Fused participles (possessives with gerunds):
Gerunds with unmarked subjects were the historically earlier form, have long been used by language’s best writers, and are perfectly idiomatic. The genitive subject (I approve of Sheila’s taking the job) is appropriate in more formal writing; the unmarked subject (I approve of Sheila taking the job) in informal writing and speech.
If-then:
English has two kinds of conditional constructions:
If you leave now, you will get there on time [open conditional]
If you left now, you would get there on time [a remote conditional]
The first is an open conditional (open possibility). It refers to a situation that the writer is uncertain about, and it invites the reader to draw inferences or make predictions about the situation.
The second kind is called a remote conditional. It refers to a counterfactual, highly improbable situation. One that the writer thinks is unlikely to be true but whose implications are worth exploring.
- Formula: The if-clause must have a past-tense verb. The then-clause must contain would or a similar auxiliary such as could, should, or might.
Take double would conditionals and put the if-clause into the past tense so that it sounds classier:
If only she would have listened to me, this would never have happened.
→ If only she had listened to me, this would never have happened.
- Rule for remote conditionals: The if-clause contains a verb which sets up a hypothetical world; the then-clause explores what will happen in that world, using a modal auxiliary. Both clauses use the past tense to express the meaning “factual remoteness”.
Prepositions at the end of the sentence:
Pied-piping is a good choice when a stranded preposition would get los in a hubbub of little grammatical words, such as:
One of the beliefs which we can be highly confident in is that other people are conscious.
→ One of the beliefs in which we can be highly confident is that other people are conscious.
- Select the construction that allows you to end a sentence with a phrase that is heavy, or informative or both.
Predicative nominative:
The choice between It is he and It is him, is strictly one of formal versus informal style.
Sequence of tenses and other perspective shifts:
A common error in student writing is to shift the tense from a main clause to a subordinate one even when they refer to the same time period. (See example in p. 223)
- It’s better to understand a few principles that govern time, tense, and discourse than to try to memorize a list of regulations that are tailored to the sequence-of-tense- phenomenon itself.
Past tense is not the same thing as past time. Past tense is used not just for events that took place in the past, but for events that are remote possibilities.
Backshifting is not mandatory, which means that violating the sequence-of-tense rules and keeping the reported content in the present tense is not always an error.
The teacher told the class that water froze at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.(seems to suggest that perhaps it no longer does).
→ The teacher told the class that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (you should violate the backshifting rule).
- Indirect discourse is not always introduced with an expression like he said that, or she thought that; sometimes it is implicit in the context. The past-tense forms of can, will, and may are could, would, and might, and these are the forms to use in backshifting. Amy can play the bassoon. → Amy said that she could play the bassoon.
Split infinitives:
The split-verb superstition can lead to a crisis of governance!
Obama: “solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States”.
There is not the slightest reason to interdict an adverb from the position before the main verb, and great writers in English have placed it there for centuries.
The policy of the Army at that time was to not send women into combat roles.
→ The policy of the Army at that time was not to send women into combat roles.
It’s a good habit to at least consider moving an adverb to the end of the verb phrase. If the adverb conveys important information, it belongs there; if it doesn’t (such as really, just, actually, and other hedges), it might be a verbal fluffball that is best omitted altogether.
Flynn wanted to more definitively identify the source of the rising IQ scores.
→ Flynn wanted to identify the source of the rising IQ scores more definitively.
Subjunctive mood and irrealis were:
The subjunctive mood refuses to die.
I wish I were younger is fancier than past-tense I wish I was younger.
Than and as:
Rose is smarter than he [is].
George went to the same school as I [did].
Since the noun phrases coming after than and as are the subjects of the truncated clauses, they must be in nominative case: he and I.
Than I is more suited for formal writing.
Than me is more suited to writing that is closer to speech.
That and which:
Nonrestrictive relative clause: Set off my commas, dashes, or parenthesis, and expresses a comment from the peanut gallery.
