Pay Attention to Verb forms

This morning's newspaper suggests again that we need to be more careful about the FORMS of the verbs we use. The first glitch appeared in a teaser on the front page. Sadly, it had to do with the first fatal shark attack off the Florida coast in five years:



Lifeguard said he could see several (sharks) swarming the victim as he approach him in the Florida surf.



Because this statement is in the PAST tense (SAID...COULD SEE), the verb in the dependent clause (APPROACH) should also be in the past tense. The lifeguard was speaking about something that had already happened. The sentence should read as follows:



Lifeguard said he could see several (sharks) swarming the victim as he approached him in the Florida surf.





The second verb glitch appeared in a Washington Post wire article about President Obama's speech yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. It read as follows:



Much of his agenda is snared near-unanimous Republican opposition in Congress.



The helping verb here should be HAS, not IS because the verb "snared" has a object (OPPOSITION). The helping verb IS would only be used in a sentence without an object, like "Much of his agenda is snarled by Republican opposition." The above sentence should read as follows:



Much of his agenda has snared near-unanimous Republican opposition in Congress.



I would guess that the Washington Post reporter knows the correct grammar but perhaps started to rewrite the sentence and then forgot to follow through on all of the changes.



That brings me to today's BONUS POINT: Whenever you rewrite a sentence or a paragraph to make it read more clearly, take the time to proofread and make sure you didn't actually do just the opposite--make the sentence less clear by only partially changing the wording.

Legal eagles (sober or intoxicated) need more than spell checkers.

Proofreading is important, especially if you are writing something that has legal implications. I recently read through a "Declaration of Protective Covenants" for a development in my area and found a paragraph on the second page that contained two typos. Neither of them would have been caught by running a spell checker.

The first statement referred to the size of dwelling that could be erected on a lot in the development. It said that no dwelling could contain less than "one thousand eight hundred (2,800) square feet of living area for a one (1)-story dwelling.

Hm-mmm. If an argument over size ever went to court, I wonder which figure--the one written out in words or the one in numerals inside the parentheses--would carry the legal weight. Obviously, the two do not match.

The same paragraph contained a statement that began this way: "Story and one-half dwellings mush have a minimum of....

I couldn't help but wonder if the typist was drunk and slurring words in the brain as well as on paper!

How many of your "life's" have been enhanced by warning labels?

I'm back on my apostrophe kick this afternoon after a friend sent me a hilarious e-mail about oddly worded warning labels. I'll share a couple of those with you in a minute, but first to the GrammarGlitch part. The headline on the e-mail said this:

No telling how many life's have been enhanced or saved because of these warning labels!

Whoops! I have said it before, and I will continue to say it: Please do NOT use an apostrophe + an "s" to make a word plural. In this case, the word LIFE becomes LIVES when it is plural. The sentence should read as follows:

No telling how many lives have been enhanced or saved because of these warning labels!

There are only two instances where you would use "life's." One is when you are talking about something that BELONGS to "life." For example, a sentence like one of these:

Catching Grammar Glitches can be one of life's little pleasures.

My life's ambition is to write the great American novel.

The other instance is in casual, conversational writing where you create a contraction of LIFE and IS or LIFE and HAS, as in the following sentences:

Life's (Life is) frustrating sometimes.

I feel as if my life's (life has) been rescued.

Now, I think you will enjoy a couple of these hilarious warning labels. I might comment that a good proofreading editor would have fixed these, but then we wouldn't have the chuckle:

Many brands of Christmas lights contain the following warning: For indoor or outdoor use only. Hm-mm, I wonder where else they are worrying about.

A Sears hairdryer carries this warning: Do not use while sleeping. Who would go to bed with their hair wet anyway?

Some Swanson frozen dinners offer this serving suggestion: Defrost.

A brand of bread pudding warns: Product will be hot after heating. Duh!

A Big Difference Between "under investigated" and "under investigation."

This morning's The Birmingham News has an informative and touching article about Major Royer, an Alabama soldier seriously injured in the terror attack at Fort Hood recently. The article told about the two women who helped save his life and also about the many visitors he has had during his recovery, including former President Bush and his wife, and President Obama and his wife.

Unfortunately, the reporter who wrote the article did not go back and proofread after changing around one sentence in the article. I suspect he originally wrote "is being investigated" and then decided to change it to "is under investigation."

This brings up a good point about proofreading. Whenever you make changes to a sentence, ALWAYS go back and read through it to make sure you don't need additional changes to go with the one you made. In this case, the reporter needed to change the verb form and did not. The sentence, as printed, reads as follows:

Royer declined to talk about what happened to him Nov. 5 because the incident is under investigated.

As written, it sounds as if this incident is not receiving enough investigation. The sentence needs the phrase "under investigation" or the phrase "being investigated" to make sense.

I wish Major Royer a good recovery.

Grammar Glitches Elsewhere in the Country

I am on the road this week, but that hasn't stopped me from spotting grammar glitches in what I've had time to read. My Alabama readers will be happy to know that other parts of the country goof, too. Of course, that's not an excuse to ignore careful proofreading!

