I thought this might be a thread for the English language and its weird rules of grammar. Many’s the time I’ve wondered if I am constructing correctly a sentence.
I’m actually eager to learn my grammatical mistakes.
Keep it unclean forthwith.
Mr. Bellows
So I guess the idea is, if you feel like the particular use of English is wrong on another thread you should explain why on this one. Alternatively, if you feel unsure of the mechanics for the placement of your dots dashes and leaves, then you should feel free to ask for guidance.
For instance, I never know where the full stop should go if I’m quoting. Before the end quotes? After the quotes? That sort of thing.
You rang? If you’re quoting a complete sentence, inside the quote. If just a phrase, outside.
Unless you’re American.
True. Please, nobody mention the Oxford comma. Oops.
I never used to be a fan of the Oxford Comma, but the older I get, the more I find it helps with clarity.
Re: acknowledging the advantages of the Oxford comma more and more as one gets older.
Listen to SouthernExile on this point.
A comma photographed in Oxford recently
A Commer, probably not photographed in Oxford recently.
@Mikethep. I’ve been wondering about the ‘Oxford comma’. Isn’t a pause just a pause,regardless of what word comes next?
Learning a new language is a great way to get a better understanding of your own. That’s when all the terminology such as nouns, verbs, prepositions, adverbs etc comes easier.
I did O level Latin which at the time seemed rather dry and dusty but certainly helped me get my bearings about grammar.
I am astonished how accurate grammar check programmes have become. They are not a substitute for knowing what is correct or not. But they are a very handy safety net. When I write in Swedish I can now avoid spelling and grammar mistakes, but my word order always has a Swenglish flavour.
Which ones do you use?
I’ve never really thought about it.
There is a spell check programme that comes with Word. Go to Review at the top and then you can choose which language you want.
I think you will find that most email programmes also have a spell check function.
Very handy if you are writing in a hurry.
Facebook also has a spellcheck function.
Come to think of it, it is odd that this AW site has no spellcheck .
Like you, I did O level Latin, AO Level Greek, and O Level German – all of which are very technical languages what with all their declensions and conjugations.
Stands me in very good stead; it’s making my learning Spanish a ton easier, and I appreciate a well put together English sentence or phrase.
I struggle with the rules too – but I thought Bill Bryson’s “Mother Tongue” was quite good.
A lighter approach on the same subject can be found in the Lynne Truss book, “Eats Shoots and Leaves”.
I remember Bryson’s advice over semi colons and colons. A dash ( – ) is perfectly fine most of the time and saves the stress of worrying which one to use. The only exception is listing things.
The best songs by Shakin’ Stevens are:
“Green Door”,
“This Ole House”, and
“Merry Christmas Everyone”.
I think that reads OK grammatically but the Afterword’s expert in residence @mikethep may be along soon to put me right.
This very post presented me with a problem. Do I write “Lynne Truss’ book” or “Lynne Truss’s book”? Again, Bill Bryson’s advice is pragmatic. Just reword the bastard so you don’t have to worry about it.
@Black Celebration “(Over the top kiss.😘 In a cliched Italian manner.)”
Names that end in s are tricky.
But if you think about what it sounds like, I’d certainly want that genitive s.
Tom Jones’s new album.
Lynne Truss’s book.
both sound fine.
Keith Richards’s guitar
on the other hand is grammatically correct but sounds very cluttered. (If not downright out of tune!)
Sensible chap that Mr Bryson but it does no harm to know that, regardless of which letter a names ends in, an s is needed
Mr Frahm’s piano for example.
And
Nils’s toilet brush.
It’s a tangled web, to be sure.
St James Park tube station is a case in point.
Depending which platform you’re on, you’ll see the official London Underground sign spelt both St James Park and St James’ Park.
If they can’t decide on signs which have to be used for decades, I despair!
😁
Should it be ‘spelt or spelled’? I’m sure there’s a reason for both.
They’re both wrong anyway. It’s St James’s Park – the tube map has it right.
Newcastle United play at St James’ Park, Exeter City play at St James Park.
The same but different.
Interesting that both play at a London Tube Station
In the 70s David Essex had a TV variety show called
“David Essex’ Showhouse” – there was a big sign above the stage with just the apostrophe – no ‘s’. It didn’t look right to me.
Oh God now I’m worried about 70s, 70’s or even ’70s.
That’s easy. It’s ‘70’s.
Not it isn’t. It’s 70s. ’70s if you must, but it’s fussy.
“Genitive S .” That’s gorgeous. What does it mean?
In that situation I’d say Keef’s axe.
I tend to use semi-colons in lists as opposed to commas, so:
The best songs by Shakin’ Stevens are:
“Green Door”;
“This Ole House”; and
“Merry Christmas Everyone”.
That’s got to be wrong.
The genitive s is added to a word to indicate ownership, that something belongs to it.
The parks of London and London’s parks are two ways of saying the same thing.
