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nglish Grammar
E
Workbook
FOR

DUMmIES

‰

nglish Grammar
E
Workbook
FOR

DUMmIES

‰

by Geraldine Woods

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies®
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc
...

Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
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Copyright © 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-9932-3
ISBN-10: 0-7645-9932-1
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1B/SQ/QU/QW/IN

About the Author
Geraldine Woods began her education when teachers still supplied ink wells to their students
...
She lives in New York City, where with great difficulty she refrains
from correcting signs containing messages such as “Bagel’s for sale
...


Dedication
For the students who labor (and occasionally smile) in the grammar portion of my English
classes
...
I appreciate the work of Kristin DeMint, Sarah Faulkner, and
Neil Johnson, editors whose attention and intelligence guided my writing
...


Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at
www
...
com/register/
...
Cox

Layout and Graphics: Denny Hager,
Stephanie D
...
Neil Johnson
Editorial Program Coordinator: Hanna K
...
the5thwave
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Cocks, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies
Michael Spring, Vice President and Publisher, Travel
Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel
Publishing for Technology Dummies
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User
Composition Services
Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Contents at a Glance
Introduction
...
7
Chapter 1: Placing the Proper Verb in the Proper Place
...
23
Chapter 3: Who Is She, and What Is It? The Lowdown on Pronouns
...
49

Part II: Mastering Mechanics
...
67
Chapter 6: Made You Look! Punctuation Marks That Demand Attention
...
91
Chapter 8: “Let Me Speak!“ Quotation Marks
...
113

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
...
127
Chapter 11: Choosing the Best Pronoun for a Tricky Sentence
...
155
Chapter 13: Are You and Your Verbs in the Right Mood?
...
177
Chapter 14: Writing Good or Well: Adjectives and Adverbs
...
189
Chapter 16: For Better or Worse: Forming Comparisons
...
215

Part V: Writing with Style
...
229
Chapter 19: Spicing Up and Trimming Down Your Sentences
...
255

Part VI: The Part of Tens
...
269
Chapter 22: Ten Errors to Avoid at All Cost
...
277
Index
...
1
About This Book
...
2
What You’re Not to Read
...
2
How This Book Is Organized
...
3
Part II: Mastering Mechanics
...
4
Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons
...
4
Part VI: The Part of Tens
...
4
Where to Go from Here
...
7
Chapter 1: Placing the Proper Verb in the Proper Place
...
9
Shining a Light on Not-So-Perfect Tenses
...
12
Mastering the Two Most Common Irregulars: Be and Have
...
15
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Verbs
...
17

Chapter 2: Matchmaker, Make Me a Match: Pairing Subjects
and Verbs Correctly
...
23
Isn’t Love Groovy? Pairing Subjects and Verbs
...
26
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Hitching Subjects and Verbs
...
30

Chapter 3: Who Is She, and What Is It? The Lowdown on Pronouns
...
35
Taking Possession of the Right Pronoun
...
38
Avoiding Double Meanings
...
42
Answers to Pronoun Problems
...
49
Seeking Out the Subject/Verb Pair
...
51
Going for Flow: Joining Sentences Correctly
...
55

xii

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies
Complete or Incomplete? That Is the Question
...
58
Answers to Complete Sentence Problems
...
65
Chapter 5: Exercising Comma Sense
...
67
You Talkin’ to Me? Direct Address
...
70
Introducing (and Interrupting) with the Comma
...
73
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Commas
...
76

Chapter 6: Made You Look! Punctuation Marks That Demand Attention
...
81
Just Dashing Through
...
84
Placing Colons
...
85
Answers to Punctuation Problems
...
91
Putting Words on a Diet: Contractions
...
93
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Apostrophes
...
96

Chapter 8: “Let Me Speak!“ Quotation Marks
...
101
Embedding One Quotation inside Another
...
105
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Quotation Marks
...
108

Chapter 9: Hitting the Big Time: Capital Letters
...
113
Entering the Worlds of Business and Academia
...
116
Placing Geographical Capitals
...
m
...
118
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Capital Letters
...
121

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
...
127
Meeting the Subject at Hand and the Object of My Affection
...
129

Table of Contents
Linking Up with Pronouns in “To Be” Sentences
...
131
Matching Possessive Pronouns to “-ing” Nouns
...
133
Answers to Pronoun Case Problems
...
141
Nodding in Agreement: Pronouns and Possessives Come Head to Head
...
143
Decoding Who, That, and Which
...
146
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Tricky Pronoun Situations
...
150

Chapter 12: Traveling in Time: Tricky Verb-Tense Situations
...
155
The Unchanging Universe: When You’re Stuck in the Present
...
158
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Verb Tenses
...
161

Chapter 13: Are You and Your Verbs in the Right Mood?
...
167
Taking Command: Imperative Mood
...
169
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Moody Verbs
...
172

Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions
and Comparisons
...
179
Distinguishing between Adjectives and Adverbs
...
181
Mastering the Art of Articles
...
183
Answers to Adjective and Adverb Problems
...
189
Little Words Mean a Lot: Situating “Even,” “Only,” and Similar Words
...
192
Hanging Off a Cliff: Dangling Descriptions
...
196
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice Placing Descriptions
...
199

Chapter 16: For Better or Worse: Forming Comparisons
...
205
Going from Bad to Worse (And Good to Better): Irregular Comparisons
...
208
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Bad Comparisons
...
211

xiii

xiv

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies
Chapter 17: Apples and Oranges: Improper Comparisons
...
215
Being Smarter than Yourself: Illogical Comparisons
...
219
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Improper Comparisons
...
222

Part V: Writing with Style
...
229
Geometry Invades English: Parallelism Basics
...
231
Matchmaking 101: Either/Or, Not Only/But Also, and Similar Pairs
...
236
Answers to Parallelism Problems
...
243
Beginning with a Bang: Adding Introductory Elements
...
245
Awkward but Interesting: Reversed Sentence Patterns
...
248
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice Honing Your Sentences
...
251

Chapter 20: Steering Clear of Tricky Word Traps
...
255
Comparing Quantities without Numbers
...
258
Verbs That Will Give You a Headache
...
261
Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice with Tricky Words
...
263

Part VI: The Part of Tens
...
269
Substituting “Whom” for “Who”
...
269
Throwing in “Have” at Random
...
270
Speaking or Writing Passively
...
270
Letting Descriptions Dangle
...
271
Being Semi-Attached to Semicolons
...
271

Chapter 22: Ten Errors to Avoid at All Cost
...
273
Letting Sentences Run On and On
...
273

Table of Contents
Being Stingy with Quotation Marks
...
274
Placing New Words in the Wrong Context
...
274
Forgetting to Proofread
...
275
Repeating Yourself
...
277
Exercise One
...
278
Exercise Three
...
280
Answers to Exercise One
...
284
Answers to Exercise Three
...
289

Index
...
No, I’m not making a sentimental statement about the importance
of a job well done or the satisfaction of learning for learning’s sake, though I believe in
both of those values
...
Don’t believe me? Fine
...
Chances are
the characters who have fancy jobs or piles of dough sound different from those who don’t
...
Proper English, either written or spoken, tends to be associated with the upper social or economic classes
...

Another payoff of good grammar is better grades and an edge in college admissions
...

The good news is that you don’t have to spend a lifetime improving your English
...
This book is the equivalent of a health-club membership for your writing and speaking skills
...
Instead, it sends you right to the mat and sets you up with the
exercises that actually do the job
...
A closely guarded English-teacher secret is
that you don’t need to know any of that terminology (well, hardly any) to master grammar
...

Each chapter begins with a quick explanation of the rules (don’t smoke, don’t stick your
chewing gum on the bedpost, be sure your sentence is complete, and so forth)
...
I start off telling you
what’s right and wrong in standard English usage
...
Just to make sure you know that I’m not wasting your
time, in every chapter I give you a sample from real-life English (with a fairly absurd situation, just to keep your funny bone tingling), so you can see how proper grammar actually
aids communication
...
In English
Grammar Workbook For Dummies, I also tell you why a particular choice is correct, not just
for the sake of learning a set of rules but rather to help you make the right decision the next
time — when you’re deciding between their and they’re or went and had gone, for example
...

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies offers a special welcome to readers for whom
English is a second language
...
English Grammar Workbook For Dummies lets you practice the little
things — the best word choice for a particular sentence, the proper way to create a plural,
and so forth
...

Finally, because standardized college entrance exams are now a permanent part of the landscape, I’ve taken special care to provide examples that mirror those horrible tests
...
Everything the grammar-testing
gurus expect you to know is in this book
...
Here are a few to note:
ߜ At the end of each chapter is the “Answers” section, which covers all the exercises in
that chapter
...

ߜ The last exercise in each chapter is comprehensive, so you can check your mastery of
the material in that chapter and sharpen your editing skills
...
The callout numbers
pointing to the corrections in the exercise correspond with the numbered explanations
in the text
...


What You’re Not to Read
I promise you that I’ve kept the grammar jargon to a minimum in this workbook, but I must
admit that I have included a couple of terms from schoolbook land
...
If you can get
the point without learning the grammatical term, you win a gold star
...

In that case read the explanation while crowing, “I knew that
...

ߜ You aspire to a better job
...

ߜ You feel a bit insecure about your language skills and want to communicate with more
confidence
...

I’ve made two more global assumptions about you, the reader
...
With this important fact in mind, I’ve tried to
keep the explanations in this book clear, simple, and short, so you can get right to it and practice away
...
I don’t want to clutter
up your brain; I just want to give you what you need to know to speak and write in standard
English
...

Second, I assume that you hate boring, schoolbook style
...
No problem! I too glaze over when faced with sentences like “The administrative council approved the new water-purification project outlined in by-law 78-451 by a margin of
three votes to two
...


How This Book Is Organized
Life gets harder as you go along, doesn’t it? So too English Grammar Workbook For Dummies
...
Part III moves up a notch to
the pickier stuff, not exactly world record but definitely the state-champ level
...
Part V is totally practical, polishing
up your writing style and explaining some common word traps into which you may fall
...


Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab:
Grammar Basics
In this part I take you through the basic building blocks — verbs (words that express action or
state of being) and subjects (who or what you’re talking about) — with a quick side trip into
pronouns (I, he, her, and the like)
...
In this part
you practice choosing the correct verb tense in straightforward sentences and find out all you
need to know about singular and plural forms
...
If you’re not sure whether to head North or north or if you want to
know where a comma belongs, this part’s for you
...
This part tackles all the fun stuff associated
with pronouns, including the reason why (for all practical intents and purposes) everyone
can’t eat their lunch
...


Part IV: All You Need to Know about
Descriptions and Comparisons
Part IV doesn’t tackle which stock is a bad investment (and which is even worse), but it
puts you through your paces in selecting the best descriptive words (good? well?)
...


Part V: Writing with Style
In Part V, the wind sprints and stretches are over, and it’s time to compete with world-class
writers
...
I also throw in some misunderstood words (healthful and healthy, to
name just two) and let you practice proper usage in this part
...


Icons Used in This Book
Icons are the cute little drawings that attract your gaze and alert you to key points, pitfalls,
and other groovy things
...
The Tip icon is the equivalent of a resident whispering in your ear
...

The Warning icon tells you where the traps are so you can delicately run like mad from them
...
You have to see the language
in action, so to speak
...


Introduction

Where to Go from Here
To the refrigerator for a snack
...
Just kidding
...
If you’re not sure what would benefit you most, take
a moment to think about what bothers you
...
I’m talking about the parts
of writing or speaking that make you pause for a lengthy head scratch
...
Use the “How This Book Is Organized” section earlier in this introduction,
the table of contents, and the index to find more detail about what is where
...
Of course, if you
decide to read every single word I’ve written, you win my “favorite person of the month”
award
...

If you aren’t sure whether a particular topic is a problem, no problem! Run your eyeballs
over the explanation and sample question
...
If everything comes out okay and you understand the answers, move on
...

When you understand each concept separately but have trouble putting the whole picture
together, take a stab at the comprehensive exercise that ends each chapter
...
After you find them, check yourself
...
Hit your mind with a half cup of grammar (about ten minutes or so) at a time
...


5

6

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies

Part I

Laying Out the Concrete
Slab: Grammar Basics

I

In this part
...

This part provides the stuff you need to lay the best foundation for your writing
...
In the same chapter,
you find the most popular irregular verbs and everything
you need to know about the ever-helpful helping verb
...
Then
you’re ready to pair pronouns and nouns (Chapter 3) and
to distinguish complete from incomplete or too-long sentences (Chapter 4)
...
Plus, even without a new Rolex, they tell time
...
In this chapter, I hit
you with basic time questions
...
?” but “Which verb
do I need to show what’s completed, not yet begun, or going on right now?” The first section hits the basic tenses (past, present, and future) and the second hits the perfect tenses,
which are anything but perfect
...


Choosing among Past, Present, and Future
Verbs tell time with a quality known as tense
...
You have three, and each has two forms — lo-carb and fatfree
...
Progressive places a little more emphasis on process or
on action that spans a time period, and the present progressive may reach into the future
...
Here’s a
taste of each:
ߜ Past tense tells what happened either at a specific, previous time or describes a pattern of behavior in the past
...
In “During the Motorcycle Festival, Diane was flexing her bicep,” was flexing is a verb in past progressive tense
...
It also touches the future
...
In “Grace is always polishing her
Harley” and “Grace is riding to Florida,” the verbs is polishing and is riding are in present progressive tense
...
(The verb in “Grace will give Diane a ride
around the block” is will give, which is in future tense
...
)

10

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics
Okay, time to check out a sample problem
...
Stay in that family when you fill in the blank,
choosing the correct tense
...


Q
...
(to accuse)

A
...
The clue here is yesterday, which tells you that you’re in the past
...
Fashion is important to David, so he always _______________ the latest and most popular
poaching style
...
Last year’s tight, slim lines _______________ David, who, it must be admitted, does not
have a tiny waist
...
While David _______________ new clothes, his fashion consultant is busy on the sidelines,
recommending stripes and understated plaids to minimize the bulge factor
...
David hopes that the next fashion fad _______________ a more mature, oval figure like his
own
...
Right now Diane _______________ an article for the fashion press stating that so-tight-itmay-as-well-be-painted-on leather is best
...
She once _______________ a purple suede pantsuit, which clashed with her orange “I Love
Motorcycles” tattoo
...
While she _______________ the pantsuit, two shoppers urged her to “go for it
...
Two days after Diane’s shopping spree, Grace _______________ about show-offs who
“spend more time on their wardrobes than on their spark plugs
...
However, Diane knows that Grace, as soon as she raises enough cash, _______________ in
a suede outfit of her own
...
David, as always, _______________ in with the last word when he gave Grace and Diane the
“Fashion Train Wreck of the Year” award
...
Two minutes after she received the award, Diane _______________ it on a shelf next to her
“Best Dressed, Considering” medal
...
Every day, when I see the medal, I _______________ what “considering” means
...
Grace _______________ it to me in detail yesterday
...
“We earned the medal for considering many fashion options,” she _______________
...
David, who _______________ Diane tomorrow, says that the medal acknowledges the fact
that Grace is “fashion-challenged” but tries hard anyway
...
Each perfect tense — present
perfect, past perfect, and future perfect — also has a progressive form, which includes
an -ing verb
...
The progressive perfect is a bit more immediate than the plain form and refers
to something that’s ongoing or takes places over a span of time
...
Here’s when to use the perfect
tenses:
ߜ Present perfect links the past and the present
...
(In the sentence “Despite numerous
reports of sightings around the world, Kristin has stayed close to home,” the
verb has stayed is in present perfect tense
...
)
ߜ Past perfect places one event in the past before another event in the past
...
In the sentence “Christy, Mike’s mother, had been threatening
a laundry strike for years, but the beginning of mud-wrestling season pushed her
to the breaking point,” had been threatening is a past perfect progressive tense
verb
...

(In the sentence “Before sundown, David will have toasted several dozen loaves
of bread,” will have toasted is in future perfect tense
...
)
Practice, especially with these verbs, makes perfect, so try this example and then
plunge ahead
...
Change it into the correct tense and fill in the blank
...
Kristin _______________ an acceptance speech, but the “Spy of the Year” title went to
Hanna instead
...
had prepared
...
The preparing
of the speech took place before the awarding of the title, so had prepared is the form you
want
...
Mike _______________ on thin ice for two hours when he heard the first crack
...
Diane _______________ Mike for years about his skating habits, but he just won’t listen
...
David — a delicate, sensitive soul — accompanied Mike to the pond and then to the hospital
...
(to wait)
19
...

(to wait, to read)

11

12

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics
20
...
(to refuse)
21
...
(to send)
22
...
(to speak)
23
...
(to achieve)
24
...
(to consist)
25
...
(to declare)
26
...

(to give)
27
...
(to express)
28
...
” (to approach)
29
...
(to declare)
30
...
(to serve)

Navigating among Irregular Forms
Designed purposely to torture you, irregular verbs stray from the usual -ed form in
the past tense
...
You don’t need to know the terms; you just need to know
what words replace the usual -ed verb configuration (sang and sung instead of singed,
for example)
...
If you’re unsure about a particular
verb, look it up in the dictionary
...

Here’s a set of irregular problems to pickle your brain
...
Notice that the
parentheses don’t, strictly speaking, contain a verb at all — just the ancestor of that
particular verb family, the infinitive
...


Chapter 1: Placing the Proper Verb in the Proper Place

Q
...
(to slide)

A
...
No -ed for this past tense! Slid is the irregular past form of to slide
...
If you discover a piece of pottery on the floor, look for Natalie, who has _______________
many vases because of her tendency to dust far too emotionally
...
Once, Natalie _______________ with sadness at her first glimpse of a dusty armchair
...
David, no mean duster himself, _______________ a manual of daily furniture maintenance
...
The manual, entitled Dust or Die, _______________ to the top of the best-seller list
...
News reports indicated that nearly all the copies had been _______________ by fanatical
cleaners
...
David once dusted the fire alarm so forcefully that it went off; the firefighters weren’t
amused because David had _______________ the fire alarm a little too often
...
The fire chief promptly _______________ to speak with the mayor about David’s false
alarm
...
The mayor has _______________ an investigation into a new category of offenses, “False
Dust Alarms”; almost immediately, David _______________ to protest
...
“I have _______________ to a new low,” sighed David, as he enrolled in the local chapter of
Clean Anonymous
...
Maybe I can
too
...
Natalie _______________ David to a fly-catching meet, and soon his interest in grime
_______________ the dust
...
Natalie, however, became completely excited by fly catching and _______________ a
tapestry with a delicate fly pattern
...
David, worried about Natalie’s enthusiasm for winged pests, _______________ help
...
“Leave the flies,” _______________ David
...
“Never!” Natalie declared as she _______________ her coffee
...
David soon _______________ up on Natalie and her new hobby
...
And like a movie star, they tend to cause trouble
...
(Amazing

13

14

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics
that the movie-star comparison works on so many levels!) Because they’re common,
you need to be sure to master all their forms, as Table 1-1 shows
...

Fill in the blanks with the correct form of to be or to have, as in this example and the
following exercises:

Q
...


A
...
Been is the combining form used with helping verbs, such as has
...
If pickling _______________ necessary, I’ll bring my own vinegar
...
Who ever _______________ enough cucumbers on this sort of occasion?
48
...
“I _______________ totally comfortable with the green vegetables
in my refrigerator
...
Kristin, never outdone, _______________ a different idea
...
“Grace and I _______________ firmly in the anti-vegetable camp,” she commented
...
By the time she finishes the meal, Kristin _______________ three trophies for carboloading
...
Diane _______________ Champion of the Potato Salad Competition for three years in a
row, counting this year
...
Grace _______________ second thoughts about her entry choice; she now thinks that she
should have picked sides instead of main dishes
...
The soon-to-be-announced winners in each category _______________ extremely pleased
with the prizes this year
...
Give me a taste because I _______________ a judge
...
Helpers you need to consider hiring include:
ߜ Should and must add a sense of duty
...
” “David must reduce his cholesterol, according to his doctor
...
By the way, could is the past tense of can
...
” or “Courtney
could stray from the beaten path, depending upon the weather
...
Strictly speaking, might is for
past events, and may for present, but these days people interchange the two
forms
...
Check out these examples: “I may go to the
picnic if I can find a bottle of ant-killer
...
”
ߜ Would usually expresses a condition or willingness
...
(“I would have brought the mouse if
I had known about the cat problem
...
(“He
would bait the trap
...

(“Every Saturday he would go to the pet store for more mouse food
...
(“I will go if I can find a free ticket
...
Add a helper to the main
verb
...


Q
...
(possibility)

A
...
The might or may shows that Steve hasn’t ruled out a run
...
Melissa, shy as ever, said that she _______________ go to the tree-cutting ceremony only if
the press agreed to stay outside the forest
...
Kirk, beat reporter for the local radio station, _______________ not agree to any conditions, because the station manager insisted on eyewitness coverage
...
Lisa, on the other hand, explained that if barred from the event she _______________ rely
on an interview with Steve after the event
...
Lisa knows that Steve _______________ leap to fame based on the tree-cutting incident,
and she doesn’t want to miss an important scoop
...
All good reporters _______________ know that if a tree falls in the forest, the sound is
heard by a wide audience only if a radio reporter is there
...
Sound engineers, on the other hand, _______________ skip all outdoor events if they
_______________ do so
...
On-air talent always _______________ find a way to weather all hardships, including bad
weather
...
Some media watchers believe that reporters _______________ be a bit more modest
...
In response, reporters claim that the public _______________ not appreciate humility if
they _______________ choose greater entertainment value
...
Steve _______________ have allowed the press at the scene had he known about the fuss
...
Read the memo in Figure 1-1, a product
of my fevered brain, and correct all the verbs that have strayed from the proper path
...


To: All Employees
From: Christy
Subject: Paper Clips

It had come to my attention that some employees will be bending paper
clips nearly every day
...

Because of my duty as your supervisor, I would remind you that paper
clips have been expensive
...
I will have given you a fair deal in the
future also, but only if you showed some responsibility
...
By quitting time, I
Figure 1-1:
A sample
memo with
some confused verbs
...
If your desk contains a bent
paper clip, you would find yourself out of a job
...
Notice the time clues? The first part of the sentence contains the word is, a presenttense verb, and the second part includes the word always
...


b

challenged
...


c

is buying or buys
...
Present progressive tense gives a sense of immediacy, so
is buying makes sense
...


d

will flatter
...


e

is writing
...


f

purchased
...


g

was charging or charged
...
I like the past progressive (was charging) here because the word while
takes you into the process of charging, which went on over a period of time
...


h

muttered or was muttering
...
The second answer gives
more of a “you are there” feel, but either is correct
...
The time words here, as soon as, tell you that the action hasn’t happened yet
...
If David gave, you’re in past tense
...
The first verb in the sentence (received) is in the past tense, so you know that the
action of placing the award on the shelf is also in past tense
...
The time clue here is “every day,” which tells you that this action is still happening at
the present time and should be in present tense
...
The “yesterday” is a dead giveaway; go for past tense
...
The saga of Grace and Diane’s award is in past tense, and this sentence is no exception
...


o

will visit
...


p

had been skating or had skated
...
The two hours of skating came before the hearing, so you need past perfect tense
...


q

has been warning or has warned
...
Present perfect is the best choice
because it links past and present
...


17

18

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

r

had waited or had been waiting
...
Progressive adds a “you are there” feel (good if you’re a fan of hospital
waiting rooms) but isn’t necessary
...
The deadline in the sentence (the end of today’s trip) is your
clue for future perfect tense
...
Notice the present-past link? Mike declared and Grace is acting now
...


u

had sent
...
Go for past perfect for the earlier action
...
The future perfect needs an end point (in this sentence, the end of the
yelling) before which the action occurs
...
If he keeps trying, you have a present-tense idea that’s connected to the past
(despite years of practice and on rare occasions)
...


x

has consisted
...
The sentence tells you about
the past (at times) and the present (is trying), so present perfect is the one you want
...
The after at the beginning of the sentence is your clue that one action occurs
before another
...


A

will have given
...


B

has expressed
...
The present perfect
tense is perfect for present-past links
...
)

C

had approached
...
Mike’s action — an approach to
ambassadors — took place before Tim’s action — begging for “a few minutes of your time
...


D

will have declared
...


E

has served
...
To link past and
present, go for present perfect tense
...
The verb to break has two irregular forms, broke and broken
...
To shake has two irregular forms, shook and shaken
...
For correct writing, use wrote, which is the past tense of the verb to write
...
You’ve probably heard that “a rose is a rose by any other name
...


J

bought
...

Here’s a line to help you remember: I thought I was in trouble because I caught a cold when I
taught that class of sneezing 10-year-olds, but fortunately I had bought a dozen handkerchiefs
and was well prepared
...
The bell rings, rang, or has/have/had rung
...
Take a memo: I go, I went, and I have or had gone
...
The plain past tense form is began, and the form that combines with has, have,
or had is begun
...
To sink becomes sank in the past tense and has or have sunk in the perfect tenses
...


O

took, bit
...


P

wove
...


Q

sought
...
The past tense of to seek is sought
...
This irregular verb is the past tense of to say
...
Three forms of this verb sound like a song to accompany a beer blast: drink, drank, and
drunk
...
The form that combines
with has and have (in case you ever need it) is drunk
...
The verb to give turns into gave in the past tense
...
Here you’re in present tense
...
You need a singular, present verb to match who in this sentence
...
The verb to be changes to am when it’s paired with I
...
This answer depends on the tense
...


Y

are
...


z

will have
...


Z

has been
...
You
need present perfect, the bridge between those two time periods
...


1

had
...


2

will be
...
You may choose either present or future, depending upon the context
...
The going is dependent upon the press arrangement
...


5

could
...


6

may or might
...
This possibility is expressed by the helpers may or might
...
You need to express ability in the present tense, which can can do
...
Gotta get that duty in, and should does the job
...
If you’re speaking in past tense, go for the first answer pair
...
Don’t mix and match! If you’re in one time period, don’t
switch without a good reason to do so
...
Now you’re firmly in present tense (clue word = always) and can adds a sense of ability
...
When duty calls, opt for should
...
The public’s appreciation is conditional, and would expresses that
fact
...
The would/could pair is
best for past tense, and will/can does the job for present
...
No
mixing allowed
...
The first part of the sentence talks about a condition that is not actually happening, and
would fills the bill
...
A few copy clerks even

68

bended bent an entire box
...
In

70

my ten years of superior wisdom as your boss, I always gave have

71

72

given you a fair deal
...
Therefore, I will

73

begin inspecting the desks in this office this morning
...
If your desk
contains a bent paper clip, you would may find yourself out of a job
...
Instead, sentence one needs a verb to link past
and present, and has come fills the bill
...


^

Bent is an irregular past form
...


&

Because you’re talking about duty, should works nicely here
...


Chapter 1: Placing the Proper Verb in the Proper Place

*

Present tense is better because the boss is concerned about current expenses
...
Thus present
perfect tense (have given) is best
...


)

Will give is correct; will have given implies a deadline
...
Go
with the present tense form, show
...


=

You’re expressing a real possibility here, so will or may works well
...
May leaves a little wiggle room
...
In this respect, grammar follows real life
...


In this chapter I show you how to tell the difference between singular and plural nouns, pronouns, and verbs, and I get you started on pairing them up correctly in some common sentence patterns
...


When One Just Isn’t Enough: Plural Nouns
When I was in elementary school, the only spell-check was the teacher’s very long, very
sturdy, and very often employed ruler
...
Hammerhead (not her real name, or was it?) was teaching spelling, but she also was
explaining how to form the plural of some nouns, the grammatical term for words that name
people, places, things, or ideas
...

ߜ Nouns ending in s, sh, ch, and x tack on es to form the plural (kindness/kindnesses,
splash/splashes, catch/catches, and hex/hexes), unless the noun has an irregular
plural
...

ߜ Nouns ending in ay, ey, oy, uy — in other words, a vowel before y — simply add
an s (monkey/monkeys and boy/boys)
...

ߜ Irregular nouns cancel all bets: anything goes! Sometimes the noun doesn’t change at
all, so the plural and singular forms are exactly the same (fish/fish deer/deer); other
times the noun does change (leaf/leaves and child/children)
...
The definition lists the plural
form for each noun
...
Don’t change
any letters even if the name ends with a consonant-y combo (Smithy, perhaps)
...

Are you up for some multiplication? At the end of each sentence is a noun in parentheses
...
Jennifer remained doubtful about the existence of flying dinner _______________
...
plates
...

1
...

(clinic)
2
...
(nuthouse)
3
...
(thatch)
4
...
(sex)
5
...
(graph)
6
...

(turkey)
7
...
(woman, lash)
8
...
(sigh)
9
...

(belfry)
10
...
(deer, squirrel,
goose)

Isn’t Love Groovy? Pairing
Subjects and Verbs
To make a good match, as every computer-dating service knows, you have to pair like
with like
...
The good news is that most of the time English
verbs have only one form for both singular and plural
...
You have to
worry only in these few special circumstances:

Chapter 2: Matchmaker, Make Me a Match: Pairing Subjects and Verbs Correctly
ߜ Talking about someone in the present tense requires different verb forms for
singular and plural
...
(“He spits” and “They spit
...
)
ߜ Verbs that include does/do or has/have change forms for singular and plural
...
(“Does John paint his toenails blue?” Does paint is a singular verb
...
” The verb has stated is singular
...
Why? I have no idea
...

ߜ The verb to be changes form according to the noun or pronoun paired with it
...

ߜ Two subjects joined by and make a plural and take a plural verb
...
(“Kristin and
David plan a bank job every two years
...
)
ߜ Two singular subjects joined by or take a singular verb
...
(“David or his friendly branch manager is cooking the books
to cover the theft
...
)
ߜ Ignore interrupters when matching subjects to verbs
...
” and longer expressions such
as “as well as
...
” Some interrupters (as well as, in
addition to) appear to create a plural, but grammatically they aren’t part of the
subject and, like all interrupters, have no effect on the singular/plural issue
...
” The subject, Kristin, is singular and matched with the singular verb is
...
It’s in their contract
...
(“Here are five pink beans
...
)
ߜ The subject usually precedes the verb but may appear elsewhere
...
” Kristin and
David form a plural subject, which is matched with speed, a plural verb
...
In the blank, write the correct form of the verb in
parentheses
...
John’s podiatrist _______________ interested in the toenail-color issue
...
remains
...
The letter s creates a singular verb
...
Hinting delicately that blue _______________ not a natural color for nails, Nadine
_______________ her toes in distress
...
John, whose hair _______________ been every color of the rainbow, says that he
_______________ from a toe condition
...
We _______________ not buying his story
...
You probably _______________ John because you _______________ everyone the benefit of
the doubt
...
_______________ you think that John’s friends always _______________ the truth?
(Does/Do, tell/tells)
16
...
No one ever _______________ when John _______________ avoiding reality
...
He _______________ sometimes created very convincing tales
...
Why _______________ everyone believe him? (does/do)
20
...
(was/were)
21
...
(was/were)
22
...
(was/were)
23
...
(is/are)
24
...
(was/were)
25
...
(includes/include)
26
...
(waddles/waddle)
27
...
(has/have)
28
...
(is/are)
29
...
Stay tuned as the Justice Network, but not its partner stations, _______________ hourly
bulletins
...
Difficult
though they may be, most, all, either, each, and other brats will, with a bit of attention,
quickly turn into well-behaved subjects
...
(“Everyone
is here
...
)

Chapter 2: Matchmaker, Make Me a Match: Pairing Subjects and Verbs Correctly
ߜ All, some, most, none, and any can be either singular or plural
...
(“All the ears that stick out are going to be super-glued
to the scalp
...
) A subject that
is measured but not counted is singular
...
” The subject most is singular
because hatred, at least metaphorically, can be measured but not counted
...
(“Neither of my
uncles has agreed to take me to the movies this afternoon
...
)
ߜ In either/or and neither/nor sentences, match the verb to the closest subject
...
” The verb in this sentence, are
going, is closer to partners than to Josh
...
If the sentence were reversed, the verb would be singular: “Either his
partners or Josh is going to jail
...
(“Each of
the five thousand computers that Elizabeth bought was on sale
...
” In these
sentences the addition of each and every creates a singular subject that must be
paired with a singular verb
...
Try these problems
...


Q
...


A
...
Did you use a ruler? The subject police officers is closer to the verb than marshal
...

31
...

32
...

33
...

34
...
Most of the songs (has/have) been written already, but the out-of-town tryouts suggest
that more work is needed
...
Everyone (has/have) invested a substantial amount in Whatever Lola Wants, but no one
(is/are) expecting a profit, despite the strong ticket sales
...
Neither her partners nor Lola (is/are) willing to speculate on the critical reception
...
Any of the reviews (has/have) the ability to make or break the production
...
(Has/Have) either the director or the musicians agreed on a contract?
40
...
”
41
...


27

28

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics
42
...

43
...

44
...

45
...

46
...
All the fame in the world (is/are) not as valuable as
honesty
...
Lola talks a good line, but all her accountants (believes/believe) that she will go along
with the necessary cover-up
...
(Has/Have) someone mentioned the Tony Awards to Lola?
49
...

50
...

51
...

52
...

53
...

54
...
If so, perhaps either Lola’s brothers or Lola herself (is/are) on the verge of a cleaner
future
...
Most of us, I should point out, (believe/believes) that Lola will never forget to shine her
Oscar statuettes
...
In fact, some of the Oscars that Lola has won (sparkles/sparkle) blindingly
...
All of the Oscar-night attention (is/are) very appealing to Lola, who doesn’t even attend
the Tony ceremony, even when she’s nominated
...
Because neither Tom Cruise nor his costars (attends/attend) the Tony ceremony, Lola
makes a point of being “on location” when the big night rolls around
...
Each of the last fifteen Oscar nights, however, (is/are) an almost sacred obligation, in
Lola’s view
...
Tucked into the letter in Figure 2-1, written by a
master criminal to his accomplice (okay, written by me, and I never even jaywalk, let
alone rob banks!) are ten errors in subject-verb agreement and ten incorrect plural
forms, for a total of 20 mistakes
...


Dear Adelie,
Oh, my little fluffy sweetheart, how I long to be with you on this cold,
cold day! Neither of the iron bars of my cell have kept me from dreaming
about sweeping you away to our long-planned vacation in Antarctica
...

Either my jailors or my honey, who is the best of all possible honies,
have taken over every thought in my brain
...
Every single one of my waking moments are devoted to you,
cuddliest of all the cuddly teddy bear
...
Two months has passed, and
everyone (though not the cellmate, as I said) are impatient
...
They can
accompany you on the train
...
) Speaking
of alone, please bring the loots from our last job
...

Also bring two gold watchs, which are very handy for bribes
...


Your Cutie Patootie,
Charlie

29

30

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

Answers to Subject and Verb
Pairing Problems
a

clinics
...


b

nuthouses
...


c

thatches
...


d

sexes
...


e

graphs
...
Only words
ending in sh or ch require an added es in the plural form
...


f

turkeys
...


g

women, lashes
...
The second noun ends in sh, so you must tack
on es for a plural
...
Regular plurals are fun; just add s
...
The plural of a noun ending in consonant-y is created by dropping the y and adding ies
...
The first and third nouns form irregular plurals, but good old squirrels
follows the rule in which you simply add s to the singular
...
You need two singular forms here: blue is and Nadine wriggles
...
The verbs has and suffers are singular, as they should be, because the subject-verb
pairs are hair has and he suffers
...
The plural verb are matches the plural subject we
...
The pronoun you always takes a plural verb such as believe and give
...
Both verbs are plural, matching the plural subjects you and friends
...


p

Has
...


q

knows, is
...


r

has
...


s

does
...


t

was
...


u

were
...
Guards is plural and takes the plural
verb were
...
Ignore the interrupters (as well as
...
Match
the singular verb was to the singular subject
...
The subject is arrest, not charges or variety
...


x

were
...

and a plural subject that takes the plural verb were
...
The subject is offers, which matches the plural verb include
...


