Where Do You Put Curly Tails?

The most questions I receive ask “Where do you place apostrophes and commas?” And while I wish I could tell you exactly where they belong in your sentences, I can give you some guidelines here.

First the raised curly tailed marks, the ones we call apostrophes. Two places immediately come to mind:

In contractions (where a letter or two has been omitted), as in can’t (cannot), won’t (will not), she’s (she is), he’d (he had), it’s (it is).
The second regular use is in possessives (where you indicate something that belongs to someone or something else), as in football’s leather, hat’s feather, horse’s mane, child’s eyes. Notice the raised curlycue in each example.

As for the lower curly tailed marks, the ones we call commas, more challenges apply. Here are three of the major uses:

Dividing items in a list of three or more: Sonja was dating three boys: Jimmy, Bobby, and Wally.
Following an introductory phrase: As each found out, they walked away.
Separating two full sentences, accompanied by a conjunction (and, but, still, yet, etc.): Sonja felt rejected, and she cried for ten minutes.

Know also there are many many more uses for both commas and apostrophes. They are all covered in my book, The Anarchist’s Guide to Grammar (Amazon and Kindle). See? There’s one in the title — and in the previous sentence! Popular little guys, aren’t they! There you have it. Go forth and watch your use of the curly tailed marks that so cleverly direct your readers’ attention.

Lay Back and Tell No Lies

Such consternation, even in the world of comedians. One recently quoted (or misquoted) on national television: “…lions laying down with lambs”. Oooh! That hurt.

In the comics pages — which incidentally are written by artists well-versed in the use of U.S. language — one slipped up last week and let the character talk about “…laying around all day, doing nothing”. Oh my!

Many comics writers work “proper English” and “grammar” into their strips, and not always in the standard lie/lay usage conundrum. One strip about golf included the following dialog: “That was a short shot.” The reply: “I was laying up.”

Another use of lay appeared recently: “The cuckoo bird likes to lay its eggs in the nest of other birds.” See? You learn stuff from the comics pages.

So what’s the real skinny on lie/lay? And how can we remember which to use… when? Simple!

Remember that lay is a verb that needs an object — something to lay down or… p-l-A-c-e. Notice the “a”; just like the one in “lay”. 

If you can’t think of that, recall that lie is a verb meaning to… r-E-c-l-I-n-E. See the “i” and “e” that also appear in “lie”?

Forget about laying up golf shots and laying eggs — those are completely other meanings. Just remember you need to lay something down (lay the taco on the plate) and it will lie around until somebody eats it (recline in leisure—yet two other “i/e” words).

Your friends will ooh and aah over your expertise in language when you conquer these simple guidelines. Promise! Would I lie to you?

Travel Farther; Think Further

The farther you travel from home, the more you further your education.
You  climb further in reputation the farther you go away from home ground.

Why does further/farther confuse so many people when the key to remember is the simple word “far”? When posed with the questions, think of distance covered.

When referring to physical distance, use farther, pertaining to something you can enumerate in inches, feet, miles, kilometers, or knots.

When referring to a nonphysical or metaphorical advancement, use further, such as talking about increasing (reputation, education, career, benefits).

So, to further your education, and possibly your career, you can stay put and study diligently while building your reputation. To travel farther than another, you’ll need a vehicle to cross the miles or light years or leagues across the sea.

Got it? No further discussion.

Speak, spoke, spoken / Prove, proved, proven. . .

What’s are the differences between the verbs speak, spoke and spoken? Prove, proved, and proven? A whole mountain of difference. And why doesn’t spoke have a spoked?

Prove is the present tense and proved is the past tense of the verb “to prove”. Proven is the participle.

She proves she caught the biggest fish.
However, she proved it too late.
Now she has proven she was right.

Speak is the present tense and spoke is the past tense of the verb “to speak”. Spoken is the participle.

He speaks too loudly after a beer.
She spoke too wildly when she scolded him yesterday.
The two have not spoken since.

The “en” words are participles, which require auxiliary (or helping) verbs.

The world has proved it is warming.
The geologists have spoken.

Now, try to figure out what the heck a participle is! And where can you find one? Perhaps you could get the real skinny in my book, The Anarchist's Guide to Grammar. Or did you know there is a book? I can prove it. Go to Amazon.com and place your order. The author has spoken!

In-TENSE-ive Verbs

Remember when Miss Miller showed you a list of “irregular verbs”? They are the ones that do not follow the standard way of making a verb past tense (add “ed”). These will trip you up. Notice the different spelling in the following sentences that include irregular verbs:

The teacher came to the end of his rope. The teacher had come to the end of his rope.
The student taught her teacher patience. The student had taught her teacher patience.
We all broke things we loved. We all have broken things we loved.
Was it you who shrank your jeans? Was it you who had shrunk your jeans?
I would not do such a thing. I would not  have done such a thing.