So back to your decades Black. No s needed as there is no belonging.
the 60s were a turbulent period.
You might need a genitive construction of course. There I would use of:
guitarísts of the 60s were adored by their fans
Just the word, ‘Genitive.’ I feel like Donovan had a hand in it somewhere.
Ahhh! I’ve just gone and got it wrong earlier in the thread thinking myself an easy one with ‘70’s.🤦♂️
Apologies @blackcelebration
No worries!
But 60s guitarists were adored by their fans would be perfectly ok. Or OK if you prefer.
Genitive S. The band that Generation X could have been.
Arf.
Deserving of an AW pen and pencil set at the very least.
For some reason I can’t do quotation marks on my tablet.
I could only put the apostrophe in cant as a proffered choice and now as can be seen I don’t even have that option. I looked up cant on Google and now can apostrophe t is no longer an option.
No technical matters please.
Sorry.
You can reject the suggestion though, surely? Does it come up with a bubble with an x in the corner?
Can’t has returned. But still no quotation marks.
Though marks became Mark’s originally.
I’ve never been entirely sure whether organisations or companies should be treated in the single or plural sense.
For example, I work in planning at a local authority and have to sign off officer reports on planning applications.
We consult a variety of bodies and organisations and sometimes a report will state something like “the Environment Agency are concerned about A, B and C” whilst others state “the Environment Agency is satisfied with the details submitted”.
I think such bodies should be treated as singular. It is ‘Environment Agency’ after all, not ‘Environment Agencies’ but any clarification would be appreciated.
I tend not to amend reports unless there’s clear inconsistency such as “the Environment Agency raises no concerns but have recommended that X, Y and Z are controlled”.
Any comments on my use of inverted commas and quotation marks above also appreciated.
“I’ve never been entirely sure whether organisations or companies should be treated in the single or plural sense. ”
I agree with your answer to this. Both a singular or plural verb form can be correct. But what is not OK is inconsistency within the same document or even worse, the same sentence.
A big organisation ought to produce some kind of style guide providing in/house guidelines for this sort of thing. Every major newspaper has one of these which is available to the public.
There ae some great forum websites where these kind of issues are discussed often by people who are working with them every day.
Stack Exchange is one. Very little pedantry but a lot of helpful suggestions.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8671/colon-use-when-introducing-a-list-split-across-sentences
As a Brit in the US, I’ve noticed that, on the whole, the UK uses the plural and the US uses the singular.
This issue also crops up regularly when people refer to sports teams.
Both “Liverpool are currently the top of the league” and “Liverpool is currently top of the league” feel perfectly fine and acceptable, although strictly speaking the entity being referred to is a single organisation, so surely it should, properly, be the latter. However, I think most people would actually use the former.
I agree. Quite a handy way of distinguishing between Liverpool the entity and Liverpool the city.
Most newspapers refer to organisations as singular, but treat sports teams and popular beat combos as plural.
It always jars with me when listening to Australian sport commentators, who refer to a team in the singular, rather than the plural we use in Britain.
It amuses me that Oz police chiefs always talk in the present tense when they’re on TV…’So he’s driving up the Pacific Highway at 150k, and hits the barrier …’
That is interesting, Mile. And I bet they rarely think about it.
In your sentence you’ve got present continuous and present simple.
But no present perfect, which is a tense that messes the heads of native Germans, whose past tense uses the same construction (have + participle) for many of its verbs.
It boils Italian brains too. Look at these two sentences:
– I’ve been to America three times.
– I’ve been in America for three years.
In English one tense, the Present Perfect, where for Italians it should be two different tenses. Get your head around that, Luigi!
When I learned to teach EFL, I was made aware that ‘been’ is the participle of both the verb ‘to be’ and the verb ‘to go’, depending on the context. When it’s used for the verb ‘to go’, it conveys the idea of going and coming back, which ‘gone’ doesn’t.
3 rules I gave my students for present perfect:
1. From the past until now (unfinished)
2. In the recent past (news)
3. At an unspecified time in the past (in my life)
In all examples, the event or experience conveyed is being hoarded – the speaker/ writer won’t give it up to the past. As soon as a specific time in the past is mentioned, the past tense has to be used.
Similar fun can be had with future tenses.
It’s been over a decade since my last lesson, but put me in front of a whiteboard and I could start again tomorrow…
Ah but, the problem for Luigi and his compatriots is not the been/gone thang, it’s the use of the same tense for your 1 and your 2/3 that confuses the poor lad.
To him, 1 is totes different from 2 and 3.
You see, “I have known many girls in my life” and “I have known my girlfriend for many years” are two totes different tenses for Luigi. So teaching him that they’re both the Present Perfect confuses the poor lad no end.
What grammar books should do, if they want a happily nodding Luigi, is to teach how to say “I have known her for years” as part of the Present Perfect Continuous lesson (albeit the non continuous form for stative verbs) and not as part of the Present Perfect lesson. Because, Luigi asks perplexed, how can “ho conosciuto molte ragazze” and “la conosco da anni” possibly be one and the same tense? Eh? Eh? Whatsa matter you?