A

waddle
...
David and Kristin =
plural, so pair them with the plural verb waddle
...
Pay no attention to series, which is a distraction
...


C

is
...


D

Is
...


E

broadcasts
...
Don’t be distracted by the interrupter but not its partner stations
...


F

are
...


G

has
...


H

is
...


I

does
...


J

have
...
You can count songs, so the plural have is best
...
The pronouns ending in -one are always singular, even though they seem to convey a
plural idea at times
...


L

is
...


M

have
...
Reviews may be counted (and you can be sure that Lola’s investors will count them
extremely carefully), so any takes the plural verb have in this sentence
...
This sentence can be decided by distance
...
The verb in this sentence has two parts, has and agreed
...
The changeable part of the verb is the one that governs the singular/plural issue
...


O

agrees
...


P

are
...
In this sentence, members can be
counted (and it won’t take too long, either, once the reviews are in), so the plural verb are is
what you want
...
The pronoun neither is always singular and needs to be paired with the singular verb has
...
Did I catch you here? The expression 20 tattoos suggests plural, but the subject is actually
one, a singular
...
You can count tattoos, so the pronoun some is a plural subject and needs to match the
plural verb are
...
The word each has the power to turn any subject to singular; has is a singular verb
...
You can measure, but not count, fame, so a singular verb matches the singular pronoun all
...
Accountants are countable, so all is plural in this sentence and needs the plural verb
believe
...
The pronoun someone, like all the pronouns ending in -one, is singular, and so is the
verb has
...
In an either/or sentence, go with the closer subject, in this case, producers
...
The singular verb enters matches the singular pronoun nobody
...


Y

is
...


z

has
...


Z

has
...

Here the subject is someone, so has wins
...
The pronoun both is plural, as is the verb are
...
This sentence illustrates a common error
...
If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone pair either with a plural, I
could retire to a luxury hotel and sip margaritas all day
...
A sentence with an either/or combo is easy; just match the verb to the closest subject
...


4

believe
...
If
it’s associated with something that you can count (such as us), it’s plural
...
Here most is
plural and joins with the plural verb believe
...
Some is a pronoun that may be either singular or plural, like most in the preceding
explanation
...
Thus the plural verb sparkle is
the one you want
...
This sentence has another changeable pronoun; this time it’s all
...
Go for the singular verb is
...
Any sentence with a neither/nor pair requires a ruler: The subject that’s closer to the
verb dominates
...
If the closer subject is
plural, opt for a plural verb
...


Chapter 2: Matchmaker, Make Me a Match: Pairing Subjects and Verbs Correctly

8

is
...
The logic is that each requires you to think of the subject as a series of singular units
...


Dear Adelie,
Oh, my little fluffy sweetheart, how I long to be with you on this
cold, cold day! Neither of the iron bars of my cell have has kept me from

61

dreaming about sweeping you away to our long-planned vacation in

62

Antarctica
...


64

Either my jailors or my honey, who is the best of all possible

65

honies honeys, have has taken over every thought in my brain
...
Every single one of my waking

68

moments are is devoted to you, cuddliest of all the cuddly teddy

69

bear bears
...
Two months has have

71

passed, and everyone (though not the cellmate, as I said) are is impatient
...
They can accompany you on the train
...
) Speaking of alone, please bring the loots loot from our last

79

job
...
Also bring two gold watchs watches, which

80

are very handy for bribes
...


0

To form the plural of a word ending in consonant-y, change the y to i and add es
...


33

34

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

@

The singular subject of the verb to go is heart, which in this sentence is located after the verb,
an unusual but legal spot
...


#

Honey ends in vowel-y, so just add s to form the plural
...
The closer subject is my honey, which
is singular and takes a singular verb
...


%

Fish has an irregular plural — fish
...


&

Bear, unlike fish and deer, forms a regular plural
...


*

The except for my cellmate may distract you, but the true subject is I and all the other prisoners,
a plural, which pairs with have
...

Time may sometimes be singular (“Five minutes is a long time”) when you’re referring to the
total amount as one block of time
...


)

Everyone, as well as all the pronouns with the word one tucked inside, is singular and takes the
singular verb is
...


_

To form the plural of a noun ending in x, add es
...


+

You always takes a plural verb, in this case it’s are
...
Voila! Tickets, a plural, takes the plural verb are
...
Hence, policemen, not policemans
...
Loots doesn’t exist
...


Chapter 3

Who Is She, and What Is It? The
Lowdown on Pronouns
In This Chapter
ᮣ Sorting singular and plural pronouns
ᮣ Using possessive pronouns correctly
ᮣ Avoiding double meanings
ᮣ Dealing with confusing pronouns

P

ronouns aren’t for amateurs, at least when it comes to formal grammar
...
Who
can make a sentence without I, me, ours, them, us, that, and similar words? Unfortunately, pronouns can trip you up in a hundred ways
...
I also help you avoid vague
pronouns and guide you through the maze of its/it’s, their/there/they’re, whose/who’s, and
your/you’re
...
When
choosing pronouns, you must follow two basic rules:
ߜ Replace a singular noun with a singular pronoun
...

Pronouns have another characteristic — gender
...
Masculine pronouns (he, him, himself) take the place of masculine nouns, and feminine
pronouns (she, her, herself) fill in for feminine nouns
...

Other rules also govern pronoun behavior, but I’ll leave those for another time and place —
specifically Chapters 2, 10, and 11, and, for those who want to perfect the most obsessive
points of pronoun usage, Chapter 21
...
They can
add emphasis (I myself will blow up the mud balloon) or circle back to the person
doing the action in the sentence (She will clean herself later)
...

Okay, get to work
...
Consider the singular/plural and gender
issues
...


Q
...
Eileen Burke will attend tonight’s symphony, even
though Charlie is tone deaf and Eileen tends to sing along during the quieter moments
...
she
...
Eileen has been known to hit the doughnut tray a little too often, but Eileen is still
just one person
...

1
...
_______________
2
...
_______________
3
...
_______________
4
...
_______________
5
...
_______________
6
...

_______________
7
...
_______________
8
...
” _______________
9
...

_______________
10
...
_______________
11
...
_______________

Chapter 3: Who Is She, and What Is It? The Lowdown on Pronouns
12
...
_______________
13
...
_______________
14
...

_______________
15
...
“I have 12 more years until retirement
...
” I
never quite understood the legal meaning, but I do know that possessive pronouns
(my, mine, your, his, her, hers, its, our, ours, their, theirs, and whose) are governed by
just a few, easy laws:
ߜ Use a possessive pronoun to show ownership
...

ߜ Match plural pronouns with plural owners
...

ߜ Never insert an apostrophe into a possessive pronoun
...
See the next section for more information
...
Choose the correct possessive pronoun from the choices in
parentheses and plop it into the blank
...
The little boy grabbed a grubby handkerchief and wiped _____ nose
...
his
...
Did I catch
you with the last choice? He’s = he is
...
Jessica spent the morning polishing _____ new motorcycle, for which she had paid a rockbottom price
...
She found two scratches, so she took the cycle back to the store to get _____ fender
repaired
...
When the store employees didn’t satisfy her demand for a new fender, Jessica threatened
to scratch something of _____
...
Jessica talks a lot, but she has never taken revenge by damaging a single possession of
_____
...
However, Neil and Rachel claim that Jessica once threw paint on something of _____
...
Also, I heard a rumor that Neil had to bury _____ favorite wig, the one he styled himself,
after Jessica got hold of it
...
When Rachel’s poodle dug up the wig, she had to use paint remover to clean _____ paw
...
Just to be safe, Neil will never let Jessica borrow another wig of _____ unless she takes
out an insurance policy
...
Tomorrow, Neil is going to Matthews Department Store to buy a spare wig
...
(its/their)
25
...
Neil usually replies, in a voice that is just as loud, “I wouldn’t dream of criticizing any
action of _____
...
When Neil speaks to _____ hairdresser, he will request a rush job
...
“Neil will never get his hands on any hairpiece of _____,” declared Rachel and Jessica
...
I think that Rachel took _____ hairpiece, and I told Neil so
...
Neil explained that he itches to get his hands on a wig of _____ someday
...
“Over _____ dead body,” I replied
...
“I can’t work on _____ dead body,” answered Neil in a puzzled voice
...
As she dipped _____ fingers in paint remover, Jessica added, “You can’t work on a live
one either
...
Jessica and Neil seriously need to work on _____ people skills
...
I will buy a wig for Jessica, Neil, and me and then style _____ new hairpieces
...
In other words,
this section points out some dangers in the pronoun world and shows you how to steer
clear of them
...
Briefly, here’s how to tell them apart:
ߜ Its/it’s: The first shows possession (the bird grasped a seed in its beak), and the
second is a contraction meaning it is
...
The second is a location (don’t go there)
...

ߜ Whose/who’s: The first shows possession (the bird whose beak is longest)
...


Chapter 3: Who Is She, and What Is It? The Lowdown on Pronouns
Try the following questions
...
Underline your selection
...
Marybelle sewed (their/there/they’re) lips shut because the little brats refused to keep
quiet
...
their
...
The second there
is location, and the third means they are
...

36
...

37
...

38
...

39
...

40
...

41
...

42
...

43
...
“(Their/There/They’re) security cameras caught me
...
(Its/It’s) impossible for Josh to lie anyway because he is totally honest
...
“(Your/You’re) honor demands only the truth,” sighed George
...
(Whose/Who’s) going to pay for the watch, you may wonder, Josh or George?
47
...

48
...

49
...
”
50
...
“(Whose/Who’s) going to help my watch?” she added
...
“I don’t think (its/it’s) battery has ever been changed,” continued Rachel
...
(Its/It’s) slowing down, according to Rachel, as the battery begins to die
...
George told Rachel, “(Your/You’re) battery is crucial and should be changed or recharged
regularly
...
“Who thinks about batteries?” commented Jessica
...
”

39

40

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

Avoiding Double Meanings
Unless you’re a politician bent on hiding the fact that you’ve just increased taxes on
everything but bubble gum, you’re probably interested in communicating clearly
...
One basic rule says it all:
If any confusion arises about the meaning of a pronoun, dump it and opt for a
noun instead
...

College entrance exams often hit you with a double-meaning sentence
...
When asked to point out the error, keep your eye out for
double-meaning pronouns
...
Hit these exercises with brainpower, rewriting if a pronoun may have more than one meaning
...
If
everything is hunky-dory, write “correct” in the blank
...
Stacy and Alice photographed her tattoos
...
Stacy and Alice photographed Alice’s tattoos
...
Which answer is better? Neither
...
The reason the sentence needs a revision
is that either meaning fits the original
...

56
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
57
...
Hobson in hope of furthering his cause
...
If Chad wins an Oscar, he will place the statue on his desk, next to his Emmy, Tony, Obie,
and Best-of-the-Bunch awards
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 3: Who Is She, and What Is It? The Lowdown on Pronouns
59
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
60
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
61
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
62
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
63
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
64
...

________________________________________________________________________________
65
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
66
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
67
...

________________________________________________________________________________

41

42

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics
68
...

________________________________________________________________________________
69
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Calling All Overachievers: Extra
Practice with Basic Pronouns
Sharpen your (that’s your, not you’re) editing skills
...
After you
find an error, correct it
...


May 31, 2010
Dear Mr
...
The band is disconnected from the
watch, which is quite valuable
...
The clerk, Mr
...
When you and you’re brother left
the store, Mr
...
He’s blood
pressure still has not returned to normal levels
...

Sievers’s medical problem
...
The watch and it’s band
are not your property
...

Figure 3-1:
Error-filled
sample
letter
...
Neil Johnson

Chapter 3: Who Is She, and What Is It? The Lowdown on Pronouns

Answers to Pronoun Problems
a

it
...


b

they
...


c

it
...


d

us
...
Because Eileen is talking about herself and Charlie, us fits here
...
Mama is a singular feminine noun, so she is your best bet
...
Two people make a plural, so themselves, a plural pronoun, is best
...
You don’t know whether the subway conductor is male or female, though you do
know that you’re talking about one and only one person
...


h

you
...
You, by the way, functions as both a singular and a plural
...
Cars is a plural noun, so they works best
...
Because Eileen is talking about herself, me is your answer
...
The singular, feminine (she always wears a skirt, never pants!) Eileen calls for a singular,
feminine pronoun, in this case, she
...
The singular, masculine (he never wears a skirt) Henry Todd calls for a singular, masculine
pronoun, he
...
The singular bus isn’t masculine or feminine, so it fills the bill
...
Eileen is talking about herself here (not a surprise, because she never talks about anything
else!), so me is appropriate
...
The driver is talking to Eileen, using the pronoun you
...
You need a feminine singular pronoun, no apostrophe
...


q

its
...
The sentence does refer to a female, but the female doesn’t have a
fender; the cycle does
...


r

theirs
...
The first choice, their,
should precede the thing that is possessed (their books, for example)
...


s

mine
...
My does its job by preceding the
possession (my blanket, for example)
...


t

theirs
...
Of the three plural choices (the last three), the first should precede the possession
(their motorcycle, for example), and the second has an apostrophe, a giant no-no in possessivepronoun world
...


43

44

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

u

his
...
The last choice is a contraction of he is
...
The first choice isn’t possessive, so you can rule it out easily
...
Bingo: The last choice, a singular possessive,
is correct
...
No possessive pronoun ever contains an apostrophe, so the first choice is the only possibility
...


x

its
...
” However, a store or a business is properly referred to
with a singular pronoun
...
One store = singular
...


y

my
...
My, on the other hand,
is a pronoun that can’t stand being alone
...


A

yours
...
Your must
be placed in front of whatever is being possessed — not a possibility in this sentence
...
The
only thing left is yours, which is the correct choice
...
The contraction he’s means he is
...
The second choice is
wrong because possessive pronouns don’t have apostrophes
...
Okay, first dump all the apostrophe choices, because apostrophes and possessive pronouns don’t mix
...
The second is best because our
needs to precede the thing that is possessed, and ours can stand alone
...
The possessive pronoun his, like all possessive pronouns, has no apostrophe
...


E

mine
...
In this sentence it has a slot for itself after the preposition of
...
The form that attaches to the front of a noun is my
...


G

your
...
The second choice, yours, doesn’t
attach to a noun, so you have to rule it out in this sentence
...


H

her
...
The pronoun hers works alone, but here the blank precedes the item possessed, fingers
...


I

their
...


J

our
...
Ours isn’t
appropriate because you need a pronoun to precede what is being possessed (hairpieces)
...


K

they’re
...


Chapter 3: Who Is She, and What Is It? The Lowdown on Pronouns

L

it’s
...
No possessive is called for
...
The band belongs to the watch, so possession is indicated
...


N

your
...


O

Whose
...


P

You’re, it’s
...
The sentence really means “You are sure that it
is not Jessica’s?”

Q

there
...


R

Their
...


S

It’s
...


T

Your
...


U

Who’s
...


V

You’re
...


W

Their
...


X

whose, their
...


Y

You’re
...
The sentence calls for the contraction you’re = you are
...
You need Who is in this sentence, so go for the contraction
...
The battery belongs to the watch, so the possessive pronoun its fits well here
...


1

It’s
...


2

Your
...


3

They’re
...


4

correct
...
No double meanings, so no corrections
...
Hobson in hope of furthering Chad’s cause
...
Hobson in hope of furthering Mr
...
The problem with the original
is the his
...
Hobson’s? The way the original reads, either answer is
possible
...
The Oscar is his favorite honor
...
The original is so unclear that almost anything may be
plugged into the blank
...
Just don’t let It stand for any one
of five awards, which is what it does in the original
...
The two pronouns in this sentence, her and who, can only refer to Chad’s sister
...


8

Rachel, who served as a model for Chad’s sister, thought her own interpretation was the
best
...
Either answer is okay, illustrating the problem with the original
...


9

In the film, the artist creates giant sculptures out of discarded hubcaps, although the hubcaps are seldom appreciated by museum curators
...
The problem with the original sentence is the pronoun these
...
These could refer to either
...


0

Rachel was pleased to be allowed to keep the leftover chair cushions and hubcaps
...
She also held onto
the hubcaps
...
She also
kept the chair cushions
...
What does which mean?
Cushions? Hubcaps? Keeping leftovers? That last possibility, by the way, can’t be expressed by a
pronoun, at least not according to the strictest grammar cops
...


!

correct
...
The
she refers to Rachel, and the which refers to objects
...
Or, Chad’s sister kept one sculpture for a souvenir
...
Just kidding about the last possible
answer
...
) In the original sentence, one is too vague
...


#

correct
...
Because
only one male is in the sentence, the masculine pronouns he and his are clear
...
” Or, Rachel
remarked to Chad’s sister, “Chad can drink your iced tea if he is thirsty
...


%

Chad called his brother and asked him to bring the cream from Chad’s refrigerator
...
”

^

“Are you crazy?” asked Rachel, giving her own straw to Chad’s sister
...
The original sentence
doesn’t make clear who owns the straw
...
The original sentence contains a pronoun (it) with several possible meanings (the straw, the sugar packet, or the coffee)
...
Baker:

70

Its It’s come to my attention that the watch you looked at yesterday in our
Central Avenue store is broken
...
Their There is no record of

72

payment beyond a very small amount
...
Sievers, told me that

73

you paid her him exactly 1 percent of the watch’s price
...
Sievers was still asking for
additional funds
...

Frankly I do not care whose who’s to blame for the broken watchband or

78

76

Mr
...
I simply want it the band fixed
...
The store needs their its

79

merchandise in good condition
...
Neil Johnson

*

In this sentence, it’s is short for it has
...


)

Their is possessive, not called for in the sentence
...
Sievers is male and needs a masculine pronoun (him)
...


=

He’s = he is, but the sentence calls for the possessive pronoun his
...
The sentence needs to read “I do not care who is to blame
...


{

Here the possessive its is needed
...


47

48

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

Chapter 4

Finishing What You Start:
Writing Complete Sentences
In This Chapter
ᮣ Recognizing what makes a sentence complete
ᮣ Avoiding fragments and run-ons
ᮣ Combining sentences legally
ᮣ Placing endmarks properly

H

ave you heard the story about the child who says nothing for the first five years of his
life and then begins to speak in perfect, complete sentences? Supposedly the kid grew
up to be something important, like a Supreme Court Justice or a CEO
...

You need to know how to do so too, and in this chapter I give you a complete (pardon the
pun) guide to sentence completeness, including how to punctuate and how to combine
thoughts using proper grammar
...
More than one pair is okay, but at least one
is essential
...

ߜ A complete sentence contains a complete thought
...
(“If it rains” = incomplete thought, but “If it rains, my paper
dress will dissolve” = complete and truly bizarre thought
...
You can’t just jam everything together
...
Punctuation marks and what grammarians call conjunctions —
joining words — glue ideas together legally
...
Endmarks include periods, question
marks, and exclamation points
...
Piece of cake, right? In theory, yes
...
In the following sections I take you through each rule, one at a
time, so you can practice each step
...
To check your creation,
zero in on the verb
...
Next look
for a word that expresses who or what is doing that action or is in that state of being;
that’s the subject
...
They must go together and make sense (“Mike has been singing,” “Lindsay
suffered,” and so forth)
...

Some words that look like verbs don’t function as verbs
...
Checking for a match between a subject and a verb eliminates these false verbs
from consideration, because the pairs sound incomplete with false verbs
...
”
You try some
...
If you find no true pair,
write “incomplete
...
)

Q
...
______________________________

A
...
Did I catch you with climbing? In the preceding sentence,
climbing isn’t a verb
...
Just for
comparison, cholesterol count is climbing makes a match
...
Duke, sighing repeatedly and frustrated by her inability to score more than ten points at
the dog show
...
Dogcatcher Charlie fed a chopped steak to Truffle, his favorite entry in the Dog of the
Century contest
...
Duke, my favorite entry, snarfed a bowl of liver treats and woofed for about an hour
afterward
...
Entered in the Toy breed category, Duke is sure to win the Most Likely to Fall Asleep
Standing Up contest
...
Having been tired out by a heavy schedule of eating, chewing, and pooping
...
Duke sleeps profoundly
...
Once, having eaten through the kibble bag and increased the size of her stomach by at
least 50 percent
...
One of the other dogs, biting the vet gently just to make a point about needles and her
preference not to have them
...
The vet is not upset by Duke’s reaction
...
Who would be surprised by a runoff between Truffle and Duke?
______________________________

Chapter 4: Finishing What You Start: Writing Complete Sentences
11
...
______________________________
12
...
______________________________
13
...

______________________________
14
...

______________________________
15
...

______________________________
16
...
______________________________
17
...

______________________________
18
...
______________________________
19
...

______________________________
20
...

______________________________

Checking for Complete Thoughts
Some subject/verb pairs form a closed circle: The thought they express is complete
...
To illustrate my point: “Who won?” makes sense, but “Who won” doesn’t
...
If you have a complete thought, write “complete
...
” Remember, the number of words doesn’t indicate completeness
...


Q
...
_______________
A
...
Aren’t you wondering, “What happens whenever the cow jumps over the
moon?” The thought is not complete
...
The cow, who used to work for NASA until she got fed up with the bureaucracy
...
On long-term training flights, the milking machine malfunctioned
...
Why didn’t the astronauts assume responsibility for milking procedures? _______________

51

52

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics
24
...

_______________
25
...
_______________
26
...
_______________
27
...
_______________
28
...
_______________
29
...
_______________
30
...
_______________
31
...
_______________
32
...
Not needing milking on a regular basis, though female sheep produce milk
...
This species may be a better fit for life in a spacecraft
...
However much the sheep practice, the training doesn’t come as easy to them as it does
to cows
...
Some are long
...
Combined sentences
make a narrative more interesting
...
Just be sure to
do so legally, or else you’ll end up with a run-on sentence
...
But if you must
know, a conjunction is a verbal rubber band that unites things
...
To highlight one thought and make the
other less important, use such conjunctions as because, since, when, where, if,
although, who, which, and that — among others
...
For more information on comma
use, check out Chapter 5
...
The two complete thoughts need
to be related in some way
...
Don’t use nevertheless, consequently,
therefore, however, or then to join complete thoughts
...
” For more information on commas, see Chapter 5
...
In the blank after the sentence, write “correct” or “incorrect
...
Notice the teacher trick? I provide space to revise every
sentence, including the correct ones, so you can’t judge the legal sentences by the
length of the blanks
...
Kathy broke out of jail, five years for illegal sentence-joining was just too much for her
...
incorrect
...
The comma can’t unite two complete thoughts
...
An alternate correction: Kathy broke out of jail because five
years for illegal sentence-joining was just too much for her
...

36
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
37
...
Grammar,” which had been given to him by the court clerks, was not a
source of pride for him
...
Nevertheless, he did not criticize those who used the term, as long as they did so politely
...
He often wore a lab coat embroidered with parts of speech, for he was truly devoted to
the field of grammar
...
Kathy’s escape wounded him deeply; he ordered the grammar cops to arrest her as soon
as possible
...
Kathy hid in a basket of dirty laundry, then she held her breath as the truck passed the
border
...
Kathy passed the border of sanity some time ago, although she is able to speak in complete sentences if she really tries
...
She’s attracted to sentence fragments, which appeal to something in her character
...
“Finish what you start,” her mother often exclaimed, “You don’t know when you’re going
to face a grammar judge
...
While she is free, Kathy intends to burn grammar textbooks for fuel
...
Grammar books burn exceptionally well, nevertheless, some people prefer history texts
for fuel
...
History books create a satisfactory snap and crackle while they are burning, the flames
are also a nice shade of orange
...
Because she loves history, Kathy rejected The Complete History of the Grammatical
World, she burned Participles and You instead
...
Participles and You, a bestseller for more than two years, sizzled, therefore it gave off a
lot of heat
...
Kathy found a few sentence fragments in the ash pile, but she disposed of them quickly
...
In writing, the tone
part is taken care of by a period, question mark, or exclamation point
...
Endmarks become complicated when
they tangle with quotation marks
...

Punch the time clock now and go to work on this section, which is filled with sentences desperately in need of an endmark
...


Q
...
? (question mark)
...

51
...
You’re not serious _____
53
...
Does she bring her own triangles or expect to find what she needs at the
convention _____
55
...
Do you think that she really means awful _____
57
...
Are you going also _____
59
...
I heard Lola exclaim that equilaterals turn her on _____
61
...
I always thought that she was fond of triangles _____

55

56

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics
63
...
I can’t believe that Lola actually bought one _____
65
...
If you’ve plowed your way
through this entire chapter (and if you have, my compliments), you’ve practiced each
sentence skill separately
...

Length and completeness aren’t related
...

Similarly, a very short sentence (“Grammar bores me,” for example) may be complete
...

Take a test drive with the questions in this section
...
If the sentence is incomplete,
repair the damage
...
In the military, that’s called camouflage
...


Q
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

A
...
The statement has no complete thought
...
”
66
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
67
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
68
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 4: Finishing What You Start: Writing Complete Sentences
69
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
70
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
71
...
”
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
72
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
73
...
How can you even ask?
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
75
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

57

58

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice
with Complete Sentences
I can’t let you go without pitching one more curveball at you
...
Greg, who is better
at romance than grammar, managed to write ten sentences about Alissa’s charms, but
only five are complete and correct
...
I can think of nothing I would rather do than contemplate the
gap between your molars
...
In the future, when I will have the
time to write poetry about those brows
...
A wrestler would be proud to
have a neck such as yours
...
Across those noble
shoulders slides your hair, as thick as extra-strength glue
...


better offer
...
Did you zero in on sighing? That’s part of a verb (a present participle, if you
absolutely have to know), but all by itself it isn’t enough to fill the verb category
...
Duke is sighing would be a
match, but Duke sighing isn’t
...


b

Dogcatcher (S)/fed (V)
...
Any action or being verbs? Yes, fed
...
Bingo: dogcatcher fed
...


c

Duke (S)/snarfed (V), woofed (V)
...
Who snarfed and woofed? Duke
...


d

Duke (S)/is (V)
...
But is does have a subject, Duke
...
Something’s missing here: a subject and a verb! What you have, in grammarspeak,
is a participle, a part of a verb, but not enough to satisfy the subject/verb rule
...
Start with a verb search, and you immediately come up with sleeps, which,
by the way, is an action verb, even though sleeping seems like the opposite of action
...


g

incomplete
...
Penalty box!

h

incomplete
...


i

vet (S)/is (V)
...

Who or what is? The vet is
...
Are you surprised to see who as a subject? In a question, who often fills
that role
...
A quick glance tells you that you have a verb form (surprised), but no subject
...
Another verb form (sniffing) is easy to find here, but when you ask who is doing
the sniffing, you come up blank
...


m

incomplete
...
True, the statement
talks about running, jumping, and sleeping, but those aren’t matches for Toto
...
)

n

Duke (S)/is guided (V)
...
Any action or being verbs? Yes, is guided
...
Bingo: Duke is guided
...


o

Duke (S)/loves (V)
...
Bingo — a subject/verb pair and a legal sentence
...
Dogcatcher Charlie makes a fine subject, but in this one he’s not matched with a
verb
...
(They’re participles, if you like these grammar terms
...
Charlie covered sounds
like a match, but the meaning here is incorrect because Charlie isn’t performing the action of
covering
...


59

60

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

q

Truffle (S), Duke (S)/sniffed (V)
...
If you sniff around this sentence looking
for an action word, you come up with sniffed
...
A good compound (double) subject for a good verb — you’re all set with a complete
sentence
...
This one may have surprised you because the subjects follow the verb —
an unusual, but perfectly fine position
...


s

incomplete
...
Verdict:
ten years in the grammar penitentiary for failure to complete the sentence
...
The action here is lapped, which unites nicely with they
...
The reader is waiting to hear something about the cow
...


v

complete
...


w

complete
...


x

incomplete
...


y

complete
...


A

incomplete
...


B

incomplete
...


C

incomplete
...


D

complete
...


E

complete
...


F

incomplete
...
No other thought is ever attached to
sheep, so the sentence is incomplete
...
This question makes sense as is
...


H

incomplete
...
Neither of these two parts is a
complete thought, so the sentence is incomplete
...
You have everything you need to know here except why anyone would want to send
sheep to the moon
...


Chapter 4: Finishing What You Start: Writing Complete Sentences

J

complete
...
You’re not left hanging, wondering what the sentence is trying to say
...


K

incorrect
...
A comma isn’t
strong enough to hold them together
...


L

correct
...
The which ties the idea to nickname
...
Surprised? The nevertheless in this sentence is not used as a joiner, so it’s legal
...
Did I get you on this one? The word for has another, more common grammatical use
in such expressions as for the love of Pete, for you, for the last time, and so on
...
”

O

correct
...


P

incorrect
...
Then can’t do the
job
...
Still another good solution is to replace the comma with a semicolon (; then)
...
The words although and if join thoughts to another, more important, main idea about
Kathy’s sanity
...
The tacked-on description (which appeal to something in her character) is legal because
the which refers to the preceding word (fragments)
...
Just because you’re quoting, don’t think you can ignore run-on rules
...
Easiest fix: Place a period after exclaimed
...
No grammatical felonies here: Two ideas (she is free and Kathy intends to burn grammar
textbooks for fuel) are linked by while
...
Nevertheless is a long word
...
Plop a semicolon before nevertheless and you’re legal
...
One complete thought (History books create a satisfactory snap and crackle while they
are burning) is glued to another (the flames are also a nice shade of orange) with nothing more
than a comma
...


W

incorrect
...
I don’t think so! Use a semicolon or place a but after
World
...
Therefore isn’t a legal joiner
...


Y

correct
...


z


...
Because this sentence makes a statement, a period is the appropriate endmark
...
These words may also form a question, but an exclamation point is certainly appropriate, because the speaker may be expressing amazement that a biker chick likes
math
...
(period)
...


2

? (question mark)
...


3


...
The period is the endmark for this statement
...
Here the question mark signals a request for information
...
(period)
...


6

? (question mark)
...


7

! (exclamation point)
...
And shame on you for avoiding math
...
(period)
...


9

? (question mark)
...


0


...
I’ve chosen a period, but if you’re bursting with emotion, opt for the exclamation
point instead
...
I see this one as a true inquiry, but you can also interpret it as a scream of
disbelief, in which case an exclamation point works well
...
I hear this one as a strong blast of surprise, suitable for an exclamation
point
...
If you’re asking for information, you need a question mark
...


%

incomplete
...
Several corrections are possible
...


^

complete
...
This sentence has no subject
...
One possible correction: Having brushed the shoes carefully with a suede brush, which can be bought
in any shoe store, Bill proudly displayed his feet
...
This sentence is a run-on, because a comma can’t join two complete thoughts
...
Here’s a possible rewording: The citizens lead
their dogs to the town square, where Heartbreak Hotel is located
...
Another run-on sentence
...
Change the comma after guest to a period
...


-

incomplete
...
Add a question mark
...


=

incomplete
...
Consequently looks like a fine, strong word, but it’s really
a 98-pound weakling that doesn’t get enough vitamins
...
Add a semicolon after touch, and dump the
comma
...
I can think of nothing I would rather do than contemplate the gap
between your molars
...
In the future, when I will have the

77

time to write poetry about those brows
...
A wrestler would be

78

proud to have a neck such as yours
...
Across those
noble shoulders slides your hair, as thick as extra-strength glue
...

Your friend,
Greg

+

Incomplete: no verb

[

Incomplete: When implies more information; no complete thought

{

Run-on

]

Run-on

}

Incomplete: no endmark

80

63

64

Part I: Laying Out the Concrete Slab: Grammar Basics

Part II

Mastering Mechanics

I

In this part
...
” You have to give me
a minute to shudder at the small but important mistakes
(and I don’t mean mistake’s) in bagel signage
...
99 percent of the apostrophes I see in all sorts of official spots
...
Sigh
...

Wherever you live, in this part, you can practice
some aspects of what grammarians call mechanics —
punctuation and capitalization
...
Plus,
you’ll know how to place hyphens and dashes and semicolons, not to mention colons (Chapter 6)
...
If all these
details fry your brain, feel free to refresh yourself with
a bagel or two
...
The current trend toward what grammarians term open style
punctuation calls for commas to be used sparingly
...
In this chapter
you can practice inserting and deleting commas until your writing is as proper as a maiden
aunt and as stylish as a supermodel
...
Commas do the same thing in sentences
...

ߜ Locate the origin of the handheld meat patty
...

Inserted into a sentence, the line breaks in the preceding list turn into commas:
Professor MacGregor wants you to go on the Internet, locate the origin of the handheld
meat patty, and write a paper on hamburger history
...
Although that last comma is optional, many
style manuals, which are stricter than the bouncer at this year’s most popular club, want
you to insert a comma before the and or whatever word joins the last two items of the list
...
Imagine that you’re inserting this list into a sentence:
ߜ Peter McKinney, the mayor
ߜ Agnes Hutton
ߜ Jeannie Battle, magic expert
In a sentence using only commas, the reader wouldn’t know that Peter McKinney is
the mayor and may instead think that Peter and the mayor are two separate people
...

Get to work! Insert the list from each question into a sentence (I supply the beginning), and punctuate it properly
...
List of things to buy at the pharmacy:
industrial-strength toenail clippers
green shoe polish
earwax remover
Getting ready for his big date, Rob went to the pharmacy to purchase ______________
________________________________________________________________________________

A
...
You have three
items and two commas; no comma is needed before the first item on the list
...
Supermarket shopping list:
pitted dates
chocolate-covered mushrooms
anchovies
pickles
Rob planned to serve a tasteful selection of _____________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
2
...
Activities:
bobbing for cabbages
pinning the tail on the landlord
playing double solitaire
After everyone arrives, Rob plans an evening of _________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
4
...
Results:
the police arrived at 10:00, 11:00, and 11:30 p
...

no one gave out any phone numbers
everyone thought his name was Bob
Rob didn’t meet his goals because _____________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

You Talkin’ to Me? Direct Address
If the name or title of the person to whom you’re talking or writing is inserted into the
sentence, you’re in a direct-address situation
...
In these examples, Wilfred is being addressed:
Wilfred, you can have the squash court at 10 a
...

I expect you to remove all the seeds from the squash, Wilfred
...

The most common direct-address mistake is to send one comma to do a two-comma
job
...

Can you insert commas to highlight the direct-address name in these sentences?

Q
...

A
...
In this example,
you’re talking to Champ, a title that’s substituting for the actual name
...


69

70

Part II: Mastering Mechanics
6
...

7
...
Would you tell our audience
about the sport?
8
...
It originated in ancient Egypt
...
Really? Man I can’t believe you knew that!
10
...

11
...
The reigning champion has decided to pay us a visit
...
Certainly Sir
...

13
...
Sure! I arm-wrestled for eight hours a day Mort and then swam a mile or so for the aerobic
benefit
...
We wish her the best of luck, don’t we folks?

Dating and Addressing
No, this section doesn’t tell you what to wear when taking a comma to dinner and a
movie
...
Instead, this section enables you to practice placing commas
in dates (as in July 20, 2009) and addresses (as in Boise, Idaho)
...
If this kind of date is in a sentence that continues beyond the year,
place a comma after the year
...
”)
ߜ For a date that includes (in order) the day, month, and year, open-style punctuation, which drops commas faster than Superman drops Kryptonite, favors no
commas anywhere — before, after, inside, over, or under
...
(“The last rutabaga will be harvested on 4 August 2006 and sold at auction
...
(“The last cabbage will be picked on 30
September, 2008, and made into a doll
...
As always, whatever style you choose should be consistent throughout
...
(“In honor of farmer Bill, I will send a contribution to Save the Rutabaga
on September 12
...
(“Bill bought the farm in January 2006 and sold it five years later
...
Many style manuals drop both commas
if the sentence continues
...
No matter what you
do, be consistent
...

