Criminal Sentence 350: Looking for a Good Instuctor

Is this advertising a hop instuctor who is hip? Ha ha. Nope, a hip-hop instuctor. Wait a minute. A hip-hop instRuctor! And with those three exclamation points, that's really exciting!!!

New Grammar Girl Episode: Pronouns and Antecedents

Check out this new episode:

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/pronouns-and-antecedents.aspx

Criminal Sentence 349: Comma or Semicolon

From something I am editing:

"They have not only successfully blended their families; they are running a thriving business together."

This punctuation doesn't quite work. When you use a semicolon to join two related independent clauses, that means that each part must be able to stand alone. The sentence passes this test for the part after the semicolon: "They are running a thriving business together" could appear alone. However, "They have not only successfully blended their families" cannot. You should just use a comma instead:

"They have not only successfully blended their families, they are running a thriving business together."

Notice, however, that the "not only" part is out of alignment: they have not only ... they are (the "have" is in the wrong place). We'll fix it while we balance the second part with the "but also" part that goes with "not only":

"Not only have they successfully blended their families, but they are also running a thriving business together."

I do feel the "not only...but also" sentence structure is a bit wordy. If you agree, you could write this:

"They have successfully blended their families and are running a thriving business together."

Criminal Sentence 348: Redundant Besides

From a book I just finished:

"Besides the reliquaries, we had also put [a] wooden chest in the wagon."

This is repetitive because "besides" is one of those words that means "also." This problem happens with "in addition ... also" and "in addition ... and." You need just one.

So let's put the redundancy in the wagon and cart it off:

"Besides the reliquaries, we had put [a] wooden chest in the wagon."

Criminal Sentence 347: "Od" Ice Cream

Yesterday I took the kids for ice cream. Although the sign warned against putting "topings" on cones, we did so anyway! Funny how they got it right the first time but not on the bottom line.

Poll Results 75

This was the question:

What's wrong here? "Johnson said the teen told officers he lit the fire and was arrested."

A "that" is missing.	5 (6%)
The "and was arrested" part is unclear.	5 (6%)
A pronoun is unclear.	10 (12%)
A punctuation mark is missing.	0 (0%)
Two of the above	57 (74%)

MY ORIGINAL ANSWER
So, I was going for answer number 2. Let's break it down.

1) A "that" is missing: Well, a "that" after "said" or "officers" is optional, not required.
2) The "and was arrested" part is unclear: Well, it definitely is! When you first read the sentence, it seems as if the teen admitted two things: he lit the fire; he was arrested. The "and was arrested" part doesn't work. You need to reword it: "Johnson said the teen was arrested after he told officers he lit the fire."
3) A pronoun is unclear: It's true that two men are in this sentence, but I don't think the "he" is unclear.

Your thoughts?

MY REVISED ANSWER
OK. I admit it. If you didn't know that Johnson was a police officer, I see how the pronoun could be vague. I should have clearly said that Johnson was a cop. Shame on me!!

Criminal Sentence 346: Confusing Outfit

From a book I am reading (about an outfit a king was wearing):

"He was dressed in a bright blue cloak and wearing a circlet of bronze on his head."

Although this is grammatically correct, it is not so clear. I felt that "wearing" was hanging there. You have to go back earlier in the sentence to get it to match up with "was," as in "was dressed ... and was wearing..." It would be better to repeat the "was" or change the verb:

1) "He was dressed in a bright blue cloak and was wearing a circlet of bronze on his head."
2) "He was dressed in a bright blue cloak and wore a circlet of bronze on his head."

Now those are a couple of kingly sentences.

Writer Mag Column 18: Pronouns

Who's on first? Keep pronouns in line

On the baseball field, the manager picks the best position players and puts them on first base, second base and so on. Chaos—and many losses—would ensue if an unprepared player got put in the wrong spot. On the written page, you must also correctly place the position players—in this case, pronouns. You don’t want to promote your bench players to first string if they don’t deserve it.

