Mental_floss Messes Up Agreement

mental_floss is just about my favorite magazine. It offers short bits of useful and interesting information in a fun and funny format that has me reading page after page when I only meant to scan one paragraph. It's great to keep in the car for traffic jams or take along for your pedicure, not to mention putting a back issue in the bathroom for long and short visits.

That being said, I must take exception to a sentence that appears on page 67 in the current issue. It appears in a series of short articles about how restaurants became popular in the world.

One of the more distinctive aspects of restaurants in 19th-century France were their enormous menus.

Let's be logical here. If you are referring to ONE of the aspects of the restaurants, then the verb that goes with ONE would be the singular form WAS. ASPECTS, which is plural, is part of the prepositional phrase "of the more distinctive aspects" and does not affect the verb. MENUS, which is plural, comes after the verb and does not affect the verb because there is a subject at the beginning of the sentence. Therefore, the sentence should read as follows:

One of the more distinctive aspects of restaurants in 19th-century France was their enormous menus.

If you'd like to read more about the newspaper-size French cartes in the 19th century or about what the French Revolution had to do with the birth of the restaurant business or about how fast food was served in old Pompeii, pick up the current issue of mental_floss and turn to page 67.

Even though I love this magazine, I must point out one more sentence on this same page that did not please me. It is not an absolute rule, but I believe that an LY adverb, when used, is more effective if it does not separate a helping verb from the main verb. Consider this sentence from the short piece about fast food in Pompeii and on American train routes:

Hundreds of passengers would madly dash into cavernous dining halls on the platforms, where cadres of waiters in white aprons would splash meat and potatoes onto their plates and granular coffee into their cups.

I hope you will agree that this sentence would sound much better if the passengers WOULD DASH MADLY into the cavernous dining halls.

By the way, you can also check out the fascinating trivia by visiting http://www.mentalfloss.com/.

An introductory phrase can unmuddle a confusing sentence.

We have all written confusing sentences, but even when we know there is a problem, it is not always easy to figure out the best fix. Here is a good example from a recent story in The Birmingham News:

Lawyers for Siegelman and Scrushy have raised nine issues in their filings to the court they believe merit a reversal in the case.

The phrase "in their filings to the court" sits in the middle of the sentence, clogging meaning. In this case, the fix is simple. Just turn "in their filings to the court" into an introductory phrase, and the sentence is much clearer:

In their filings to the court, lawyers for Siegelman and Scrushy have raised nine issues they believe merit a reversal in the case.

The fix is not always this easy, but it certainly works here!

Incorrect use of INTO creates impossible magic situations.

• 
  
  ABRACADABRA! Criminal custodian turns herself into police!
  
  Be careful when using the word INTO. It should not be used in places where IN and TO should be separate. Look closely at this sentence, which appeared in The Birmingham News this week:
  
  XXXXX XXXXXX, a 28-year-old custodian at Bluff Park Elementary at the time of the burglary, turned herself into police Friday after being charged with theft....
  
  What the custodian actually did, I am sure, was to turn herself in to the police. In this case, IN is an adverb that describes the turning. TO is a preposition at the beginning of the prepositional phrase "to the police." It is not correct to substitute the word INTO in this instance.
  
  Here are some other examples:
  
  Abigail turned her co-worker in to the bank examiner. (NOT: Abigail turned her co-worker into the bank examiner. Do you think the co-worker wanted to be transformed into a bank examiner??)

John stepped in to fill his father's unexpired term as mayor.

Peter turned himself in to the authorities after the theft became public. (Peter might have wanted to turn himself into the authorities who would then not charge him!)

An ING verb cannot be the main verb by itself.

When proofreading what you write, always check to make sure you are creating complete sentences. If you move words around, it is easy to have a sentence fragment without a complete verb. Notice in the first sentence of this paragraph that "are" is used as a helping verb with "creating" to create the complete sentence.



Here is a sentence that appeared Monday in an article in The Birmingham News. The reporter was writing about behavioral health issues found in soldiers returning from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan:



The screenings, which are required for all U. S. service members, including members of Guard and Reserve units, who return from combat tours.



There are three verb groups in this long sentence, but what the reporter ended up with was simply three verb phrases and no main statement in the sentence. I suspect this happened when he tried to combine ideas and then forgot to go back and proofread what he put together.



It is simple to fix this goof by simply eliminating the word "which" and turning "are required" into the main verb:



The screenings are required for all U. S. service members, including members of Guard and Reserve units who return from combat tours.



Notice that this sentence reads more smoothly if the comma between "units" and "who" is removed. The reason? The writer is using "who return from combat tours" to QUALIFY which units he is talking about. The comma would only be used if the "who" part is nice to know but does not QUALIFY the particular units.

An Apostrophe Problem at Associated Press

I've said it before, and I'll say it again--an apostrophe should NOT be used to create the PLURAL of a noun. The following sentence appeared in an Associated Press story this past week:

Her attorney has said that the diaper's were her children's and that she did not wear them during her trip from Texas.

This sentence, of course, refers to the woman who drove non-stop to Florida to confront her rival for the affections of an ex-astronaut. (If you wrote this story as a novel, people would claim it was too unrealistic.)

The word DIAPERS should simply be PLURAL--that is, you add an "s" to show that she had more than one of them in the car. No apostrophe needed.

The word CHILDREN'S shows possession, so it is appropriate to add the apostrophe and then the "s" to indicate that the diapers supposedly belonged to the woman's children.

The sentence should be punctuated as follows:

Her attorney said that the diapers were her children's and that she did not wear them during her trip from Texas.

You could simplify this sentence even more by changing the use of "children" to a smoother form:

Her attorney said that the diapers belonged to her children and that she did not wear them during her trip to Texas.

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Monk Corrects Natalie on "Who" and "Whom"

If you haven't met detective Adrian Monk yet, you need to check out this entertaining USA Network dramedy. I'm not sure when it comes on because we "tivo" everything and watch it when we're in the mood, but you can check the website.

In the episode we watched last evening, Natalie (Monk's trusty assistant) asked him about getting something certified. "Certified by who?" she said.

Monk, in his muttering way, reworded her question immediately--before answering her question. "Certified by whom?" he corrected.

Monk was pointing out that WHO is the SUBJECT pronoun and could not be used as the OBJECT pronoun after the preposition BY.

WHO is bringing the dessert?

WHO wrote this detailed report?

WHOM is the OBJECT pronoun, for use, in this case, after the preposition.

FOR WHOM was this position created?

BY WHOM were you given permission to attend?

Personally, I would simplify the second example here by making WHO the subject and getting rid of the prepositional phrase:

WHO gave you permission to attend?

"Your Child" does not equal "them" and "their."

I am back on my podium about subject/verb agreement today. Melissa Rayworth made some good points in a recent Associated Press article about parents involving children in charity during the holidays. However, she tangled up the agreement issue in her third paragraph with this sentence:



For example, helping your child gather used coats for donation to a homeless shelter can teach them more about their family's values than a dozen lectures on compassion ever could.



Good point, but YOUR CHILD refers to ONE person. Both THEM and THEIR are plural, so the grammar does not work. The most appropriate change here would be to use the word CHILDREN so that the whole sentence is plural:



For example, helping your children gather used coats for donation to a homeless shelter can teach them more about their family's values than a dozen lectures on compassion ever could.



If you don't like the plural version, you can still avoid the awkward HIM/HER usage by rewording the sentence this way:



For example, helping your child gather used coats for donation to a homeless shelter can teach more about family values than a dozen lectures on compassion ever could.