ߜ If the address is inserted into a sentence, use a comma to show where one line
of the address ends and the next begins and between the city and state, which is
standard practice
...
(“I sent the rutabagas to Evelyn O’Hara, 1322
Wilson Street, Corville, Iowa 70202, but she never replied
...

Punctuation party time! Place commas where you need them in these sentences
...
On December 12 2007 I received a letter from Evelyn O’Hara, who now resides at 722 Park
Avenue New York City New York 10027 in the heart of Manhattan’s Upper East Side
...
On December 12, 2007, I received a letter from Evelyn O’Hara, who now resides at 722
Park Avenue, New York City, New York 10027, in the heart of Manhattan’s Upper East
Side
...
A
comma also follows the address
...
(They’ve been going steady for years and allow nothing to come between
them
...
)
16
...

17
...

18
...

19
...

20
...


Introducing (and Interrupting)
with the Comma
Do you want to start your sentences off with a bang, or at least a small pop? Fine
...
Grammatically,
introductory expressions are a mixed bag of verbals, prepositional phrases, adverbial

71

72

Part II: Mastering Mechanics
clauses, and lots of other things you don’t have to know the names of
...
It may include a verb form or just mention a place; it may even be
as short as yes, no, or well; or it may be much longer
...

To get out in one piece, Brad planned a diversion
...

Interrupters vary in length
...
The same principle that applies to
direct-address elements applies to interrupters: They comment on or otherwise interrupt the main idea of the sentence and thus are set off by commas
...

There was no guarantee, of course, that Cindy would even be asked to write about
herself
...
For
example, in the sentence “In the morning Brad drank 12 cups of coffee,” in the morning isn’t set off by a comma
...
This test may help: Say the sentence aloud (or in your head, if you’re afraid
of attracting the wrong sort of attention)
...
If everything runs together nicely, don’t plop
...


Q
...

A
...
The
comma sets off the introductory expression, Disgruntled after a long day delivering pizza
...

21
...

22
...

23
...

24
...

25
...


Chapter 5: Exercising Comma Sense
26
...

27
...

28
...

29
...

30
...

31
...

32
...

33
...

34
...

35
...


Setting Off Descriptions
Life would be much simpler for the comma-inserter if nobody ever described anything
...
However, solving your punctuation problems in that way leads to writing that resembles a pay-by-the-word text
message — limited in scope, expensive, and not a good idea!
A better plan is to find out more about these basic principles behind punctuating
descriptive expressions:
ߜ If the description follows the word being described, decide whether it’s extra
information or essential, identifying material
...
If the description is in the “gotta have it” bin, omit the commas
...
However, in the
sentence, “Charlie’s dictionary, which is on the table, is dusty,” the description in
italics is set off by commas, because you already know Charlie’s dictionary is the
one being discussed
...

ߜ For descriptions that precede the word described, place commas only when
you have a list of two or more descriptions of the same type and importance
...
For
example, in the sentence, “The tan, dusty dictionary has never been opened,” the
two descriptions — tan and dusty — can be reversed without changing the meaning, so you need a comma
...
You can’t say, Dusty two, so you don’t
insert commas
...

An example: Sighing into his handkerchief, Charlie looked for a dust cloth
...

Got the idea? Now try your comma skills on the following sentence
...
If not, go waterskiing
...
Leave
the sentence alone if no commas are needed
...
The ruffled striped blouse belongs to my oldest sister Mary
...
The ruffled, striped blouse belongs to my oldest sister, Mary
...
The second description (which, the strictest grammarians would tell you is really an equivalent term or appositive) follows the word
described (my oldest sister)
...

36
...

37
...

38
...

39
...

40
...

41
...

42
...

43
...

44
...

45
...


Chapter 5: Exercising Comma Sense

Calling All Overachievers: Extra
Practice with Commas
Figure 5-1 shows an employee self-evaluation with some serious problems, a few of
which concern commas
...
) Forget about the content errors and concentrate on commas
...
Circle the commas you’re deleting and insert commas where
they’re needed
...
Ehrlich that time of year has arrived again
...
First and most important let me say that I love working for
Toe-Ring
...

Sneaking out the back door, is not my idea of fun
...
Also Ms
...


all
...
I have only one more thing to
say
...
Each item on Rob’s list, including the last one before the and,
is separated from the next by a comma
...


b

Rob’s guest list is heavily tilted toward women he would like to date, such as Helen Ogilbee,
supermodel; Natasha Nakovee, swimsuit model; Blair Berry, automotive salesperson; and
Hannah Umbridge, former Miss Autoclave
...
Semicolons do the trick
...
Fun guy, huh? I can’t imagine why he has so much
trouble getting dates
...


d

Rob will consider his party a success if he can get three phone numbers, arrange at least
one future date, and avoid police interference
...
So is the standard for a correctly punctuated list
...


e

Rob didn’t meet his goals because the police arrived at 10:00, 11:00, and 11:30 p
...
; no one
gave out any phone numbers; and everyone thought his name was Bob
...
You’re in trouble too if you forgot to use a semicolon to distinguish one
item from another
...


f

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the Fifth Annual Elbox Championships
...


g

I know, Mort, that you are an undefeated Elbox competitor
...
Without it, the reader
thinks I know Mort is the beginning of the sentence and then lapses into confusion
...
is the real
meaning
...
It originated in ancient Egypt
...


i

Really? Man, I can’t believe you knew that! Before you start yelling at me, I know that Man is
sometimes simply an exclamation of feeling, not a true address
...
Hence the comma slices it away from the rest of the sentence
...
No one’s hitting Chester’s funny bone
...


k

Excuse me a moment
...
Miss William,
could you tell us how you feel about the upcoming match? Here the person being addressed
is Miss William
...
I am confident that my new training routine will pay off
...


Chapter 5: Exercising Comma Sense

m

What type of exercises did you do, Placida? I may call you “Placida,” right? Placida is being
addressed, so the name requires a comma
...
It’s in her contract
...
The direct address term Mort is in the middle of the sentence, so two commas are
needed to cut it away from the main idea
...


p

An article in The New York Times of 12 November 2006 reports that rutabagas have very
few calories
...
Surprise! Two answers are possible
...
The very traditional, “I learned English when quill pens were
the rage” style calls for commas between the month and year and the year and the rest of the
sentence
...
Each line of the address is separated from the next by a comma
...
The last date doesn’t need a comma, but you may place one between
the month and the year if you wish to follow the older, traditional style
...
Traditional month-day-year style dates take commas between the day
and the year and also after the year within a sentence
...
The lines of Hubert’s address are separated by
commas, and the whole thing is followed by a comma
...


t

Instead of flowers, Evelyn wrote that friends and loved ones should contribute to the United
Rutabaga Society, 990 Pacific Street Northwest, Agonis, Oregon 98989
...
If you interpreted the location as Northwest Agonis, no problem
...
(Neither Agonis nor Northwest Agonis exists, so I don’t care which you
choose
...
)

u

In desperate need of a pizza fix, Brad turned to his cellphone
...
Length doesn’t always determine whether you
need a comma, but in general the longer the introduction, the more likely you’ll need a comma
...
The expression inside the commas makes a comment on
the rest of the sentence, contrasting it with the actions of Brad
...


w

Yes, pizza was an excellent idea
...


x

The toppings, unfortunately, proved to be a problem
...
However, setting the word off with commas emphasizes the
emotional, judgmental tone
...


77

78

Part II: Mastering Mechanics

y

Restlessly Brad pondered the pepperoni question as the robbers searched for him
...
No comma is necessary
...
The expression
given his low-fat diet interrupts the flow of the sentence and calls for commas
...

Introductory expressions with verb forms always take commas
...
The of course interrupts the flow of the sentence and comments on the main idea
...


D

To ensure fast delivery was crucial
...
To ensure fast delivery is the subject of the sentence, not an extra comment
...
Introductory expressions containing verbs always take commas
...


F

Worrying about toppings had used up too many minutes
...
The verb form (Worrying about toppings) is the subject of
the sentence, not an introduction to another idea
...
Words such as well, indeed, clearly, and so
forth take commas when they occur at the beginning of the sentence and aren’t part of the
main idea
...
I admit that this one’s a judgment call
...
Neither will I scream if you, like me,
inserted one
...
With a comma, the introductory expression
stands out a little more
...


I

As the robbers chomped on pepperoni and argued about payment, Brad slipped away
...


J

Cindy, let’s just say, was left to clean up the mess
...
Cindy isn’t attached to the interrupter, let’s just say, but
absent the commas, the reader runs all those words together
...


K

Oscar’s favorite food, which he cooks every Saturday night, is hot dogs
...
The information about Oscar’s
datefree Saturday nights is extra and thus set off by commas
...


L

The place where he feels most comfortable during the cooking process is his huge brick
barbecue
...
The two
descriptions preceding barbecue aren’t of the same type
...
You can’t easily reverse them (a brick huge barbecue sounds funny), so don’t insert a
comma
...
The paired descriptions (his and wheat,
large and plastic) aren’t of the same type
...
(They get very annoyed
...


Chapter 5: Exercising Comma Sense

N

One of the horses that live in Oscar’s barn often sniffs around the tub
...
Identifying information
doesn’t take commas
...


O

Oscar rode his three favorite horses in an important race honoring the Barbecue King and
Queen
...
Commas never set off possessives and numbers
...
Without that information,
the topic could be any important race
...


P

Oscar will never sell one of his horses because he needs money
...
The comma-free sentence means
that Oscar may sell a horse because he hates the animal or wants to please the prospective
buyer, but never for financial reasons
...
) With a comma, the italicized material is extra
...
The reason — he needs the money — may mean that the horses are
worth more in Oscar’s stable than they would be anywhere else
...


Q

Oscar dedicated a song to the filly that was born on his birthday
...
Thus you need no comma
...
Even without the
italicized material, you know which song the jockeys hate
...


S

The deep, horrible secret is that Oscar can’t carry a tune
...


T

His guitar, a Gibson, is missing a few important strings also
...


Annual Self-Evaluation: Kristin DeMint

46
47
50

51
53
54
55
57

59

Well, Ms
...
I, must think about
my strengths and weaknesses as an employee, of Toe-Ring International
...

When I applied for the job on September 15, 2005, I never dreamed how
much fun I would have taking two, long lunches a day
...
Because no one ever watches what I am
doing at Toe-Ring, I can leave by the front door without worrying
...

Ehrlich, I confess that I do almost no work at all
...
I have only one more thing to say
...
Ehrlich because she’s being directly addressed in this sentence
...


W

The pronoun I is part of the main idea of the sentence, not an introductory expression
...


X

The phrase of Toe-Ring International is an essential identifier of the type of employee being discussed
...


Y

A comma follows the introductory expression, First and most important
...


Z

A comma follows a year when a date is inserted into a sentence
...
These descriptions aren’t of the same
type
...
Also, numbers are never separated from other descriptions by a comma
...


2

In this sentence the expression sneaking out the back door isn’t an introductory element
...


3

The introductory expression Because no one ever watches what I am doing at Toe-Ring should
be separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma
...
Slice it off with a comma
...


6

A comma follows Idaho for two reasons
...
Also, Idaho is the last bit of an
introductory element
...
Because these
descriptions are more or less interchangeable, a comma separates them from each other
...


Chapter 6

Made You Look! Punctuation
Marks That Demand Attention
In This Chapter
ᮣ Placing hyphens where needed
ᮣ Using dashes for drama and interruptions
ᮣ Examining colons and semicolons

T

he punctuation marks I discuss in this chapter don’t sit in the corner at parties murmuring, “Just forget about me
...
Happily, placing these marks in the proper spots is a cinch
...
(Dashes are the
long ones
...
When you arrive at the righthand margin in the middle of a word, a hyphen enables you to finish the word on the next
line
...

Hyphens also create compounds (two words linked to create one meaning) and sometimes
to attach a prefix to a word
...
Most prefixes attach without hyphens, but a
couple (self-, for example) tend to appear with hyphens
...
Many prefixed and
hyphenated compounds of a hundred years ago have now become single words
...
To make matters worse, the major style
guides and publishing companies sometimes differ on the to-hyphenate-or-not question
...

If you can’t find a dictionary, follow these guidelines:
ߜ You need a hyphen if your reader will become confused without one
...

Without the hyphen, how can the reader tell?
ߜ If two vowels show up together, chances are you need a hyphen
...


82

Part II: Mastering Mechanics
ߜ If a prefix latches onto a capitalized word, a hyphen separates the two
...

ߜ If you’re talking about part of a word (as I did earlier in this section when I
listed the prefixes pre-, post-, and others), a hyphen signals that the word isn’t
complete
...

Hyphens also link two words that form one description of the same person or thing
...
Or, if
you’re having a really bad day, you may make a third base-error (the third of three bad
throws to any base, made obvious by the creation of compound base-error)
...

Enough talk
...
Use a caret (^) to tuck a hyphen wherever it’s
needed in this sentence
...
If the sentence is okay, go bowling
...
The best known actress of the preSpielberg era has recently begun to respond to fans
via email
...
best-known, pre-Spielberg, e-mail
...
The pre- is attached to a capitalized word; hence the hyphen
...
Ten years from now, however, you may be
sending email
...

1
...

2
...

3
...

4
...

5
...

6
...

7
...

8
...

9
...

10
...


Just Dashing Through
The dash is the egotist of punctuation marks
...
Hence you need to use the dash sparingly, in these situations only:

Chapter 6: Made You Look! Punctuation Marks That Demand Attention
ߜ To interrupt the flow of thought with another idea
...
”
Notice that the material inserted into the sentence between the two dashes
doesn’t begin with a capital letter, even though in another situation it can stand
alone as a complete sentence
...
“Lip gloss, bug repellent, stun gun — Megan had
everything she needed for her big date
...

If you’re not feeling dramatic, use a colon to precede a list
...

ߜ To show incompleteness
...
The dash shows that
the sentence is incomplete
...
“May I introduce the best golfer in Antarctica — Sam Spearly
...
In the sample sentence,
“Sam Spearly” may be preceded by a comma, if you favor a quieter approach
...
)
When you plop a dash into a sentence, don’t place a comma before or after it, unless
you’re showing incompleteness and the sentence requires a comma after the dash
...
Keep these points in mind:
ߜ Too many dashes are really annoying to the reader
...

ߜ You can’t send a dash to do a hyphen’s job
...
By the way,
did you notice that I didn’t say where needed? That’s because dashes aren’t required
anywhere
...
Note that you may have to
knock out another punctuation mark before inserting a dash
...
As usual Debbie brought too many snacks, chocolate antlers, cherry-coated sardines, and
unsalted popcorn
...
As usual Debbie brought too many snacks — chocolate antlers, cherry-coated sardines,
and unsalted popcorn
...

11
...

12
...
” sputtered Debbie
...
He needs help with his fitness routine, four push-ups, a walk around the block, and a 20minute nap
...
His personal trainer worked with one of the best athletes on the planet, Karen Green
...
Push-ups and walking, not exactly demanding exercises, are so easy that even an old lady
can do them
...
Not surprisingly, that isn’t its main job
...
(Chapter 5 tells you more about this function of the semicolon
...

Get to work
...
If no semicolons need to be added or deleted, write “correct” in the blank after
the sentence
...
Fran is allergic to hot weather, she plans to crank up her air conditioner to maximum cool
...
Fran is allergic to hot weather; she plans to crank up her air conditioner to maximum
cool
...
Not a good idea!
16
...
_______________
17
...
_______________
18
...

_______________
19
...

_______________
20
...
_______________
21
...
_______________
22
...
_______________
23
...

_______________
24
...
_______________
25
...

_______________

Chapter 6: Made You Look! Punctuation Marks That Demand Attention

Placing Colons
A colon ( : ) often shows up — to grammarians’ intense disapproval — in e-mails and
the like to create smiley faces and other emoticons
...
Don’t place a colon after a form of the verb to be or a preposition
(from, by, to, and similar words)
...
If you follow this rule, you can’t insert a
colon after for example, but you can use one after take a look at this example
...

Time to “colon-ize” (or not) the sentences in this section
...
If everything’s okay, write “correct” in the
blank after the sentence
...
The weather this year may be described with these words, horrible, freezing, humid, and
windy
...
The weather this year may be described with these words: horrible, freezing, humid,
and windy
...
Placing a comma after
words allows words to blend in with the list of descriptions
...

26
...
If I had to live in the days when
a bucket of ice and a fan were the only remedies for hot weather, I’d move to the North
Pole
...
Did I tell you that I bought books by: Marv Heatfree, Helen Icicle, and October Surprise?
_______________
28
...
” _______________
29
...

_______________
30
...
Ignoring the wisdom of Fran’s choice, read the following
excerpt (see Figure 6-1) with an eye toward correct (actually, incorrect) punctuation
...
Cross out the
offending marks and substitute the correct punctuation
...
No need to hike 10 miles to La Bocaville the limo will take you
to the resort
...


vacation; and she knows her job depends on your happiness with La
Bocaville
...
Be sure to take bug-spray
along
...
You’re not talking about second quarterback and string quarterback
...


b

glue traps
...
The word glue describes traps and doesn’t form a compound
...
Two vowels together, created by the attachment of a prefix, call for a hyphen
...
The name of the product that Megan opposes is Pestbegone, which begins
with a capital letter
...


e

self-improvement
...


f

supremely annoying
...
Instead, supremely
describes annoying
...
In general, descriptions ending in -ly
aren’t linked by a hyphen to other descriptions
...
The sentence links two prefixes to one word
...


h

two- or a three-way and ski trip
...
The hyphen links the descriptions
...


i

Latvian American or correct
...
If you hyphenate the
term, you give equal importance to both, so Megan appreciates her Latvian and her American
heritage equally
...
Without a hyphen, Megan sees herself as primarily American, though the Latvian side has
some influence
...


j

extremely expensive
...
How expensive? Like everything
Megan buys, extremely expensive! They aren’t linked as one description, so no hyphen should
be inserted
...
The interrupting words I really don’t know why are set off by dashes
...


l

“I can scarcely believe that he has a trainer because —” sputtered Debbie
...
The
ellipses (three dots) in the question do the job perfectly well, but the dash is more dramatic
...


m

He needs help with his fitness routine — four push-ups, a walk around the block, and a
20-minute nap
...
If you’re allergic
to dashes, a colon or parentheses may substitute here
...
Or,
correct
...


o

Push-ups and walking — not exactly demanding exercises — are so easy even an old lady
can do them
...


87

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p

The reasons why I hate the summer are sweat, sweat, and sweat
...
Semicolons therefore aren’t needed to separate
the items in the list
...


q

They say global warming is a myth
...
A semicolon can’t join
two unrelated ideas
...
Apart from punctuation, throwing two unrelated ideas together isn’t a good idea
...


r

correct
...
If the three
places were separated only by commas, the reader would not be sure whether Ross and Alaska
were two items or one
...


s

I will turn on the weather report, but I am sure that it will be sunny and mild
...
Change it to a comma
...


t

My saltshaker will run freely again
...
The semicolon implies a relationship between the things it links
...
Better yet, add one or more sentences that join the two ideas in a logical way
...
These two complete thoughts both relate to the maddening habit of selling out-of-season merchandise
...


v

Stores like to sell merchandise in advance; shoppers prefer to buy season-appropriate
goods
...
You need a semicolon to link them
...
Take the
semicolons out of this list
...


x

correct
...


y

July is quite cool in Sydney, Australia; Canberra, Australia; and Wellington, New Zealand
...


A

correct
...
Thus it
may be introduced by a colon
...


C

When I return, I will say, “Great vacation
...
The colon is appropriate for long or
extremely dramatic quotations only
...
Drop the
colon! It only interrupts the main idea, which shouldn’t be interrupted, particularly in the case
of cold fronts
...
) No punctuation is
needed after explain
...


Chapter 6: Made You Look! Punctuation Marks That Demand Attention

31

La Bocaville Resort welcomes — you to the best vacation of your life!
When you arrive at the airport, you’ll be greeted by: a stretch limo and a

32

driver, a complimentary box of chocolates, and a bottle of mosquito

33

34

repellent
...
After you’ve checked in to our lovingly- restored mansion,
you can choose amoung many alternatives, including — volleyball

36

played with a water-filled balloon and a chat with our secretary-treasurer,

35
37

who is also our President of Having a Great Time! She’s dedicated to

38

your vacation;, and she knows her job depends on your happiness with
La Bocaville
...
Be sure to take bug- spray

39
40

along
...
Why? The sentence has no interrupting thought that should be
set off by a dash
...


H

Two complete sentences can’t be placed next to each other without a joining word or appropriate punctuation
...


I

These two descriptions should not be linked because they don’t form a single description of
mansion
...
In general, words
ending in -ly aren’t linked by hyphens to other descriptions
...
Drop the dash
...
)

K

The hyphen is needed to join water and filled because they create one description of the balloon and a very messy volleyball game
...


M

The two complete sentences are already joined by and
...
Drop the and,
or drop the semicolon
...
A comma is better here
...
No hyphen is needed, because you don’t have a compound word
...
With a little
practice, you can confidently plop apostrophes into the proper spots in your writing
...
Don’t use
an apostrophe in either of these circumstances:
ߜ To create a plural: You have one arrow and two arrows, not two arrow’s
...
I am one person named Woods,
and members of my family are the Woodses, not the Woods’
...

Traditionally, an apostrophe was used to create a particular (and unusual) type of plural —
the plural of symbols and numerals
...
(Confused? Keep reading for an example
...
Don’t panic
...
What was once correct is now passé
...

Hook into the exercises in this chapter so that no apostrophe snags you ever again
...
The shortened word, or contraction (not to be confused with the thing pregnant women scream through), adds an informal, conversational tone to your writing
...


92

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Table 7-1

Frequently Used Contractions

Long Form

Contraction

Long Form

Contraction

Long Form

Contraction

Are not

Aren’t

I will

I’ll

We are

We’re

Cannot

Can’t

I would

I’d

We have

We’ve

Could have

Could’ve

It is

It’s

We will

We’ll

Could not

Couldn’t

She has

She’s

Were not

Weren’t

Do not

Don’t

She is

She’s

Will not

Won’t

He has

He’s

She will

She’ll

Would have

Would’ve

He is

He’s

Should have

Should’ve

Would not

Wouldn’t

He will

He’ll

Should not

Shouldn’t

You are

You’re

He would

He’d

They are

They’re

You have

You’ve

I am

I’m

They have

They’ve

You will

You’ll

I had

I’d

They will

They’ll

You would

You’d

College entrance tests won’t ask you to insert an apostrophe into a word, but they may want to
know whether you can spot a misplaced mark or an improperly expanded contraction
...
The contraction should’ve, for example, is short for should have, not
should of
...
If you
see one of these turkeys on the SAT or the ACT, you know you’ve found a mistake
...
You also can slice numbers out of your writing with
apostrophes, especially in informal circumstances
...

Feel like flexing your apostrophe muscles? Look at the underlined words in these sentences
and change them into contractions
...


Q
...
_____
A
...
This apostrophe is a real bargain
...

1
...
_____
2
...
_____ _____
3
...
_____
4
...
_____
5
...

_____ _____
6
...
_____ _____
7
...
_____

Chapter 7: One Small Mark, a Whole New Meaning: Apostrophes
8
...
_____
9
...
” _____
10
...
_____
11 She is a bit testy when faced with diet food
...
Of course, Adam could have been a little more diplomatic when he mentioned Pam’s
“newly tight” sweater
...
Adam is planning to serve a special dessert wine, Chateau Adam 1999, to his guests
...
He always serves that beverage at reunions of the class of 2006
...
We are planning to attend, but we will bring our own refreshments! _____ _____
16
...
_____ _____
17
...
_____
18
...
_____
19
...
_____
20
...
_____
21
...
_____
22
...
_____
23
...
_____
24
...
_____
25
...
_____ _____

Taking Possession
The pen of my aunt that you learn in foreign-language class becomes my aunt’s pen in
standard English, with the help of an apostrophe
...

ߜ Plural owner: Attach an apostrophe to a regular plural (one that ends in s) to express
possession (the boys’ restroom, the cities’ mayors, the billboards’ message)
...

ߜ Joint ownership: If two or more people own something jointly, add an apostrophe and
an s (in that order) to the last name (Abe and Mary’s sofa; George, Jeb, and Barbara’s
memories)
...

ߜ Hyphenated owner: If the word you’re working with is hyphenated, just attach the
apostrophe and s to the end (mother-in-law’s office)
...

ߜ Time and money: Okay, Father Time and Mr
...
Nevertheless,
time and money may be possessive in expressions such as next week’s test, two hours’
homework, a day’s pay, and so forth
...

Easy stuff, right? See whether you can apply your knowledge
...
Write your answers in the blanks provided
...
The style of this year muscle car is Jill favorite
...
year’s, Jill’s
...
Jill is the traditional owner — a person, but the time
expression also takes an apostrophe
...
Carol classic car is entered in tonight show
...
She invested three months work in restoring the finish
...
Carol will get by with a little help from her friends; Jess and Marty tires, which they purchased a few years ago with their first allowance, will be installed on her car
...
The boys allowance, by the way, is far too generous, despite their sister-in-law objections
...
Jill weekly paycheck is actually smaller than the brothers daily income
...
Annoying as they are, the brothers donate a day pay from time to time to underfunded
causes such as the Women Committee to Protect the Environment
...
Carol couldn’t care less about the environment; the car gas mileage is ridiculously low
...
She cares about the car, however
...
______________________________
34
...
_______________
35
...

______________________________
36
...
______________________________
37
...
_______________
38
...
_______________
39
...

______________________________

Chapter 7: One Small Mark, a Whole New Meaning: Apostrophes
40
...

______________________________
41
...
_______________
42
...

_______________
43
...
_______________
44
...
_______________
45
...

_______________

Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice
with Apostrophes
Marty’s to-do list, shown in Figure 7-1, needs some serious editing
...
You need to find nine spots to insert and six spots to delete
an apostrophe
...
Call Johns doctor and arrange for a release of annual medical report
...
Check on last springs blood pressure numbers to see whether they
need to be changed
...
Ask John about his rodent problem’s
...
Find out why networks cant broadcast Tuesdays speech live, as John
needs prime-time publicity
...
Ask whether his’ fondness for long speeches’ is a problem
...
Send big present to network president and remind him that you are
both Yale 06
...
Order bouquet’s for secretary and National Secretaries Week card
...
Rewrite speech on cat litter’ to reflect sister-in-laws ideas
...


I
...


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Answers to Apostrophe Problems
a

aren’t
...


b

I’m, you’ll
...
In the second, it
replaces two letters, w and i
...
This contraction is irregular because you can’t make an apostrophe-letter swap
...


d

Don’t
...


e

you’re, don’t
...
Don’t
confuse the two
...
Take care with the first contraction; many people mistakenly re-expand
the contraction would’ve to would of (instead of the correct expansion, would have)
...


g

can’t
...


h

he’s
...


i

I’d
...


j

you’d
...


k

She’s
...


l

could’ve
...
A common mistake is to write could of, an
expression that’s a total no-no
...
A date may be shortened, especially if you’re out with Adam
...
This
one is fairly clear, given that we’re nowhere near 2099, and 1899 is probably not the intended
meaning
...
Not much chance of the reader misunderstanding which numbers are missing here (unless
he or she is really old)!

o

we’re, we’ll
...


p

’12, they’re
...
It’s okay
to drop numerals as long as the reader is likely to understand what’s been left out
...


q

we’re
...


r

who’s
...


s

He’s
...


t

We’ll
...
Drop two letters (wi ) and plop in an apostrophe instead
...
The apostrophe is a real space saver in this contraction; it replaces woul
...
If you take out the ha, you can insert an apostrophe and create a contraction
...
I’m not sure why anyone cares about gossip, but I’m sure that the contraction has an
apostrophe in place of the letter o
...
Drop the o and replace it with an apostrophe
...
Two for the price of one here: In the first blank, you substitute an apostrophe for
the letters no
...


A

Carol’s, tonight’s
...
The second answer illustrates a time/money possessive expression
...
The value of time and money can be expressed with a possessive form
...


C

Jess and Marty’s
...
It’s placed after the last owner’s name
...


D

boys’, sister-in-law’s
...
Hyphenated forms are easy too; just attach the apostrophe and an s to the end
...
The first form is singular, so you add an apostrophe and an s
...


F

a day’s, Women’s
...
The second is an irregular plural (not ending in s), so you
tack on an apostrophe and an s
...
A singular possessive form calls for an apostrophe and an s
...
Okay, the brothers are close, but they draw the line at shared toothbrushes
...

If a word ends in s (Jess, for example), adding an apostrophe and another s creates a spit factor:
People tend to spray saliva all over when saying the word
...
Grammarians generally allow this practice, perhaps because they too dislike being spit
upon
...


I

helpers’
...


J

judge’s, two thousand dollars’
...
The second is a time/money possessive, and two thousand dollars is
plural, so just an apostrophe is needed
...
Two singular words, so only an apostrophe and the letter s are needed to make
each possessive
...
The apostrophe and the letter s follow the last word of the hyphenated term
...
The apostrophe creates an expression meaning ten hours of begging
...


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N

car show’s, animals’
...


O

geese’s
...
In an irregular plural, an apostrophe and the letter s are
added
...
The word fish is irregular (and unusual); the singular and plural form are the same
...


Q

weeks’
...


R

animals’
...
To show possession, add an apostrophe
...
This regular plural needs only an apostrophe after the s to become possessive
...
When one cook becomes possessive, he hogs all the desserts
...
That’s life, not
grammar
...


Things to Do This Week

46
47

A
...

B
...

C
...


49

D
...


51

E
...


52

F
...

G
...

H
...

I
...


U

The doctor belongs to John (in a manner of speaking), so the apostrophe is needed to show
possession
...


W

A simple plural (not possessive, not a numeral, and so on) takes no apostrophe
...


Y

Time expressions sometimes use apostrophes, as in Tuesday’s
...


Z

A plural takes no apostrophe
...


2

A simple plural doesn’t take an apostrophe
...


4

In this sentence litter isn’t possessive and doesn’t need an apostrophe
...


6

A singular possessive is created by adding an apostrophe and an s
...


8

Days is just plural, not possessive, so it doesn’t take an apostrophe
...
I assumed the students knew that my
fingers represented the two little lines that precede and follow a direct quotation (“ ”)
...
It was June before I discovered that they had interpreted my wiggles as a strange
form of wave
...

Quotation marks may puzzle you, too, because they’re subject to so many rules, most of
which come from custom and tradition rather than logic
...

Quotation marks have a few important jobs:
ߜ Directly quoted material: Quotation marks surround words drawn from another
person’s speech or writing
...
Quotation marks don’t belong in a sentence that
summarizes speech, such as He said that he had caught a cold
...

ߜ Distancing: Quotation marks sometimes are used to indicate slang or to tell the reader
that the writer doesn’t agree with the words inside the quotation marks: I don’t always
appreciate Emily’s “art
...
Let the games begin
...
Place quotation marks around words
drawn directly from someone else’s speech or writing to distinguish their ideas and expression from your own
...
The tricky part is the interaction between quotation marks and
other punctuation, such as commas, periods, and the like:
ߜ If the quotation has a speaker tag (he murmured, she screamed, and so forth),
the speaker tag needs to be separated from the quotation by a comma
...
”
• If the speaker tag is after the quotation, the comma goes inside the closing
quotation mark: “What a large snout you have,” whispered Richard lovingly
...
”
Just because you’re quoting, don’t think you have a license to create a run-on
sentence
...
) If you have two complete
sentences, quoted or not, they should be written as separate sentences or linked
correctly with a semicolon or a joining word such as and
...
Richard added, “I would like to kiss the tip of your humungous ear
...
“Why did you slap
me?” asked Richard
...

ߜ If the quotation is neither question nor exclamation, but the sentence in
which the quotation appears is, the question mark or exclamation point goes
outside the closing quotation mark
...
Nor does the quotation begin with a capital letter
...
In an interrupted quotation (speaker tag in the
middle), the first word of the first half of the quotation is capitalized, but the first
word of the second half is not, unless it’s a proper name
...
Mary explained
that the book was “too long”; I told her to read it anyway
...
Put the pedal to the metal in each of the following sentences
...
Here and there I add extra information in
parentheses at the end of the sentence
...
The annual company softball game is tomorrow declared Becky
...
“The annual company softball game is tomorrow,” declared Becky
...

1
...

2
...
No one knew how to answer Andy, who in the past has been called overly sensitive
...
Gus said No one wanted Andy at third base; the entire Snyder family has terribly slow
reaction time (The first part of the sentence — No one wanted Andy at third base — is a
quotation, but the second part is not
...
Who wants to win asked the boss in a commanding, take-no-prisoners tone
...
Did she mean it when she said that we were not hard-boiled enough to play decently
7
...
)
8
...
)
9
...
The league handbook states that all decisions regarding player placement are subject to
the umpire’s approval
11
...
)
12
...

13
...
Surely the umpire doesn’t think that Becky would violate the rule that states, Fair play is
essential (Imagine that the writer of this sentence is exclaiming
...
Becky has been known to cork her bat commented Harry
...
The corking muttered Becky has never been proved
17
...
Sarah has not often been called a team player
19
...
)
20
...


Embedding One Quotation inside Another
You had to ask
...
Embedded quotations don’t turn up very frequently, but when
they do, you must pay close attention
...
So far, so good
...
Follow
these guidelines:

103

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Part II: Mastering Mechanics
ߜ If the embedded quotation is at the end of the larger quotation, the two closing quotation marks are next to each other, with the single mark first
...
“I hate the term
‘frozen rope,’” said Sharon
...
If the internal quotation isn’t a question or
an exclamation but the larger quotation is, place the ? or the ! outside the single
closing mark but inside the double closing mark (simply put, in between them)
...
In other words, commas that precede the embedded quotation go in
front of the opening double quotation mark
...
Sharon exclaimed, “‘A
frozen rope’ is what she hit!” and “When Sharon started talking about ‘a frozen
rope,’ I cheered,” said Harry, who is supposed to be neutral
...
In Britain, single and double
quotation marks are called inverted commas, and they’re reversed
...

Can you place the quotation marks and other punctuation in the right places in these
sentences? Write the appropriate punctuation marks in the appropriate spots
...


Q
...
(The embedded quotation is more lovely and more temperate
...
“I think that I shall never see a summer’s romance ‘more lovely and more temperate‚’”
intoned Richard, who believes that quoting Shakespeare is the best way to impress
women
...

21
...
(The embedded quotation is more lovely
...
Sharon went on to say that her favorite quotation concerns a truth universally acknowledged (The embedded quotation is a truth universally acknowledged
...
Did Richard really ask about Shakespeare’s sonatas asked Clair
...
)
24
...
)
25
...
(The embedded quotation is beauteous bonnets
...
)
26
...
(The
embedded quotation is Richard’s posturing
...
Clair went on to ask Don’t you think that Richard is what I call an educated guy who
means well (The embedded quotation is an educated guy who means well
...
No, he claims he’s just trying to make girls think he’s a player commented Sharon
...
)
29
...

30
...
(The embedded quotation here is actually a poem title, A Summer’s Pay
...
Treat the title like any other
embedded quotation
...
Imagine a basketball player,
one who tops seven feet
...
Got the picture? Good
...
The titles of those works are italicized or underlined
...
The titles of these
little guys aren’t italicized or underlined; they’re placed in quotation marks
...