I’m getting a bit confused myself right now, so you can just imagine what poor Luigi is going through.
This happens in Fife as well.
And if I remember my Brookmyre correctly, is a staple in ned-speak.
There you go again Thep. The borders are closed and, for you, they may never reopen.
Good point with the statives there @Gary, where an exclusive and powerful bunch of verbs aren’t used in any “ing” tenses at all, so no I’m understanding or she’s been knowing or we’ll have been believing, etc. And as for, are you having a maid? 😉 I also suspect teaching this is gonna get more difficult now, thanks to I’m lovin’ it.
A comment by the marker of my Honours thesis was that I was inclined to use split infinitives. I had to look up what one was.
That sounds clever.
There is nothing wrong with split infinitives and they often make a sentence flow better without changing the meaning.
What’s a split infinitive? Sounds like a supernatural ice cream dessert.
“Two split infinitives for table 5! They’re in a hurry.”
‘To boldly go’ is a split infinitive.
A split infintive is a phrase construction where a word (often an adverb) is placed between the word “to” and the infinitive of a verb. For example, “to quickly walk”, “to gently encourage”, or “to avidly read”.
For a very long time, split infinitives were always considered a big grammatical no-no. In fact, they were every grammar nazi’s worst nightmare – their kryptonite. Use of a split infinitive would induce steam to billow from their ears.
However, more recently they have become widely accepted as perfectly fine in the right context, specifically when you wish to emphasise an adverb or when the adverb would simply be peculiar if placed elsewhere in the sentence.
Well, speaking as a person whose job it is to correct other people’s grammar (I prefer that to grammar Nazi, I think), I still get a little twinge of pain whenever I come across one, even though unsplitting them is frequently absurd. I do however occasionally amuse myself by recasting sentences in which they appear to avoid the problem altogether. Nobody ever notices.
I get that twinge when I see ‘who’ used when it should be ‘whom’. Even worse, though much less frequent, is ‘whom’ used when it should be ‘who’. ‘Whom’ seems to be a lost cause though, and I have had to accept that. It just interrupts my reading flow if I need to repeat the sentence to myself with a correction.
‘Whom may I say is calling?’
But, who is calling! Very tricky little construction there. Reminds me a bit of what was the name? This notional distance by means of more remote tenses for extreme politeness (=distancing). Kind of the way a butler would speak.
I trained at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, based at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. The difference between s’s and s’ was drummed into us on the first day, even if nobody knew why.
Should have been St Thomas’ Hospital’s Medical School, keep everybody happy.
St Thomas’ saved Boris. Fuck ’em, stick a few extra apostrophes in there.
That was confusing, Retro, until I read this:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/st-thomas-s
There were two St Thomases associated with the hospital
Even so, I think they are being deliberately perverse and simply succeed in confusing people.
Two St Thomases? I doubt that very much.
(Geddit?)
Great thread idea.
As a committed “get it right” person (who also loves both “Mother Tongue” and “E, S & L”) I have plenty of opportunity to vent my spleen.
If we disregard “should of” and “would of” etc as just 100% wrong abominations, which should be punishable by flogging at the very least, then the commonest error I see is the confusion between “its” and “it’s”.
In reality, it’s really simple.
Take the sentence “It’s on its way.”
The first “it’s” is a contraction of “it is” (or “it has” in other cases). The apostrophe denotes the missing letter of said contraction. These two contractions are the only times you ever need an apostrophe.
The second “its” is the possessive, which doesn’t have an apostrophe. As it was explained to me once, any more than “theirs”, “hers” or “yours” needs one.
I’m continually astonished by the amount of times I see apostrophes in instances of possessive “its” in print. The BBC are terrible for it.
Most grammar errors/corrupt meanings can be avoided by a teeny rewrite.
I was reminded today of the following headline
“PM urges public not to lose patience with lockdown on his first day back at work.”
The meaning being corrupted by the thought that it would be OK to lose patience with the lockdown tomorrow, or the day after?
“On his first day back at work, PM urges public not to lose patience with lockdown.”
Sorted.
Loving this thread.
Language, it’s real values we’re talking about here.
Language, its real values we’re talking about here.
Language. Its real values we’re talking about here.
Language, it’s real…“Nurse!!!”
No, no! You’ve got it the wrong way round.
‘splain, Lucy?
‘splain as the nose on your face. And who’s Lucy?
Fred and Ethel’s tenant.
The real horrors are to be found on social media when some people get worked up about something. They massacre our language and kick it repeatedly in the nuts with everything they write. It’s like walking around an unregulated abbatoir.
The odd stray apostrophe on the BBC website is like afternoon tea at The Savoy in comparison.
I hear there was a lot of a lot of bloodshed at the Nell Gwynn tea rooms. Communication problems can be quite severe.
Don’t get me started on the misuse of apostrophe’s.