Gone Fishin’

Posted on August 16, 2009 by languageandgrammar

We have not taken a blog vacation since we started in December 2007, so don’t you think it’s about time we do?  We do–and we’ll resume regular posting in about two weeks (at the start of September). We will continue to moderate comments.

In the meantime, feel free to read any of our over 300 posts, including our composite pages– Sherry’s Grammar List, which is our most popular page, and  Paul’s List.

Oh, and don’t forget to learn a little more about Paul’s book, Literally the Best Language Book Ever.

–Paul and Sherry

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As Easy As A, B, C

Posted on August 13, 2009 by languageandgrammar

We decided to take a short break from language and grammar to talk about hurricane season since hurricanes affect many Americans and often become major news stories at this time of year.

Since there have been no named storms yet this season, many people are talking about how this might be an exceptionally quiet hurricane season. That might ultimately be the case, but there are signs of activity in the tropics (three areas of concern in the Atlantic basin alone) as we approach the peak of hurricane season (roughly August 15 through October 1).

As Easy as A (Ana), B (Bill), C (Claudette) on my weather blog  (Cloudy and Cool) gives a quick overview of the current threats.

–Paul Yeager

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Getting Emotional

Posted on August 10, 2009 by languageandgrammar

Humans are, by their nature, emotional beings, and the emotions we exhibit are numerous. Why is it then that we use the word emotional as a synonym for crying in many instances?

A person who cries is described as someone who became emotional–whether he’s crying out of joy or sadness. It’s said about a co-worker who announces he got a promotion, a professional athlete who’s been traded, or a political figure at a news conference.

Someone who yells in anger, though,  is not described as someone who became emotional. Someone who jumps for joy is not described as someone who became emotional. Someone who shakes his head in disgust is never viewed as someone who became emotional.

Do we not understand that there are numerous displays of emotions, or are we ashamed of crying to the point that we describe a crying person as becoming emotional to save him the shame associated with saying that the person was crying?

–Paul

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Special Encore Presentation

Posted on August 7, 2009 by languageandgrammar

I love the special encore presentations when I see them on television. Not because I love yet another lame re-run but because I enjoy seeing television executives trying to make their lame re-runs seem like a special event.

Inflated language is everywhere, and this is one of the better examples because it fools no one. Re-runs have been the bane of the television fan for decades, which is why many networks are shifting to 12-month schedules of  new programming. Now that most of us have simple ways of recording a program that we’re not available to watch (It’s hard to imagine there being any activity more important than watching TV, but apparently, it happens!) that the need for watching a show in a re-run is limited.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to make re-runs sound like special treat, such as saying it’s a special encore presentation. This is such a hand-picked episode (out of the many worthy candidates) that the benevolent television executives decided to give you a second chance to see. And how many times do we get a second chance in life? We should be grateful.

–Paul

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Conjunctive Adverbs—-or Adverbial Conjunctions

Posted on August 5, 2009 by languageandgrammar

A sign is hanging up at work: Empty the trash, then line the basket with a new bag.

I saw the forecast for my local area: Rain will end this morning, then it will be partly sunny this afternoon.

Both of these sentences show the mis-use of punctuation for conjunctive adverbs.

Conjunctive adverbs, also called adverbial conjunctions, join independent clauses (clauses that can stand alone as full sentences) and should NOT be joined by a comma. This mistake is one that is made much too often, especially with the adverbial conjunction then. By contrast, coordinating conjunctions (and, but, so, for, yet, or, nor) joining two independent clauses DO use a comma between them.

The correct punctuation when using a conjunctive adverb is a semicolon before the conjunctive adverb and a comma after it.

Rain will end this morning; then, it will be partly sunny this afternoon.

Empty the trash; then, line the basket with a new bag.

The same punctuation rules apply for all other conjunctive adverbs. Some of the most common of them are otherwise, therefore, in fact, thus, hence, and however.

Sherry

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Keep ’em Coming

Posted on August 3, 2009 by languageandgrammar

This is another installment of your pet peeves, which are pet peeves that you posted on our Pet Peeves page. Some of them might be redundancies, but I doubt they’re as redundant as the previous sentence.

Keep ’em coming–we love to hear them.

