Look What You Can Tuck Into Your Pocket!

My dream to place help to the grammatically challenged, right into your pocket, is coming alive. The first sixteen parts of my new series — GRAMMAR IN YOUR POCKET — have been gently downloaded onto Kindle. These are the parts of speech and punctuation that give so much trouble to those who want “rules”:

1—Introduction (FREE)
2—Nouns
3—Pronouns
4—Verbs
5—Adjectives
6—Adverbs
7—Clauses and Phrases
8—Conjunctions
9—Prepositions

10—Articles & Interjections
11—Commas
12—Colons, Semicolons, Periods
13—Question Marks & Exclamation Pointns
14—Parentheses, Brackets, & Quotation Marks
15—More Dots and Dashes
16—Putting it All Together (FREE)

#1—The Introduction and #16—Putting It All Together — available FREE — to get you started. Here you’ll understand the problems Americans have learning nefarious grammar “rules”. That's because those infamous, purported, mystical “rules” mostly apply to the linguists who dream them up. (But don’t get me started. See for yourself.)

You can download to your Kindle each or any other section at only 99¢ apiece; such a deal! 
So you want to refresh your understanding of Adjectives? Download Number 5—Adjectives. 
If you’re unsure about what nouns to capitalize, download Number 2—Nouns. 
Simple, easy, and instructive: just look in your pocket!
Your grammar skills will impress your boss, your clients, your friends, and your family.

Upcoming will be a section on Tips for Writers. I’m promising that before I leave for my trip to the beach this summer, you will have all you need to know about GRAMMAR IN YOUR POCKET!

Celebrate Our Day!

Today, Tuesday, March 4, is National Grammar Day. How do you celebrate? Take a grammar to lunch? Buy your grammar a dozen roses? Or just watch your mouth. Not easy in this day of purple prose — f-words and s-words and xyz-words. Take a hint from our classy forebears whose words remain on our lips for decades — nay centuries — long after the speakers are gone. They chose words that cut, struck chords, made points, all without reverting to the profanity of the day (or was it the profanity of the day?).

Notice where profane words originate? In the bathroom (considered childish obsession with the digestive system), in the bedroom (sexual activity has long bothered Americans), in humor (making fun of others), and in ways to diminish the character of another.

Where our grandparents got by using such expletives as gosh darn, drat, egad, yikes, gee, and golly, their grandchildren easily display potty mouths — most likely for shock value to adults, but more for the easy of finding a pet cuss word and using it as often as possible. The cure? Find a pet cuss word that only you define as “profanity”.

U.S.-English is rich with wonderful words that would send an enemy or opponent scurrying off to find a dictionary. Consider: scurrilous, blasphemous, file, coprophagous, cloacal, ribald, execrable, ominous, minacious, maledictory, damnatory, desiccative.

On this holiest of holy days, watch your language. 

1) Keep your dictionary tucked inside your iPod or your pocket.
2) Find a mobile copy of a thesaurus.
3) Delight in coming up with dissident, dissentient, dissipated, disassociated word that will blow away the need for bathroom or bedroom attempts at humor.

When you stare your opponent in the eye, smile, and describe that person in extraordinary words, you'll feel so much better.

Be a proud grammar user.

 

The President Filches From the Proverbs

Did you hear it? President Obama has the “proverbial reset button”. True! I heard it on NPR. You have to wonder where he got it and where he keeps it.

When I checked the Proverbs, I’ll be darned; I couldn’t find a single “reset button” listed.

Be careful when choosing modifiers, such as proverbial and literal and absolute and first and, especially, unique. These are sometimes called “ultimates”. Make sure the ultimate is precisely what you mean.

I would expect poverbial to mean “from Proverbs” or at least “in wide usage” — and old. 

Literal infers reality over metaphor. You may think you are “literally swimming in debt”, but you are metaphorically paddling among your IOUs. You literally swim in water! 

Absolute means there is nothing more to be added or done. “Absolute control of the situation” means that no other has any control at all. 

First is another ultimate. You may be the first to enter the building, or (more likely) among the first to enter the building. Remember, there is only one first (just ask an Olympic competitor). 

Unique is the ultimate most abused in today’s language. Like first, unique means “the only one”. Which means something cannot be “sorta unique” or “somewhat unique” or even “very unique”. 

Bottom line (literally); ultimates need no modifiers. That is absolutely what makes them unique — even in proverbial usage.

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.

Magifantastical Adjectives

I’m a big fan of Darby Conley, whose characters in his comic strip “Get Fuzzy” mangle the language regularly. He gets his cat to play with words like my daughter’s cat plays with a ball of yarn. When Cat’s owner chastises him, Cat calls him a rude luddite — “a ruddite”. Then adds that his owner is dim and stupid — “dimpid”, as well as ugly and annoying — “ugloying”. Don’t you love it? 