Restrictive relative clause: Essential to the meaning of the sentence.
The choice between that and which:
Restrictive relative clauses take that.
There is nothing wrong with using which to introduce a restrictive relative clause. Even when which is not mandatory, great writers have been using it for centuries.
The real decision is not whether to use that or which, but whether to use a restrictive or a nonrestrictive relative clause. If a phrase which expresses a comment about a noun can be omitted without substantially changing the meaning, and if it would be pronounced after a slight pause and with its own intonation contour, then be sure to set it off with commas (or dashes, or parenthesis).
If, on the other hand, a phrase provides information about a noun that is crucial to the point of the sentence, then don’t set if off with punctuation.
Also, you generally wont go wrong if you use that.
And, some guidelines recommend a switch to which when the relative clause is separated from the noun it modifies. (An application to renew a license which had previously been rejected must the submitted within thirty days). → the clause modifies “application”.
Verbing and other neologisms:
A fifth of English verbs started out life as nouns or adjectives.
Even many of the denominal verbs that gained traction in the past couple of decades have earned a permanent place in the lexicon because they convey a meaning more transparently and succinctly than any alternative: incentivize.
Who and whom:
Whom has long been perceived as formal verging on pompus. But the actual distinction between who and whom is identical to the distinction between he and him, or she and her.
Who replaces the subject
Whom replaces the object.
Though whom is pompous in short questions and relative clauses, it is a natural choice in certain other circumstances, even in informal speech and writing.
-Who’s dating whom?
-To whom it may concern
-With whom do you wish to speak
QUANTITY, QUALITY, AND DEGREE
"Very unique:"
One of the commonest insults to the sensibility of the purist is the expression very unique. But there’s a flaw in the purists’ logic. Uniqueness is not like pregnancy or marriage (either you are or you’re not); it must be defined relative to some scale of measurement. The concept “unique” is meaningful only after you specify which qualities are of interest to you and which degree of resolution or gain size you’re applying.
Singulars and plurals:
The singular “None of the students was doing well” feels a bit more specific and emphatic than the plural “None of the students were doing well”, and is often stylistically preferable for that reason.
Neither means “not one of the two” and it is singular.
Neither book was any good not Neither book were any good.
A disjunction of two singular nouns is singular. Either beer or wine is served.
A disjunction of two plurals is plural: Either nuts or pretzels are served.
With a disjunction of a singular and a plural, traditional grammar books say that number agreement goes with the noun closest to the verb: Either a burrito or nachos are served.
Duals and plurals (between/among):
Among may not be used with a twosome: “among you and me” is impossible.
* It’s not true that between is reserved for two.
The real principle is that between is used for a relationship of an individual to any number of other individuals, as long as they are being considered two at a time; whereas among is used for a relationship of an individual to an amorphous mass or collectivity.
-er and –est:
It’s not the sheer number of items that determines the choice but the manner in which they are being compared. If Usain Bolt and I happened to be competing for a spot on an Olympic Dream Team, it would be misleading to say that they picked the faster of the two men for the team; they picked the fastest man.
Things and stuff:
While sloppy grammar can be a turnoff, so can the kind of pedantry that takes a grammatical distinction too far.
It is certainly true that less is clumsy when applied to the plurals of count nouns for discrete items: fewer pebbles really does sound better than less pebbles. But it’s not true that less is forbidden to apply to count nouns across the board.
Like many dubious rules of usage, the less-fewer distinction has a smidgen of validity as a pointer of style. In cases where less and fewer are both available to a writer, the word fewer is the better choice in classic style because it enhances vividness and concreteness. But that does not mean the less is a grammatical error.
The same kind of judgment applies to the choice between over and more than. When the plural refers to countable objects, it’s a good idea to use more than. But when the plural defines a point on a scale of measurement, it’s better to use over.