  • Saying “on accident”
  • Skipping the word “other” in comparisons, such as “This car gets better gas mileage than any in its class”
  • Hot water heater (Wonder what the problem is with that? Buy Literally, the Best Language Book Ever to find out! Note: I’ve said it before, but book promotion doesn’t have to be subtle.)
  • Same difference
  • How come, as in “How come he didn’t eat?”
  • Saying “axe” instead of “ask”
  • Saying “disorientated”
  • Saying “May I help who’s next” instead of “May I help the next person in line”
  • Trying to sound important through conflated language, such as saying “ground truthing” for “verifying the field data”
  • Saying things like “The city will be replaning trees that it cut down”
  • Using “different than” instead of “different from”
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Comma with Because

Posted on July 30, 2009 by languageandgrammar

I often see writers and editors putting a comma before the word because, for example, This won’t surprise anyone who has known her for a long time, because she has always espoused both liberal and conservative perspectives.

The problem with this construction is that the word because is a subordinating conjunction, which means that it introduces a subordinate clause. When there is an independent clause first, and then a subordinating conjunction is used to introduce another clause, that subordinating conjunction does not get a comma before it.

  • This won’t surprise anyone who has known her for a long time because she has always espoused both liberal and conservative perspectives.

If, however, a clause that starts with a subordinating conjunction comes at the beginning of a sentence, then a comma must be used after the clause.

  • Because she has always espoused both liberal and conservative perspectives, this won’t surprise anyone who has known her for a long time.

Other examples:

  • I stayed home instead of venturing out for the evening because I was tired.
  • Because I was tired, I stayed home instead of venturing out for the evening.
  • His explanation did not satisfy her but, rather, made her suspicious because she’d just seen a similar plot on the late, late show.
  • Because she’d just seen a similar plot on the late, late show, his explanation did not satisfy her but, rather, made her suspicious.

Sherry’s Grammar List

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Are You Killing the Apostrophe?

Posted on July 27, 2009 by languageandgrammar

Years ago, I came across a column on the demise of the apostrophe, called Are You Killing the Apostrophe. It makes no sense to me to discard a perfectly good and useful mark of punctuation simply because some people don’t know how to use it.

Why don’t they just learn, same as they have learned how to do any number of simple everyday tasks, such as hanging up a coat, boiling water, or locking their front doors? Do those people just throw their clothes on the floor, never make a hot drink, and trust the neighborhood safety patrol to keep on eye on things?

Most of the time, the apostrophe is used in noun possessions and in contractions. There are a couple of other uses, but these are the main two.

John’s books. The woman’s books. The women’s books. It’s (it is) a good book. The man who’s (who is) reading a book.

Sherry

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Sci-Fi Marketing

Posted on July 24, 2009 by languageandgrammar

While flipping through the television stations recently, I noticed that the Sci Fi Channel is now the SyFy Channel, and not knowing what SyFy was, I did a little research (Sci Fi Becomes SyFy).

As it turns out, Sci Fi was concerned that the name of their channel was too, for the lack of a better term, geeky, so they changed the name to SyFy. In other words, the name of their channel is pronounced the same, and it gives the same impression to anyone speaking. The only difference seems to be that no one will now know how to spell it or understand why it’s spelled in a bizarre way.

My initial thought was that we all make rash decisions that don’t work out too well—–until I realized that they had chosen this “new” name from a list of 300 possible names. They actually believe this will make some sort of a difference.

I really should go–The  Wx Channel has a show I want to watch.

–Paul

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Comment on Comments

Posted on July 21, 2009 by languageandgrammar

Behavior

We know that there is a tendency for discussions on the Internet to become personal, petty arguments and attacks, but we’ve been lucky. Nearly everyone leaving a comment on our blog has been respectful and polite (thank you), but since we’ve never posted any rules about commenting on the blog, we’ll do that today.

Moderation Rules

All comments are moderated, so comments will not appear instantly on the site even if you’ve previously left comments. We reserve the right to  edit comments (or to not publish them) at our discretion; any editing will be to remove any inappropriate (profane or disrespectful) language, shorten exceptionally long comments, remove content unrelated to language and grammar, etc.

Comments will not be published if they include any type of personal attack, inflammatory language, overly negative language, or are not directly related to the topic.

Discussion

Also, while the writers of the blog  may occasionally comment to a comment, we will not answer specific grammar questions inside of comments. Comments are intended to be short, succinct commentary on the topic at hand,  not areas for prolonged discussion between the writers and one reader or a Q&A with the writers. We’d rather spend our timing writing posts for everyone to read rather than answer a question of an individual.

We occasionally write posts about pet peeves we’ve received, so the Pet Peeves page is the best place to ask a question that we might address in the future.

–Paul and Sherry

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