Here is a glaring example of an apostrophe error that appears in the 2009 Tulsa Visitors Guide. It appears in a letter of welcome from the mayor of the city. I won't speculate on whether the mayor goofed, somebody who keyed in her letter goofed, or the proofreader goofed. It might have been all three.

Here is the offending sentence:

One of the best western art collection's in the nation is housed in oil magnate Thomas Gilcrease's former property, the Gilcrease Museum, just north of downtown.

Only one of the apostrophes in red above is correct. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already know that the primary purpose of an apostrophe is to SHOW POSSESSION. The primary purpose of an apostrophe is NEVER to show PLURAL.

Therefore, collections is plural (add JUST the s). However, Gilcrease's indicates that the property once belonged to (SHOWING POSSESSION) Thomas Gilcrease, so it needs the apostrophe.

The sentence should read as follows:

One of the best western art collections in the nation is housed in oil magnate Thomas Gilcrease's former property, the Gilcrease Museum, just north of downtown.

Hope this is helpful. Check again tomorrow to see what I caught in Sunday's The Denver Post.

Denists? Wal-Mart Bag Says They Recommend Colgate Total!

My husband picked up a prescription at Wal-Mart the other day and left the bag sitting on the kitchen table. Apparently my subconscious likes to proofread as much as my conscious mind because while we were discussing something else, my eye caught the misspelling shown here at the left and set off alarm bells. "Dentist," of course, has a "t" after the "n."

I would imagine that Wal-Mart and Colgate would both prefer that I remember them for their good products and customer service, NOT for a spelling blooper in an advertisement on one of their bags. I wonder how long it will be before this one is corrected.

PLEASE remember to proofread anything that will be read by large numbers of people. Accuracy goes hand in hand with professional image.

Ooops! Setting the "reccord" straight?

That old saying about people in glass houses not throwing stones should apply to copy editors as well. The small correction notice on the second page of a local newspaper last week carried the following headline:

Setting the Reccord Straight

Hm-mmm. Seems to me if you are going to correct someone else, you should first proofread your own copy! The article noted that someone had given the wrong figure for how many home sales would be triggered by an extension of the $8,000 federal homebuyer credit, but the copy editor misspelled "record" in his own headline!

Crossword Editor not Proofreading Well Enough

I've been working and recommending crossword puzzles for a long time. They are a great way to keep your mind sharp, increase your vocabulary, work with ideas, and fine tune your grammar skills.

Until recently, I have rarely seen a spelling error or a grammar glitch related to a crossword puzzle clue or answer.

This week, however, the USA Today Crossword contained a spelling error one day and a grammar glitch the next. That really surprised me because I had come to think that crossword puzzle editors must be the best proofreaders in the world.

The spelling error--and I might note that it was one a spelling checker would have caught--was in Clue #48 Down. It read "Sherrif's assistance." Hm-mm, I thought. Maybe a "sherrif" is some exotic person I've just never heard of. And then I even considered that maybe the puzzle was asking about Omar Sharif. But, as I worked the puzzle, I could clearly see that the answer was turning out to be "posse." I even checked my dictionary to be sure I hadn't suddenly forgotten how to spell "sheriff."

I chalked this up to the "Everyone is entitled to a goof once in a while" category until I settled in the very next evening to work the USA Today crossword puzzle. This time, I only got as far as Clue #9 Down, which was "Car lot figure." After getting a couple of Across letters, I concluded that the answer was "salesman," which is singular like "figure" in the clue. (You need to know at this point that I often tell my husband, who loves crossword puzzles, and my workshop participants that the grammar in crossword puzzles is always impeccable.)

Unfortunately, that worked only until I tried to fill in the answer for Clue #34 Across, which was "Goalies' specialities." The answer here had to be "saves," and the "e" in "saves" meant that the answer for #9 Down was working only as "salesmen," which is plural. Clue #9 Down should have read "Car lot figures."

You might read this and think that I'm being picky, but then again, crossword puzzle people are people who are interested in words and using them correctly. I think USA Today should expect its crossword puzzle editor to be more careful.

Please send me an e-mail if you come across any other careless crossword puzzle editors. I'm hoping this is a one-time phenomenon.

Proofread to Avoid Wordy Phrasing

Let's face it--all of us write wordy, illogical sentences when we are in a hurry. The trick is to take the time, once you've written a complete draft, to read back through and clean things up.



Here is a good example from that investment newsletter I've mentioned before:



"Bernanke patiently explained to the member of Congress making this accusation that what she was calling money was actually not really money at all, but rather temporary reserves loaned to banks to stop fears of a crash and depression."



In my workshops, I like to call this "bopping it twice when once will do." A quick proofread would have led the writer to conclude that one or the other of the words in red needed to go. Then he could have made a quick decision about what to keep and what to get rid of. I liked keeping "really" after the "not."



I also made a second little punctuation adjustment to clarify the wording. I moved the comma between "rather" and "temporary" so that "but rather" clearly goes together. Otherwise, it sounds as if he is talking about "rather temporary reserves" (whatever those would be).



