Pink wedding cake sports four tires??

Spell checker is a wonderful tool. However, if you misspell a word in a way that creates another legitimate word, spell checker will not catch the error for you.

Here is a good typo example from the wedding column in The Birmingham News for Sunday, May 31:

Lydia's four-tired, light pink wedding cake was decorated in white fleur de lis.

I would imagine the columnist meant to write "four-tiered." TIRE is a word, and TIER is a word, but my guess is this wedding cake had four tiers rather than four tires. Spell checker would not point out the error.

REMEMBER: After running spell checker, always proofread again with your brain in gear!

Did you bail out OR get a bailout?

This point has come up before, but apparently it needs mentioning again. It is important to recognize the difference between verb and noun forms of similar words. Here is a good example from Gary Bauer's "Campaign for Working Families; End of Day Report" for May 20, 2009. In it, he made the following comment:

“Sadly, it is far more likely that the people of Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, North Carolina and elsewhere will be taxed to bailout California’s failed experiment in Big Government.”

Whoops! "Bailout" is the NOUN form, as in, "That bank just got another bailout." What Mr. Bauer needed was the VERB form because he was placing it after "to" to create an infinitive phrase. He should have written:

“Sadly, it is far more likely that the people of Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, North Carolina and elsewhere will be taxed to bail out California’s failed experiment in Big Government.”

Mom or Dad = singular verb

I enjoy keeping up with Stephen Colbert's antics on Comedy Central. One of his shows this week included this phrase:

...while Mom or Dad are fighting for you....

Whoops! If it's Mom OR Dad, not both of them together, fighting for you, then the verb should be singular. The phrase should read as follows:

...while Mom or Dad is fighting for you....

In spite of the grammar glitch, Colbert has a great charity challenge on his show right now. He wants viewers to vote for the branch of the service they want a contribution to go to--Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard. So far, the Coast Guard is lagging in votes.

What is great about this challenge is that the money goes to projects at the SCHOOLS attended by children of men and women serving in these military branches. If you'd like to participate, go to http://www.donorschoose.org/ and make a contribution while voting for one branch of the service.

Right now, either the Air Force or the Coast Guard needs more votes to stay off the bottom of the list.

Whoops! A Poll I Run Two Years Ago??

As I've said before, I enjoy keeping up with the ProBlogger and all of his wonderful suggestions for improving my blog. I've also had a little fun catching ProBlogger with some grammar glitches. Here is a new one from a week or so ago:



This is a poll I run two years ago.



I pointed out in one of my recent blogs that it's important to be aware of the proper forms of verbs in English. They don't always follow a logical pattern, as with the forms of RUN. They are RUN, RAN, RUN. I agree that the more logical forms might be RIN, RAN, RUN (kind of like SING, SANG, SUNG or RING, RANG, RUNG), but that's not the case.



RUN is present tense, as in "I RUN errands every morning." RAN is past tense, as in "This is a poll I RAN two years ago." And RUN is ALSO the past participle that is used with helping verbs like HAVE and HAS, as in "I have RUN that marathon every year since 1990." Or, "She has RUN that marathon every year."



ProBlogger should have written his sentence this way (in the PAST tense):



This is a poll I ran two years ago.



By the way, I'd like to welcome members of the AUM Campus Police to the readship of this blog. They participated in a business writing workshop in Montgomery, Alabama, this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed working with them. Welcome! Like everyone else, they are welcome to post comments with questions for future posts.

Whoops! USA Today Crossword Clue Needs Spell Checker!

Usually, crossword puzzle clues are correct when it comes to spelling and grammar. In fact, I often recommend them as good practice for workshop participants who want to improve their writing skills.

Unfortunately, today's USA Today crossword puzzle has a glaring spelling error in the #11 Down clue.

Remember that old elementary school rhyme, "I before E except after C"?

Most of the time, it is a good rule of thumb.

Kevin Donovan forgot the rule and forgot to check spell checker before he wrote "Student acheiver" for the #11 Down clue. Then Timothy Parker forgot to correct it when he edited the puzzle.

The clue should read: "Student achiever." In case you check out the puzzle on page 7D in the Life section of USA Today, the answer is "letterman."