These rules apply to titles that are tucked into sentences
...
The centering and placement are enough to call attention to the title, so
nothing else is called for, unless the centered title refers to some other literary work
...

When a title in quotation marks is part of a sentence, it sometimes tangles with other
punctuation marks
...
So if
the title is the last thing in the sentence, the period of the sentence comes before the
closing quotation mark
...
For
example, suppose you write a poem and call it “Why Is the Sky Blue Again?” because
you can’t stop wondering why the sky isn’t green
...

If a title that ends with a question mark is the last thing in a sentence, the question
mark ends the sentence
...


105

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Part II: Mastering Mechanics
All set for a practice lap around the track? Check out the title in this series of sentences
...
Here and there you find parentheses at the
end of a sentence, in which I add some information to help you
...
Have you read Sarah’s latest poem, Sonnet for the Tax Assessor (The sentence is a question, but the title isn’t
...
Have you read Sarah’s latest poem, “Sonnet for the Tax Assessor”? The title of a poem
takes quotation marks
...

31
...
Mary’s fifth best-seller, Publish Your Poetry Now, inspired Sarah
...
Some of us wish that Sarah had read the recent newspaper article, Forget About Writing
Poetry
...
Julie, an accomplished violinist, has turned Sarah’s poem into a song, although she
changed the name to Sonata Taxiana
...
She’s including it on her next CD, Songs of April
...
I may listen to it if I can bring myself to turn off my favorite television show, Big Brother
and Sister
37
...

38
...

39
...
They plan to publish their article in The New York Times
...
Identify ten spots
where a set of quotation marks needs to be inserted
...
Also, underline titles where
appropriate
...
At
Camp Waterbug I learned to paddle a canoe without tipping it over more
than twice a trip
...
The article was called How to Tip a
Canoe
...
I was not upset
because I believed him (eventually) when he explained that the comment
was an editing error
...

You know, he responded quickly, that I have a lot of respect for you
...
One
of the frogs had a little label on his leg that read JUST KIDDING TOO
...
The song was called If I Were a Rich Man
...


changed the first line to If I were a counselor
...


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Part II: Mastering Mechanics

Answers to Quotation Problems
a

“I plan to pitch,” added Becky, who once tried out for the Olympics
...
The comma that sets off the speaker
tag added Becky goes inside the closing quotation mark
...
” The speaker tag comes first in this sentence, so the comma is placed before the opening quotation mark
...


c

No one knew how to answer Andy, who in the past has been called “overly sensitive
...
Single quotation marks, in
American usage, are reserved for embedded quotations
...
The period at the end of the sentence is
placed, as periods always are in American usage, inside the closing quotation mark
...


d

Gus said, “No one wanted Andy at third base”; the entire Snyder family has terribly slow
reaction time
...
A semicolon always goes outside the
closing quotation mark, unless you’re quoting a long passage that has a semicolon somewhere
inside
...


e

“Who wants to win?” asked the boss in a commanding, take-no-prisoners tone
...

Okay, everybody knows that boss’s questions aren’t real questions — they’re more like threats
...


f

Did she mean it when she said that we were “not hard-boiled enough to play decently”? The
quoted words aren’t a question, but the entire sentence is
...
By the way, if both the sentence and the quotation are questions,
the question mark belongs inside the closing quotation mark
...
Because the quoted
words are an exclamation, the exclamation point belongs inside the closing quotation mark
...
Because the whole statement is an exclamation, the exclamation point belongs outside the closing quotation mark
...
” Here’s an interrupted
quotation, with the speaker tag in the middle
...
Just be sure that the two parts of the quotation are punctuated correctly
...

If each part of the quotation can stand alone as a complete sentence (see Chapter 4 for more
detail), don’t run the two together as one sentence
...
Or, place a period after the first half of the quotation and capitalize the first word of the
rest of the quotation
...
“I will not give up
...
” Here’s a nice little quotation tucked into the sentence
...
The period at the end of
the sentence goes inside the closing quotation mark
...
” Ah yes, the joy of amateur sport! This quotation is plopped into the sentence without a speaker tag, so the first word takes no capital and isn’t preceded by a comma
...


l

“Do you think there will be a rain delay?” inquired Harry, the team’s trainer
...


m

Harry also asked‚ “Has anyone checked Becky’s shoes to make sure that she hasn’t sharpened her spikes again?” This speaker tag Harry also asked begins the sentence
...
The quoted words form a question (actually, they’re a last-ditch effort to avoid a trip to the emergency room), so the question mark
belongs inside the quotation marks
...
The whole sentence is
an exclamation, and the quoted words are fairly mild, so the exclamation point belongs to the
sentence, not to the quotation
...


o

“Becky has been known to cork her bat,” commented Harry
...
The quotation is a complete sentence
...

Periods don’t belong in the middle of a sentence unless they’re part of an abbreviation
...
” A speaker tag breaks into this quotation and is set off by commas
...
Ditto at the end of
the sentence; the period needs to be inserted inside the closing quotation mark
...
)

q

“Oh yes it has,” countered Sarah
...
” Did
I catch you here? The quoted words form two complete sentences
...
The comma is too weak to do
the job
...
The second sentence should be surrounded by quotation marks, and
the last period goes inside
...
” Okay, dokey
...
The sarcasm
of team player is indicated by the quotation marks
...


t

Just then Becky hit her trademark “frozen rope” to left field
...


u

“Jane Austen would have a lot to say to Richard about his ‘more lovely’ nonsense,” commented Sharon
...
I’m talking about America here; in Britain, this practice is
sometimes reversed
...
’” You may want to sort out all these squiggles with a magnifying glass! The embedded
quotation gets single marks, and the embedder (sounds like someone you don’t want to meet at
a party) gets double quotation marks
...


w

“Did Richard really ask about ‘Shakespeare’s sonatas’?” asked Clair
...
It appears far too complicated to punctuate correctly
...
Just take it one step at a time
...

Because the embedded quotation is not a question, the question mark follows the closing
single quotation mark
...
See, I told you it was easy!

x

Betsy replied, “No, he asked about ‘Shakespeare’s bonnets
...
The
embedded quotation and the larger quotation are both statements, so the period goes inside
both closing marks
...
Are you having a good
time yet? The embedded quotation isn’t an exclamation, so the exclamation point stays outside
the single quotation marks
...


A

“Betsy has no patience for what she terms ‘Richard’s posturing,’” explained Clair
...


B

Clair went on to ask, “Don’t you think that Richard is what I call ‘an educated guy who means
well’?” This is a complicated one
...
The larger quotation is a question, so its closing
quotation mark goes after the question mark
...
Once
again, both the embedded and the larger quotation end at the same place
...


D

“I can’t believe that anyone would call him ‘a player’!” exclaimed Betsy
...

The embedded quotation is just a statement, so its closing quotation mark precedes the exclamation point
...
Embedded titles are the same as embedded quotations, so the comma goes inside both
closing quotation marks
...
If it’s a collection, it’s a full-length work
...


G

Publish Your Poetry Now
...


H

“Forget About Writing Poetry
...


I

“Sonata Taxiana
...

In Britain the period is generally outside, playing cricket
...


J

Songs of April
...


Chapter 8: “Let Me Speak!” Quotation Marks

K

Big Brother and Sister
...
(You can italicize it instead
...


L

“Sister Knows Everything,” I don’t have a blog, but if I did, I wouldn’t want anyone breaking in!
The episode title belongs in quotation marks
...
(Italics may sub
for underlining, if you wish
...


M

Who Will Be My First Love? This one is complicated
...
The comma in the sentence follows the title
...
)

N

“A Resolution to Revolutionize Poetry
...
The period ending the sentence goes inside the closing mark
...
The newspaper name is underlined or italicized, in contrast to an article
title, which belongs in quotation marks
...
” At
Camp Waterbug I learned to paddle a canoe without tipping it over more
than twice a trip
...
The article was called “How to Tip a Canoe
...
” I was not upset because I
believed him (eventually) when he explained that the comment was an

43

44

editing error
...


45

46

“You know,” he responded quickly, “that I have a lot of respect for
you
...
”
One of the frogs had a little label on his leg that read “JUST KIDDING

49

50

47
48

TOO
...
The song was called “If I Were a Rich Man
...
” I won’t quote the rest of the
song because I’m still serving the detention my counselor gave me, even
though I’m back home now
...
The title of a collection of poems, on the other hand,
needs to be underlined
...


R

An article title belongs in quotation marks
...


S

Directly quoted speech belongs in quotation marks, with the period inside the closing mark
...


U

The interrupted quotation, with an inserted speaker tag, needs two sets of marks
...


V

As in the preceding explanation, the period at the end of the sentence goes inside the closing
mark
...
The period goes inside
...
The
period goes inside
...


z

The title of a song needs to be in quotation marks
...


Chapter 9

Hitting the Big Time: Capital Letters
In This Chapter
ᮣ Choosing capitals for job and personal titles
ᮣ Capitalizing geographical names
ᮣ Identifying school and business terms that should be capitalized
ᮣ Selecting capital letters for literary and media titles
ᮣ Placing capital letters in abbreviations

P

oetry is something I love, but even I have to admit that poets get away with murder
...
A poet can
write “i sent sally to sue,” and no one blinks
...

Most people know the basics: Capital letters are needed for proper names, the personal pronoun I, and the first letter of a sentence
...
Never fear
...

Even for nonpoets, the rules for capital letters may vary
...
In this workbook I
follow the most common capitalization styles
...
The most common are those manuals published by
the Modern Language Association (academic writing in the humanities), the American
Psychological Association (science and social science writing), and the University of
Chicago (general interest and academic publishing)
...
Titles — job or personal — are a different story
...
Smith, Professor Wiley, Lord
Cummings, and so forth)
...


114

Part II: Mastering Mechanics
ߜ Titles written after or without a name are generally not capitalized (George Wiley,
professor of psychology or Danielle Smith, director of paper distribution, for
instance)
...

Now that you get the idea, test yourself
...
Lowercase any extra capitals
...
) Note: In this section, correct only personal names and
people’s titles — you can assume that everything else is correct
...
The reverend archie smith, Chief Executive of the Homeless Council, has invited senator
Bickford to next month’s fundraiser
...
Reverend, Archie, Smith, chief, executive, Senator
...
Reverend and Senator precede the names (Archie
Smith and Bickford) and act as part of the person’s name, not just a description of their
jobs
...
The title chief executive follows the name and isn’t
capitalized
...
Yesterday mayor Victoria Johnson ordered all public servants in her town to conserve
sticky tape
...
Herman harris, chief city engineer, has promised to hold the line on tape spending
...
However, the Municipal Dogcatcher, Agnes e
...

4
...

5
...
Bark is so extensive that hardly any paper detaches
...
Few Dogcatchers care as much as agnes about rounding up lost dogs
...
The recent champion of the town dog show, BooBoo, was caught last week
...
Surely Ms
...

9
...

10
...
, will continue
to tape to her heart’s content
...
Sticking, Inc
...

12
...
is tired of jokes about his name
...
When he was appointed Chief Financial Officer, George Finger asked the previous holder
of the position for advice
...
Alicia Bucks, who is now the President of a major thumbtack conglomerate, had little
sympathy for Finger
...
With a name like Bucks, she explained, everyone thinks you should work as a Bank
President
...
Finger next asked reverend Holy how he dealt with his unusual name
...
However, Holy, who has been a Bishop for twelve years, was puzzled by the question
...
“I feel fortunate compared to my brother, who was General Manager of the New Jersey
Devils hockey team,” Bishop Holy remarked
...
Reginald Holy joined the Devils twenty years ago as a Player Development Director
...
Holy hopes to be appointed President of the National Hockey League someday
...
Surprisingly, the worlds of business and education have a lot in common:
ߜ The place where it all happens: Capitalize the name of the company or school
(Superlative Widgets International or University of Rock and Roll, for example)
...

ߜ Working units: Business activities (management, advertising, or marketing, perhaps)
and general academic tasks, years, and subjects (such as research, sophomore, and history) aren’t capitalized
...
Project names (the
Zero Task Force) and course names (Psychological Interpretations of Belly-Button Rings)
are capitalized
...

Course titles and the names of businesses or institutions are capitalized according to
the “headline style” rules of titles, which I describe in “Capitalizing Titles of Literary
and Media Works” later in this chapter
...
Short, relational words such as of, for, by,
and from aren’t capitalized, nor are articles such as a, an, and the
...
Neither are academic degrees or
awards (master’s, endowed chair, fellowship, doctorate, and so forth)
...

Some companies take a tip from poets and change the usual capitalization customs
...
As a grammarian, I’m not happy, but people (and companies) have the right to
ruin their own names
...

Now that you have the basics, try these questions
...
If a word needs a capital
letter, cross out the offending letter and insert the capital
...


115

116

Part II: Mastering Mechanics

Q
...


A
...
The name of the company is
capitalized, as is the name of the school
...

21
...

22
...
”
23
...

Stileless, who is the student representative to all university committees
...
“The gold ring definitely turned off some juniors I was interested in romantically,”
explained Fred, who hasn’t had a date, he says, since he was a high school senior
...
The spokesperson surveyed competing products, including a silver-gold combination
manufactured by in style or else, inc
...

26
...
”
27
...

28
...
”
29
...

30
...


Capitalizing Titles of Literary
and Media Works
If you write an ode to homework or a scientific study on the biological effects of too
many final exams, how do you capitalize the title? The answer depends on the style
you’re following:
ߜ Literary, creative, and general-interest works are capitalized in “headline
style
...
Articles (a, an, the) and prepositions (among,
by, for, and the like) are usually in lowercase
...

ߜ The titles of scientific works employ “sentence style,” which calls for capital
letters only for the first word of the title and subtitle and for proper nouns
...
(The title of a scientific paper in sentence style:
“Cloning fruit flies: Hazards of fly bites
...

Cross out the offending letters and insert capitals above them where needed
...
By the way, titles of short works are enclosed in quotation marks
...
(See Chapter 8 for more information on the punctuation of titles
...
“the wonders of homework completed: an ode” (headline)
A
...
So are the nouns (Wonders, Homework) and descriptive
words (Completed)
...

31
...
“an analysis of the duckensis mobyous: the consequences of habitat shrinkage on population” (sentence)
33
...
the duck and i: essays on the relationship between human beings and feathered species
(sentence)
35
...
“the duck stops here: political wisdom from the environmental movement” (sentence)
37
...
“moby platypus doesn’t live here anymore” (headline)
39
...
for the love of a duck: a sentimental memoir (headline)

Placing Geographical Capitals
Where am I? I’m in a city (lowercase), popularly known as New York (capitalized), or,
as my husband likes to say, on a small island (lowercase) off the coast of New Jersey
(capitalized)
...

Get the idea? Place names are in lowercase when they’re generic, one-term-fits-all
(river, canyon, town, street, and so forth)
...

One more point about places: the compass points are in lowercase when they refer to
directions (head south for ten miles, for example) and capitalized when they refer to
areas of the country (the Northeast, the South, the Midwest, and so on)
...

Now that you’re oh-so-savvy about places and capital letters, peer at the underlined
words in the following sentences and decide whether a capital letter is appropriate
...
If not, leave the word
alone
...
Megan often revs up her motorcycle and speeds south, arriving at the shores of the
mississippi river around sunset
...
correct, Mississippi River
...
The second underlined term is a proper, specific name, so
capital letters are needed
...
Rowing across the hudson river is difficult for Andy, who hates oceans, lakes, and all
bodies of water
...
Andy, who was born in schenectady, new york, pretends to be a ukranian prince
...
His latest bride, Abby, hails from an island near Andy’s castle, which is just north of the
strait of gibraltar
...
Megan gave a wedding present to the happy couple: two round-trip tickets to a beautiful
natural canyon in the southwest
...
The last time Megan visited new mexico, she was arrested by a constable visiting from
europe
...
“The fact that I am not from this continent is no reason to deny my arresting privileges,”
said Constable Creary
...
”
47
...

48
...

49
...

50
...


AM or p
...
? Capitalizing Abbreviations
Abbreviations save you time, but they also present you with a couple of annoying
problems, namely whether to capitalize or lowercase and whether a period is needed
...
Some
publications and institutions proudly announce that “we don’t capitalize a
...
” whereas
others declare exactly the opposite, choosing “AM” instead
...
) So if you’re writing for an organization with a chip on its collective shoulder, you’re wise to ask in advance for a list of the publication’s or school’s
preferences
...
These
are the general guidelines:
ߜ Acronyms — forms created by the first letter of each word (NATO, UNICEF,
OPEC, and so forth) — take capitals but not periods
...
Bush and Msgr
...
The three most common titles — Mr
...
, and Ms
...


Chapter 9: Hitting the Big Time: Capital Letters
ߜ Latin abbreviations aren’t usually capitalized but do end with a period
...
g
...
(in the same place), and etc
...
The abbreviations for morning and afternoon may be written with capital letters and no periods (AM and PM) or without capitals but with periods (a
...

and p
...
Your choice, but be consistent
...
and Ala
...
However, people now use the two-letter, no-period, capitalized
forms created by the post office (IN and AL)
...

ߜ When an abbreviation comes at the end of a sentence, the period for the abbreviation does double duty as an endmark
...
Check out the full word, which I place in lowercase letters, even when capital letters are called for
...


Q
...
fig
...
illustration _______________
52
...
mister Burns _______________
54
...
national hockey league _______________
56
...
new york _______________
58
...
irregular _______________
60
...


Moby, the Life Of a Duck: A Book Report

If you are ever given a book about Ducks, take my advice and burn it
...
She
said that “Excitement was on every page
...
Moby
actually goes to school and earns a Doctorate in bird Science! After a really
boring account of Moby’s Freshman year, the book turns to his career as a
Figure 9-1:
Sample
book report
of a lousy
read
...
I was very happy to see him fly away at the end of the
book
...
Titles and proper names take capitals; common nouns, such as servants and tape, don’t
...
Names take capitals, but titles written after the name usually don’t
...
The title in this sentence isn’t attached to the name; in fact, it’s separated from the name by a comma
...
Initials take capitals and periods
...
Now the title is attached to the name, and thus it’s capitalized
...
The title Ms
...
After you choose a style, however, be consistent
...
, Mrs
...
or Mr, Mrs, and Ms but not some from each set
...
The common noun dogcatchers doesn’t need a capital letter, but the
proper name Agnes does
...
The name of the champion must be capitalized
...
The capital letter inside
the name is a style; you may not like it, but the namer’s preference should be honored
...
Once again, the title and name are in caps, but the common job classification isn’t
...
This title isn’t attached to a name, so it takes lowercase
...
Names are in caps, but the title isn’t, except when it precedes the name
...
A title that isn’t attached to a name shouldn’t be capitalized
...
In this sentence the title precedes the name and thus should be capitalized
...
This title isn’t attached to a name
...


n

president
...
(Even then, some style
manuals call for lowercase
...
This title isn’t connected to a name; therefore, it should be lowercased
...
The title precedes the name and becomes part of the name, in a sense
...


q

bishop
...


r

general manager
...


s

player development director
...
Opt for lowercase
...
To be president is a big deal, but not a big letter
...
Although college freshmen think they’re really important (and, of
course, they are), they rate only lowercase
...


121

122

Part II: Mastering Mechanics

v

company
...


w

Curriculum Critique Committee
...


x

correct
...


y

In Style or Else, Inc
...
The names of companies are capitalized according to
the preference of the company itself
...


A

jewelers
...


B

Department of Product Development
...


C

Introduction to Fashion
...


D

correct
...
A
...
S
...
School subjects aren’t capitalized
...
This term isn’t the name of a specific company, just a common noun
...


F

Moby Duck: A Tale of Obsessive Bird Watching In headline style, the first word of the title
(Moby) and subtitle (A) are in caps
...
The preposition of merits only lowercase
...
In this title, following preferred scientific style, the names of the genus and species are in italics, with only the genus
name in caps
...
Did I catch you on “As”? It’s short, but it’s not an article or a preposition, so it rates a
capital letter
...
The personal pronoun I
is always capitalized
...
The joining word and is lowercased in headline style, unless it
begins a title or subtitle
...


L

Duck Upped: How the Duck Triumphed over the Hunter Because this title is in headline
style, everything is in caps except articles (the) and prepositions (over)
...


N

“Population estimates of the platypus: An inexact science” Sentence style calls for capital letters at the beginning of the title and subtitle
...


Chapter 9: Hitting the Big Time: Capital Letters

O

For the Love of a Duck: A Sentimental Memoir Headline style mandates lowercase for articles (the, a) and prepositions (of)
...


P

Hudson River, correct, correct
...


Q

Schenectady, New York, Ukranian
...


R

correct, correct, Strait of Gibraltar
...
When capitalizing place names that contain several words, follow the “headline
style” of capitalization described in detail in the section entitled “Capitalizing Titles of Literary
and Media Works” in this chapter
...


S

correct, Southwest
...


T

New Mexico, Europe
...


U

correct, North American, correct
...


V

trans-Atlantic
...
The prefix trans- isn’t a proper name, so it’s written
in lowercase
...


W

European, Belgium, correct, correct
...
The first two are capitalized
because they’re proper, specific terms
...
A turkish towel isn’t really talking about the country of Turkey but rather about a household object
...


X

Santa Fe, correct, correct, Omaha
...
One common term (village) and
one direction (north), no caps
...
The stream is a common term and doesn’t deserve uppercase
...


z

illus
...
” To make this term more universal, historians often substitute “CE” or Common Era for AD and “BCE” or Before the Common Era for BC
...
Burns

S

U
...
Pres
...
Smith

V

NY (postal abbreviation) or N
...
(traditional form)

W

Adams Blvd
...


Y

Inc
...

When i I had to read Moby Duck, the Tteacher promised me that it was

story is set in the nNorthwest, where a duckling with special powers is born
...
She said that “Eexcitement was on every page
...
I was very happy to see him fly away at
the end of the book
...


Z

An ordinary term for animals, in this case ducks, is lowercased
...


2

The name of the teacher isn’t given, just the term teacher, which should be lowercased
...


4

Areas of the country are capitalized
...


6

School subjects are written in lowercase
...


8

Job titles, when they aren’t attached to the beginning of a name, are in lowercase
...


hen was the last time you chatted with a grammar
teacher? Never? I’m not surprised
...
The urge to
clam up rather than to risk an error is nearly overpowering
...
Furthermore, most of
the issues that people obsess about are actually extremely
simple
...
Deciding which
one is appropriate is not rocket science; it’s just pronoun
case, which you can practice in Chapter 10
...
If you’ve ever stumbled over everyone brought their/his/her lunch or she said she has/had
a cold, these chapters rescue you
...


Chapter 10

The Case of It (And Other Pronouns)
In This Chapter
ᮣ Distinguishing between subject and object pronouns
ᮣ Selecting who or whom
ᮣ Placing pronouns in to be sentences
ᮣ Choosing pronouns for prepositional phrases
ᮣ Using possessive pronouns with -ing nouns

M

ost kids I know can switch from He and I are going to do our homework now (reserved
for adult audiences) to Him and me are playing video games (with peers) faster than
an eye can blink
...
Just to be clear what I’m talking about: Pronouns are the words
that stand in for the name of a person, place, or thing
...

Case is one of the qualities that all pronouns have
...
The third is possessive
...
Oops, that’s my mother, not possessive
case
...
You can find the basics
of possessive-pronoun usage, along with the lowdown on another quality of pronouns —
number — in Chapter 3, and the really advanced (okay, obsessive) pronoun topics, such as
double meanings, in Chapter 11
...


Meeting the Subject at Hand and
the Object of My Affection
Subjects and objects have opposite jobs in a sentence
...
In the first paragraph of this chapter, he and I are better than him and me because the sentence needs a
subject for its verb, are going, and he and I are subject pronouns
...
If you scold him and me, those two pronouns resentfully receive
the scolding and thus act as objects
...
(I deal with prepositions later in this chapter
...

ߜ Object pronouns are me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom, and whomever
...
They do double duty as both
subject and object pronouns
...

Other one-case-fits-almost-all pronouns are either, most, other, which, and that
...
Use these pronouns only when the action in the sentence doubles back on the
subject
...
” “They washed themselves
50 times during the deodorant shortage
...
(“She herself baked the cake
...

In the following sentences, choose the correct pronoun from the parentheses
...
Violators will
be prosecuted
...


Q
...

A
...
In this sentence, Matt is the one taking and giving
...
Her is an object pronoun
...
Matt, Peyton, and (I/me/myself) have a date with destiny
...
The parchment, which (he/him) discovered in the back pocket of a pair of jeans made in
1972, is covered with strange symbols
...
I wanted to call Codebusters because (they/them) solved the riddle of the Subway
Tapestry last year
...
I can’t decide whether (they/them) should contact Matt first or wait until Matt realizes
that he needs (they/them)
...
The president of Codebusters knows that Peyton is better at figuring out obscure symbols
than (he/him)
...
Peyton won’t tell (I/me) a thing about the parchment, but (she/her) did nod quietly when I
mentioned Martians
...
Peyton’s friends — Lucy and (she/her) — are obsessed with Martians and tend to see
Little Green Men everywhere
...
If the Martians and (she/her) have a message for the world, (they/them) will make sure it
gets out with maximum publicity
...
Elizabeth and (I/me/myself) will glue (we/us/ourselves) to the all-news channel just in
case Peyton decides to talk
...
Sure enough, Peyton just contacted the relevant authorities, Dan Moore and (he/him), to
arrange an interview
...
Elizabeth favors sending NASA and (we/us/ourselves) the parchment
...
I pointed out that NASA knows a lot more than (she/her) about space, but nothing about
ancient parchments
...
Matt checked the Internet, but it had little to offer (he/him), though Codebusters did
...
(I/me/I myself) think that the parchment is a fake
...
No one is more dishonest than Matt and (she/her)
...
Yesterday, Elizabeth told Matt and (I/me) that Peyton’s room is filled with parchment
scraps
...
Elizabeth is as suspicious as (we/us) when it comes to Peyton’s activities
...
Peyton and (I/me/myself) were enrolled in several art classes last year
...
The art class, which gave (we/us) instruction in sculpture, printmaking, and parchment
design, was fascinating
...
This semester Peyton and Elizabeth left art school and enrolled in the Classics Academy,
where (they/them) are taking a class in symbolic language
...
Like all other subject/object pronoun decisions, you simply have to figure out
how the pronoun functions in the sentence
...
If you need
an object (a receiver of the action), go with whom
...
But if you untangle the sentence and figure out (pardon the expression) who is doing what to whom, you’ll be fine
...


Q
...
Who
...
Who is for subjects, and whom is for objects
...
Does Peyton know (who/whom) should get the information once she’s finished decoding?
22
...

23
...
His buyer is (whoever/whomever) believes Matt’s sales pitch
...
Also, Matt will sell the parchment to (whoever/whomever) is willing to pay
...
I don’t think NASA is interested, despite Matt’s claim that an expert from NASA, (who/
whom) isn’t saying much, was seen checking “Mars” and “Alien Life Forms” on the Internet
...
Do you know (who/whom) the expert consulted?
28
...

29
...

30
...


129

130

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
31
...

32
...

33
...
”
34
...

35
...


Linking Up with Pronouns
in “To Be” Sentences
Most verbs express action, but mingling with this on-the-go group are forms of the verb “to
be” (am, is, are, was, were, has been, will be, and the like)
...

“Jeremy is the president” is the same as “Jeremy = president
...
”) This incredibly boring explanation leads to an important pronoun fact: A subject pronoun serves as the subject of a linking verb, and to preserve
reversibility, subject pronouns also follow linking verbs, in the same spot where you normally expect an object
...

When you select pronouns for a linking-verb sentence, be aware that sometimes the verb
changes, so to sound right, a reversible sentence may need a verb adjustment from singular to plural or vice versa
...

Can you select the appropriate pronoun from the parentheses? Give it a whirl in the following
example and practice exercises
...
”

Q
...

A
...
Who is he? Only the gossip columnist knows for sure
...

Reverse that portion of the sentence to check yourself: Him is the culprit? I don’t think
so
...

36
...

37
...

38
...


Chapter 10: The Case of It (And Other Pronouns)
39
...
”
40
...
”
41
...

42
...

43
...
”
44
...

45
...
“It was (he/him),” Tim replied, “the master
criminal who created the fake parchment and sold it to Peyton
...
(Come to think of it, propositions concern relationships too
...
Prepositions
always have objects, and sometimes those objects are pronouns
...

The embroidery on the umbrella was done by me alone
...
In the second, umbrella and me are objects of on and by
...
They’re nouns, and they don’t change no matter where they
appear in the sentence
...
And if its job is to be an object of a preposition, it must be an object pronoun
...
Not in this grammatical
universe, anyway
...
In an attempt to fry your brain, I cleverly (she said modestly) scatter a few
subjects in the exercise
...
I won’t accept any packages from (he/him) because last week he sent a quart of pickled
cabbage to (I/me), and my mailbox was sticky for days
...
him, me
...
To is
also a preposition and should be followed by the object pronoun me
...
Jessica sang songs to Mom and (she/her) whenever the moon was full
...
Her latest CD is entitled Of Mom, (I/Me), and the Moon
...
I’m going to buy the CD, although a lot of issues remain between Jessica and (I/me)
...
For example, when she broke up with her boyfriend, she stated that she was prettier than
(he/him)
...
However, she has been “looks-challenged” ever since her mother’s dog Spike ran after
(she/her) and took a large bite out of her nose
...
Aggressive though he may be, you can’t put much past (he/him), and for that reason
Spike is a great watchdog
...
Spike likes to walk behind (we/us) when we approach the house; he growls at (whoever/
whomever) comes too close
...
“At (who/whom) is this dog snarling?” I once asked Jessica
...
“He thinks the letter carrier wants to rob us, so he tries to keep an eye on (he/him),” she
replied as she pieced together a ripped catalogue
...
“You have to run around (they/them),” added Jessica, speaking of her mother and Spike
...
Carefully separating the letters addressed to “Spike” from the letters meant for Jessica,
the letter carrier gave the shredded mail to Jessica and (he/him)
...
Spike’s penpals generally include a dog biscuit when writing to (he/him)
...
Spike and Jessica both enjoy getting mail, but Spike loves letters even more than (she/her)
...
Spike’s letters sometimes contain meaty bones from (whoever/whomever) really wants to
catch his attention
...
Jessica is as fond of meaty bones as (he/him), but she hardly ever receives any
...
When I say -ing noun, I mean a noun made
from the -ing form of a verb (swimming, smiling, puttering, and similar words)
...
Nor am I talking about -ing verb forms used as
verbs or as descriptions of other nouns
...

Here’s the deal with pronouns and -ing nouns
...
Why? Because that form keeps the focus in the right place
...

Putting on your thinking cap, you can see that Carrie doesn’t hate me
...
(My auditioning threatens her sense of privacy
and pretty much guarantees that she won’t get a slot on the show
...

In the situation described in the preceding paragraph, the possessive form of a noun
should also be your choice for the spot in front of an -ing noun
...
, not Carrie hates
Rick auditioning
...
She just
doesn’t want him on television
...
Circle the pronouns
you love and ignore the ones you hate
...
Keep your eyes open!

Q
...


A
...
The possessive pronoun shifts the
attention to the task, which is the point of the sentence
...
St
...

62
...

63
...

64
...

65
...

66
...

67
...

68
...

69
...
John will appreciate (I/me/my) calling him “Johnny”?
70
...


Calling All Overachievers: Extra
Practice with Pronoun Case
This advertisement for a garage sale (see Figure 10-1) has quite a few problems
(including the fact that Anne stapled it to the police chief’s favorite rose bush)
...
Ten are correct, and ten aren’t
...
The merchandise, which, just between
you and I is mostly junk, will go on sale tomorrow
...
I recommend For
Who the Dog Barks
...

Only a little freon leaks now
...
I promise a
free balloon to whomever buys the most, and he or her may blow it up and
Figure 10-1:
A pronounchallenged
garagesale ad
...
”

Chapter 10: The Case of It (And Other Pronouns)

Answers to Pronoun Case Problems
a

I
...
Me is for objects
...


b

he
...
He is a subject pronoun
...
Someone has to do the solving referred to in the sentence
...


d

they, them
...
In
the first parentheses, they is what you want because they should contact Matt
...
In the second half of the sentence, he needs them, and them receives the action
from the verb needs
...
Did I catch you here? If the sentence contains a comparison and some words are implied,
supply the missing words before choosing a pronoun
...
than he
is
...


f

me, she
...
) In the second, you need someone to do the nodding, the subject pronoun she
...
The tough part about this sentence is that the pronoun choice is camouflaged by other
words (Peyton’s friends and Lucy)
...
You need the subject pronoun
...
An appositive is always in the same case
as the word it matches
...
Two parentheses, two subjects
...


i

I, ourselves
...
You can rule out
me because me is an object pronoun
...
In the second parentheses, you’re looking
for an object for the verb will glue
...
The next choice, us, is tempting, but because the actor and the receiver are the
same, ourselves is better
...
Like sentence 7, this one has lots of camouflage
...
What’s left? Peyton just contacted he/him
...
If you really
want a grammatical explanation, and surely you have better things to do with your time,
authorities is the object of the verb contacted, and Dan Moore and him forms an appositive
...


k

us
...
You can’t plug in we
because we is for subjects, and receivers are objects
...
) or for situations in which the actor
and receiver are the same (I told myself
...
A word is missing in this sentence: does
...
The pronoun she is the subject of the
implied verb does
...
The verb offer, even in the infinitive form (to offer) takes the object pronoun him
...
The first choice is an ordinary subject pronoun; the second is emphatic
...


o

she
...
After you supply it, you see what’s needed: No one is more dishonest
than Matt and she are
...


p

me
...
You can probably “hear” the
correct answer if you use your thumb to cover the words Matt and
...
Elizabeth told me sounds — and
is — correct
...
In many comparisons, a word is missing
...
Elizabeth is as suspicious as us are? Nope
...
Bingo
...


r

I
...
The -self pronoun isn’t appropriate because -self pronouns are only for emphasis or for actions that double back upon the subject, as in I told myself not to make a grammar mistake
...
The object pronoun us receives the action of the verb gave in this sentence
...
The verb are taking needs a subject, and they fills the bill
...
Focus on the part of the sentence containing the who/whom issue: who/whom should get
the information
...


v

whomever
...
Receivers are always object pronouns, so whomever wins the prize
...
The verb is needs a subject, and who is a subject pronoun — a match made in heaven
...
The verb believes needs a subject
...


y

whoever
...
When you hear the word to (a preposition), you may want to
jump for the object pronoun, because prepositions are completed by object pronouns such as
whomever
...
)
But in this sentence, the verb is needs a subject, and whoever fills that role
...


A

who
...
Who fills the bill
...
This sentence is easier to figure out if you isolate the part of the sentence containing
the who/whom choice: who/whom the expert consulted
...
Whom is the object of the verb consulted
...
As in the previous sentence, isolating and rearranging are helpful: who/whom Matt saw,
Matt saw whom
...


D

whoever
...


E

whom
...
Rearrange the words into
the normal subject-verb order: I do not trust who/whom
...


F

whom
...


Chapter 10: The Case of It (And Other Pronouns)

G

who
...


H

who
...


I

whoever
...
However, the verb is willing requires a subject, and that subject is whoever
...


J

whoever
...


K

they
...
” To put it another way: they is a subject pronoun and belongs after the
linking verb are
...
To promise isn’t a linking verb; it expresses action
...


M

she
...
See how neatly that reverses?

N

I
...


O

he
...
in more ways than one! If Peyton points the FBI at Matt, he is certainly
it, as far as felony charges go
...


