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grammar

Wasted Words: Verbal Abuse

September 19, 2017 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

There are many writers and, apparently, more than a few editors who think that to be and some of its conjugations are not actual verbs. I regularly encounter headings like this: Blabworth is Picked to be Next Publisher. This grammatical confusion is exposed in titles using the conventional upper and …

The Hardest Language

April 11, 2017 | Filed under: James Harbeck

What language is the hardest to learn? The hardest for whom to learn? The world has many languages of many different kinds, but one thing they all have in common is that kids grow up speaking them fluently and think of them as the natural way to say things. Some …

Perilous Punctuation: The Email Salutation

May 31, 2016 | Filed under: Frances Peck

An old friend from Ottawa recently visited me in Vancouver. We hadn’t seen each other in years. “One thing I’ll never forget about you,” said Ann (who is not an editor), “is that you taught me the right way to begin an email. Every time I write ‘Hi comma So-and-So …

Facts and Fiction: Grammar Vampires and True Crime

June 30, 2015 | Filed under: Ruth E. Thaler-Carter

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed By Karen Elizabeth Gordon. Pantheon Books, 1984, 1993.  Wild, wacky, inventive grammar guide continues to educate and amuse The opportunity to review the new edition (1993) of Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: …

Hand holding compass

Whom Do You Believe? | Linguistics, Frankly

January 20, 2015 | Filed under: James Harbeck

First of all: If you can avoid using whom, you should. Any but the most formal texts are better off without it; it’s a foreign word for most users, as evidenced by the general inability of even many language professionals to use it quite correctly all the time. Sometimes, however, …

Hand writing question mark

What’s an Editor to Do?

January 6, 2015 | Filed under: Victoria Neufeldt

The vagaries of language can cause even the most experienced editors headaches. Editors as a group are more attuned to the whims and ways of language than the average speaker, but many strange and challenging usages regularly fly under the radar and pass into public text, despite our best efforts. …

Scoop with salt

Seriously, What’s the Problem With Sentence Adverbs? | Linguistics, Frankly

September 9, 2014 | Filed under: James Harbeck

The English language is a very complex and powerful thing, capable of many nuances and quite resistant to simplistic attempts at tidying it up. Sadly, not everyone realizes that. Worse still, many people take very narrow and inconsistent views, focusing on pet peeves while letting parallel instances of usage pass …

butler holding silver platter

There’s No Way to Truly Split an Infinitive | Linguistics, Frankly

June 17, 2014 | Filed under: James Harbeck

You can’t split an infinitive. I don’t mean I don’t want you to. I don’t mean it’s not proper to. I mean it’s not possible to. This is for the same reason that I haven’t just broken one off three times, at the ends of the three preceding sentences. The …

cake

I Only Wanted to Explain This | Linguistics, Frankly

April 15, 2014 | Filed under: James Harbeck

Adverbs are a problematic and much-maligned class of words. Linguists often have trouble explaining exactly why they go where they go. Some sorts of adverbs are baselessly despised (hopefully, people will eventually get over those hangups, but I’m not hopeful). Some people think adverbs should be excised from writing altogether. …

man walking Labrador dog

Topics, We Front Them | Linguistics, Frankly

January 14, 2014 | Filed under: James Harbeck

English is normally a subject-verb-object kind of language, but there are some interesting exceptions, especially in casual contexts. Consider examples such as the following: Poodles, we walk them. Labradors, they walk us. Chickens we have; roads, not so much. Not one of the clauses above follows standard English sentence order, …

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