WHOOOO? or WHOOOOM?

It is often difficult to decide when to use WHO and when to use WHOM. Fortunately, this is not as frequent a problem in contemporary usage, but it still comes up from time to time.

The basic rule is that WHO goes in the subject slot and WHOM goes in the object slot. You have simple sentences like these:

Who is in charge of this project?

To whom were you speaking?

Things get a little muddier when you have a complex sentence where WHO or WHOM is part of a secondary clause. Look at this example from a recent Letter to the Editor in a local newspaper:

We also need to censure whomever drafted and carried out these terrible decisions.

At first glance (which is probably all the letter writer gave it), this appears to be correct. "WHOMEVER" seems to be the object of the preposition "to."

Actually, it is the WHOLE SECONDARY CLAUSE "whoever drafted and carried out these terrible decisions" that is the object of "to." Therefore, "whoever" is the SUBJECT of that secondary clause.

The sentence should read as follows:

We also need to censure whoever drafted and carried out these terrible decisions.

By the way, you should also be careful about the words "censure," "censor," and "sensor." They have very different meanings. Check your dictionary. If you'd like a post about using them, please send me a comment.

Be Careful with Verb Forms

Microsoft Office has a new e-mail newsletter for those of us who have Vista and Office 2007. It offers great tips on using the programs, but the second newsletter had a grammar glitch right at the beginning:

This one's about things you can do that you might not have know you can do.

Whoops! If you use the helping verb "have" with the verb "know," it is necessary to use the past participle form of the verb. The principal parts of KNOW are KNOW (present tense),KNEW (past tense), and KNOWN (past participle for use with most helping verbs).

Therefore, the Office 2007 sentence should read as follows:

This one's about things you can do that you might not have known you can do.

Unless you go back and study the linguistic history of modern English, there does not appear to be rhyme or reason to many of the principal parts of verbs (BRING, BROUGHT, BROUGHT but SING, SANG, SUNG or TEACH, TAUGHT, TAUGHT but WRITE, WROTE, WRITTEN.

You just need to learn them. If you have questions about any verb forms, please leave a comment, and I will check them for you.

YOU'RE COMMENT IS BROKEN??

I have been enjoying the latest series on problogger.com, which offers great tips to those of us who are trying to improve our blogs. Today, I have a tip for the ProBlogger about a sentence that appeared in his latest post:

Shane, you’re comment is broken.

This goes back to my post last Friday about YOU, YOUR, and YOU'RE. In this sentence, the writer is referring to a comment belonging to "you." He needs the adjective form YOUR, not the contraction YOU'RE, which can only be used in a spot where YOU + ARE would fit. His sentence should read as follows:

Shane, your comment is broken.

Grammar glitches aside, the ProBlogger site (not CITE or SIGHT) is a good one, and I suggest you check it out. There is a link to it on my site.

$300 million IS/ARE?? missing

Money can be tricky when you must decide what is plural and what is singular. Here is part of an example sentence from an article in yesterday's The Birmingham News about the new civil trial of Richard Scrushy:

...creditors began circling after prosecutors said up to $300 million in cash reserves were missing.

In this example, "reserves" is NOT the subject. It is the object of the preposition "in." "Up to $300 million" is a lump sum amount of money and should take a SINGULAR verb.

Note also that, even though this reads out loud as "up to three hundred million dollars," it is written with the $ sign in front of the number.

This portion of the sentence should read as follows:

...creditors began circling after prosecutors said up to $300 million in cash reserves was missing.

I COULD/COULDN'T?? CARE LESS!

Bruce Tinsley's MALLARD FILLMORE cartoon for today (in the San Francisco Chronicle) makes a good point:



Most people who say, "I could care less." really mean "I could NOT care less."



Think about it. You are NOT saying that you could care less than you do, but you really do care quite a bit. What you want to convey is that you could NOT possibly care any less about whatever it is than you do.



Therefore, "I COULDN'T care less.



Got that? If you'd like to see more of Mallard Fillmore's witticisms, please check out www.kingfeatures.com/features.