P

them
...


Q

him
...


R

whoever
...


S

him
...


T

he
...


U

her
...


V

Me
...


W

me
...
In this sentence, Jessica is one and me is the
other
...


X

he
...
When you throw it in, you hear that she was prettier than he was
...
(Everyone knows that he once won an “Ugly as a Wart” contest!)

Y

her
...


z

him
...


Z

us, whoever
...
The pronoun us is best as an object of the preposition behind
...
Instead, whoever functions as the subject of the verb comes
...


137

138

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use

1

whom
...
The preposition at is completed by the object whom
...
The preposition on needs an object, and him got the job
...
Around is a preposition in this sentence, so it takes the object them
...
The preposition to needs an object, so opt for him
...
You can’t write to he, because he is a subject pronoun, and the preposition to can’t bear to
be without an object pronoun
...
This sentence makes a comparison, and comparisons often contain implied verbs
...
Once you include the
missing word, the answer is clear
...


7

whoever
...
The pronoun whoever functions as the subject of the verb wants
...
This implied comparison omits the verb is
...
You need the subject pronoun he to match
with the verb is
...
Lincoln doesn’t need help with a person; he needs help with a task (editing)
...


0

their
...
He didn’t love their sending pronoun-lovers
...


!

him
...
Lori saw him
...
A possessive isn’t called for in this sentence
...
The objection isn’t to a person (she) but to an action (insisting)
...
The point in this sentence is Lincoln’s reaction to the editing
...


$

my
...
My ensures that the reader thinks about pronouncing
...
They haven’t backfired; the say-it-my-way-or-take-the-highway attitude is the problem
...


^

she
...
Take it out for a moment and see what’s left: she got a big laugh
...


&

my
...
But in this sentence, I’m inquiring about
the calling
...


*

me
...
Also, the noun king wasn’t created from a verb
...
The merchandise, which, just
between you and I me is mostly junk, will go on sale tomorrow
...

I recommend For Who Whom the Dog Barks
...
Only a little freon leaks now
...
I promise a free
balloon to whomever whoever buys the most, and he or her she may blow

86
88

it up and pop it right on the spot! As my mom says, “Give she her a chance,

89

and everyone will be happy
...
My is a possessive pronoun and links the brother to the speaker as strongly as the
handcuffs he bought for her birthday last year
...
Another possessive pronoun, attached to the noun neighbors
...
You need an object pronoun here, receiving the action expressed by the verb gave
...
The you is okay (you works for both subject and object jobs)
...
I is a problem
...


+

His
...


[

whoever
...
The object of the preposition, by the way, is the whole
expression, whoever looks
...
The object pronoun correctly follows the preposition with
...
The possessive pronoun their answers the pet-ownership question
...
The subject pronoun I pairs with the verb recommend
...
The preposition for requires the object pronoun whom
...
The preposition by takes the object pronoun me
...
The possessive pronoun our clarifies the parent/child bond here
...
By I? I don’t think so
...


,

I
...


<

correct
...



...
The verb buys takes the subject, whoever
...
The verb may blow is paired with the subject pronouns he
...
You need a subject pronoun for the verb may blow, so she does the job
...
The verb give needs the object her
...
The language can’t do without pronouns, but when it comes to
error-potential, they’re a minefield just waiting to blow up your speech or writing
...
In
this chapter I hit the big time, supplying information about pronouns that your great-uncle,
the one who has a collection of antique grammar books that he actually reads, doesn’t even
know
...
er, star
...
For example, take a look at this sentence: “When Charlie yelled at me,
I smacked him and poured glue on his homework
...
This example sentence is fairly straightforward;
unfortunately, not all pronoun-pronoun couples get together so easily
...
” Doesn’t that comment sound plural? So why do you need the singular
verb is? Because everybody is a singular pronoun
...
Chances are your ear for good English already knows that these pronouns belong in
the singular box
...
,” “some
...
,” and other similar pronouns, you may stub your toe
...
And in the grammar
world, agreement (matching up all plurals with other plurals and singulars with other singulars) is a Very Big Deal
...
”

142

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
Not every pronoun is singular
...

Scan the following example sentence and practice exercises and plop a pronoun that
makes sense in each blank
...
Neither of my aunts has a wart on _______________ nose
...
her
...
True, the sentence refers to aunts, a plural
...
Because aunts are female,
her is the word you want
...
My cousins may be easily found in a crowd because both have warts on _______________
noses
...
My cousin Amy opted for surgery; relieved that the procedure went well, everybody sent
_______________ best wishes
...
Many of the get-well cards sported miniature warts on _______________ envelopes
...
A few even had little handwritten messages tucked into _______________ illustrations
...
Because Amy is pleased with the result of her surgery, someone else in her family is going
to get _______________ nose done also
...
“Doesn’t everyone need more warts on _______________ nose?” reasoned Amy
...
Anybody who disagreed with Amy kept quiet, knowing that _______________ opinion
wouldn’t be accepted anyway
...
Each of the implanted warts has _______________ own unique shape
...
Several of Amy’s new warts model _______________ appearance on a facial feature of a
famous movie star
...
Although someone said that _______________ didn’t like the new warts, the crowd reaction was generally positive
...
Neither of the surgeons who worked on Amy’s nose has opted for a similar procedure on
_______________ own schnozz
...
I assume that nothing I say will change your mind about the nose-wart question;
_______________ will “go in one ear and out the other,” as my mother used to say
...
Aftercare is quite extensive; not one of the warts will continue to look good unless Amy
gives _______________ a lot of attention
...
Both Amy and her sister Emily look forward to having _______________ portraits painted,
warts and all
...
Many will ask _______________ own doctors for cosmetic surgery after this event
...
A few will opt for _______________ own version of “wart enhancement
...
Not everyone will want the same type of wart on _______________ nose
...
In fact, neither of Elizabeth’s daughters will ask for warts on _______________ nose, choosing a tasteful cheek placement instead
...
A few cheek warts have already appeared in the tabloids because many stars want something dramatic for _______________ publicity photos
...
Each of the warts chosen by Elizabeth’s daughters has little white spots on
_______________
...
, the United Nations,
and a ton of other businesses or community groups are waiting for the chance to
mess up your pronoun choices
...
However, a
moment of logical thinking tells you that each is one business and must therefore be
referred to by a singular pronoun
...

Why it is wrong: I was there last week and the lingerie was full price
...

Right: Saks sometimes puts its designer lingerie on sale
...

In the following example and set of practice exercises, choose the correct pronoun for
each sentence
...
The same principle
applies: Singular matches with singular, and plural matches with plural
...
Carrie patronizes Meyer and Frank because (she/they) likes (its/their) shoe department,
which has a good supply of her favorite size-13 stiletto heels
...
she, its
...
Carrie is not
only singular, but also unique when it comes to shoe size
...

21
...

22
...

23
...
“The WHMA will take care of
(its/their) own staff
...
Carrie, depressed by her failure to launch a cookie drive, immediately visited Mrs
...


143

144

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
25
...
“The WHMA needs to do a better job with labor relations
...

26
...

27
...
Moo’s Cookie World and all (its/their) subsidiaries,” vowed Carrie, after she
had been revived by a handsome emergency medical technician
...
“Don’t sue the EMT service,” muttered the technician
...
”
29
...

30
...

31
...

32
...
Moo’s Cookie World did
report that macadamia nuts are (its/their) most popular ingredient,” read the letter
...
Carrie’s response was to question the NIH about (its/their) integrity
...
“I think that Mrs
...
Moo’s Cookie World, has bribed the
NIH, and (it/they) will always rule in favor of those who contribute money,” said Carrie
...
Mrs
...


Decoding Who, That, and Which
Most pronouns are either singular or plural, masculine or feminine or neuter, popular
or unpopular, good at math or barely passing arithmetic
...
The characteristics of most pronouns are fixed
...
Who, which, and that take their meaning and characteristics from the sentences in which they appear
...
(The who is feminine and
singular because it replaces the feminine, singular May
...
(The who is feminine and plural because it replaces sisters
...
Whether a subject pronoun is singular or plural affects what
sort of verb (singular or plural) is paired with it
...


Chapter 11: Choosing the Best Pronoun for a Tricky Sentence
Deciding singular/plural verb issues is especially tough sometimes:
She is one of the few quarterbacks who (is/are) ready for prime time
...

Leaving aside the issue of a female quarterback (hey, it could happen!), the key to this
sort of sentence is deciding what the pronoun represents
...
But if who
means quarterbacks, the verb should be plural, because quarterbacks is plural
...

She is the only quarterback who is negotiating with the Jets
...
The who in the first example clearly stands
in for quarterbacks, a plural
...

Therefore, who is singular and so is the verb paired with it
...
I promise that at least one of each pair in parentheses is what you want
...
Kristin is one of the many lawyers on the fishing boat who (want/wants) to catch a shark
...
want
...
Bingo: A plural verb is needed to match the
plural who
...
The shark that Kristin caught was the only one that (was/were) hungry enough to take the
odd bait that Kristin offered
...
The bait that (was/were) on sale at the market when Kristin went shopping was extremely
cheap (just like Kristin herself)
...
“I know that there is at least one shark that (likes/like) peanut butter,” reasoned Kristin
...
Kristin’s fellow shark fans, who (sails/sail) even in the winter, read a lot about these animals on the Internet
...
The only one of the shark sites that (doesn’t/don’t) appeal to Kristin is the one sponsored
by the Stop Fishing Society
...
Could it be that Kristin is one of the shark fans who (believes/believe) the Great White is a
vegetarian?
42
...
One of the many experienced sailors who (was/were) laughing at Kristin’s bait exclaimed,
“Peanut butter can’t catch anything!”
44
...

45
...


145

146

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use

Getting Down to Specifics: Avoiding
Improper Pronoun References
Pronoun rules are far more rigid than even the U
...
tax code
...
(Ida, Mary,
and Joan, for example, may be replaced by they
...
But if you’re going for correct, formal English, don’t ask a pronoun to violate the rules
...
(Pronouns can’t replace verbs or noun/verb combos
...

Wrong: Jeffrey handed in a late, error-filled report, which annoyed his boss
...
In
formal English the pronoun has to replace one and only one noun
...
(Now
which refers to report, a noun
...
(Sometimes the best way to fix one of these sentences is to eliminate the
pronoun entirely
...

Why it’s wrong: One what? Sports marketing course? I don’t think so
...

Right: Jeffrey’s sports marketing course sounds interesting, but I don’t want to
enroll in it
...
)
Also right: Jeffrey is studying to become a sports marketer, but I don’t want to be
one
...
)
Fix the pronoun problem in the following example sentence and practice exercises
...
When you find one, write “correct” in the blank
...
Remember that
sometimes you have to dump the pronoun entirely in order to correct the mistake
...


Q
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 11: Choosing the Best Pronoun for a Tricky Sentence

A
...

The preceding sentence is just one possible solution, in which the pronoun which takes
the place of job
...
Any sentence that achieves the goal of one noun out, one pronoun in is fine
...

46
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
47
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
48
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
49
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
50
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
51
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
52
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

147

148

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
53
...
”
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
54
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
55
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
56
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
57
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
58
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
59
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
60
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 11: Choosing the Best Pronoun for a Tricky Sentence

Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice
with Tricky Pronoun Situations
Here’s a field trip report (see Figure 11-1), written by a battle-weary teacher after a
particularly bad day
...


Mr
...
m
...
The day passed without incident, which was a
great relief to me
...
The group saw me eating and
said they wanted one too, but I replied that everyone had their schoolissued lunch
...
We got on one of the vans that was overdue for maintenance
...
We drove to Makoski
Figure 11-1:
A field trip
report,
written by
a teacher
who
doesn’t use
pronouns
correctly
(shame!)
...
Makoski is also the only one of the many repair shops on Route
9 that take credit cards, which was helpful because I had spent all my
money in the Adventure Land Bar and Grille
...
The plural pronoun both matches with the plural possessive pronoun their
...
Technically you can answer “his best wishes” and be grammatically correct, but I
always opt for the more inclusive term “his or her
...


c

their
...


d

their
...
A fine pair — they may even get married!

e

his or her
...


f

his or her
...


g

his or her
...


h

its
...
The singular each matches the singular possessive pronoun its
...
The possessive
has no apostrophe
...
The pronoun several moves you into plural territory, where their rules
...
The pronoun someone is singular (notice the one inside the word?) and must pair
with the singular he or she
...
If you know that the surgeons are both men (or both women), use one of the singular pronouns (either his or her)
...
No matter what, don’t opt for the plural their because neither is
singular
...
The singular nothing pairs with the singular pronoun it in this sentence
...
The singular not one needs the singular itself
...
The plural pronoun both tells you that the girls are springing for two portraits
...


o

their
...


p

their
...


q

his or her
...
Because the gender is not specified, his or her allows for both possibilities
...
The pronoun neither is singular, and the sentence concerns two females, Elizabeth’s daughters
...


s

their
...


t

it
...
True, the sentence talks about warts, and warts is a plural
...
Therefore you need a singular pronoun, it, to match with each
...
In the first part of the sentence, the possessive pronoun refers to the organization, the United Countries Association
...
In the second part of the sentence, the pronoun refers to the
individual staffers, who like to chow down and party hearty
...


v

its
...
The singular pronoun
is the one you want
...
I know, I know
...
Unfortunately, the correct word is
its, the singular pronoun that matches the singular organization
...
Mrs
...


y

It
...
Carrie is referring to the WHMA, and thus it is appropriate
...


A

she
...


B

its
...


C

It
...
The singular
possessive works well here
...
These two pronouns refer to Carrie, so singular and feminine rule
...
The organization’s name implies a plural, but in reality a singular entity is referenced, and
its matches up correctly
...
The National Institute of Health, an organization that in real life has never done anything
remotely like the actions in this exercise, should be referred to with the singular pronoun its in
this sentence
...
Mrs
...


H

its
...


I

it
...


J

they
...
Moo scarfed down
...


K

was
...
Not all, or even some, sharks would take Kristin’s unusual
bait
...
The pronoun that is singular
...
The pronoun that replaces bait, a singular word that must match with the singular was
...
Now Kristin is talking about one shark, and the pronoun that is singular
...
The pronoun who refers to fans, so the who is plural and takes a plural verb, sail
...
The only tells you that the pronoun that is singular and is therefore desperate for a singular verb, doesn’t
...


P

believe
...
The people in the crowd believe
...
The pronoun that represents bait, so that is singular and takes the singular verb is
...
How many people are doubled over in mirth? Not just one
...
) The who is plural, as is its verb, were
...
Just one taxidermist, so singular is the way to go
...
Strange as it may sound, more than one brand of peanut butter is shark-friendly (no sharks
were harmed in the grinding or bottling operation)
...


U

Jeffrey jogged for an hour in an effort to work off the pounds he had gained during his last
three-hour lunch, without success
...
You can dump this with any number of rewrites, including the one given here
...
Now the pronoun one refers to superhero
...


W

correct
...


X

The fact that Jeffrey’s next fitness effort ended in disaster did not discourage him
...
That may not refer, as it
does in the original sentence, to a whole sentence (Jeffrey’s next fitness effort ended in disaster)
...
The
pronoun this needs a one-word reference, but in the original, this replaces everything that
appears before the semicolon
...


z

correct
...
One word out and one in: You’re okay
...
In the original, no one can figure out
what it means
...


1

“No, I did not see the car when I directed my bicycle into the street,” testified Jeffrey, “but
my distraction wasn’t the cause of the accident
...
I’ve chosen distraction, but you may select blindness, lack of awareness, or something
similar
...
The pronoun which refers to phone, a legal use
...
Okay, pick any amount you want, so long as you dump the it
...
A pronoun replaces a noun, not a verb
...

The problem here is the pronoun which
...
In my suggested
rewrite, I drop the which altogether
...
The original sentence contains a vague
pronoun (this)
...


6

“Please pay your fine and leave the room,” she roared, flattening Jeffrey’s hopes for a
Saturday night date
...
You have plenty of reason to hope for proper
pronoun usage
...


Chapter 11: Choosing the Best Pronoun for a Tricky Sentence

7

The clerk wisely never dates anyone from work
...
Another possible correction: The clerk’s policy never to date anyone
from work is wise
...
In reality, they would hit
the divorce court within a month, but the problem with the original sentence is the pronoun,
not Jeffrey’s romance
...
Jeffrey didn’t major in literary
critic (the expression in the original); he majored in literary criticism, an expression that
replaces it in the corrected sentence
...
Levi Martin
Associate Professor, English 103
Field Trip Report, 1/18/12

I left school at 10:03 a
...
with 45 freshmen, all of whom were excited about
our visit to Adventure Land
...
I sat in the Adventure Land Bar and Grille for five hours
while the youngsters visited Space Camp, Pirates’ Mountain, and other
attractions that are overrated but popular
...
This was a disappointment, and several students threw
them at me
...
The motor whirred loudly, and it scared the van driver
...
Makoski is also the only one of the many repair

69

shops on Route 9 that take takes credit cards, which was helpful because I
had spent all my money in the Adventure Land Bar and Grille
...
The pronoun can’t replace an entire sentence
...
was a
great relief to me
...
Reword to add some food
(“
...


!

The pronoun everyone is singular, so it must be paired with his or her, not their
...
Eliminate the pronoun with
something like “The lunch packs were a
...
”

153

154

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use

#

In the original, the pronoun them refers to nothing
...


$

The sentence should read “one of the vans that were,” not “one of the vans that was
...


%

What does it mean? The motor didn’t scare the driver; the whirring sound scared him
...
Fix this problem by saying that “the driver was scared” or a similar
statement
...
Try its
...
” When you get into
“only one of ____” territory, you know that the pronoun is singular and needs a singular verb
...
Rewrite to eliminate the pronoun with something like “Makoski’s
acceptance of credit cards was helpful because
...
I probably like fiddling with verb tense for exactly the same reason; standard
English verbs allow writers and speakers to time travel
...
For example, did Arthur say that he has
or had a cold? Did or does Mars qualify as a planet? And what effect do verbals — hybrid
forms that are half verb, half another part of speech — have on the timing of events in a sentence? If you’re sure of all these issues, drop the book and play a round of miniature golf
...


Telling Tales of the Past
Humans love to gossip, so I’m betting that your lunch table is filled with a ton of stories,
many of which include summaries of what others have said or written
...
Note the past-tense verbs in italics:
She caught Arthur with Stella, but he told her that he was only tying Stella’s bow tie and
not nibbling her neck
...

What’s wrong with the preceding example? Apart from the fact that Arthur was indeed nibbling Stella’s neck, nothing
...
So even if she still has incomparable eyes, in this paragraph the
verb had is better
...
”)
A common error is to switch from one tense to another with no valid reason
...
He finally called
...
If she sat and waited until he called (all past-tense verbs), the next three
verbs (says, is, and will skip) should be in past tense also (said, was, and would skip)
...
Just to be sure you’re paying attention, I sneak in a few verbs that aren’t summary of speech and therefore shouldn’t be in past tense
...
During yesterday’s tryouts for the new reality show, Grammarian Idol Factor, Roberta
(tells/told/will tell) the producer that she (likes/liked/will like) selecting pronouns
while dangling 200 feet above the ground
...
told, liked
...
If the tryouts were yesterday, the fact that Roberta
lied to the producer (she actually hates pronouns) has to be in past tense
...
The second part is trickier
...

1
...

2
...

3
...

4
...

5
...

6
...

7
...

8
...

9
...

10
...

11
...

12
...
”
13
...

14
...

15
...


Chapter 12: Traveling in Time: Tricky Verb-Tense Situations
16
...

17
...

18
...

19
...

20
...


The Unchanging Universe: When
You’re Stuck in the Present
Verb tenses express the march of time: past, present, and future actions
...
When you talk about these things,
present tense is the only one that makes sense, no matter what else is going on in the sentence
...

Why it is wrong: What is the earth now, a bagel? The unchanging fact, that the
earth is a planet, must be expressed in present tense, despite the fact that all
other summarized speech should be in past tense
...
)
Right: Marty told me that the earth is a planet
...
To complicate your
life, I mixed “eternal truths” with changeable information
...
you’re on your own
...
Although Marty knew that 10 plus 10 (equals/equaled) 20, she wrote “15” on the test as a
gesture of defiance
...
equals
...
No change is possible, so present tense is what you want here
...
Marty’s job as a schoolteacher won’t last very long if she keeps telling her class that each
molecule of water (has/had) three oxygen atoms
...
Science has never been Marty’s best subject, but she did explain that water (covers/
covered) nine tenths of the planet
...
I gently confronted her with the fact that land (makes/made) up about a quarter of the
earth’s surface
...
Marty sniffed and said that she (has/had) a cold and couldn’t think about the earth
anyway
...
We went out for a snack (bagels and cream cheese), and Marty told me that cheese (is/
was) a dairy product
...
“Not the way they make it here,” I replied, pointing out that the product (is/was) mostly
artificial
...
Did anyone actually like guar gum, I wondered, and why (is/was) it on my bagel, pretending to be cheese?
28
...
”
29
...

30
...

31
...

32
...

33
...

34
...

35
...


Tackling the Timeline: Verbals to the Rescue
In Chapter 1 I explain the basic and “perfect” tenses of verbs (past, present, future,
past perfect, present perfect, and future perfect)
...

Verbals, as the name implies, have a link with verbs, but they also have a link with
other parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, and adverbs)
...
The
three types of verbals are as follows:
ߜ Gerunds look like the -ing form of a verb but function as a noun; that is, a gerund
names a person, place, thing, or idea
...
In this sentence, smiling is a gerund
...
Infinitives may function
as nouns or they may take a descriptive role
...
” In this sentence, to be is an infinitive
...
They’re
also the form of the verb that joins up with has, have, or had
...
(“Inhaling sharply, Elaine stepped away from the
blast of peppermint that escaped from Alice’s mouth
...
The verb is stepped
...
The plain form (without has, have, having, or
had) shows action happening at the same time as the action expressed by the main
verb in the sentence
...


Chapter 12: Traveling in Time: Tricky Verb-Tense Situations
The tricky part about choosing either the plain or perfect form is to decide whether the
events are actually simultaneous, at least in the grammatical sense
...
If the events are so closely spaced so as not to matter, go for the
plain form
...

Circle the correct verbal form from the parentheses in this example
...


Q
...


A
...
The two events occurred in the past, with the chemists’ request
closer to the present moment
...
The perfect form
(having tells you you’re in perfect-land) places the act of perfecting prior to the action
expressed by the main verb in the sentence, asked
...
(Peering/Having peered) at each interview subject, the researchers checked for
discoloration
...
One interview subject shrieked upon (hearing/having heard) the interviewer’s comment
about “teeth as yellow as sunflowers
...
(Refusing/Having refused) to open her mouth, she glared silently at the interviewer
...
With the market research on GreenTeeth (completed/having been completed), the team
tabulated the results
...
The tooth whitener (going/having gone) into production, no further market research is
scheduled
...
The researchers actually wanted (to interview/to have interviewed) 50 percent more subjects after GreenTeeth’s debut, but the legal department objected
...
Additional interviews will be scheduled if the legal department succeeds in (getting/
having gotten) participants to sign a “will not sue” pledge
...
“(Sending/Having sent) GreenTeeth to the stores means that I am sure it works,” said
the CEO
...
(Weeping/Having wept), the interviewers applauded the boss’s comment
...
Next year’s Product Placement Awards (being/having been) announced, the GreenTeeth
team is celebrating its six nominations and looking for future dental discoveries
...
Check out
the report in Figure 12-1 and circle the proper verbs or verbals in the parentheses
...
m
...
Samuels

(Proceeding, Having proceeded) from the locker room where Grammarian Idol Factor was on
television, I noticed smoke (coming, having come) from a doorway that leads to the loading
dock
...
I alerted the other guard on duty, M
...
Faulkner, not (turning, having turned) off the television, couldn’t hear
me
...


I noticed that the smoke was not hot
...
(Arriving, Having
arrived), Faulkner apologized and explained that the adverb competition (is, was, had been)
his favorite
...


“(Speaking, Had spoken) of heating up,” I remarked, “I don’t sense any heat from this door
...
Then
Faulkner and I, (hearing, having heard) a buzz from the other side of the door, ran for shelter
...
We did not put the television on
again, Grammarian Idol Factor (being, having been) over for more than ten minutes, but we did
plug in a CD as we waited for the police to arrive, (calling, having called) them some time

Figure 12-1:
Sample
accident
report
with a lot
of verbal
indecision
...
Therefore we didn’t hear the director yell, “Cut!” In no way did we intend (to disrupt,
to have disrupted) the film crew’s work or (to ruin, to have ruined) the dry ice that caused the
“smoke
...

Scorsese only the best with his next film
...
The tip-off is the verb explained, which tells you that you’re summarizing speech
...


b

wanted
...

The last choice, by the way, imposes a condition (he would do something under certain circumstances)
...


c

likes, didn’t
...
The present tense works nicely in this spot
...


d

was
...
The past tense works here for summary
of speech
...
You can arrive at the answer in two separate ways
...
Another way to look at this sentence is to reason that Michael is
telling you something that already happened, not something happening in the present moment
...


f

asked, did
...

The second is summary of speech (Roberta’s words) and calls for past tense
...
Give yourself a pat on the back if you got this one
...
The speech isn’t summarized; it’s quoted
...


h

annoyed
...
Therefore, past
tense is the one you want
...
This statement isn’t a summary, but rather a direct quotation from Roberta
...


j

were
...


k

was
...


l

were
...
The had form is used
to place one event further in the past than another, a situation that isn’t needed here, when
you’re simply summarizing what someone is saying and not placing events in order
...


m

threatened
...


n

hemmed, made
...


o

was
...
Whatever I say about
them, however, must be summarized in simple past tense
...
“The director said” is your cue to chime in with simple past tense, because you’re
reporting his speech
...
“He declared” tells you that you’re reporting what he said
...


r

was
...


s

knew, were
...

However, summarized speech needs past tense
...
Regardless of how long Roberta’s fearful state lasts, go for past tense to indicate summarized speech
...
The composition of a molecule doesn’t change, no matter how wrong Marty is about the
number of oxygen atoms (the actual number is two)
...


v

covers
...


w

makes
...


x

had
...
The summary of speech rule
doesn’t change
...
(See the section, “Telling Tales of the Past,” earlier
in this chapter, for more detail
...
For once, Marty is correct
...

For an eternal truth, present tense is correct
...
Product composition can change, and the speaker is summarizing what was said
...


B

was
...
The past-tense verb was is the one you want
...
The definition of dairy doesn’t change, so present tense works best here
...
This directly quoted remark refers to something that doesn’t change
...
Present tense
works for an unchangeable fact
...
Math doesn’t change, so present tense is appropriate here
...
Peanut butter is always made from nuts; the definition can’t change, so present tense is best
here
...
What do strawberries have now? Press conferences? Because strawberries and seeds are
linked for eternity, go for present tense
...
One particular strawberry had 45 seeds, but another strawberry may have a different
number
...


I

knew
...
The past tense works best here because the sentence is talking about a previous time
...
Vegetarian diets never include meat
...


K

Peering
...
The researchers check out the subjects’ teeth and check for trouble
...


L

hearing
...
Go for the plain form
...
The “not in this universe will I open my mouth” moment is simultaneous with an “if
looks could kill” glare, so the plain form is best
...
The plain form completed would place two actions (the completing
and the tabulating) at the same time
...
The perfect form (with having) places the completing before
the tabulating
...
The decision to stop market research is based on the fact that it’s too late; the
tooth whitener, in all its glory, is already being manufactured
...


P

to interview
...
But the legal department objected first
...


Q

getting
...

The first action is placed in the future, so don’t worry about it
...
As it expresses a simultaneous action, the plain form of the verbal (without having) is
appropriate
...
The CEO’s statement places two things, sending and being sure, at the same time
...


S

Weeping
...
Plain form works because the two things happen at the same time
...
The celebration and “time to get back to work” movement take place at the same
time as the announcement
...


163

164

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use

GMT Industries
Incident Report
Date: 8/29/05
Place: Loading dock

46
47

Time: 1:10 a
...

Guard on duty: P
...
Knowing

48

that no deliveries were scheduled, I immediately became suspicious and took out
my two-way radio
...
Faulkner, that trouble might

49
50

be brewing
...
Upon
screaming into the radio that I needed him right away, I crept up to the door
...
As I waited, touching the door to see

52
54

whether it was getting hot, I sincerely wished to find Faulkner and to strangle him
for not replying when I called
...
He also said that he had a clogged ear

57

58

that he had not been able to clean out, no matter how many toothpicks he used
...
” I
reminded him that fire is hot, and where there’s smoke there is fire
...
I told Faulkner
that the buzz was not from a bomb, but neither of us being in the mood to take

65

chances, we headed for the locker room
...
Therefore we didn’t hear the director yell, “Cut!” In no way did we intend

68
70

to disrupt the film crew’s work or to ruin the dry ice that caused the “smoke
...
Scorsese
only the best with his next film
...


V

The noticing and the coming of the smoke were more or less simultaneous, so go for the plain
form here
...


Chapter 12: Traveling in Time: Tricky Verb-Tense Situations

W

The suspicions arose from the knowledge that no deliveries were scheduled, so the knowing
and the act of suspecting are simultaneous, calling for the plain verbal
...
Because the television was not turned off first,
Faulkner couldn’t hear
...


Y

The screaming and the creeping are simultaneous; go for the plain form
...


Z

The narrator wished to find Faulkner (everyone’s looking for him, including his bookie), and the
wishing and finding are more or less simultaneous
...


1

The plain infinitive to strangle is appropriate because the narrator wished to find and to strangle
Faulkner all at the same time
...


2

The calling and replying are presented as simultaneous acts, so go for plain, not perfect
...


4

This verb expresses summarized speech, so past tense is what you want
...


6

In summarizing speech, always opt for past tense
...


8

The I in the sentence is speaking now, so the plain form is needed
...


0

This unchangeable fact (fire is never without smoke) calls for present tense
...


@

Summarized speech, indicated by told, calls for past tense
...
The writer is not placing the mood before another
action
...


$

The perfect form is appropriate because the speaker is putting events in order
...
Second, they put on a CD
...


^

The intending and the disrupting are simultaneous, so plain form is best
...


*

Here the writer is emphasizing a longstanding respect for the film world
...


165

166

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use

Chapter 13

Are You and Your Verbs
in the Right Mood?
In This Chapter
ᮣ Understanding the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods of verbs
ᮣ Choosing verbs for statements, commands, and condition-contrary-to-fact sentences

N

o, they’re not pregnant or in the midst of midlife crises; nevertheless, verbs do have
mood swings
...
(The dishes are dirty
...
Little colonies of mold established themselves all over the sink a couple of days ago
...
(Wash the dishes
...
Don’t think your allowance is off limits!)
And when you least expect a change, subjunctive pops up
...
I’m not a millionaire, so I request that 7 p
...

be the official dishwashing hour
...

Every statement of fact is in indicative mood, as are nearly all the sentences in this book
...
The subjunctive, the one designed to give you a headache, shows up in conditioncontrary-to-fact and in certain command/wish sentences
...


Stating the Obvious: Indicative Mood
Just about everything I say about verbs in this book actually applies to indicative verbs,
which, as the name implies, indicate facts
...
Do you want to see some samples of
indicative verbs? No problem
...
I have
placed all the verbs in italics so you can locate them easily
...
I cover these issues in Chapters 1 and 2
...
The verb choices are in parentheses
...
Mr
...

A
...
Both choices are indicative, but the present tense works better
...


168

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
1
...
”
2
...

3
...

4
...

5
...

6
...
Maybe he (replaced/will replace) the linen napkins in the executive dining room with
paper
...
After the chat, the employees always (go/will go) out for some conversation of their own
...
(Does/Do) they review Adams’ performance in the most candid way?
10
...


Taking Command: Imperative Mood
I studied a couple of foreign languages in college, and I remember a major headache arriving right around the time I tried to learn the imperative mood
...
In English, the command, also known as the imperative mood, is the same
whether you’re talking to one person or 20, to a peasant or to a queen
...
In other words, the unchanged, plain form of the
verb
...
They take the infinitive-minus-to and add do
not, as in do not snivel, do not blink, and do not blubber
...

Pull yourself together and meet your new in-laws
...

Prepare to die if they find out we’re getting married!
Fill in the blanks with commands for poor Henry, who is meeting his prospective in-laws
...


Q
...
(to sit)
A
...
The command is formed by dropping the to from the infinitive
...
Henry, _______________ my lead during the conversation
...
If Mom talks about Paris, _______________ your head and _______________ interested
...
Dad hates bad accents, so _______________ French
...
_______________ them to show you slides of last year’s trip to Normandy
...
_______________ asleep during the slide show, if you can help it! (to fall, negative command)
16
...
(to eat)
17
...
(to talk,
negative command)
18
...
(to make/to keep)
19
...
(to wish/
to thank)
20
...
(to remember)

Telling Lies or Being Passive:
Subjunctive Mood
The subjunctive is a very big deal in some languages; whole terms were devoted to it in my
college Spanish class
...

Condition-contrary-to-fact means that you’re talking about something that isn’t true
...
(The verb were is
subjunctive
...

If I had not punched the police office, I would have avoided jail
...
In indicative, the pronoun I
is paired with was (see the section on indicative mood earlier in this chapter for more
detail)
...

Referring to the first sample sentence, I must confess that I’m not famous, though I do wear
sunglasses
...
(See
Chapter 1 for more details on this use of had
...

Condition-contrary-to-fact sentences always feature a would form of the verb
...

Subjunctive verbs also express commands indirectly, as in these sentences, in which the
subjunctive verb is italicized:
The bouncer requested that he remove himself from the line as soon as possible
...


169

170

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
Subjunctive, indirect commands are formed by dropping the to from the infinitive
...
In subjunctive, the infinitive to remove loses the to and becomes remove
...
The indicative form would be guests are
...
The verb you’re working with appears in parentheses after each sentence
...
Keep your eyes open
...
If Ellen _______________ for her turn at the wheel, she wouldn’t have wrapped her car
around that telephone pole
...
had prepared
...
Instead, she went to a drive-in movie, as a passenger
...
The motor vehicle tester asked that Ellen _______________ ready for her exam at 9 a
...

(to be)
22
...
(to be)
23
...
” (to snow)
24
...
(to cover)
25
...
(to be)
26
...
(to postpone)
27
...
(to refuse,
negative form)
28
...
(to complain)
29
...
(to be)
30
...
(to be)
31
...
(to take, negative form)
32
...
(to go)
33
...
(to skid)
34
...
(to travel)
35
...
(to demonstrate)

Chapter 13: Are You and Your Verbs in the Right Mood?

Calling All Overachievers: Extra
Practice with Moody Verbs
If you master the three moods (cranky, irritable, ready to bite someone’s head off),
try your hand at this exercise
...
Check out the underlined verbs, circle the ones that are correct, and
cross out and correct the ones that are in the wrong mood
...
Bell, Coffee Break Coordinator
To: Ms
...
If a test were given at a time when coffeesipping were not authorized and the results were positive, the policy require that the
worker “donates” a pound of coffee to the break room
...
If I would tell you

Figure 13-1:
This
progress
report
contains
some verbs
that are in
the wrong
mood
...
All I would say is that the
steward were not happy
...
One more thing: the coffee stains on my shirt, if they were to come
out, should not make you thought that I were drinking coffee outside of the official break
time
...


171

172

Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use

Answers to Verb Mood Problems
a

is
...


b

know
...


c

likes, will
...

