A Sense of Doubt blog post #1790 - Grammar Stuff, part one

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1790 - Grammar Stuff, part one

And so I continue to post my teaching content dating back to the stone age when I began this work and had to carve my teaching lessons into large tablets of granite.

The memes are new. :-)

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION, AND OTHER PLANTS, part one

In the following sentence and all sentences like it, DO NOT precede "because" with any form of punctuation:

"I reminisce about the things that I miss because I keep forgetting about them."

 

Semi-colons may replace conjunctions in compound or coordinated sentences. Conjunctions: and, but, or.

"I chew aspirin in the morning, and I like motor oil in my coffee."

"I chew aspirin in the morning; I like motor oil in my coffee."

 

Use semi-colons before words like however, therefore, and thus if coordinated with a previous sentence. 

"I love Marilyn Monroe for her blonde hair and whimsy; however, I think Ava Gardner is sexier." (NOTE the comma after "however.")

 

a lot: two words

all right: two words

  

DO NOT comma splice. This is an error made by writers in which two clauses (sentences) are separated by a lone comma. 

"Verlander pitched great game, Granderson is the best Tigers player."

 

DO NOT SEPARATE THE SUBJECT AND VERB WITH A COMMA!

"The most important event last week, was the Harmonic Convergence."

"You, waiting relentlessly for me at the corner, howled." Isn't this painful to read?

OR before a prepositional phrase:

"I bought the new Pink Floyd album, at Flipside Records."

OR with coordinators joining just words and/or phrases not sentences:

"The Cubs are the best, and worst team in Baseball."

 

DO NOT USE COMMAS

(offending commas underlined)

after "such as":

"There are many great songs on the 10,000 Maniacs' album In My Tribe, such as, "Hey Jack Kerouac," "What's the Matter Here," and "Verdi Cries."

OR between an adjective and noun:

"BAD, by Michael Jackson, is a horrible, nasty, really bad, album."

OR after the last item in a series:

"Neurotic, vain, and unnecessarily stressed-out, are just a few terms applicable to Opus, the penguin."

  

USE a comma after subordinated clauses when they begin a sentence:

"Because my roommate wears psychedelic underwear, I have moved my bed into the closet." (NOTE where the comma has been placed.)

 

Who=subject and Whom=object.

IF you can replace the who with a pronoun and make a new sentence (a subject and a verb) then you use WHO.  If not, then whom.  EXAMPLES:

"My friends are those terrorists who use psychological bombs to spread apathy among college students."

In the above sentence "who" can be replaced with "they" (they use...), so you KNOW that you must use who in the sentence.

In the following sentence the whom cannot be replaced by a pronoun, and so you know that it is correct.

"Diplomats cannot decide whom to blame for the radiation leak in the Pacific Ocean."

(NOT "they to blame", so you know "whom" is right!)

 

  

REVISE problems with reference.

UGH: "I knew that Egbert was cheating, but the other students were not aware of this."

(Of what were the other students unaware?  The cheating?  Knowing about the cheating by the narrator?  The price of a new iphone?  In any case, the sentence is unclear.)

BETTER: "I knew that Egbert was cheating, but the other students were unaware of his blatant disregard of the honor system."

 

MAKE CERTAIN that your verbs agree with your subject in either the singular or the plural case.

SINGULAR: “The Detroit Pistons is a great organization.”

PLURAL: "The Tigers players are all great, even Todd Jones."

PLURAL (unless as seen on Star Trek the Next Generation): "The data have indicated that the sun will go nova in less than a year." (Data is the plural of datum.)

(Famous unknown singulars: criterion, curriculum, phenomenon, medium, and stimulus.)

(Their brothers and sisters, the plurals: criteria, curricula, phenomena, media, stimuli.)

OFTEN nouns can be both singular and plural.  These are called collective nouns: audience, committee, family, group, jury, police, and team.  BEWARE!

 

Use singular case when you use the noun as a unit, a single thing.

SINGULAR: "The team is a vital socialization unit."

And the plural when speaking of the individual members. 

PLURAL: "The team’s players were scattered about the floor waiting for the in-bounds pass."

REMEMBER the problem with nouns like bank and university ("those bastards").  The bank is an it: "It denied her the loan" as is the university "It cancelled all his classes."

  

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2001.12 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1653 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.