The sentence should read as follows:



"Bernanke patiently explained to the member of Congress making this accusation that what she was calling money was not really money at all, but rather, temporary reserves loaned to banks to stop fears of a crash and depression."



For those of you who are about to send me a comment stating that I don't understand how busy you are--that you don't have time for writing, then proofreading, then fixing--I disagree. Every one of us procrastinates while we think in our heads about what we are going to put on paper. My suggestion is to put it on paper as quickly as you can and THEN use your time wisely to proofread and polish.

Proofread Even When You Run a Spelling Checker

A friend just sent me the latest version of the Church Bulletin Bloopers that make their rounds each year. Several of the examples involve simple proofreading that could save embarrassment.

I've printed a few below. Before scrolling to the bottom, try to spot the typos yourself. Remember, a spell checker would NOT catch these because they are also correctly spelled words--just not used correctly

1. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Say "Hell" to someone who doesn't care much about you.

2. Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

3. The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment, and gracious hostility.

4. Potluck supper Sunday at 5 PM--Prayer and medication to follow.

It is very easy to leave endings off words or to confuse them with similar looking words that have completely different meanings. It is also easy to grab the wrong preposition when you are in a hurry.

1. Wrong preposition choice in this first one. It is the sick IN the community, not those who are sick OF the community. And, as you can see, there is a huge difference between "Hell" and "Hello."

Remember in prayer the many who are sick in our community. Say "Hello" to someone who doesn't care much about you.

2. Be careful about the FORM of a word. These Scouts want to HELP CRIPPLED children. "Cripple" needs a "d" on the end of it to turn it into an adjective (participle if you want to be technical) that describes the children who need help. The active verb needs to be HELP, not CRIPPLE.

Proceeds will be used to help crippled children. NOTE: In current usage, "crippled" is considered old-fashioned. A better word choice would be "physically impaired."

3. In case you didn't notice, there is a huge difference between "hospitality" and "hostility." In fact, these two words are just about opposites. It is highly unlikely that the church would serve up great food and great entertainment and then add "hostility"-- especially gracious hostility. "Hostility" describes the way a person feels about an enemy, NOT a fellow church member.

The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hospitality.

4. The only reason you might need "medication" after a potluck supper might be poorly cooked turkey stuffing. My guess is that this writer meant "meditation," which is quiet thinking that goes nicely with prayer.

Potluck supper Sunday at 5 PM--prayer and meditation to follow.

A little common sense and a lot of proofreading would have caught all of these bloopers. You want to be remembered for what you said, not the silly way it came out!

If you come across any bloopers in your own work or work that you read, please send them along. I'd love to share them with our readers.

Thanks!

In this sentence, "than" needs "more."

I did a column recently on comparative and superlative wording. Here is another problem sentence in that area--this one from an Associated Press article about the new President's Cabinet picks. It appeared in The Birmingham News this week:

"But the health post could be key in an Obama administration than in some others, making Daschle a key player in helping steer the president-elect's promised health care reforms."

This is probably just a proofreading error by a reporter who left out the word "more" and then didn't catch the omission. If you say THAN, you are implying a comparison, so you need the word MORE in front of what is being compared. In this case, what is being compared is HOW key, or important, the post of Health and Human Services Secretary will be in this administration as COMPARED to other administrations. The sentence should read as follows:

But the health post could be more key in an Obama administration than in some others, making Daschle a key player in helping steer the president-elect's promised health care reforms.

So, stay focused when you are creating comparative and superlative statements, and ALWAYS proofread to be sure you expressed the relationship as you meant to.

Even Painters Should Proofread!

My friend Marianne Moates sent this snapshot from Montgomery. I'm not sure exactly where this intersection is, but I would imagine many drivers do a doubletake when they pull up to it.


Perhaps the painter was so close to the work that he or she didn't notice.

We should all take a big step back from anything we write and make sure it looks good and is clear from a distance--both geographical and time.

Proofreading is Really Important--Even in a Political Campaign!

I saved this goof until after the election because I didn't want to appear partisan before everyone voted. However, now that the decision has been made, I cannot resist pointing out a glaring goof that appeared in a letter Sarah Palin sent out about a week ago. There is no formal date at the top of the letter, so I am not sure exactly when it was written.

Underneath her name, SARAH PALIN, which is centered at the top of the page is this phrase:

Wendnesday Morning

I don't want to be like all those mean-spirited people who made fun of the Republican VP nominee for not knowing what the Bush doctrine was or whether Africa is a continent or a country and on and on, but I will suggest that it would be a very good idea to PROOFREAD what other people prepare for you to sign.

This letter has an identifier at the bottom of the page, suggesting it was issued by the Republican National Committee. Somebody there needs to PROOFREAD.

I remember, back in elementary school, having trouble learning to spell the word "Wednesday" because the "d" was silent. Whenever I had to write this word, I would say to myself inside my head: WED...NES...DAY, pronouncing it exactly as it was spelled. To this day, I find myself doing that with words that have silent letters.

If spelling is difficult for you, try my old trick.

I hope you voted and that you were as proud as I was on Tuesday evening to see that we Americans could have a peaceful yet exciting day of elections in spite of our differences.