The future-tense verb will explains that in the coming year, as always, employees will be shopping in the bargain basement
...
The expression these days is a clue that you want a present-tense verb that talks about something or someone
...
If an action always occurs, present tense is the best choice
...
The boss is talking about the future (the clue is next year)
...


g

will replace
...


h

go
...


i

Do
...


j

believes
...


k

follow
...


l

nod, look
...


m

don’t speak or do not speak
...


n

Ask
...


o

Do not fall
...


p

Eat
...


q

Don’t talk or Do not talk
...


r

make, keep
...


Chapter 13: Are You and Your Verbs in the Right Mood?

s

Wish, thank
...


t

Remember
...


u

be
...


v

were
...
As she’s not a morning person, the subjunctive
verb were expresses condition-contrary-to-fact
...


w

snows
...
The instructor is talking about a possibility, not a
condition that didn’t occur
...


x

had covered
...


y

be
...
The subjunctive be fits nicely
...
The indicative (the normal, everyday form) of to postpone is postpones, when the
verb is paired with examiner
...


B

had not refused
...
Thus the first part of this sentence is condition-contrary-to-fact and calls for the subjunctive
...
Ellen said nothing, as revealed by the conditional would have investigated in
the second part of the sentence
...
Did I get you here? The possibility expressed in the if portion of the sentence calls for a
normal, indicative verb (is)
...


E

is
...
It expresses a possibility and
thus calls for the normal, indicative verb (is)
...
She has taken it five times, so the statement isn’t true and needs a subjunctive
...
Here the sentence expresses a possibility
...
Stay
away from subjunctive if the sentence may be true
...
As in sentence 32, this one talks about something that is true (or may be true)
...


I

had traveled
...
This condition-contrary-to-fact sentence needs the subjunctive
...
The verb requires tips you off to the fact that subjunctive is appropriate for the
indirect command
...
Bell, Coffee Break Coordinator
To: Ms
...
If a test

39

were is given at a time when coffee-sipping were is not authorized and the

40

41

results were are positive, the policy require requires that the worker

42

43

“donates” “donate” a pound of coffee to the break room
...
If I

45

would tell were to tell you what the shop steward would have said, you

46

47

had blushed would blush
...


50

Would Had you have known about the reaction before issuing the directive,

51

you would have had reconsidered
...
These stains

55

result from coffee being thrown at me
...


L

The indicative is called for here because the sentences expresses a truth, not a conditioncontrary-to-fact or a command
...
The
indicative verb that matches the singular subject every employee is submits, but the subjunctive form (submit) is needed here
...


O

The indicative is works best in this sentence, which expresses a real possibility and not a
condition-contrary-to-fact
...


Q

This statement is simply a fact, so the indicative is needed
...


Chapter 13: Are You and Your Verbs in the Right Mood?

S

The imperative mood, the command, calls for the infinitive minus the to
...
In the original, the -ed at the end of ask is wrong
...


U

The report referred to concerns what was actually said
...
This sentence reverses the
proper order (and plops a correct indicative verb, said, in the middle)
...
you would blush
...


X

The original has a subjunctive (were) but indicative is called for in this simple statement
...
The corrected sentence reads
“Had you known about the reaction
...
The “would” doesn’t belong in the “untrue” portion of
the sentence
...

you would have reconsidered
...
Instead, it talks about a possibility
...


1

Stay in the indicative present here, not past
...


3

Correct
...


isten to a little kid and you hear language at its most
basic: Tommy want apple
...
Enter descriptions and
comparisons
...

In this part you can practice your navigation skills, steering around such pitfalls as the choice between adjectives,
adverbs, and articles
...
) This part also tackles the
placement of descriptions (Chapter 15) and the proper
way to form comparisons (Chapters 16 and 17)
...


Chapter 14

Writing Good or Well:
Adjectives and Adverbs
In This Chapter
ᮣ Choosing between adjectives and adverbs
ᮣ Managing tricky pairs: good/well and bad/badly
ᮣ Selecting a, an, or the

D

o you write good or well — and what’s the difference? Does your snack break feature
a apple or an apple or even the apple? If you’re stewing over these questions, you have
problems
...
Here you can practice choosing
between two types of descriptions, adjectives and adverbs
...


Distinguishing Between Adjectives and Adverbs
In your writing or speaking, of course, you don’t need to stick labels on adjectives and
adverbs
...
(You also need to
punctuate strings of adjectives and adverbs correctly
...
) A few wonderful words (fast, short, last, and likely, for example) function as both
adjectives and adverbs, but for the most part, adjectives and adverbs are not interchangeable
...
They also
describe pronouns, which are words that stand in for nouns (other, someone, they, and similar words)
...
In the following sentence, the adjectives are italicized:
The rubber duck with his lovely orange bill sailed over the murky bath water
...
)
An adverb, on the other hand, describes a verb, usually telling how, where, when, or why an
action took place
...
In the following sentence, the adverbs are italicized:
The alligator snapped furiously as the duck violently flapped his wings
...
)
Most adverbs end in -ly, but some adverbs vary, and adjectives can end with any letter in
the alphabet, except maybe Q or Z
...
Most definitions include both forms with handy labels
telling you what’s what
...
Circle your selection
...
The water level dropped (slow/slowly), but the (intense/intensely) alligator-duck quarrel
went on and on
...
slowly, intense
...
Next up is a description of a
quarrel, a thing, so the adjective intense does the job
...
The alligator, a (loyal/loyally) member of the Union of Fictional Creatures, (sure/surely)
resented the duck’s presence near the drainpipe
...
“How dare you invade my (personal/personally) plumbing?” inquired the alligator (angry/
angrily)
...
“You don’t have to be (nasty/nastily)!” replied the duck
...
The two creatures (swift/swiftly) circled each other, both looking for a (clear/clearly)
advantage
...
“You are (extreme/extremely) territorial about these pipes,” added the duck
...
The alligator retreated (fearful/fearfully) as the duck quacked (sharp/sharply)
...
Just then a (poor/poorly) dressed figure appeared in the doorway
...
The creature whipped out a bullhorn and a sword that was (near/nearly) five feet in length
...
When he screamed into the bullhorn, the sound bounced (easy, easily) off the tiled walls
...
“Listen!” he ordered (forceful/forcefully)
...
”
11
...

12
...

13
...

14
...

15
...

16
...

17
...

18
...

19
...

20
...


Chapter 14: Writing Good or Well: Adjectives and Adverbs
21
...

22
...

23
...

24
...

25
...
“I’m sealing these (filthy/filthily) pipes for once and for all!”

How’s It Going? Choosing Between
Good/Well and Bad/Badly
For some reason, the “judgment” adjective and adverb pairs (good and well, bad and badly)
cause a lot of trouble
...
Good and bad are adjectives,
so they have to describe nouns (people, places, things, or ideas)
...
They also attach to other descriptions
...

Well can be an adjective in one particular circumstance: health
...
You can also — and I hope you do —
feel good, especially when you’re talking about your mental state, though this usage is a bit
more informal
...
In fact, if you can insert the word healthy in a particular spot, well works in
the same spot also
...
(The adjective good describes the
noun report
...
(The adverb well attaches
to the verb written
...
(The adjective
bad describes the noun dog
...
(The adverb badly describes the verb slept
...
You have to decide whether the description gives information about the verb or about the person/thing who is doing the action or
being
...
If it attaches to the person/
thing (the subject, in grammatical terms), opt for the adjective
...


Q
...


A
...
How does the trainer work? The word you need must be an adverb because you’re
giving information about an action (work), not a noun
...
Truffle barks when he’s run (good/well) during his daily race with the letter carrier, Adam
Arbel
...
The letter carrier likes Truffle and feels (bad/badly) about beating him
...
Truffle, on the other hand, tends to bite the poor guy whenever the race doesn’t turn out
(good/well)
...
Truffle’s owner named him after a type of chocolate candy she likes very (good/well)
...
The slightly deaf letter carrier thinks high-calorie snacks are (bad/badly)
...
He eats organic sprouts and wheat germ for lunch, though his meal tastes (bad/badly)
...
Truffle once caught a corner of Arbel’s lunch bag and chewed off a (good/well) bit
...
Resisting the urge to barf, Truffle ate (bad/badly), according to his doggie standards
...
Truffle, who didn’t feel (good/well), barked quite a bit that day
...
Tired of the din, his owner confiscated the kibble and screamed, “(Bad/Badly) dog!”

Mastering the Art of Articles
Three little words — a, an, and the — pop up in just about every English sentence
...
(I probably just blew my
Thanksgiving invitation
...
As always, forget about the terminology
...
When you say that you want the book, you’re
implying one particular text, even if you haven’t named it
...

ߜ A and an are more general in meaning, and they work only with singular nouns
...

A precedes words beginning with consonants, and an comes before words beginning
with vowels
...

If you want a general term but you’re talking about a plural, try some or any instead of
a or an, because these last two articles can’t deal with plurals
...

Write the correct article in each blank in the sentences that follow
...
When Lulu asked to see _____ wedding pictures, she didn’t expect Annie to put on _____
twelve-hour slide show
...
the, a
...
Also, wedding
pictures is a plural expression, so a and an are out of the question
...
Because twelve begins with the
consonant t, a is the article of choice
...
Although Lulu was mostly bored out of her mind, she did like _____ picture of Annie’s
Uncle Fred that caught him snoring in the back of the church
...
_____ nearby guest, one of several attempting to plug up their ears, can be seen poking
Uncle Fred’s ribs
...
At Annie’s wedding, Uncle Fred wore _____ antique bow tie that he bought in _____
department store next door to his apartment building
...
_____ clerk who sold _____ tie to Uncle Fred secretly inserted _____ microphone and
_____ miniature radio transmitter
...
Uncle Fred’s snores were broadcast by _____ obscure radio station that specializes in
embarrassing moments
...
Annie, who didn’t want to invite Uncle Fred but was forced to do so by her mother,
placed _____ buzzer under his seat
...
Annie’s plan was to zap him whenever he snored too loudly; unfortunately, Fred chose
_____ different seat
...
Lulu’s sneeze set off the buzzer, whereupon she jumped a foot into _____ air
...
One of _____ two flower girls, distracted by Lulu’s movement, dropped _____ basket of
roses that she was supposed to scatter in _____ center aisle
...
Reverend Foster shortened _____ ceremony in _____ effort to avoid even more trouble
...
Twenty descriptive words are
underlined, but only some of them are wrong
...
When you find an error, correct it
...


Dollars’ Clothing: Fashions That Work

A–D
...
Easily-to-clean
polyester in real varied colors goes from the office grind to the extreme
bright club scene without a pause!

A
...
Stun your co-workers with a astonishingly elegance of
deeply eggplant
...
The silkily lining, in delightful loud shades of orange, gives a
strong message: I am woman! Hear me roar!
Figure 14-1:
Sample
dresscatalogue
exercise
...
Softly, woven pants coordinate with a jacket described above — and with
everything in your wardrobe
...


183

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

Answers to Adjective and Adverb Problems
a

loyal, surely
...
Because you’re describing
a noun (member), you need the adjective loyal
...
Resented is a verb and must be described
by an adverb
...
In the first part of the sentence, personal describes a thing (plumbing)
...
The adverb tells about the verb, inquire
...
The adjective nasty describes you
...
You earned my
undying affection by buying this book
...
The adverb swiftly describes the action of circling
...


e

extremely
...

(If you absolutely have to know, territorial is an adjective describing you
...
Both of these adverbs tell how the actions (retreated and quacked) were
performed
...
The adverb poorly gives information about the descriptive word dressed
...
This was a tough question, and if you got it right, treat yourself to a spa day
...
The adverb nearly gives additional information about the description five feet in length
...
The adverb easily describes the verb bounced
...
The adverb forcefully tells how he ordered, a verb
...
You can cheat on the first part of this one just by knowing the name of the
possibly imaginary monster that supposedly stalks the Himalayas, but you can also figure it out
with grammar
...
Adjectives describe nouns,
so abominable does the trick
...
You aren’t describing the action of seeming, so an adverb is inappropriate
...
This sentence presents a common mistake
...


m

surely
...
But the verb deny must be described by an adverb, so surely is the
one you want
...
Statement is a noun because it’s a thing
...


o

lovely
...
Incidentally, lovely isn’t an adverb, despite the fact that it ends with -ly
...
The adverb quickly describes the verb come
...
This sentence presents a puzzle
...
Happy, by the way, describes duck
...
The adjective dumb is attached to enemy
...


s

first, particularly
...
In this sentence it’s an adverb telling about the verb go
...


t

warily
...


u

worried
...

The pronoun you may be described only by an adjective, so worried wins the prize here
...
This adjective describes the noun duck
...


w

winding
...

The adjective winding is attached to the noun tunnel
...
The adjective angry tells you about the Snowman
...
In this sentence, the verb
sounded is a stand-in for was, which is a linking verb that connects what precedes and follows it
(Snowman and angry)
...
If you’re describing pipes, a thing and therefore a noun, you need an adjective, which in
this case is filthy
...
The adverb well tells you how Truffle has run
...
This sentence illustrates a common mistake
...
Instead, it tells you about the letter carrier’s state of
mind
...

To feel badly implies that you’re wearing mittens and can’t feel anything through the thick cloth
...
The adverb well is attached to the action to turn out (to result)
...
How does she like chocolate truffles? Almost as much as I do! Also, she likes them well
...


E

bad
...
Hence, an adjective is what
you want
...
The description tells you about his meal, a noun (also a truly terrible combination of
foods)
...


G

good
...


H

badly
...


I

well
...
Good
will do in a pinch, but good is better for psychological or mood statements
...
The adjective bad applies to the noun dog
...
The sentence implies that one particular picture caught Annie’s fancy, so the works nicely
here
...
The sentence would be a bit less specific but still acceptable
...


185

186

Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

L

A
...
The more
general a is best
...
In the first blank you may place either an (which must precede a word beginning
with a vowel) or the
...
The is more definitive, pointing out one particular store
...
Lots of blanks in this one! The first two seem more particular (one clerk, one tie),
so the fits well
...
The more general article is a, which precedes
words beginning with consonants
...
Because the radio station is described as obscure, a word beginning with a vowel, you need
an, not a
...
That article works here also
...
The word buzzer doesn’t begin with a vowel, so you have to go with a, not an
...


Q

a
...


R

the
...


S

the, a, the
...
In the middle blank, the more general article works well
...
Because only one wedding ceremony is in question here, the does the job for the first
blank
...
The vowel in effort requires an, not a
...
Surprising Surprisingly comfortably comfortable suits for work and

47

48

leisure
...
Fast track jacket
...


56

57

Gently Gentle curves follow an a real really natural outline to accentuate

59

58

your figure
...
Softly Soft, woven pants coordinate with a the jacket described above —

65

62
64

and with everything in your wardrobe
...


Chapter 14: Writing Good or Well: Adjectives and Adverbs

U

The description comfortable must be intensified by the adverb surprisingly, not by the adjective
surprising
...


W

Polyester is a noun, so it must be described by an adjective
...


X

The description varied is intensified by the adverb really
...


z

The adverb extremely intensifies the descriptive word bright
...


1

That wonderful word fast may be either an adjective or an adverb
...


2

A particular sort of elegance is being discussed, so the definitive the is called for
...


4

Eggplant is a color, which is a thing and therefore a noun
...


5

To describe the noun curves, go for the adjective gentle, not the adverb gently
...


7

Natural is a descriptive word, so it must itself be described by an adverb, really
...


9

The adverb delightfully attaches to another description, loud
...


0

The article a is the one you need to precede a word beginning with a consonant
...


@

Did I fool you here? True, you may have thought that softly described woven in this sentence,
but the meaning indicates otherwise
...

Instead, you have two separate words (the comma clues you in on this) describing the noun
pants
...


#

Clearly you’re talking about one particular item, the extremely ugly jacket described as item A
...


187

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

Chapter 15

Going on Location: Placing
Descriptions Correctly
In This Chapter
ᮣ Placing even, only, almost, and similar words
ᮣ Avoiding misplaced, dangling, or confusing descriptions

M

y out-of-town friends always tell me that I can buy a ten-room mansion for the price
of a closet in New York City
...
That
statement is as true for descriptive words as it is for home prices
...

First, some definitions: Descriptions in English may be composed of one word or, if you like
to pour it on, twenty or more
...
They belong in the adjective bin if they describe people, places,
things, or ideas (in grammar terms, nouns or pronouns)
...
Flip to Chapter 14 for a
host of practice exercises with basic adjectives and adverbs
...
Some sentences give you a bit more leeway than
others
...
But a few
words require precision
...


Little Words Mean a Lot: Situating “Even,”
“Only,” and Similar Words
The other day I saw a tee shirt that made me want to turn my grammar book into a guided
missile
...
Why, as a founding member of Grammarians Anonymous, was I upset? Because the
descriptive term only was misplaced
...

Little words — only, even, almost, just, nearly, and not — will torpedo the meaning of your
sentence if you put them in the wrong spot
...
Take a look at these examples:

190

Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons
Even Mary knows that song
...
)
Mary knows even that song
...
She knows every musical work
ever written, including the one that the sentence is referring to
...
If you find a misplaced
description, rewrite the sentence as it should be
...


Q
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

A
...
The only has to move because it makes a comment on the conditions that make
Fred pay up (his mood and the times when the IRS puts him in the mood)
...
The only is not a comment on pays, so
it’s out of place in the original
...
Because she was celebrating an important birthday, Ms
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
2
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
3
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
4
...
Jonge, the meanest teacher on the planet, would understand the
need to take a break
...
I made a cup of coffee, but because I’m dieting, I only ate one doughnut and ignored the
other three that were silently shouting, “Eat me
...
My friend Eloise nearly gained three pounds last week just from eating glazed doughnuts
...
Eloise, my brother, and I love doughnuts, but all of us do not eat them; Eloise can’t resist
...
Eloise even draws the line somewhere, and she seldom munches a chocolate sprinkle outside of homework time
...
After I had sent a text message to Eloise, I returned to my homework and found I only had
five tasks left
...
Not all the work was boring, and I actually liked the history assignment
...
I had to read two chapters about an empire that almost covered half the known world
...
The conquerors even invaded countries that had superb defense systems
...
The next day I was surprised to hear Ms
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
14
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

191

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons
15
...
Jonge considers ten hours of homework a holiday, but I
know that she only wants what’s best for us
...
Unfortunately, the description — with snow tires — is not,
because its current placement attaches it to sales associate and thus indicates a car guy
whose feet have been replaced by big round rubber things, not a vehicle you can drive
confidently through a storm
...
I cover
short descriptions — simple adjectives and adverbs — in Chapter 14
...

Except for a few place or time descriptions, nearly every multiword description directly follows the word it describes, as in these sentences:
I want to buy a car with snow tires from a sales associate
...
)
The bread that Lulu baked yesterday is as hard as the rock of Gibraltar
...
)
The leaf shimmering in the sunlight bothers Jeff’s light-sensitive eyes
...
)
These descriptions quickly become absurd if they move slightly
...
See what I mean?)
When you move a misplaced description, take care not to make another error
...
In the original sentence, I found the
pocket in the playground
...
The
solution is to place a description at the beginning of the sentence: In my pocket I placed a
stone that I found in the playground
...
If all the descriptions are where they should be, write
“correct” in the blank
...
Tip: In addition to moving descriptions, you
may have to reword here and there in order to create a sentence that makes sense
...
Even before she passed the road test, Julie bought a leather license holder that was given
only twice a month
...
Even before she passed the road test that was given only twice a month, Julie bought
a leather license holder
...
Move the description closer to test and
you’re all set
...
Julie passed the eye examination administered by a very near-sighted clerk with flying
colors
...
The written test inquired about maneuvers for cars skidding on ice
...
Another question inquired about defensive driving, which required an essay rather than
a multiple-choice response
...
About a week after the written portion of the exam, the Department of Motor Vehicles
sent a letter giving Julie an appointment for the road test lacking sufficient postage
...
Julie asked her sister to drive her to the testing site before the letter arrived
...
Julie’s examiner, a nervous man whose foot kept slamming onto an imaginary brake
pedal, constantly wrote notes on an official form
...
The first page contained details about Julie’s turning technique, which was single-spaced
...
Julie hit only two pedestrians and one tree in the middle of a crosswalk
...
The examiner relaxed soon after Julie’s road test in his aunt’s house in Florida
...
Julie wasn’t surprised to hear that she had failed her first road test, but the pedestrians’
lawsuit was a shock because the examiner had fainted when the speedometer hit 80
...
This
structure is a good workhorse to carry your meaning to the reader, but it’s a bit boring if
overused
...
(In official
grammar terminology, they’re verbals
...
) Usually a comma separates
these introductory statements from the main portion of the sentence
...
(The introductory description gives more information about Lulu
...
(The introductory description gives more information about the glasses
...
(The implied statement is While Lulu is wearing these glasses
...
In the preceding examples, Lulu is the one
who is dazzled, Lulu’s glasses are what blocks out light, and Lulu is the one who is wearing
the sunglasses
...
(English
thoughtfully supplies you with plenty of room for error
...
If you want to avoid misplaced descriptions elsewhere in
the sentence, check out the preceding section on misplaced description
...

Before buying them, the glasses carried a clear warning, which Lulu ignored
...
In the second sample sentence, the expansion of the
sentence would read Before the glasses were buying them
...

Before buying them, Lulu read a warning about the glasses and chose to ignore it
...
If everything is securely
attached, write “correct” in the blank
...
No problem, as long as the introductory information refers to the subject
...
After waiting for a green light, the crosswalk filled with people rushing to avoid Lulu and
her speeding skateboard
...
After waiting for a green light, people rushed into the crosswalk to avoid Lulu and her
speeding skateboard
...

The rewritten sentence has the people waiting for an escape hatch from the sidewalk,
where Lulu is riding blind, thanks to her non-see-through sunglasses
...
To skateboard safely, kneepads help
...
Sliding swiftly across the sidewalk, a tree smashed into Lulu
...
Although bleeding from a cut near her nose ring, a change of sunglasses was out of the
question
...
To look fashionable, a certain amount of sacrifice is necessary
...
While designing her latest tattoo, a small camera attached to the frames of her glasses
seemed like a good idea
...
Covered in rhinestones, Lulu made a fashion statement with her glasses
...
Discussed in the fashion press, many articles criticized Lulu’s choice of eyewear
...
Coming to the rescue, Tiffany swiped the offending glasses and lectured Lulu on the irrelevance of such fashion statements
...
To pacify Tiffany and the pedestrians’ lawyers, the glasses eventually went into the
trash can
...
Being reasonable, Lulu opted for a wraparound stainless steel helmet with UV protection
...
If you place
a description an equal distance from two words it may describe, however, you present a
puzzle to your reader
...

Which word does successfully describe? Protesting or scares? You can’t tell
...

Protests scare politicians successfully
...
The point is that each of
these sentences is clear, and clarity is a great quality in writing, if not in politics
...
If they’re
clear, write “correct” in the blanks
...


Q
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 15: Going on Location: Placing Descriptions Correctly

A
...
Or, The senator who
spoke last week is the one who voted against the Clarity Bill
...
As long as your sentence indicates whether last week is attached to speaking
or voted, you’re fine
...
Running a red light once earned a stiff fine
...
Backing away from the traffic cop swiftly caused a reaction
...
The ticket he got last summer was a blot on his spotless driving record
...
The judge said when the case came to trial he would punish the drivers severely
...
The warden of the driving-infraction division soon arrived on the scene
...
Speaking to the driver forcefully made the point
...
The driver charged with reckless driving recently went to court
...
The driver education course redesigned a year ago won an award
...
Do not try these positions at home, but do look for ten errors caused by vague,
misplaced, or dangling descriptions
...
Note: The errors have several possible corrections, but in the answers section, I
show only one correction for each error
...
Beginners can even do
it
...
While bending the right
knee up to the nose, the left ankle relaxes
...
Throw your head back now
extending each muscle to its fullest, only breathing two or three times
Figure 15-1:
Sample
instruction
manual
exercise
...
Tucking the chin close to
the collarbone, the nose should wiggle
...


Chapter 15: Going on Location: Placing Descriptions Correctly

Answers to Description Placement Problems
a

Because she was celebrating an important birthday, Ms
...
The implication of this sentence is that she could have given twenty hours
...


b

The first task seemed nearly impossible: to write an essay about the benefits of getting older
...
But that’s not what you’re
trying to say here
...
Thus the nearly describes impossible and should precede that word
...

How many pages did you write? That’s what the sentence discusses
...
In the original sentence, you have
nothing at all on paper because the sentence says that the speaker had almost written (had
approached the action of writing but then stopped)
...
Jonge, the meanest teacher on the planet, would understand the
need to take a break
...


e

I made a cup of coffee, but because I’m dieting, I ate only one doughnut and ignored the
other three that were silently shouting, “Eat me
...
The only belongs in front of the
number, not in front of the action (ate)
...

One word — just — is in the appropriate place, but nearly must be moved
...


g

Eloise, my brother, and I love doughnuts, but not all of us eat them; Eloise can’t resist
...
Here’s the logic: If Eloise eats the doughnuts and the rest keep their lips
zipped, not all but some eat doughnuts
...


h

Even Eloise draws the line somewhere, and she seldom munches a chocolate sprinkle outside of homework time
...
Instead, Eloise is being singled out
...
The sentence comments on the amount of remaining homework (only five tasks,
not six or seven)
...


j

correct
...
Logic tells you that not all is what you want
...
If the
chapters almost covered, they didn’t cover at all, they just approached the act of covering
...


l

The conquerors invaded even countries that had superb defense systems
...
In
front of the verb, you get an implied comparison of action (even invaded, didn’t just threaten)
...
In this one Ms
...
She didn’t assign,
say, the first five chapters and half of the sixth
...
Whom does she love?
Nearly all, with some notable exceptions
...
Because the sentence compares all children with all children minus a few clinkers, the nearly belongs in front of all
...
Jonge considers ten hours of homework a holiday, but I know
that she wants only what’s best for us
...
But this sentence implies a comparison between only what’s best for us and water torture
...


p

With flying colors, Julie passed the eye examination administered by a very near-sighted
clerk
...
Fixing it can be tricky
...
You can place
with flying colors, as I have, at the beginning of the sentence or, if you wish, after passed
...


q

correct
...
Written describes test and for cars skidding on ice describes maneuvers
...
Defensive driving techniques don’t include essays, but test questions
do
...


s

About a week after the written portion of the exam, the Department of Motor Vehicles sent a
letter lacking sufficient postage and giving Julie an appointment for the road test
...
I inserted and
after postage to clarify that the letter, not the postage, gave Julie her appointment
...
Another possible correction drops lacking sufficient postage and
inserts postage-due before letter
...
This sentence
mentions two actions: asked and drive
...
The description should be closer
to asked than to drive because asked is the word it describes
...
The description is where it should be
...


v

The first page, which was single-spaced, contained details about Julie’s turning technique
...


w

Julie hit only two pedestrians in the middle of a crosswalk and one tree
...
The description in the middle of
a crosswalk should follow the word it describes, in this case, pedestrians
...
I’m sure he
needed a break! The relaxing took place in his aunt’s house in Florida
...
Move the description closer to the word it describes
...
The
because statement should be closer to was not surprised, as that expression is being described
...
Bad idea! If you put the because information after test, it looks as if
she failed because the examiner had fainted
...


A

To skateboard safely, you may find kneepads helpful
...
A person must be inserted into the sentence
...


B

Sliding swiftly across the sidewalk, Lulu smashed into a tree
...


C

Although Lulu was bleeding from a cut near her nose ring, a change of sunglasses was out
of the question
...
The easiest way to
correct a sentence with the wrong implied subject is to insert the real subject, which is Lulu
...
Now Lulu is doing the bleeding, a common state
for her
...
Who is looking fashionable? In the
original sentence, no one
...


E

While designing her latest tattoo, Lulu thought it would be a good idea to attach a small
camera to the frames of her glasses
...
Another way to correct this sentence is to
insert Lulu into the first part of the sentence, making her the subject: While Lulu was designing
...
Lulu’s glasses are covered
in rhinestones, not Lulu herself
...


G

Discussed in the fashion press, Lulu’s choice of eyewear was criticized in many articles
...


H

correct
...


I

To pacify Tiffany and the pedestrians’ lawyers, Lulu eventually threw the glasses into the
trash can
...


J

correct
...


K

Several corrections are possible
...
Running a red light earned a stiff fine at one time
...
Here you have to reword and drop
the once in order to be perfectly clear whether you’re talking about at one time or a single time,
both of which are meanings of once
...
Two examples: Backing swiftly away from the traffic cop
caused a reaction
...
Here swiftly
causes problems unless it is moved closer to backing or, changed to swift, it describes reaction
...
It’s hard to imagine that anyone would hear this sentence and attach last summer to
was
...


201

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

N

Several corrections are possible
...
The judge said that he would punish the drivers
severely when the case came to trial
...
The expression when the case came to trial may be when the judge made
his statement or when the judge intended to wallop the drivers
...


O

correct
...
The word preceding the description,
division, doesn’t logically attach to a time element, so the sentence is okay as written
...
Two examples: Speaking forcefully to the driver made the
point
...
The problem with the original is that
forcefully could describe either speaking or made
...


Q

Several corrections are possible
...
The driver charged with reckless driving went to court recently
...

If you place it between two possible descriptions, it has a nervous breakdown
...
Two examples: The redesigned driver education course
won an award a year ago
...
The problem with the original sentence is that a year ago, placed between
redesigned and won, could describe either
...


Yoga and Y’all: An Excerpt

44

If you only learn only one yoga posture, this should be it
...
To form the “Greeting Turtle Posture,” the
mat should extend from knees to armpits freshly laundered and dried

46

to fluffiness from knees to armpits extend the mat, which has been
freshly laundered and dried to fluffiness
...
You should

49

almost bend the knee for almost a minute before straightening it again
...
Tucking the chin close to the collarbone,

52

the nose should wiggle the nose
...


S

The description only applies to the number, not to the act of learning
...


47

Chapter 15: Going on Location: Placing Descriptions Correctly

U

The sentence begins with a verb form (To form the “Greeting Turtle Posture”), so the subject of
the sentence must be the person who is supposed to do this ridiculous exercise
...


V

The laundry description belongs to mat, not to armpits, though I do think fluffy armpits are nice
...
But the left ankle can’t bend the right
knee, so the logic is flawed
...
Another possible solution: Change the first half of the sentence to
“While you are bending
...


Y

In the original sentence now is equidistant from throw and extending, creating a vague statement
...
Once you move now, add a comma between
back and extending to help the reader separate these two actions
...


Z

The introductory verb form must be an action done by the subject, and the nose can’t tuck the
chin
...


1

The color description belongs to sky, not to yoga posture
...
”

203

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

Chapter 16

For Better or Worse:
Forming Comparisons
In This Chapter
ᮣ Creating the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs
ᮣ Dealing with irregular comparisons
ᮣ Identifying absolutes that may not be compared

D

oes Nellie have a bigger ice cream cone? Whose cold is worse? Do you think Tom
Cruise is the most attractive, strongest, and richest star in Hollywood? If human beings
weren’t so tempted to compare their situations with others’, then life — and grammar —
would be a lot easier
...
Sometimes many words are needed (taller than
any other Lincoln impersonator or as much electricity as Con Edison)
...
In this chapter you get to practice creating and placing one- or
two-word comparisons that make your meaning come through loud and clear (Oops! What I
meant was more loudly and more clearly)
...
Regular
unadorned adjectives and adverbs are the base upon which two types of comparisons may
be made: the comparative and the superlative
...
Superlatives (dumbest,
smartest, neatest, most interesting, least available, and so forth) identify the extreme in a
group of three or more
...
For descriptions of more than one syllable,
the -er may sound awkward
...
For a comparative that shows inferiority, use less
...
Most
does the trick for most longer words
...


206

Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons
ߜ Check the dictionary if you’re not sure of the correct form
...
If you don’t see a listing for another form of the
word, take the less/more, least/most option
...
I discuss
these in the next section, “Going from Bad to Worse (and Good to Better): Irregular
Comparisons
...
The base word is in parentheses at the end of
the sentence
...
Helen is the _______________ of all the women living in Troy, New York
...
most beautiful or least beautiful
...
Comparing more than two elements requires the superlative form
...
Which should you choose?
The answer depends on your opinion of Helen’s looks
...

1
...
(low, lively)
2
...
(efficient)
3
...
(slow)
4
...
(neat)
5
...
(legibly)
6
...
(drinkable)
7
...
(frequently, productive)
8
...
(long, boring)
9
...
” (petty, annoyingly)
10
...
Knowing about Helen’s transfer request, I asked for a duck that sounded _______________
than the average American rubber duck
...
The clerk told me my request was the _______________ he had ever encountered
...
I replied that I preferred to deal with store clerks who were _______________ than he
...
Anyway, Helen’s transfer wasn’t approved, and she is in the _______________ mood imaginable
...
We all skirt Natalie’s desk _______________ than Helen’s, because Natalie is even
_______________ than Helen about the refusal
...
Natalie, who considers herself the _______________ person in the company, wanted a promotion to Helen’s rank
...
Larry, however, is sure that he would have gotten the promotion because he is the
_______________ of all of us in his donations to the Office Party Fund
...
“Natalie bakes a couple of cupcakes,” he commented _______________ than the average
Mack truck, “and the boss thinks she’s executive material
...
“I, on the other hand, am the _______________ of the three clerks in my office,” he continued
...
When I left the office, Natalie and Larry were arm wrestling to see who was
_______________
...
Irregulars don’t add -er or
more/less to create a comparison between two elements
...
(See the preceding section, “Visiting the -ER (And the
-EST),” for more information on comparatives and superlatives
...


Table 16-1

Forms of Irregular Comparisons

Description

Comparative

Superlative

Good or well

Better

Best

Bad or ill

Worse

Worst

Much or many

More

Most

Take a stab at this section’s practice exercises, but don’t go to the -ER if your aim is
faulty and you put the wrong form of the description (which you find in parentheses
at the end of each sentence) in the blank
...


207

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

Q
...
(good)

A
...
Once you mention the top or bottom experience of a lifetime, you’re in the superlative column
...

21
...
(much)
22
...
(bad)
23
...
(good)
24
...
(bad)
25
...
(many)
26
...
Appleby relies on Edgar to make it run
even _______________
...
Edgar’s scrapbook also contains three samples of watch oil; Edgar thinks Time-Ola Oil is
the _______________ choice
...
Unfortunately, last week Edgar let a little oil drip onto his lunch and became sick; a few
hours later he felt _______________ and had to call the doctor
...
“Time-Ola Oil is the _______________ of all the poisons,” cried the doctor
...
“But it’s the _______________ for watches,” whispered Edgar
...
Therefore
you can’t be compared to anything or anyone else because the word perfect — as well
as unique, round, circular, right, mistaken, and a few other terms — is an absolute
...

If you reach an absolute state, you can’t be more or less absolute
...
You can, however,
approach an absolute, being, for example, nearly perfect (okay, I admit that’s a better
term for me) or almost round
...
You can turn left and but not
lefter or more left
...

Check out the following sentence pairs and circle the correct sentence
...
(For those sentences, just write “both wrong” or “both right” in the
margin
...
Sentence A: The design of that vase is quite unique, and I expect to pay big bucks for it
...


A
...
The vase is either one-of-a-kind or not, an idea that sentence B expresses
...

31
...

Sentence B: The base of your vase is round, but mine is almost round
...
Sentence A: The antiques dealer said that the top of the vase is circular, but he’s probably
mistaken
...

33
...

Sentence B: To find a better antiques dealer, drive more west for about an hour
...
Sentence A: That dealer sells Victorian-era buttons that are some of the most unique gift
items you can imagine
...

35
...