Notice the slightly different meaning (and spelling) when you add an auxiliary verb (have, had). Take a look at these verbs in your dictionary. They (irregulars) are shown in three forms: Present, Past, and Past Participle.

Regular verbs look like this:
          PRESENT               PAST              PAST PARTICIPLE
          walk                          walked              (have) walked
           rake                          raked                 (have) raked
           step                          stepped              (have) stepped

Irregular verbs look like this:
            go                             went                 (have) gone
            break                        broke               (have) broken
            come                        came                 (have) come
            teach                        taught               (have) taught

And here’s a clue as to why this matters. The verb “fly” has many meanings. Only the one pertaining to baseball uses the regular “ed” form: John hit a fly ball; John flied out twice. BUT: A bird can fly; The bird flew.

I agree! There is no sense to it — at all. Which is one of the reasons for keeping a dictionary on hand at all times when you’re still catching on to these idiosyncrasies.

Keep Your Thoughts to Yourself

Someone says this phrase every three seconds, somewhere in the world: “I was thinking to myself…” When I hear it, my innards quake, my teeth take on an edge, my toes curl, and my head goes dizzy.

Who else do you think to? I must ask. When you think, it’s completely your secret. Thinking occurs inside your head. When have you heard someone say, “I was thinking to Harry…” or “I was thinking to Mary…” or “I was thinking to you…”?

You have to ask why it seems necessary to add “to myself” to your thinking. Is this narcissism? a mental defect? a cry for help? Wha…???

Imagine You Can Spell Like a Whiz Kid?

Do you ever watch the annual National Spelling Bee? It is composed of the best spellers from grade schools around the country who spell words most of us have never heard before. These kids are phenoms to the max! The NSBee is so popular, they made a book out of it — and a movie. So how can you learn to spell as well as these youngsters? Or at least well enough to please your readers/boss/family/Internet friends?

Easy as 1-2-3! Three things you can do to improve your spelling all scream PAY ATTENTION.

1) Become aware of “root” words, other words that mean almost the same thing or are derived from a similar source. Let’s say you want to spell a word that means “able to be imagined”. Is it imaginible or imaginable? Think of a similar word, such as “imagination”. Do you see the “a” that follows the “n”? There’s your clue.

2) Be sure you pronounce the word right. Some words are mutilated in speech because we don’t all learn from the same speech source. One of our Presidents often spoke of “our gub-ment” (meaning government — three syllables.) Another President had trouble with nuclear, pronouncing it “nuc-u-lar” (as many others do). Notice how often those whiz kids ask for the pronunciation.

3) Look it up. Keep a spell-check app on your electronic carry-alls and refer to it when in doubt. After looking up a word a couple of times, it may sink into your imaginary dictionary-in-your-head.

Come on, show your moxy by paying attention to the way words are spelled. You will soon realize the benefits of being the kind of person who pays attention to details and can handle your language. That's your PAY BACK for PAYING ATTENTION.

Incredibly Yours

When did we start using incredible to mean “very very”?

As in:

“We spent an incredible day at the beach.”

“You are incredibly beautiful.”

 “She earns an incredible salary.”

Incredible means “unbelievable, unable to be believed”! What makes a trip to the beach unbelievable, especially if it’s a sunny day?

Personally speaking, I can believe how beautiful you are, but why would anyone say they could not believe it?

And large salaries are not only within the area of belief, but very satisfying to earn.

Come on, listen to yourself and the words you use. And believe them. I find it entirely incredible that U.S.-ers cannot grasp understanding of the language they grew up with.

Why Grammar?

As a grammarian and word person, I am constantly asked why grammar is important. “Why do I have to understand what words go together and which ones don’t?” “What's the difference if I use double negatives?” “Why do we even have apostrophes — much less, how do we use them?”

Having order to the way we communicate by mouth and writing is as important as having some order to the way we communicate via the Internet and email. Sure there are different systems, or styles. But computer-ese makes communication between computers — and therefore between people — possible. If your computer cannot talk to mine, we cannot get together on anything.

Grammar is like the coding in computers, in that knowing how it works makes it work better. Read a good book about language: The Anarchist’s Guide to Grammar, by Val Dumond, or The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker. I guarantee you’ll come away with more respect for the guidelines offered through the order of language.

No, it’s not British English or Australian English or Canadian English — not in the good old US of A! Which is why we in the U.S. have the most beautiful and flexible language in the world. Why? Because it is composed of all the other languages — with all their styles and systems in one room, together.

Bless us all, everyone, for our language and knowing how to order it!

NOTE to Advertisers

If you have a reasonable question about grammar or punctuation, I’ll be delighted to provide my answer (not necessarily one that everyone will agree with), but perhaps one to help you.

Three requirements for an answer: 1) identify yourself,  2) ask, and 3) omit reference to your business.

—Grammar Anarchist