Masculine and feminine:
English has no gender-neutral pronoun. And at least in grammar, the masculine does not embrace the feminine. This is a bug in the English language. One solution (used by Shakespeare and Jane Austen), is the singular they. Even though it offers a handy solution to the need for a gender-free pronoun, that is not is only or even its primary appeal. Many writers use it even when the gender is unambiguously male or female.
“No man goes to battle to be killed. But they do get killed”.
For many decades, usage manuals have recommended two escape hatches for the singular pronoun trap. The easiest is to express the quantified description as a plural, which makes they a grammatically honest pronoun.
Everybody began to have their vexation.
→ They all began to have their vexations.
The other escape hatch is to replace the pronoun with an indefinite or generic alternative and count on the reader’s common sense to fill in the referent:
Everybody began to have their vexation.
→ Everybody began to have a vexation.
DICTION
Look: p. 263 for a table of words
PUNCTUATION
Commas and other connectors:
Comma error account for more than a quarter of all language errors in student papers, occurring at a rate of about four errors per paper.
A comma may not separate the elements of an integrated phrase (such as a subject and its predicate), no matter how badly its narrator may want to take a breath at that juncture.
Sloppy writers tend to forget that when a supplementary phrase is poked into the middle of a sentence, it needs to be set off with commas at both ends, like matching parenthesis, not just at the beginning.
The other comma mistake is so common that composition teachers have invented many terms of abuse for it (like comma splice). It consists in using a comma to join two compete sentences, each of which could stand on its own. There are two reasons that comma splices drive careful readers crazy: they always create a garden path, distracting and annoying the reader. And they are easy to avoid.
Legitimate ways to split two sentences:
- When two sentences are conceptually pretty much independent: the first should end with a period!
- When two sentences are conceptually linked but the writer feels no need to pinpoint the coherence relations that holds between them: join them with a semicolon.
- When the coherence relation is elaboration or exemplification (when one is tempted to say that is, in other words, which is to say, for example…): they may be linked with a colon: like this.
- When the second sentence intentionally interrupts the flow of the discussion, requiring the reader to wake up, think twice, or snap out of it, a writer can use a dash –dashes can enliven writing, as long as they are used sparingly.
When the writer pinpoints the coherence relations he has in mind with an explicit connective such as a coordinator (and, or, but, yet, so, nor), or a preposition (although, except, if, before, after, because, for), a comma is fine, because the phrase is a mere supplement.
You should use the serial (Oxford) comma.
Quotation marks:
Another insult to punctuational punctiliousness is the use of quotation marks for emphasis. The practice of closing quotation marks outside the comma or period, “like this,” rather than inside, “like this”, is illogical. The quotation marks enclose a part of the phrase of sentence, and the comma or period signals the end of that entire phrase or sentence, so putting the comma or period inside the quotation marks is like Superman’s famous wardrobe malfunction of wearing his underwear outside his pants.
If you write for an edited American publication, be prepared to live with the illogic of putting a period or comma inside quotation marks.
Dealing with matters of usage is not like playing chess, proving theorems, or solving textbook problems in physics, where the rules are clear and flouting them is an error. It is more like research, journalism, criticism, and other exercises of discernment.
If you really want to improve the quality of your writing, or if you want to thunder about sins in the writing of others, the principles you should worry about the most are not the ones that govern fused participles and possessive antecedents but the ones that govern critical thinking and factual diligence. Here are a few to remember:
- First, look things up.
- Be sure your arguments are sound. If you’re making an argument, it should proceed from premises that reasonable people already agree upon to your newer or more contentious assertion using valid if-then steps.
- Don’t confuse an anecdote or personal experience with the state of the world.
- Beware of false dichotomies. Few good ideas can be insightfully captured in a single word ending with –ism, and most of our ideas are so crude that we can make more progress by analyzing and refining them than by pitting them against each other in a winner-take-all contest.
- Arguments should be based on reasons, not people.