Sentence B: The very circular shape of the buttons is surprising, given that the buttons
are so old
...
Sentence A: The dealer obtained the buttons from an extremely elderly widow
...

37
...

Sentence B: The widow claimed that she would sell her antiques only when the time was
just right
...
Sentence A: Last week I bought a button that was almost perfect
...

39
...

Sentence B: I thought I could sell it over the Internet for a huge profit, but my plans were
very mistaken
...
Sentence A: My sister confiscated the button, claiming that it was uniquely suited to her
personal style
...


209

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice
with Bad Comparisons
Political campaign literature is heavy with comparisons — Why Seymour and not Sally?
How much more often did Seymour vote for tax increases, compared to Sally? — but not all
the comparisons are correct
...
) Run your eyeballs
over the campaign leaflet in Figure 16-1
...
Locate and correct ten errors in comparisons
...


Vote for Sally!
She will be the most unique president our grade hasever had!
Here is Sally’s campaign platform:
¸ Our cafeteria is dirtier than the cafeterias of William Reed

School, Mercer Prep, and Riverton
...

¸ Sally will collect dues most efficiently than Seymour
...

¸ The principal likes Sally’s ideas because compared to

Seymour’s, hers are best
...

Figure 16-1:
Faux
political
campaign
literature
riddled with
errors
...

¸ Seymour’s face is unattractiver than Sally’s, and you’ll have to

look at him all day if he is president
...
The comparative form is the way to go because two cities are being compared,
Paris and New York
...

Most two-syllable words rely on more or less, but lively is an exception
...


b

most efficient
...
Efficient, a long word, takes most or least
...


c

slower
...

The one-syllable word takes -er
...
Here the sentence compares typing to handwriting, two elements, so the comparative is
correct
...


e

more legibly
...
However, this sentence actually compares two elements (Natalie and the group composed of everyone else)
...


f

less drinkable
...
Both more drinkable
and less drinkable are correct grammatically, but Helen’s anger more logically flows from a comment about her coffee’s inferiority
...
The fight’s getting serious now, isn’t it? Charges and countercharges! Speaking solely of grammar and forgetting about office politics, each description in
this sentence is set up in comparison to one other element (how many times Natalie brews
tea versus how many times the rules say she can brew tea, Natalie’s productiveness versus
Helen’s)
...


h

longer, more boring
...


i

pettiest, more annoyingly or less annoyingly
...
The adjective petty has two syllables, but -est is still appropriate,
with the letter y of petty changing to i before the -est
...
I’ll let you decide whether Natalie was insulting
Helen or the duck
...


j

most expensive or least expensive
...
Because
expensive has three syllables, tacking on most or least is the way to go
...
Comparing two items (the sound of the duck you want to buy and the
sound of the “average American rubber duck”) calls for comparative, which is created with
more because of the length of the adjective international
...
Out of all the requests, this one is on the top rung
...


m

less snobby
...
The add-on less does the job
...
I can imagine many moods, so the extreme in the group calls for the superlative
...


o

more widely, more upset
...


p

most essential
...
Hence superlative is the
one that fits here
...


q

most generous
...
Go for the two-word form because generous has three syllables
...
This sentence compares his force to the force of a truck
...


s

most professional
...
(One out of two is comparative, as in more professional
...
Natalie and Larry are locked in a fight to the death (okay, to the strained elbow)
...
Because strong is a single syllable, tacking on
-er does the trick
...
Two elements are being compared here: the amount of detail Edgar uses and the amount
of detail people want
...


v

worst
...


w

better
...

Even though the group has several members, the comparison is between two elements —
Edgar and the group — so comparative form is what you want
...
Two states of being are in comparison in this sentence, Edgar’s health before and after
he hears about a broken watch
...


y

most
...


A

better
...


B

best
...


C

worse
...
Comparative form works for two elements
...
The very large group of poisons has two extremes, and Time-Ola is one of them, so
superlative form is best
...
The group of watch oils also has two extremes, and Time-Ola is one of them, so once again
you need superlative
...
Because round is absolute, the term rounder isn’t standard English
...
Two absolutes are in question here: circular and mistaken
...
Instead, probably expresses an opinion about whether or
not the absolute term applies, and nearly expresses an approach to the absolute
...
You can’t go more west
...


I

Sentence B
...
Unusual, on the other
hand, isn’t absolute, so most may be attached
...
The shape is either circular or not
...


K

Sentences A and B
...
You can be
very, extremely, really, and not-so elderly, depending upon your birth certificate and your degree
of truthfulness
...
Right is an absolute, so you’re either right or wrong, not very right or wronger
...


M

Sentences A and B
...


N

neither
...
(Not wronger, or very wrong,
because wrong is also an absolute
...
If the button is uniquely suited, nothing else in the universe is suited in the
same way
...
Uncommonly means that more than one item may be suited, but this
button fits to a rare degree
...


Vote for Sally!

41

She will be the most unique a unique president our grade has ever had!
Here is Sally’s campaign platform:

42

¸ Our cafeteria is dirtier than dirtiest compared to the cafeterias
of William Reed School, Mercer Prep, and Riverton
...


44
45

¸ Sally will collect dues most more efficiently than Seymour
...

¸ The principal likes Sally’s ideas because compared to

46
47

Seymour’s, hers are best better
...


48
49
50

¸ Sally’s plan for the school field will make it more nearly square
and add really unique bleachers
...


213

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

P

Unique is an absolute and can’t be compared
...


R

Better is an irregular comparison
...


S

In comparing two items (the way Sally gets the money from her classmates and the way
Seymour does), go for comparative, not superlative form
...


U

The comparative form (better) works for a two-element comparison
...


W

Square is an absolute and may not be compared
...


X

The absolute term unique may not be compared
...


Chapter 17

Apples and Oranges:
Improper Comparisons
In This Chapter
ᮣ Avoiding incomplete or illogical comparisons
ᮣ Handling double comparisons

Y

ou can’t compare apples and oranges, according to the old saying, but that error is
only one of many common comparison mistakes
...
” The imaginary umpire I conjured up, the one who knows the rules of grammar as thoroughly as the rules of baseball, immediately screamed, “Foul! You should have compared
Jeter to ‘the other Yankee players
...
My reputation for
nerdiness is bad enough as it is
...
You can also practice double comparisons, a sentence construction for
people who like to hedge their bets
...
For example,
She throws more pies than I do or Of all the clowns, she throws the most pies
...

A comparison may be any of these things, but what it may not be is partially absent
...
As
fresh as what? Most musical in comparison to whom? You have no way of knowing
...
The snapper is not as
fresh
...
Also, some words in a comparison may be implied, without loss
of meaning
...

The italicized word in the preceding sentence may be left out — and frequently is —
without confusing the reader
...

So may also mean therefore, in which case it doesn’t pair with that
...
In formal English, however, so
should be paired with that when it creates a comparison
...
If
the sentence is correct, write “correct” in the blank
...
You may come up with thousands of possible answers, a
further illustration of why incomplete comparisons make for poor communication
...
Check your answer by determining whether your comparison is clear and complete
...
“There are more fish in the sea,” commented the grouper as she searched for her posse
...
“There are more fish in the sea than you know,” commented the grouper as she
searched for her posse
...
The key here is to define the
term more
...

1
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
2
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
3
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
4
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 17: Apples and Oranges: Improper Comparisons
5
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
6
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
7
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
8
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
9
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
10
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Being Smarter Than Yourself:
Illogical Comparisons
If I say that my favorite Yankee, Derek Jeter, is cuter than the Yankee players or better
at turning double plays than the Yankees, I’m making an error that’s a lot worse than
Derek’s occasional wild throw into the stands
...
According to the logic of those statements, Derek would have to
be cuter or better than himself
...
Insert other or else or a similar
expression into the sentence
...

Don’t insert other or else if the comparison is between someone in the group and
someone outside the group
...

Another form of illogic that pops up in comparisons is overkill: the use of both -er and
more or less or -est and most or least
...


217

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons
Time for some comparison shopping
...
If the comparison
is logical, write “correct” in the blank
...
Because some sentences may be corrected in more than one way, your
answer may differ from mine
...


Q
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

A
...
Pigeons are
animals, and pigeons flap all over New York
...
) Without the word
other, pigeons are smarter than themselves
...

11
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
12
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
13
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
14
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
15
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
16
...
You may be surprised to know that it is more firmly fact-based than the material in this
chapter
...
Tourists to New York probably go home with stranger stories than visitors to big cities
...
New Yorkers themselves, of course, make worse tourists than travelers from large metropolitan areas
...
New Yorkers are more likely to become impatient than residents of small towns
...
Does this statement
sound like something you’d say? If so, you probably employ double comparisons
...

Eleanor is almost as annoying as Sarah, if not equally annoying
...

The preceding examples are correct because each falls into one of two categories:
ߜ The first comparison is completed before the second begins
...

ߜ The beginning of both comparisons may be logically completed by the phrase
at the end of the sentence
...
The first comparison in that sentence begins with the statement as complicated as
...
The second comparison begins with more complicated than and is completed by the same statement, Jessica’s oration
...
Because
both comparisons are completed by the same phrase, the sentence is correct
...

Why it’s wrong: Each comparison must be completed by the same phrase at the
end of the sentence
...
The way it is now, the first
comparison reads as complicated Jessica’s oration
...

Right: Carrie’s speech on tariff reduction was as complicated as, if not more complicated than, Jessica’s oration
...

Double comparisons are so annoying that you may be tempted to make up your mind and
go for one statement only
...
But if you must give two alternatives, be
sure that each is correct
...
If you find an
error, rewrite the sentence
...
Just pick one way to rewrite
...
Celeste put as many people — if not even more people — to sleep as Elizabeth, even
though Celeste’s speech was five minutes shorter
...
Celeste put as many people to sleep as Elizabeth, if not even more than Elizabeth, even
though Celeste’s speech was five minutes shorter
...
The first comparison, Celeste put as many people to sleep as Elizabeth, is okay
...
The word than is missing
...

21
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
22
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
23
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
24
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 17: Apples and Oranges: Improper Comparisons
25
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Calling All Overachievers: Extra Practice
with Improper Comparisons
Figure 17-1 is an excerpt from a completely fictitious review of an imaginary restaurant,
which I designed to give you a thorough review of the rules of comparisons
...
You should find ten mistakes in comparisons and about a
million reasons not to eat at this establishment
...
Note: Often more than one correction is possible
...


Pembroke Diner: You Won’t Go Broke, but You Won’t Eat Well Either
A recent meal at the Pembroke Diner on 48th Street was most
distressing
...
I truly did not want to hear my
neighbors’ conversation about their grandchildren, who are, they claim,
so smart
...
The
wine list of the Pembroke is the least interesting
...
I was surprised to realize that I was less impressed than the
diners munching happily in the restaurant
...
I
Figure 17-1:
A poorly
written
restaurant
review
...
The Pembroke must
revise its menu and its habits immediately, or the restaurant will be so
unpopular
...
The problem with the original is that you can’t tell what or who is being compared to the
trout
...


b

The octopus has almost as much money as the trout but prefers to keep the trout at arm’s
length
...
Supply an ending and
you’re fine
...
The original comparison doesn’t specify the group in which mermaids excel
...


d

On the other hand, mermaids are less competent at purchasing shoes than other mammals
...
In the corrected sentence, the mermaids are compared to other mammals
...


e

Not many people realize that mermaid tail fins are as sensitive as a duck’s foot
...
As sensitive as what? Who knows? The suggested answer finishes the comparison by supplying another sensitive object
...
It doesn’t
matter how you finish the comparison so long as you finish it
...
Your call
...
Finish the comparison with your favorite example of excruciating boredom
...
The so statement must be completed by some sort of that statement
...
Let me explain
...
In this sentence, however, the context is implied (harder than I did before)
...
The phrase less than satisfying compares the comedy to an ideal state (satisfying)
...


k

Despite the fact that they don’t use Metrocards, subway pigeons are no worse than any other
rider
...
(I’m not kidding
about this one, honest! I have seen the little feathered guys on my train
...


l

Spotting a pigeon waiting for the subway door to open is no odder than anything else you
see on an average day in New York
...
Without the else, the sentence is irrational because then the sentence means
that seeing pigeons in New York is no odder than what you see in New York
...
More weirder is overkill
...


Chapter 17: Apples and Oranges: Improper Comparisons

n

Singing a shower song with a thick New York accent, she appeared saner than other city
residents
...
Without the word other, you’re
saying that she’s saner than herself
...
The tourist isn’t a city resident, so he or she may be compared to New Yorkers on the
street without the word other
...
The phrase the rest of differentiates the story but preserves the logic
...


q

You may be surprised to know that it is more firmly fact-based than the other material in
this chapter
...
The expressions other, rest, or anything else can do the job
...

New York is a big city, but the original sentence implies otherwise
...


s

New Yorkers themselves, of course, make worse tourists than travelers from other large metropolitan areas
...

Trouble! Insert other and you’re all set
...
New Yorkers are compared to residents of small towns, and that comparison is legal

u

Celeste described every provision of the Snooty-Harvey Tariff Law, and even more
...
The first comparison is incomplete
...
You can easily see that the untangled comparison doesn’t make sense
...
Untangled it reads Celeste described even more than
the provisions of the Snooty-Harvey Tariff Law
...
The corrected version presents two complete ideas
...
Or, Elizabeth concentrated on one of the most important provisions of the law, if
not the most important
...
In the original sentence, the first comparison reads one of the most provisions of the law
...

The two corrections supply important
...
In the original sentence, the first comparison is incomplete: equally Elizabeth’s
...
Comparison one: equally important
...


x

Elizabeth insisted on the same amount of time as Celeste, or even more time than Celeste
...
The than is missing
...
Comparison one: the
same amount of time as Celeste
...


y

Celeste’s demand for a bowl of pink jellybeans during the lecture was as ridiculous as
Elizabeth’s request for green gummy bears, if not more ridiculous
...
If you untangle it from the second
comparison, you hear what’s missing: Celeste’s demand for a bowl of pink jellybeans during the lecture was as ridiculous than Elizabeth’s request for green gummy bears
...


223

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Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons

Pembroke Diner: You Won’t Go Broke, but You Won’t Eat Well Either
A recent meal at the Pembroke Diner on 48th Street was most

26

distressing the most distressing experience I’ve had since becoming
a restaurant critic
...
I truly did not want to hear

27

my neighbors’ conversation about their grandchildren, who are, they claim,

28
29

so smart that no IQ test can measure them
...
The wine list of the Pembroke is the
least interesting of all the restaurants in the universe that serve wine
...
I was surprised to realize that I was less impressed than the other
diners munching happily in the restaurant
...
I recommend that you find a place
with better food
...


35

A

The expression most distressing must be placed in context
...


B

If you’re doubling a comparison, each separate comparison must be complete
...


D

Steak is a meat, so the word other must be inserted
...


F

Each element of a double comparison must be complete
...
Insert
other and the logic is saved
...
I’ve provided one possibility, but anything you come up with is fine so long as the comparison is complete
...
I supply an answer, but don’t worry if yours is different
...


J

The so statement can’t make a comparison all by itself; a that statement must be appended
...


ompleting the exercises in this part is the equivalent
of designing clothes for one of the famous Parisian
fashion houses
...
The topics in this part include
more than grammar; and when you master them, your
writing will be as stylish as a supermodel
...
(In fashion terms, how
not to wear rain boots with an evening gown
...
er, structuring every
sentence the same way
...


Chapter 18

Practicing Parallel Structure
In This Chapter
ᮣ Creating balanced sentences
ᮣ Avoiding shifts in tense, person, and voice
ᮣ Dealing with paired conjunctions (either/or, not only/but also, and the like)

M

ath teachers have all the luck
...
English has
parallels too, but in grammar, parallels are created with words, not with pencils and rulers
...

Parallelism refers to order and balance, the quality a sentence has when it flows smoothly
...
This chapter provides a road map and some practice drives to keep your sentences on track
...
If you have two subjects, for example, and one is an infinitive
(to ski), the other one will be an infinitive also (to fracture)
...
Check these sentences out:
Nonparallel: Roberta didn’t enjoy paying full price for a lift ticket and that the cashier
treated her rudely
...

In checking for parallelism, don’t worry about terminology
...

Keep your balance while you check out the following sentences
...
If they are, write “correct” in the blank after each sentence
...


230

Part V: Writing with Style

Q
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

A
...
The sentence
has three subjects
...
Mismatch! My
suggested answer makes all three subjects into gerunds
...
Now all are infinitives, and
the sentence is parallel
...
The ski pants that Robert favors are green, skin-tight, and made of stretch fabric
...
When he eases into those pants and zipping up with great difficulty, Robert feels cool
...
In this ski outfit, Robert can breathe only with great difficulty and loudly
...
The sacrifice for the sake of fashion is worth the trouble and how he feels uncomfortable,
Robert says
...
Besides, sliding down the mountain and coasting to a full stop is easier in clothing that
resembles a second skin
...
Robert has often been known to object to secondhand clothing and how some equipment
is used
...
“With a good parka or wearing a warm face mask I’m ready for anything,” he says
...
He adds, “The face mask is useful on the slopes and doing double duty in bank robberies
...
The ski pants can also be recycled, if they are ripless and without stains
...
However, robbing a bank and to mug someone on the street is more difficult in ski pants
...
Robbers need speed and to be private, but they also need pockets
...
Stashing stolen money and where to put an unwanted ski mask are important issues
...
Robert, who is actually quite honest and not having the inclination to rob anyone, nevertheless thinks about crime and fashion
...
He once wrote and had even edited a newsletter called Crimes of Fashion
...
Skiing and to pursue a career in law enforcement are Robert’s dreams
...
I did my best,
though the grinding noise that echoed through the car wasn’t always my teeth
...
Every sentence has
tense (the time of the action or state of being), person (who’s talking or being talked
about), and voice (active or passive)
...
Nor should a sentence drift from singular to
plural without good reason
...
Pronoun tips
are in Chapters 3 and 11
...
If I hit you and then he hits me, the
shift from one person to another is part of what I’m trying to say
...
What’s not parallel is a statement like I hit him because you always want to be aggressive in tight situations, where the you is a stand-in for I or everyone
...
Check out the following sentences
...
Rewrite the nonparallel sentences so they’re correct
...
Miranda read her introduction, and then the slides of our trip to Morocco were shown
by me
...
Miranda read her introduction, and then I showed the slides of our trip to Morocco
...
were shown)
...

16
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
17
...
The Amoeba Family provides a good example of the process, so its name will be
explained
...
You may not know that the first example of this single-celled organism would have the
name Amy
...
When you split them in half, the new organisms name themselves
...
The right half of Amy was still called Amy by herself, but the left half now called
herself Bea
...
The next time Amy and Bea split, you have four new organisms
...
No one can imagine a conference between four single-celled organisms unless they witnessed it
...
Amy Right Half favored a name that people will notice
...
Amy Left Half thought about the choice for so long that her swimming was neglected
...
Bea Right Half, a proto-feminist, opted for “Amy-Bea,” because she wants to honor both
her parents
...
Everyone always pronounced “Amy-Bea” very fast, and soon “Amoeba” was their preferred spelling
...
Single-celled organisms should have simple names that can be remembered by biology
students
...
Bea Left Half, by the way, will change her name to Amy-Bea when she reached the age of
seventeen days
...
You know what a teenager is like; they always have to assert their identities
...
Specifically, either/or, neither/nor, not only/but also, and both/and work
as teams
...
Your job is to
keep them together by ensuring that they link parallel elements
...
Check out
the following examples, in which the linked elements are underlined and the conjunctions are italicized:
Nonparallel: Gertrude was not only anxious to achieve fame but also she wanted
to make a lot of money
...

The linked elements in the parallel example are both prepositional phrases
...
) If you say the underlined sections
aloud, your ear tells you that they match
...
Clearly these two aren’t going to make it through
dinner and a movie
...
Divorce
court looms!
A good way to check parallelism in this sort of sentence is to underline the elements,
as I do in the preceding example sentences
...


Chapter 18: Practicing Parallel Structure
Parallel or nonparallel? Take a look at the following sentences
...
If they aren’t, correct them
...
The bird both swooping over my head and the surprise in the garbage pail startled me
...
Both the bird that swooped over my head and the surprise that I found in the garbage
pail startled me
...
The first element has a verb (swooping), and the second
doesn’t
...

31
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
32
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
33
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
34
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
35
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
36
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
37
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

235

236

Part V: Writing with Style
38
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
39
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
40
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Calling All Overachievers: Extra
Practice with Parallels
Look for any parallelism problems in this letter to an elected official from an unfortunate citizen (see Figure 18-1)
...
When you find a mistake, correct it
...
Mayor:
I do not like complaining or to be a nuisance, but if a person is
persecuted, they should be heard
...
When I spoke to the Department of Highways, the clerk was rude
and that he took my complaint lightly
...
I demand that the
issue be taken seriously by you
...
” I am angry and in
the mood to take legal action
...
I expect you to cooperate and that you will fire the
Figure 18-1:
A disgruntled citizen
writes
a letter that
is unparalleled
...

Sincerely,
Joshua Hickman

Chapter 18: Practicing Parallel Structure

Answers to Parallelism Problems
a

The ski pants that Robert favors are green, skin tight, and stretchy
...
Two adjectives + one verb form = penalty box
...
(In case you’re wondering why he
finds it hard to get a date, think about his wardrobe
...
The original sentence isn’t parallel because the and joins two verbs (eases and zipping) that don’t match
...
In fact, these verb forms are so well suited to
each other that they planned a date for Saturday night
...
Now easing parallels zipping
...
The original
sentence matches up difficulty (a noun) and loudly (a description)
...
The correction pairs two nouns (difficulty and loudness)
...
The
clunker (the original sentence) joins a noun, trouble, and a whole clause (that’s the grammar
term for a subject/verb combo), how he feels uncomfortable
...


e

correct
...
Verdict: legal
...
You’re
okay with two nouns (clothing and equipment)
...


g

“With a good parka or a warm face mask, I’m ready for anything,” he says
...
The second term includes
a verb form (wearing), and the first doesn’t, so you know that the parallelism is off
...
Because they’re both nouns, the parallelism works
...
The original
sentence isn’t parallel because is useful and doing don’t match
...


i

The ski pants can also be recycled, if they are ripless and clean
...
Penalty box! The corrected version has two adjectives (ripless and
clean)
...
In the
correction I match two nouns (robbery and muggings), but you could also go for two infinitives
(to rob a bank and to mug someone)
...


k

Robbers need speed and privacy, but they also need pockets
...
The correction
joins two nouns, speed and privacy
...

In the correction, the subjects are both clauses; that is, they’re both expressions containing
subjects and verbs
...
) Two clauses = legal pairing
...


237

238

Part V: Writing with Style

m

Robert, who is actually quite honest and not inclined to rob anyone, nevertheless thinks
about crime and fashion
...
No sale
...


n

He once wrote and edited a newsletter called Crimes of Fashion
...
The original matched a past (wrote) and a past perfect (had
edited) without any valid reason for a different tense, so it wasn’t parallel
...
Pair two infinitives (to
ski and to pursue) and you’re fine
...


p

If you’ve studied biology, you know that a person must learn the names of hundreds, if
not thousands, of organisms
...
The correction stays in second
...


q

correct
...
No shifts, no problem
...
The
original sentence shifts unnecessarily from active (provides) to passive (will be explained)
...
True, it contains a shift from third person (talking
about the Amoeba Family) to first, but that shift is justified by meaning
...

The original sentence shifts inappropriately from present tense (may not know) to conditional
(would have)
...

The shift is there, but it’s justified by meaning
...
Because the person giving the name is
unknown, the passive must be used
...
The question sentence is nonparallel because it moves from the second person you to the third person organisms
...


u

The right half of Amy still called herself Amy, but the left half now called herself Bea
...
The correction
eliminated the problem by making both parts of the sentence active
...
Parallel statements
should stay in one person, in this case third person, talking about Amy, Bea, and they
...
The issue here is singular/plural pronouns
...
The correction begins with singular (no
one again) and stays singular (he or she)
...
The first verb in the original is
past, but the second shifts illogically to the future
...
In the correction, the past tense
favored is matched with a conditional (would notice), but that change is logical because Amy is
attaching a condition to her choice of name
...
Why
change from active (thought) to passive (was neglected)? Two actives work better
...
The original sentence has a meaningless tense shift, from past (opted) to present
(wants)
...


B

Everyone always pronounced “Amy-Bea” very fast, and soon “Amoeba” was the preferred
spelling
...
The answer
avoids the problem by dropping the second pronoun entirely
...
The
shift from active in the original (should have) to passive (can be remembered) isn’t a good idea
...


D

Bea Left Half, by the way, will change her name to Amy-Bea when she reaches the age of
seventeen days
...
The first verb is future (will
change) and the second is past (reached), placing the sentence in some sort of time warp and
out of the realm of parallel structure
...


E

You know what teenagers are like; they always have to assert their identities
...


F

When she traveled to the biker convention, Lola intended both to show off her new Harley
and to display her new tattoo
...
The correction pairs
two infinitives (to show off and to display), in contrast to the original sentence, which joins a
noun (her new Harley) and an infinitive (to display her new tattoo)
...
The
elements joined by either/or in the original sentence don’t match
...
The new version links two verbs (accompany and stay)
...
The corrected sentence links two nouns (Lulu, Lola) with
the neither/nor conjunction pair
...


I

Lola writes screenplays not only about bikers but about alien invasions also
...
The new version joins two prepositional phrases
...
Here you’re working with both/and
...
In the correction, each half of the conjunction pair precedes a noun
(talent, award)
...
The conjunction pair, not
only/but also, links two verbs in the answer sentence (scorns, refuses)
...
Mismatch!

L

correct
...
Verdict:
parallel
...
In the original sentence, both comes before a verb (wants), but and precedes a noun (trophy)
...
The
new version does better, linking two nouns (award, trophy)
...

The two conjunctions (not only/but also) link subject-verb combos in the corrected version (did
Lulu bribe, she ran), but in the original these conjunctions link a subject-verb and a verb (did
Lulu bribe, ran)
...


O

Either the judges were unimpressed with Lulu’s efforts or they liked Lola better
...
In the original, a description (unimpressed) incorrectly follows either,
but a verb (liked) follows or
...
Mayor:

41
42

I do not like complaining to complain or to be a nuisance, but if a
person is persecuted, they he or she should be heard
...
When I spoke to the Department of
Highways, the clerk was rude and that he took my complaint lightly
...
I demand that the issue be taken seriously by you you
take the issue seriously
...
” I am angry and

46

in the mood ready to take legal action
...
I expect
you to cooperate and that you will to fire the clerk
...
Either
way makes a parallel sentence
...
I change they to the singular he or she, but if you want to
keep they, you may scrap a person and insert people instead
...


S

The and may link was and took, two verbs, but not a verb (was) and a subject-verb combo (he
took)
...
Then the verb was precedes
two adjectives, rude and dismissive, perhaps
...
In the original,
the either comes before a verb (be) and the or before a noun
...
by you)
...


V

The original shifts from present perfect tense (have written) to future (will say) for no good
reason
...


W

Angry is an adjective, but in the mood is a phrase
...


X

Either two infinitives (my correction) or two -ing forms (Moving and canceling) are acceptable
here, but not one of each
...


241

242

Part V: Writing with Style

Chapter 19

Spicing Up and Trimming
Down Your Sentences
In This Chapter
ᮣ Creating interesting sentence structures
ᮣ Combining sentences by subordinating
ᮣ Reversing standard order
ᮣ Examining repetition and awkward wording

A

s I write this, the rain beats down on my window
...


Compare the above paragraph to the next paragraph:
I am writing
...
I am glad that I am not outside
...
I type away
...

Okay, admit it
...
Why? Because variety is not only the spice of life
but the spice of writing as well
...
You also get some scissor
practice by cutting repetitive or awkward expressions
...

Most sentences also have some sort of completion, what grammarians call a complement or
an object: Mary walks the dog, Oliver opens the peanut butter
...
The easiest and most effective way to change the basic pattern is to add an
introductory element, which is italicized in the following examples:
Sticking her finger in the jar, Agnes curdled the peanut butter
...
)
Despite the new polish on her nails, Agnes was willing to eat without a fork
...
)
When she was full, Agnes closed the jar
...
Once again, you get more information
about Agnes
...
Just try some
of the patterns, but be sure to avoid a common error: The subject of the main part of the
sentence must be the one doing the action or in the state of being described by the introductory verb form
...

Put boredom behind you by combining the two statements in each question, making one of
the statements an introductory element
...
Your answer may differ from the one I provide in the answers section and still be correct
...


Q
...
Oliver stops cleaning his teeth and starts typing
...
Realizing that the boss wants the memo immediately, Oliver stops cleaning his teeth
and starts typing
...
You may also begin with a statement like Now that Oliver knows that the boss wants the memo immediately, he stops
cleaning his teeth and starts typing
...
Jesse is considering retirement
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
2
...
Jesse’s debt is quite large
...
Jesse wants to drink martinis on a tropical island
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
4
...
An especially unrealistic part lets Jesse drink martinis
all day
...
The bank manager speaks to Jesse in a loud voice
...
02 in
his savings account
...
The bank manager angers easily
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
7
...
Jesse is an honest man
...
The bank manager eventually decided to rob the bank
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Smoothing Out Choppy Sentences
The term subordinate doesn’t refer to the poor slob who has to make coffee and open
letters for the boss
...
In the world of grammar, which is not a tourist destination,
the full name is subordinate clause
...
Do remember that
subordinate clauses may fall at the beginning, middle, or end of the sentence
...

Ellen is planning to repair whatever was damaged if she ever manages to replace the lid
...
the lid
...
If you have a lot
of short sentences strung together, subordination can make your writing less choppy
...
Combine the ideas in these exercises into one sentence
per question, using subordinate clauses
...
Ellen’s boss held a press conference
...
”
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

A
...
” More than one answer is possible here
...
”
9
...
He asked the boss a number of questions
...
The boss asked Joe to sit down and be quiet
...
He was still looking for information about “the incident
...
The CIA became interested in the case
...
The agents were
supposed to investigate
...
Ellen didn’t want to talk to the agents
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
13
...
She slipped out of the office
...
The CIA may track her down
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
15
...
The boss is trying to manage the news media
...
Ellen has offered her story to an independent film company
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
17
...
The prison is located in a
desert
...
Some people know what was in the box
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 19: Spicing Up and Trimming Down Your Sentences

Awkward but Interesting: Reversed
Sentence Patterns
What wakes up an audience faster than a triple latte? The words in conclusion
...
Similarly, in writing, the end of a chapter or a paragraph — and even the end of an individual sentence —
may be a high-interest spot
...

Instead, they lull the reader with the usual subject-verb-object/complement pattern
...

Through the trees, across a clearing, and toward our SUV ran the hungry bear
...
The sentence leads the reader through
the bear’s route before revealing the subject
...
Doing so would simply create another pattern with the potential to bore
your reader
...

Don’t reverse sentences by lapsing into passive voice
...
Passive voice isn’t wrong
...
But passive is wordy
and awkward
...

These sentences are in the usual order
...
Aim for the same
meaning expressed in a different order
...
Change them to active voice (any order) for a better, stronger expression
...
The paper deliverer tossed onto our lawn a sticky, soggy mess of a newspaper
...
A sticky, soggy mess of a newspaper the paper deliverer tossed onto our lawn
...
Duke, our favorite Pug, was soon sprinting from the kitchen, sliding through the living
room, and making a bee-line for the lawn
...
The locked front door was in Duke’s way
...
The newspaper and advertisements were not chewed by Duke
...
Duke did place a few tooth marks and about a hundred scratches on the front door
...
Puppy obedience school was unsuccessful for Duke
...
The paper deliverer stood on the front porch listening to Duke’s frantic efforts
...
He was not a fan of dogs
...
His left leg had seven dog-bite scars
...
Duke was not to blame for the paper deliverer’s tooth marks
...
The mail carrier’s scars, on the other hand, were inflicted by Duke
...

You probably hate listening
...
You should avoid it in your writing, regardless of the form it takes — and it does
take many forms, including doubled adjectives (calm and serene), extra phrases (six feet
tall in height), or just plain saying the same thing two different ways (in my opinion I think)
...


Q
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

A
...
I chose extremely tense, but
you could cut those words and stay with anxious
...
The other cut (where the race would begin)
is justified because that’s what a starting line is
...
Susannah’s new and innovative idea for racing strategy was to cut away quickly from the
crowd and separate herself
...
I believe that in my view Susannah has a great chance of winning and finishing in first
place
...
The spikes that she installed and put in on her tire rims should easily and without much
effort cut her opponents’ tires
...
Bethany thinks that Susannah scattered tacks and little nails over the left side of the
course, where her chief and most important rival rides
...
There are two sides to every story, of course; Susannah and Bethany have different ideas
about what is fair and unfair in a motorcycle race
...
A little tack can alter the outcome of the race in an important and significant way
...
Susannah says that in future days to come she will win legally or not at all
...
Revise it as
you see fit, paying attention to varied sentence patterns, unnecessary words, and
choppiness
...
Darla was lying on the floor in a heap
...
She breathed in quick pants at a rapid rate
...
He neared Darla and gasped
...


said
...
His cardiologist would be worried about the
fast rate
...
Henry cared only about Darla
...
She was unconscious
...
” He knelt next to her
...
My answer begins with a prepositional phrase
...
or Contrary to Jesse’s desire to
...
The first time I show
this sentence structure to my students, they often protest that “you can’t begin a sentence with
because
...

Take care not to dangle an introduction here
...
)
If you write something like Wanting Jesse to work hard, Jesse’s debt
...


c

In addition to his desire to drink martinis on a tropical island, Jesse also wants to keep his
house
...


d

Impractical in every way, the plan is especially unrealistic in letting Jesse drink martinis all
day
...


e

Speaking to Jesse in a loud voice, the bank manager points out that he has $
...
Here the bank manager is still speaking, but that thought is expressed by an
introductory verb form now, not by a separate sentence
...
I added
admits so that the bank manager is the subject of the sentence
...
In such a sentence, Jesse would be the one angering easily — not the meaning you want to convey
...


g

Even though he is an honest man, Jesse considered robbing the bank
...


h

With martinis on a tropical island in her future, the bank manager eventually decided to
rob the bank
...


i

Joseph Shmo, who is a prize-winning reporter, asked the boss a number of questions
...
(The shortened form is
called an appositive, but you don’t need to know that
...
)

j

The boss asked Joe to sit down and be quiet, but Joe, who was still looking for information,
refused
...


k

The CIA, which was interested in the case, sent several agents who were supposed to investigate
...


l

Ellen didn’t want to talk to the agents because her boss had told her that her job was in jeopardy
...


251

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Part V: Writing with Style

m

When she slipped out of the office, Ellen bought a bus ticket
...


n

If the CIA tracks her down, they will deal with her harshly
...

Writing choppy sentences isn’t nice either! If expresses a possibility, as does the verb may in
the original
...
A time expression works
nicely here, tying Ellen’s absence to the boss’s press conference
...

When you use that to introduce an idea, a comma is seldom necessary
...

When you use which to introduce an idea, a comma usually separates the which statement from
the rest of the sentence
...
)

r

Whoever knows what was in the box is in danger
...
By placing the subject, Duke, near the end, you gain drama
...
Not a big change, but placing the locked front door
at the end is a way to emphasize the tragedy of the barrier that the eager dog can’t surmount
...
The original sentence is passive, not
usually a good choice
...
You can also flip the standard order and place the object before the subject and verb
...
The new
order is dramatic, emphasizing Duke
...
That’s the
trade-off with reverse order sentences
...
Use this sort of sentence sparingly!

w

Unsuccessful for Duke was puppy obedience school
...


x

On the front porch listening to Duke’s frantic efforts stood the paper deliverer
...


y

Not a fan of dogs was he
...


