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DOWN WITH CRIMINAL SENTENCES!!
Posts
"The Writer" Magazine Column
In 2009 and 2010, The Writer published 20 online columns and one print article of mine. These essays covered everything from semicolons to wordiness. The full text of all 21 are here on my blog!
Criminal Sentence Rap Sheet
- Blatant Self-Promotion (6)
- Books You Might Like (If You've Already Read Mine) (2)
- Capitalization (11)
- Dumb Mistakes (60)
- Encounters at Stores (2)
- Facebook account (1)
- Grammar (220)
- Grammar in the news (11)
- Grammar in Unexpected Places (2)
- Grammar-Related Articles (1)
- Guest post (2)
- Guest-written Episodes for Grammar Girl (73)
- National Grammar Day (2)
- poll picture (1)
- Poll Results (172)
- Punctuation (163)
- Questions from You (21)
- Questions to You (1)
- Rewriting Practice (1)
- Spelling (213)
- Style (65)
- Tips (2)
- Truly Criminal (2)
- weirdness (11)
- Word Choice (46)
- Wordiness (12)
- Writer Magazine (22)
- Your Own Criminal Sentence (1)
About Me
- The Sentence Sleuth
- I'm a copy editor and writer. I wrote The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier: How to Solve the Mysteries of Weak Writing, published in 2006 and now available in paperback. In 2007-2008, I wrote "The Sentence Sleuth" column for Writer's Digest magazine.
Followers
Blog Archive
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2008
(193)
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September
(38)
- Criminal Sentence 100: A Naughty Error
- Negative-Only Words: Grammar Girl Episode
- Poll Results 6
- Criminal Sentence 99: According to
- Criminal Sentence 98: How Many Guests?
- Criminal Sentence 97: Not so Great
- Irregular Plurals: Grammar Girl Episode
- Historic v Historical: Grammar Girl Episode
- Collective Nouns: Grammar Girl Episode
- Using the Wrong Word: Grammar Girl Episode
- Double Possessives: Grammar Girl Episode
- Comparatives and Superlatives: 2 Grammar Girl Epis...
- Have Got: Grammar Girl Episode
- Shall v Will: Grammar Girl Episode
- Loan v Lend: Grammar Girl Episode
- Phrasal Verbs: Grammar Girl Episode
- Singular Nouns That Seem Plural: Grammar Girl Episode
- That: Grammar Girl Episode
- Whose: Grammar Girl Episode
- More Than v Over: Grammar Girl Episode
- Sentence Length: Grammar Girl Episode
- Subject-Verb Agreement: Grammar Girl Episode
- Criminal Sentence 96: Don't Listen to Microsoft
- Poll Results 5
- Criminal Sentence 95: Watch Those Zeros
- Criminal Sentence 94: "A part" vs. "Apart"
- Criminal Sentence 93: Verses vs Versus
- Criminal Sentence 92: How Many Ways?
- Poll Results 4
- Criminal Sentence 91: More Incorrect Apostrophe's
- Criminal Sentence 90: A Comma between Two Sentences
- Criminal Sentence 89: Commas in Salutations
- Criminal Sentence 88: "Each and every"
- Poll Results 3
- Criminal Sentence 87: Less vs Fewer
- Criminal Sentence 86: Three Errors in a Row
- Reader Question: And/But
- Poll Results 2
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September
(38)
1 comment:
I just finished reading Double Possessives, the article you wrote some years ago for a Grammar Girl podcast. I came across the article while trying to find a way to explain to native German speakers why formulations such as my today's task don't work in English. The phrase is an attempt to translate a typical German construction: meine (my) heutige (of or pertaining to today) Aufgabe (task). Initially I merely said that in English such double possessives were stylistically weak, in that my logically would refer to task, not to today. Unfortunately I have subsequently noticed quite a few instances of such constructions, some of which sound quite "normal". For example, this time of year I might mention my New Year's resolutions. And in the upcoming tax season, the IRS instructions will be replete with the phrase your last year's tax return. Do these examples merely seem correct owing to their prevalence, or is there some other explanation? Can one, for example, view either New Year's resolutions or last year's tax return as fixed entities which can indeed be modified with a possessive pronoun? And when, by the way, did it become acceptable for inanimate objects such as New Year, today, yesterday, tommorrow, etc to have a possessive apostrophe-s, rather than the former of / for / relating to ...?
It would be very helpful if you could do a follow-on to your Double Possessives article to deals with these issues. Happy New Year! (and good luck with your upcoming New Year's resolutions...)
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