versa. Let’s get down to definitions Comprise means, according to dictionary.com, to include, contain, consist of, to form or constitute, and to be composed of. Meanwhile,... [Read More...]

The Noun’s the Thing

Did you ever play Mad Libs as a kid? If you did, you remember filling in nouns, verbs and adjectives to make up wacky stories. But you might not remember what those words mean. Based on readers’ questions over the past few weeks, I’m launching a new series defining grammatical terms. We’ll start with the basics and then move on to more obscure terms like predicates, conjunctions and gerunds. I hope I haven’t lost you with those. Bear with me and in a week or so, you, too, will be able to speak like Mrs. Johnson from eighth grade English class. Nouns: Every story needs a subject Noun – A noun is a person, place or thing. It’s as simple... [Read More...]