A

Seven dog-bite scars had his left leg
...


B

Not to blame for the paper deliverer’s tooth marks was Duke
...


C

On the other hand, Duke did inflict the mail carrier’s scars
...
You do know, because the sentence tells you, who chomped on the mail carrier
...


Chapter 19: Spicing Up and Trimming Down Your Sentences

D

Susannah’s new idea for racing strategy was to cut away quickly from the crowd
...
Also, you may drop to cut away quickly from
the crowd and leave separate herself
...


E

Susannah has a great chance of winning
...
Winning and finishing in first place are the same; choose either one
...
More
doubles: installed and put in match, as do easily and without much effort
...


G

Bethany thinks that Susannah scattered tacks over the left side of the course, where her
chief rival rides
...
Ditto for chief and
most important
...
The
whole first part of the sentence is unnecessary
...
Also, if the bikers
can’t agree on what’s fair, by definition they also don’t agree on what’s unfair, so that part of
the statement may also be cut
...
If you prefer, drop important and keep significant
...


J

Susannah says that in the future she will win legally or not at all
...
(If you’d
rather keep days to come, go for it and drop future
...
Lying on the floor in a heap, her legs bent under her,

37
38

she breathed in quick pants at a rapid rate
...
Nearing Darla, he gasped, “My angel
...
Henry
did not care
...
Kneeling next to her he said, “Angel Pie, you don’t have to
pawn your engagement ring
...
The ideas in the first two sentences are
turned into introductory elements, with the last of the three sentences as the main idea
...
Another possible combination: After Darla fainted, she was lying on the floor in a
heap
...


253

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Part V: Writing with Style

L

The revision cuts repetition; rapid and quick are the same
...


N

Two sentences — He neared Darla and gasped
...
— have been combined
...


O

A subordinate (that his cardiologist would worry) tucks an idea from one sentence into another
...
”

P

The original story ends with several short, choppy sentences
...


Q

The last two sentences of the original combine with an introductory verb form, kneeling
...

You can also revise this section in this way: “Angel Pie, you don’t have to pawn your engagement ring,” he said as he knelt next to her
...
The tiny errors that can sink you — a nonstandard expression, a faulty
irregular verb, and the wrong word from a pair of similar words, for example — are in focus
here
...


Separating Almost-Twins: Commonly
Confused Words
Do you know any twins who resemble each other but have completely different personalities? One is a professional hang glider, perhaps, and the other a librarian
...
This section divulges the ones that trip
up most people
...

Effect is most often used as a noun and means “result”: One effect of Mallory’s sweet
tooth was a truly impressive dental bill
...
Affect as a
noun means “the way someone displays emotions
...
” In this chapter, though, I concentrate on the more common
usage for each
...

Farther refers to distance: Mallory runs farther than anyone else when a candy bar is at
stake
...


256

Part V: Writing with Style
Other pairs (or triplets) are quite different in appearance, but for some reason people
mix them up:
Like expresses similarity, but it may not be attached to a subject/verb combo: She
jumps like Mike
...

Such as introduces examples: Mallory’s cupboard is stocked with sweets such as
pie filling, pudding mix, and chocolate
...

Imply is “to hint”: Mallory never actually asked for a gumdrop, but she strongly
implied that one would be welcome
...

Can you tell the following twins and triplets apart? Circle the best word or phrase in
each set of parentheses
...
Fueled by the caffeine in two double-lattes, Jake drove (farther/further) than anyone else
...
Farther
...

1
...

2
...

3
...

4
...

5
...

6
...

7
...

8
...

9
...

10
...

11
...

12
...


Chapter 20: Steering Clear of Tricky Word Traps

Comparing Quantities without Numbers
Lost in the fog of the history of English is the reason why different words are used to
describe singulars and plurals when you’re counting or measuring:
More than, many, and fewer work for plurals: more than nineteen witnesses, many problems, fewer than fifty coffee cups
...

Less, much, and over take you into singular territory: less interest in the sport, much
unrest, over an hour
...

The word over is frequently misused in place of more or more than
...

Number applies to plurals: the number of bowties
...

Among is for groups of three or more: Among the twelve candidates for mayor,
Shirley stands out
...
Circle the correct word in each set of parentheses
...
Just (between/among) you and me, do you think he needs a dye job?
A
...
You plus me equals two, and between is the word for couples
...

13
...

14
...

15
...

16
...

17
...

18
...

19
...
”
20
...

21
...
”
22
...

23
...

24
...


257

258

Part V: Writing with Style

Sorry to Bust Your Bubble, but Some
Common Expressions Are Wrong
English should of been easier, I cannot help but think
...
Irregardless, I’ll still have time to fold
origami, a hobby which I can’t hardly resist because it does not have no stress attached
to it
...
In proper English, they don’t exist
...


Table 20-1

Correcting Made-Up Words

Wrong

Right

Should of
Would of
Could of

Should have, should’ve
Would have, would’ve
Could have, could’ve

Cannot help but

Cannot help [insert the -ing form of the verb]: Cannot help
wondering, for example

Being that

Because

Try and

Try to

Irregardless

Regardless

Can’t hardly

Can hardly

Here’s your challenge: Rewrite the following sentences, substituting proper English
for any nonstandard terms
...


Q
...

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

A
...

The expressions can’t help but and cannot help but are double negatives
...
Thus the
original sentence means that you can stop thinking this way if you want to do so
...
Irregardless of the teacher’s views on technology in the classroom, Mark sends an instant
message to his brother
...
Kevin doesn’t answer immediately, being that he’s in the middle of the sandbox
...
“I’ll try and answer Mark after snack,” he thinks
...
The teacher doesn’t want no distraction from the peanut butter cookies she has prepared,
so she confiscates Kevin’s PDA, which sends and receives e-mail, keeps track of Kevin’s
play dates, and handles instant messages
...
Kevin should of hidden his PDA until nap time
...
Mark can’t hardly believe some of the stories Kevin tells about kindergarten
...
Mark remembers his own days in finger-paint land, which he should of treasured
...
Because the third grade room is near the kindergarten, Mark could of walked out of the
classroom and spoken directly to Kevin
...
Kevin can’t help thinking about his PDA, which now resides on the teacher’s desk
...
Being that the day is almost over, Kevin asks the teacher to return his PDA
...
“Being in kindergarten is really annoying sometimes,” Kevin thinks
...
“I can’t hardly wait until I’m in first grade,” he remarks
...

Afterward you can lie (not lay) down for a rest
...
” (Yes, it also means that you aren’t telling the
truth, but that definition isn’t a problem
...
The form of
the verb lie that combines with has, have, or had is lain
...
” The past tense of lay is laid
...

To sit is “to bend your knees and put your bottom on some sort of surface
...

To set is “to place, to put something somewhere
...

To tell the difference between these two pairs of verbs, think of lie and sit as actions
that a person does to himself or herself: I lie down, I sit in the chair
...

Don’t set down your pen until you try the following questions
...


Q
...


A
...
The meaning in this sentence is “to rest or to recline,” so the verb you want is to lie,
and the past tense of to lie is lay
...
In the soap, the main character (lies/lays) in bed, comatose
...
In the world of soaps, the rule is that the doctor must (sit/set) by the bed every day with
a look of concern and love on his or her face
...
In yesterday’s episode, the doctor (sit/sat/set) a bouquet of flowers on the nightstand
...
When the nurse told the doctor to go home and (lie/lay) down, the doctor replied that she
would “(sit/set) down for a while
...
Last week the doctor (lay/laid) a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier
...
The viewers think the wreath that (lies/lays) there is a sign that the soldier is really the
doctor’s long lost lover
...
During sweeps week, the long lost lover will show up and (sit/set) next to the doctor in
the cafeteria
...
The final show will reveal that the long lost lover has (lain/laid) in a bed, comatose too
...
While the doctor (sits/sets) there gobbling tuna salad, the lover will explain what happened to the evil twin and other soap mysteries
...
A couple of other pairs have both a single- and a double-word
form, and confusing these pairs changes the meaning of your sentence:
ߜ Already (by this time) and all ready (completely prepared)
ߜ Everyday (ordinary) and every day (daily)
ߜ Sometime (at an unspecified moment) and some time (a period of time)
Can you find the correct form in the following pairs? Circle your choices
...
Because Jennifer sneezes (alot/a lot), Abigail has (already/all ready) packed a dozen
handkerchiefs
...
a lot, already
...
In the second parentheses, the
meaning you want is “by this time,” so already is the one
...
The sneezing will end (sometime/some time)
...
Jennifer has devoted (sometime/some time) to the study of the nose and its explosions
...
She has discovered that most people sneeze at least once (everyday/every day)
...
Jennifer herself sneezes at least ten times a day, so she buys (alot/a lot) of tissues
...
When Abigail arrived to take Jennifer to the airport, Jennifer was (already/all ready)
...
Jennifer carried her (everyday/every day) handkerchief, a blue cotton square
...
Abigail packed a fresh outfit for (everyday/every day) of the trip
...
“Come on (already/all ready)!” sighed Abigail with impatience
...
“It will take us (sometime/some time) to get to the airport and through security,” she
added
...
“(Alright!/All right!) I’m coming,” yelled Jennifer
...
Whenever you encounter a misused word, correct the clunker
...


Lloyd Demos Dies at 81: Specialized in Ancient Egypt
Lloyd Demos died yesterday as he was pursuing farther study in ancient
Egyptian culture
...
By the time he died he had all ready
learned 12 languages, including ancient Egyptian, and spent some time
everyday studying Egyptian grammar so that his writing would be alright
...


his door
...
”
Demos, who wrote over 50 books, will be fondly remembered
...
In this sentence you want a word that indicates a greater degree, so further fills the bill
...
The word must introduce a list of examples, so such as is the best choice
...
In the preceding answer, like
means that the speaker in the sentence did not provide a photo of his car, a statement from his
girlfriend, or an attendance award
...


c

implied
...
”

d

As
...


e

further
...
Instead, the judge is referring to time,
and further does the job
...
The speaker resembles a statue, and like expresses similarity
...


g

inferred
...


h

effect
...
Bingo: effect wins
...
Here you’re looking for a verb that’s the same as influence
...


j

such as
...


k

further
...


l

affects, infer
...
Affect is a verb
meaning “influence
...


m

more than
...


n

among, much
...

Between works for couples, not mobs
...


o

less
...


p

many, amount
...
In the second parentheses, the singular paper is the issue
...


q

more than
...
Use more than
...
It may take fewer employees to shelve the issue, but it takes less energy, because energy is
singular
...
One year calls for over, the term for singulars
...
The word material is singular, even though the term may refer to a ton of stuff, as in
the material in my file cabinet that I don’t want to work on
...


u

between
...


v

fewer
...


w

amount
...


x

Among
...
Hence, among
...
Irregardless is the Loch Ness Monster of formal English; it doesn’t exist
...


A

Kevin doesn’t answer immediately, because he is in the middle of the sandbox
...
Use because or as
...
The expression try and says that the speaker is
going to do two things: try and answer
...
”

C

The teacher doesn’t want any distraction from the peanut butter cookies she has prepared,
so she confiscates Kevin’s PDA, which sends and receives e-mail, keeps track of Kevin’s play
dates, and handles instant messages
...
Change doesn’t want no to
doesn’t want any
...
The expression should of sounds like
should’ve, but should’ve is the contraction of should have, not should of
...
Can’t hardly is
a double negative, which reverses the intended meaning of the sentence
...


F

Mark remembers his own days in finger-paint land, which he should’ve treasured
...


G

Because the third grade room is near the kindergarten, Mark could have walked out of the
classroom and spoken directly to Kevin
...


H

correct
...
Just don’t
place it with but, because then you’ll have a double negative
...
Delete being that
wherever you find it; send in because instead
...
In this sentence being is fine because it’s a verb, not a faulty substitute for because
...
Can’t hardly, a double negative, flips
your meaning
...


L

lies
...


M

sit
...
Go for sit
...
To place something somewhere calls for the verb set
...
Both of these spots call for personal body movements, not the placement of something
else
...


P

laid
...


Q

lies
...
The doctor lays the wreath, but the wreath itself just lies (rests)
there
...
The lover will pull out a chair and sit in it, not place an object somewhere
...
The lover has been stretched out in a bed, in the traditional soapy coma, so the verb must
be a form of lie
...


T

sits
...
The verb is to sit, and the
form that matches doctor is sits
...
The sentence refers to a particular moment (knowing Jennifer, about an hour after
the first achoo)
...
”

V

some time
...


W

every day
...


X

a lot
...


Y

all ready
...

Hence, all ready
...
Her ordinary handkerchief (thus her everyday handkerchief) isn’t as fancy as the
silk number she carries when she’s dressed up
...
The meaning implied here is “every single day
...
Abigail means “by this time!”

2

some time
...


3

All right! I know, I know
...
Wrong
...
Always wrong! It’s two words
...
Demos, who effected affected the lives of many

58
59

died he had all ready already learned 12 languages, including ancient

grammar so that his writing would be alright all right
...


60

61

Irregardless Regardless, Demos insisted on finishing his mashed
potatoes, though he was heard to say, “I would like to lay lie down for a

65

57

residents of our town, had alot a lot of varied interests
...
” Demos, who wrote over more than 50 books, will be fondly

64

remembered
...


5

Effected can be a verb, but as such it means “to be the sole agent of change
...


6

A lot is always written as two words
...


8

Everyday as one word means “ordinary
...


9

All right is always two words, never one
...
Set is
to place something else somewhere else
...


@

Lie is to rest or recline; lay (in the present tense) is to put something down somewhere
...


#

Fifty books is plural, so more than comes into play
...


Part VI

The Part of Tens

T

In this part
...
This part
also shows you the worst, avoid-at-all-cost, common
errors that can sink your writing faster than a torpedo
from a nuclear sub
...
Read on
...
All of a sudden the eyes glaze over,
the chin lifts, and the grammar/style portion of the brain goes into overdrive
...
Verb tenses tangle up, and had is suddenly as common as shoulder pads at an ’80s party
...
If you want to identify these grammar and style potholes so
that you can steer around them, read on
...
But throwing whom into every situation isn’t a good idea either
...
In fact, you need whom only when the sentence calls for an
object of some sort
...
)
Objects receive the action of the verb, as in Whom did you call? In this sentence, whom
receives the action of the verb did call
...
)
The problem with whom is that when it does show up, it’s often in a sentence containing
other thoughts, so you have to sort out the various threads
...
Untangling shows you why: I shall
say whom is calling
...
Who is calling
...
But it shouldn’t be overused
...
On a timeline, the shaving precedes the exploding, and both precede the present moment
...
The shaving part of the sentence gets the had
...


270

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Throwing in “Have” at Random
Another helping verb, have, shows up where it has no business, I suspect because it makes
the sentence sound more complicated and therefore somehow more “advanced
...

The have error I hear the most is Nice to have met you
...
So nice to have met you implies some
sort of deadline, as in nice to have met you before our wedding or nice to have met you
before it was time for me to clip your toenails
...


Sending “I” to Do a “Me” Job
Me sounds childlike, doesn’t it? It conjures up memories of “Me Tarzan!” and similar statements
...
I is a subject pronoun, so it
belongs in a subject spot — or after a linking verb — and nowhere else
...

Penalty box! The correct phrases are between you and me and except you and me
...

Official forms tend to throw passive verbs all over the place, perhaps because passive voice
allows the writer to omit the subject — the doer, and therefore the one responsible — for the
action
...
But passive voice comes across as stilted
...


Making Sentence Structure Too Complicated
Hey, I can handle complications
...
But complicated sentences (which abound in the pile of forms I just mentioned) don’t make your
writing look more mature
...
Stay away from sentences
like It was this treaty that ended the war and substitute This treaty ended the war
...


Letting Descriptions Dangle
Description is good, especially when you’re agreeing to a blind date with someone you’ve
never met
...
) Descriptions containing verb forms are good too,
because they give you even more information: Howie, howling at the moon as he does every

Chapter 21: Ten Overcorrections
evening, is happy to double date
...
Descriptions
in the beginning of a sentence are especially good, because they vary the usual, boring sentence pattern: Running with his friend Wolfie, Howie often stays out all night
...

But — and this is a big but — don’t overuse the introductory description, or you’ll simply
create a new, but immediately boring, sentence pattern
...
If not, you
have a dangler, a truly big no-no
...
Because many writers make the mistake of pairing the plural their with something singular (say, a person or
everybody), overcorrectors do the opposite
...
Bad idea! Plurals (the guys, three grapefruits, both,
several, a few, and so on) match with other plurals (they and their)
...
Instead, keep the plurals together: The
kids blew off their homework and blamed the dog
...
They also separate
items in a list, when at least one of the listed items contains a comma already
...
It isn’t a fancy comma or a weak colon
...
(National Semicolon Day is next week
...
Don’t; throw them around
...
I mean Don’t throw them around
...
The cure for underexplaining isn’t overexplaining
...

And if your readers wander around wondering how many seeds were in that apple, that’s
their problem
...
If the plane is going down, I personally am
willing to forgo the peanut butter and jelly, but not that handy little life-saving device
...
Ten ways, actually,
which I explain here
...


Writing Incomplete Sentences
Unless, of course, you want to make a style point
...
That’s my attempt at irony and also my way of pointing out that
sometimes breaking the rules is a good thing
...
However, a forest of
incomplete sentences is not a style; it’s just poor English and calls into question whether
you know how to fashion a complete sentence
...

Be sure that each of your sentences has a subject-verb pair, an endmark, and a complete
thought
...
)

Letting Sentences Run On and On
A run-on sentence is actually two or more sentences stuck together without any legal
“glue” — a word such as and or a semicolon
...
Be especially careful with words that resemble legal joiners (consequently, however, therefore, nevertheless, and so forth)
...

(Chapter 4 explains run-ons in greater detail
...
If you write this way, fine
...

Ditto if you put a little circle on top of the i instead of a dot
...
But even if you don’t go that far, you risk alienating the reader by
breaking so basic a rule
...
Period
...
Lifting someone else’s words, dropping them into your own writing,
and omitting the quotation marks is as dishonest as passing the teller a note demanding
all the money
...
The solution is simple
...
”

Using Pronouns Incorrectly
Pronouns — noun substitutes such as he, they, all, other, neither, and the like — are governed by more rules than the citizens of a fanatical tyrant
...
Don’t use an object pronoun in a subjectpronoun spot
...
(Check out Chapters 3 and 10 for details on these issues
...
First, they begin to look familiar when
they show up in something you’re reading
...
Later
still, you feel comfortable using them in your own sentences
...
The problem is that the nuances of a word’s meaning are
hard to grasp from a list or a couple of encounters
...
You may find yourself, as one of my students did,
writing about “New York City’s government suppository of documents
...
Look it up
...
In fact, slang can be bad — the real bee’s knees
...

That paragraph contains a mixture of slang from several different eras
...
Therein lies the problem
...
If your reader understands that bad
in the sentence above is slang for “good,” fine
...
By the way, 411 means
“information
...
” Bottom line:
A writer who uses slang risks confusion
...


Chapter 22: Ten Errors to Avoid at All Cost

Forgetting to Proofread
Even if you finished the paper or project only ten minutes before you have to cram it into
the mailbox, take the time to proofread your work
...
punctuation,

Relying on Computer Checks
for Grammar and Spelling
You can’t cash them in, but computer checks are popular anyway, and you should remember to glance at them as you write
...
) I have to admit that sometimes they actually
help, but they’re not 100 percent accurate
...
(See what
I mean? That last sentence should read plenty of errors
...
I get little wavy lines lots of times,
and as you have figured out by now, I’m prefect
...
perfect
...
Don’t — do
not — repeat, because repetition isn’t a fun or enjoyable way to pass the time
...
Shall I reiterate the
point? Once is enough
...
If you can see it with 20/20 vision, you’ll spot 30 mistakes in each
of the four exercises
...

The errors may involve faulty structure or word choice, punctuation, capitalization, and
anything else the English Grammar Workbook For Dummies covers
...
This course description has many faults — 30, by my count
...
Don’t worry about numbers —
your mission is to search and destroy the mistakes
...
Lapham, Ms
...
One two-hour
lecture period per week is required
...

This course on world domination and dictatorship involve both lecture and that they put into
practice what students will learn
...

Everyone must keep a journal of revolutions started, governments overthrown, and peasants’
oppressed
...
This is sure to
interest students who’s career plans are to be an emperor; tsar; dictator; or reality-show
winner
...
We will be discussing topics like propaganda, media
manipulation, and telegenic coronation clothes (including crown-jewel selection)
...
The students’s
task is to outmaneuver everyone in the course by becoming the first to conquer a hostile

Figure A-1:
A scary
sample
course
description
that needs
some work
(in more
ways than
one)
...
Exams also emphasizes real practical skills, and
theoretical ideas
...

Admission to this course and it’s sequel (Universal Domination) are by permission of the
Department of Politically Science Irregardless of age or class rank, applicants should be as
motivated than the average freshman and should try and visit the departmental office for an
interview
...
Try your hand at correcting all 30
...
Chester Slonton
33 Warwickville Road
Alaistair, CA 90990
Dear Mr
...
” To read over 1,000 pages
about a love affair between plants is a very unique experience
...
Before
Mr
...

Most of the editors, including Mr
...
You are
absolutely right in stating that each of the lovers are in the lily family, scientifically they have
similar characteristics
...

Unfortunately, your main characters resembles each other in petal color and height
...

A second problem are the love scenes
...
Mr
...
After all, once a person has read
one flower proposal, he or she has essentially read them all
...
When the lily droops, the book ended
...
Market research shows that books with happy endings appeal to the
readers, whoever he or she may be
...
Instead of drooping, perhaps
the lily could spread it’s petals and welcome the dawn
...


Figure A-2:
A sample
letter from
a publisher
(with a lot of
mistakes, so
you know
it must
be fake)
...
I hope that you are open to the
changes I had outlined in this letter
...

Sincerely,
Cynthia Higgen

Appendix: Grabbing Grammar Goofs

Exercise Three
Try your hand at editing the newspaper article in Figure A-3
...
(If you’re quoting someone who makes a grammar
error, you may usually leave the error in the quotation in order to convey someone’s style
or personality
...
)

Hold the Tights: a Former Television Star Plays Shakespeare
Silver, the actor that played a talking horse on the Emmy-winning series Mr
...
” The handsome blond recently agreed to
discuss his approach to acting
...
As he had
munched oats and sipped delicately from a water pail, the colt explained that he learned to talk
at the age of one
...

“I started by reciting monologues for whomever would listen,” he said
...
Said
...
You get typecast
...
” He added, “Sitting
by the phone one day, it rang, and my agent told me that I had a audition
...
Silver is the only horse that have ever played Hamlet, as far as
he knows
...
His costume includes a traditionally velvet coat but
no tights
...
” Director Ed
Walketers asked Silver to consider shaving, and he also tried several types of material for the
tights
...
“No one tried harder than
her to find tights I could wear,” Silver said
...


situation
...
“I relate to Hamlet’s problems,” he explained
...
” The role is also exhausting;
Silver lays down for a quickly nap everyday before going onstage as Hamlet
...
Correct them!

Installing You’re New Widget Wheel
To install the widget wheel, a computer should first be turned off, then follow these simple
steps
...
You must
have sent for manual number 218B, or, in the case of a computer that previously has a widget,
for manual number 330B
...

Faulty directions have been responsible for explosions and that software crashed
...
Unpack the widget wheel which looks like a sharks tooth
...
Unpack the two disk poles
...
Lining up the teeth with
the teeth on the widget
...
see
enclosed order form for more information
...
After the teeth are tight clenched, a person should insert the widget disk into slot C
...

Don’t mix up the slots as the computer will catch fire
...
Sit the computer on its side before beginning this step
...
Turn on the computer
...
If
Figure A-4:
The world’s
biggest
headache
inducer:
A sample
of a poorly
written
computer
manual
...
This means the widget was installed improper; the computer is all together
unusable
...
You are almost ready to enjoy your new widget!! Place a hand on the mouse that is not
wearing any rings, including wedding rings
...
Some widgets can work good no matter what the pressure
...
All corrections are boldfaced and underlined
...


6901 World Domination (3 credits): Professor Peck, Mr
...
Austin
...
Three periods of fieldwork per week is are also required
...


12

2
4

A student Students will report to their faculty advisors once a month
...
Readings
include Karl and Groucho Marx’s masterful essay, “Laughing All Tthe Way to Tthe Throne,”, and
Chairman Mayo’s autobiography, Hold the Bacon
...
By the

6
8
9
11

time the course concludes, students will have gathered all necessary information about what it
takes to rule the world
...
Working in the

14
16
19

field, spy networks will be set up students will set up spy networks,;
this fieldwork will count as a quarter of the grade
...
Exams also

20
23
24
26
29

emphasizes emphasize real really practical skills, and theoretical ideas
...

Admission to this course and it’s sequel (Universal Domination) are is by permission of the
Department of Politically Political Science
...


27

21
22

25
28
30

281

282

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies

a
b
c

The subject is three periods, a plural, so the verb (are) must also be plural
...

Go for present (learn)
...

Also, a student should never pair with their, because singulars and plurals don’t match
...
The possessive
form should be linked to a noun, but here it precedes a verb form (oppressed)
...


l

A future deadline (by the time the course concludes) calls for future perfect tense (will have
gathered)
...
In this sentence the listed
items are examples and should be preceded by such as
...
An introductory element containing a verb form must refer to the subject, and spy networks aren’t working in the field
...


o

Two complete sentences may not be joined by a comma
...


p
q

The pronoun this is too vague all by itself
...


r
s

The student is in the course and so must be compared to everyone else
...


The subject course is singular, so the verb (involves) must also be singular
...


When a comma follows quoted material, the comma is placed inside the closing quotation mark
...
Insert the clarifying expression, reading list
...

Items in a series are separated by semicolons only when one or more of the items contain a
comma
...


To create a possessive form for a plural ending in the letter s, just add an apostrophe, not an
extra s
...
Descriptions should be close to the word they describe
...

If you unite two complete sentences with the word and, a comma precedes the and
...


Appendix: Grabbing Grammar Goofs

w

The descriptive word only should precede the word being compared — in this case, only two as
compared to three or four or whatever the professor assigns
...


B
C
D
E

Admission is singular and takes a singular verb, is
...
Politically is an adverb and may describe
only verbs (speaking politically) or other descriptions (politically inexperienced)
...

Irregardless isn’t standard English
...

As and than don’t belong in the same comparison
...

Try and implies two actions, but the sentence refers to one that should be attempted
...


283

284

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies

Answers to Exercise Two
In the following figure the errors from the original letter are boldfaced and crossed out,
with a possible correction following each one, as well as an occasional addition of a missing word or mark
...
Check the corresponding
numbered explanations that follow the revised letter
...
Chester Slonton
33 Warwickville Road
Alaistair, CA 90990
Dear Mr
...
” The Lily Droops at Dawn
...
In your talented hands, both of the plants becomes become characters that are

33

To read over more than 1,000 pages about a love affair between plants is a very unique

35

well-rounded and of great interest interesting to the reader
...
Higgen, whom who

37

you know is our founder, commits to publishing this masterpiece, I must ask for some

38

39

40

real really minor changes
...
Higgen, was were confused about the names
...
Calling the lovers Lila and Lyle would not of have been a problem if the

41
42

characters were distinguished from one another in personality or habits or appearance
...


44

46

47
49

43

True, one of the lilies is said to be smartest smarter, but the reader doesn’t know which
...
You mention in your cover letter that you can make
them more lengthier
...
Higgen feels, and I agree, that you write vivid vividly; nevertheless,

person has read one flower proposal, he or she has essentially read them all
...
When the lily droops, the book ended ends
...
After all, once a

50

comfortable with a tiny change
...
These volumes sell good well
...
Or dawn or become

55

a rose
...
I hope that you are open to the

57
60

changes I had outlined in this letter
...
I look
forward to having talked talking with you about the editing process
...


H
I
J
K

Over precedes a singular word, and more than precedes a plural
...


N
O
P
Q

Most of the editors is a plural subject and requires a plural verb, were
...


Unique is an absolute, so no degrees of uniqueness (very unique, a little unique, and so on) exist
...

The original sentence isn’t parallel because it pairs the simple description well rounded with the
phrase of great interest
...


Real is an adjective and appropriate for descriptions of people, places, things, or ideas
...


Each of the lovers is a singular subject and requires a singular verb, is
...
Use a semicolon instead
...
The proper expression is would have, here changed
to the negative would not have
...


T
U
V
W
X
Y

The contraction doesn’t contains an apostrophe
...


Smartest is for the extreme in groups of three or more
...


The singular subject problem takes the singular verb is
...
Use lengthier or more lengthy
...

The expression a lot is always written as two words
...


The plural pronoun they refers to readers
...

A possessive pronoun, such as its, never includes an apostrophe
...

A company is singular, so the matching pronoun is its
...

Cannot help but mention is a double negative
...
This statement calls for a period
...


285

286

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies

Answers to Exercise Three
In the following figure the errors from the original article are boldfaced and crossed out,
with a possible correction following each one, as well as an occasional addition of a missing word or mark
...
Check the corresponding
numbered explanations that follow the revised article
...
Said, is now
starring in the Royal Theater production of “Hamlet
...
The handsome blond recently

64
66
67

69

agreed to discuss his approach to acting
...
As he had munched oats and sipped delicately from a water pail, the colt explained that
he learned to talk at the age of one
...

“I started by reciting monologues for whomever whoever would listen,” he said
...
Said
...
You get typecast
...
” He added, “Sitting by the phone one day, it rang I heard the phone ring, and my
agent told me that I had a an audition
...
Silver

73
74
76

is the only horse that have has ever played Hamlet, as far as he knows
...
His costume includes a
traditionally traditional velvet coat but no tights
...
” Director Ed Walketers asked Silver to consider shaving, and he Silver

79
81
82

also tried several types of material for the tights
...
“No one tried harder than her she to find tights I could wear,” Silver said
...

Silver is equally as involved with the role itself
...

“Us We horses often find it hard to take action and being to be decisive
...


89

87
90

Appendix: Grabbing Grammar Goofs

9

The first word of a title and a subtitle should always be capitalized
...
The original sentence has a comma at the beginning
of the long, descriptive expression (the actor who played a talking horse on the Emmy-winning
series Mr
...
The second comma is necessary because the information
supplied is extra, not essential to the meaning of the sentence
...


!

The title of a full-length work (in this sentence, a play) should be in italics or underlined
...


#

A singular possessive is formed by the addition of an apostrophe and the letter s
...
Drop the had
...


^

Two complete sentences shouldn’t be joined by a comma
...


&

The subject pronoun whoever is needed as the subject of the verb would listen
...
However, in this
sentence the entire expression (whoever would listen) is the object of the preposition, not just
the pronoun
...


(

The past tense verb matches the meaning of the sentence
...


-

Only singular pronouns (in this sentence, he or she) can refer to the singular pronoun nobody
...
Another possible correction: Add a subject/verb
combo to the beginning of the sentence so that it reads When I was sitting by the phone
...


+

The possessive pronoun his should precede the -ing form of a verb that is being used as a noun
(in this sentence, getting)
...

Has is singular, and have is plural
...


]

Begun is the combination form of to begin and here is paired with has
...


\

Between is a preposition and thus takes an object
...


287

288

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies

|

Two males appear in the sentence (Silver and Ed), so the pronoun he is unclear
...


;

The missing word in the original is did, as in than she did
...


:

Unique is an absolute and can’t be compared, so the extremely must be deleted
...


<

We is the subject pronoun needed here
...



...
Another alternative is
to change to take action to acting
...
” To lie is “to rest or to recline,” the meaning here
...


?

The single word everyday means “ordinary
...
”

Appendix: Grabbing Grammar Goofs

Answers to Exercise Four
In the following figure the errors from the original manual are boldfaced and crossed out,
with a possible correction following each one, as well as an occasional addition of a missing word or mark
...
Check the corresponding
numbered explanations that follow the revised manual
...

Important: If you have an A4019 or a newest newer model, please discard this manual
...
Being that Because your computer is not covered

92
93
94
97

in this manual, discard it the manual
...

1
...

2
...
Grasp the disk pole that is more nearly circular
...
Note: Teeth should be brushed everyday every day

101
103
104

with a WidgetBrush
...

3
...


107

However, if the widget disk has a blue strip, in which case it should be inserted into slot D

108
109

insert the widget into slot D
...
Neither
of these slots are is open when the computer is standing upright
...

4
...
If the screen is blank, call the service specialist at 914-555-5039
...
This Blinking means the widget was installed
improper improperly; the computer is all together altogether unusable
...
You are almost ready to enjoy your new widget!! Place a hand that is not wearing any
rings, including wedding rings, on the mouse that is not wearing any rings, including
wedding rings
...


120

111

Some widgets can work good well no matter what the pressure
...
” In this sentence you want the possessive pronoun your
...
Reword the sentence so that the subject is the
person who is installing — the understood you
...
Delete the
comma and insert and
...
In this sentence
you’re talking about a comparison between two things only — model A4019 and the group of
everything newer
...
)

â

The verb send is in present tense and addresses what the installer must do now, not what the
installer must have done previously
...


ƒ

The word previously tips you off to the fact that you’re talking about past tense, so had works
better than has
...


˙

The pronoun it must have a clear meaning, but the original sentence provides two possible
alternatives, computer and manual
...


è

Two terms linked by and need a similar grammatical identity in order to keep the sentence parallel
...
The
correction links two nouns, explosions and crashes
...


¬

The tooth belongs to the shark, so you need the possessive shark’s
...
It may be approached but not compared
...


Ø

The original sentence is a fragment; it has no complete thought
...


é

Everyday means “ordinary
...
”

œ

A sentence always begins with a capital letter
...


ß

A person is a new expression in this piece, which has been addressing you either directly or by
implication
...


ê

The original is a fragment, not a complete sentence
...


ì

The pronoun neither is singular and takes the singular verb is
...
Set means that you’re
placing something else into some position
...
Insert a comma after blank
...


¡

Farther is for distance, and further is for time or intensity
...


™

The pronoun this is too vague
...


£

The adverb improperly is needed to describe the action installed
...
” Altogether means “completely,” the definition that fits this
sentence
...
One per sentence does the job
...
Place it after hands, the word
being described
...
In the
original sentence, a verb-description combo is linked to a description
...


·

The adverb well is needed to describe the verb can work
...
See verb tenses
that, 144–145
their, 271
they, 271
time, 94
titles
capital letters, 113–115
quotation marks, 101, 105–106
to be
about, 13–14
sentences, 130–131
to have, 13–14

•V•
vague descriptions, 196–197
verb moods
about, 167
answers, 172–175
imperative, 168–169
indicative mood, 167–168
practice, 167–171
subjunctive mood, 169–170

297

298

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies
verb tenses
about, 9, 155
answers, 161–165
future perfect, 11
gerunds, 158
infinitives, 158
parallel structure, 232–234
participles, 158
past, 155–157
past perfect, 11
practice, 10, 156–160
present, 157–158
present perfect, 11
verbs
about, 9
answers, 17–21
helpers, 15–16
irregular verb forms, 12–14
matching with subjects, 26–28
practice, 260–262
word traps, 260–261
voice, parallel structure, 232–234

•W•
well, 181–182
which, 144–145
who, 129–130, 144–145
whom, 129–130, 269
word traps
about, 255
answers, 263–266
common expressions, 258–260
independent words, 261
practice, 256, 258–260
quantity words, 257
similar words, 255–256
verbs, 260–261
worse, 207
worst, 207
would, 15
writing passively, 270

Notes
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Notes
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