AED = Deadly Mix; Singular + Plural = Bad Mix, Too!

280 Living http://www.280living.com/ carried a recent article about the dangers of mixing alcohol with energy drinks. This is important and useful information, but it would be more effective if the article had been well written. The source was ParentTalk, a publication of The Alabama Department of Children's Affairs and The Alabama Parent Network http://www.children.alabama.gov./.



The article contains several examples of poor subject/verb agreement or pronoun/antecedent agreement that I will share with you and then correct:

Where once energy drinks were a fad among our youth, it has now become a staple in their lives.


Whoops! If the writer refers to ENERGY DRINKS (plural), that writer must then use a plural pronoun. The verb must also change to the plural, as follows:

Where once energy drinks were a fad among our youth, they have now become a staple in their lives.



Here is another poor example from the same article:


The newest trend of energy drinks are referred to as "speedball in a can."


Whoops again! TREND (singular) is the subject of this sentence (not DRINKS, which is the object of the preposition OF). Therefore, the verb should be IS. The sentence should read as follows:

The newest trend in energy drinks is referred to as "speedball in a can."


BONUS POINT #1: Usage is also a problem in this sentence. Correct usage refers to trends IN something, not OF something.


BONUS POINT #2: Remember that the period ALWAYS goes inside the quotation marks.



The author of this article also struggled with gender pronouns, as the following sentence shows:


Without scanners that alert a store clerk to a product containing alcohol, it is left up to her/him to know the difference between each product her store sells.


Whew! This sentence has major, major problems! First, by changing A STORE CLERK to STORE CLERKS, the writer could have avoided the HIS/HER problem completely. Second, it is not possible to have a difference BETWEEN each product (singular). Third, if the writer chooses to use HIM/HER, that writer cannot then refer to the clerk as simply HER. A quick fix for this sentence looks like this:


Without scanners that alert store clerks to products containing alcohol, it is left up to the individual clerks to know the differences between the products they sell.


I hope you agree that this version is MUCH easier to read.


BONUS POINT #3: It is a good idea to avoid HIM/HER in most business writing. Use the plural or choose either HIM or HER for clearer writing.