And when one of my writer friends turned out a book that was both magical and fantastic, I had to let her know her work is “magifantastical”. So there! Who says you can’t make up new words.

BTW, a question mark at the end of a sentence usually is asking for an answer. A question with a period at the end is called “rhetorical” because it does not require an answer.

 Ain’t grammar fun!

Inhuman or Inhumane?

The news is filled with the use of these terms, and sometimes they are mis-used. Honestly, would you rather be “inhuman” or “inhumane”?

Inhuman is more dastardly than inhumane. One who is “inhuman” is cruel beyond the scope of being a human being. Whacking a mole over the head several times to kill it would be considered inhuman behavior.

If you are “inhumane”, you are being accused of being unsympathetic, lacking the ability to be compassionate or kind (much like many human beings). Telling a mole’s offspring that you just whacked their parent would be inhumane.

See the difference? Now stop whacking that poor mole!

Myriad Questions or a Myriad of Questions

How do you use the word “myriad”? As a noun or an adjective? The snobby grammarian purists (and poets) insist on using it as an adjective; as in: They ask myriad questions. or Myriad participants attended the conference.

Then there are the pure grammarians — my kind of anarchy grammarians who use language to suit them. They readily accept: They ask a myriad of questions. or A myriad of participants attended the conference.

What’s right? you ask, forgetting that we anarchists do not recognize the words right and wrong. Here’s another opportunity to make your choice the prime factor. Which do you like best?  Until the 1800s, myriad was used in English as a noun. Then along came a poet named Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Now you can blame the confusion on Coleridge and his “Hymn to the Earth,” in which he included the lines:

O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention:
Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre!
Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith
Myriad myriads of lives teem’d forth from the mighty embracement.

 So now it’s up to you. Both uses are acceptable. But you wouldn’t stoop to playing the snooty card… would you? Or do thou strovest to flee?

Why Don’t You Believe Me?

Incredible! Unbelievable! I can’t believe it’s not true. Notice how these words are used.

1. He had an incredible body.
2. She was unbelievably gorgeous.
3. I can’t believe how cold it is.
4. Did that success you mentioned actually happen?
5. I am really happy for you.

Number 1 says “This guy had a body that no one would believe.” (Only a Schwartnegger could have that.)
Number 2 shows the woman as more gorgeous than anyone could comprehend. (Nobody can be that gorgeous.)
Number 3 shows your level of mentality, that you can’t believe 10-degrees below is cold. (Brrr! dammit!)
Number 4 questions your veracity. (“Are you lying?”)
Number 5 is a sarcastic way to say, “I may not look happy for you, but I am.” (Honestly, would I kid you?)

How often do you stretch belief with these words? Credible means “able to be believed”. Believable means “convincing or realistic”. Actually refers to “the truth or facts of a situation”. Really is another way to say that something is real, as opposed to a figment of the imagination. I find that many people use “really” as a way to say “but” (not so!) in order to cover up their disbelief that the speaker thinks something is so (I really like that color on you — but…). Ah, you remember that “but” generally negates anything that precedes it.

Good on you (I don’t think so!)

You hear it all around you. “Good on this”, “good on that”, “good on you”.

Good is an adjective that describes a noun. In the usage I’m hearing (above), the usage sounds more like a verb: I good, you good, we good, etc. Where in the world of English-speaking people did this term come from? Boo! Hiss! Go to war, Miss Agnes!

A Fun Game

Sitting at the beach? Seeking shade in the back yard? Swigging down a cool one? Converting your hot tub to a cool tub? However you choose to chill, here’s a fun game to help you forget the heat.

List as many adjectives as you can from one extreme to the other — in degrees. Example:

        TEPID - WARM - HEATED - HOT - STEAMY - BOILING - TORRID - BURNING

Now try it with the opposite: COOL to FREEZING

I’ll bet you feel cooler already.

What's Wrong With “more better”?

Nothing! As long as you don’t understand grammar. If you did, you’d quickly realize that better is a comparative adverb (good, better, best) and more is an adjective. Which makes “more better” a reverse of modifier guidelines.

Listen closely, I’ll say this only once…more:

Adjectives modify Nouns and Pronouns — period.

Adverbs, on the other hand, modify Verbs, other Adverbs,
AND Adjectives.

Stick with me, sweetheart, and you’ll get this stuff down soon!

Multi-tasking Adjectives

Sometimes one adjective won’t do. Several words pop into mind and that’s when you call in the hyphens. Here are some examples:

Sometimes this feels like a dog-eat-dog world.
I’m always happy-as-a-lark to offer hope.
Or am I just a whistling-in-the-wind optimist?

Now you try it! Multi-hyphened-words form the entire adjective and are often more effective than a plain-old-one-word modifier.