Please keep YOU, YOUR, and YOU'RE straight!

I've been busy this week preparing a workshop for a client company. One of the subjects I was asked to cover is PRONOUN CONFUSION, particularly as it relates to confusing YOU, YOUR, and YOU'RE.

Here is an example of the problem:

I am sorry I missed you call. Your right. The address in that document is incorrect.


Let's review for a minute:

YOU = subject or object pronoun:

YOU wrote the report.

I gave YOU the report.


YOUR = possessive or adjective pronoun that describes a noun:

YOUR report is on his desk.

I put YOUR memo in the file.


YOU'RE = a contraction of YOU and ARE

YOU'RE (YOU ARE) not fooling me for one minute.

I think YOU'RE (YOU ARE) about to be promoted.


The incorrect example sentences above should read as follows:

I am sorry I missed your call. You're right. The address in that document is incorrect.


I hope I have increased YOUR understanding of this pronoun usage. If YOU still have a question, YOU'RE welcome to pose a question in the comment section.

PRONOUN--Be sure the reader understands which noun it replaces!

Pronouns are good writing tools. You can mention a noun and then use a pronoun to refer back to it several times, BUT you cannot insert another noun between the pronoun and the noun it refers to. If you do, your reader will not be sure which noun is being replaced.

Here is a good example of this problem as it occurs in a wonderful new novel called Mudbound (Algonquin Paperbacks). I've highlighted the subject nouns in these two sentences in red and the pronoun in blue:

His hands were strong-looking and finely made, and the nails wanted cutting. I was struck by their stillness, by the way they remained folded calmly in his lap or planted on either side of his plate....

I believe the author, Hillary Jordan, is picturing Henry's HANDS folded calmly in his lap or planted on either side of this plate--not his NAILS. However, as you read along, it sounds as if the fingernails (the noun closest to the pronouns "their" and "they") have jumped off his hands and are doing their own thing.

A better and clearer wording would be as follows:

His hands were strong-looking and finely made, and the nails wanted cutting. I was struck by the stillness of his hands, by the way they remained folded calmly in his lap or planted on either side of his plate,...

Mudbound is definitely a good read. It won the Bellwether Prize for fiction, so you might want to check on it.

Whoops! "Panama Choses"??

Here is an Associated Press online headline from this past weekend:

"Panama choses new president amid canal expansion"

Verb forms can be tricky in English. They do not always follow logical patterns, but it is important to know which form to use for present tense or past tense and also which form to use with a helping verb.

In the case of the verb CHOOSE, the present tense form has two o's. The forms of the verb are CHOOSE, CHOSE, CHOSEN.

In this sentence, the writer needed the present tense form CHOOSE with an added "s" for the 3rd person (he, she it) slot in the sentence. The headline should read as follows:

Panama chooses new president amid canal expansion

If Panama had chosen its president a few days earlier, the headline writer might have said, "Panama chose new president amid canal expansion."

Also notice that, when this sentence is expressed in the past tense, the verb is simply chose (with no added "s").

If any of my readers would like to see a blog post that lists the basic forms of commonly used verbs, along with some examples of their use, please let me know in the comment section.

AFFECT? EFFECT?

We all struggle with AFFECT and EFFECT, but there is a simple way to keep these two straight. Use AFFECT when you need a verb and EFFECT when you need a noun. That works about 97% of the time. (If you want to know about the other 3% of the time, let me know in the comment section, and I'll do another post about that.)

Here is a sentence that appeared in a newsletter I received this week about flu concerns:

Tamiflu is only effective if you start dosage within 48 hours of contact and should not be used for more than 2 weeks because of the side affects.

Whoops! AFFECT is a verb, not a noun. This person should be talking about "side EFFECTS." Notice also that when you create an adjective, you use the noun form EFFECT to create EFFECTIVE. This sentence should read as follows:

Tamiflu is only effective if you start dosage within 48 hours of contact and should not be sued for more than 2 weeks because of the side effects.

Please do take care of yourself until this flu situation settles down. A little common sense goes a long way. The best advice for most of us is to wash our hands regularly and keep our hands away from nose and mouth. That advice is good advice at any time!