A pronoun stands in for a noun you’ve already mentioned, so in the sentence The pitcher said he was tired, you’re using “he” to avoid repeating “the pitcher.” Sometimes, though, pronouns creep into the wrong positions. Your readers won’t support a team that makes too many errors, so let’s review four main pronoun regulations. If you keep them straight, you won’t be ejected from the game.

Regulation 1: Remember which pronouns are subject pronouns and which are object pronouns.

No matter how much of a baseball or writing fan you are, you’re not allowed to say, Me and Jimmy sat behind the dugout. Me is an object pronoun and cannot be a subject; you must use I: Jimmy and I sat behind the dugout.

The other subject pronouns are he, she, you, we, they and it. They are subjects, as in He hit a home run.

The object pronouns are me, him, her, you, us, them and it. Object pronouns—are you ready for this?—are objects, as in The batter hit a home run to him.

Native speakers don’t make mistakes such as Them are my teammates; we naturally say, They are my teammates. However, we do sometimes promote object pronouns to subject pronouns when we’re talking about two individuals and want to emphasize the first one. You might hear someone say, Her and I met at the mall. Unless your characters are teenyboppers who are unconcerned with grammar, don’t put such words into their mouths.

Regulation 2: Do not put your pronoun before its antecedent.

Umpires don’t let players go to first base before they deserve a walk; batters have to wait until there are four balls—not three, two or one. Likewise, you’re not supposed to use a pronoun before you’ve mentioned the noun it replaces (called an “antecedent” because it comes before the pronoun).

If you use a pronoun before its antecedent, you’ll confuse your readers. I became disoriented when I read this Criminal Sentence:

If it’s available, make sure to order Armagnac.

When I arrived at the pronoun “it,” I wondered what singular item was being discussed (the antecedent did not appear in the sentence before). I had to read the entire sentence to get the full picture. Luckily, the fix is easy. Just reverse the pronoun and the noun:

If Armagnac is available, make sure to order it.

Here’s another Criminal Sentence that I wish hadn’t made it into print:

Though they’ve never seen facial expressions, people blind from birth still use them.

This sentence is confusing because we have no idea what the pronoun “they” is standing in for—until we read the whole sentence. As we find out later, “they” means “people blind from birth.” If we switch around the noun and pronoun, as we did for the Armagnac sentence, we solve the problem:

Though people blind from birth have never seen facial expressions, they still use them.

Although “people blind from birth” and “they” now line up correctly, this fix has introduced a new problem (see Regulation 3).

Regulation 3: Ensure that your pronoun does not have two or more potential antecedents.

Did the last part of that facial-expression sentence confuse you? The pronoun “they” seems to refer back to “facial expressions,” the plural noun closest to “they,” but another plural antecedent—the true one—is lurking earlier in the sentence: “people blind from birth.” We must rewrite the sentence to avoid this problem. After much huddling in the dugout, we’ve decided to avoid pronouns altogether and instead restate the two nouns in a more specific way:

Though people blind from birth have never seen facial expressions, the sight-impaired still grimace and smile, for example.

Another Criminal Sentence shows how ambiguous pronouns can be if you’re not careful:

The room contained a chair, a desk and a lone light bulb. It was twenty-six feet long by seventeen feet wide.

That’s a pretty big light bulb! In this sentence, the pronoun “it” could, in theory, refer to “room,” “chair,” “desk” or “light bulb.” If more than one potential antecedent presents itself, readers tend to match the pronoun to the last-mentioned noun, in this case “light bulb.” Let’s fix the absurdity. We could repeat the antecedent, but if we do, we get an inelegant pair of sentences:

The room contained a chair, a desk and a lone light bulb. The room was twenty-six feet long by seventeen feet wide.

Let’s just strip away the pronouns and say what we mean exactly:

The room, twenty-six feet long by seventeen feet wide, contained a chair, a desk and a lone light bulb.

Regulation 4: Check your pronoun-antecedent agreement.

Speakers and writers often use the plural pronoun “they” to refer back to a singular subject of unknown gender, as in An improv comedian must think on their feet. The plural pronoun “their” doesn’t match up with the singular noun “comedian.” Granted, it can sound awkward to write An improv comedian must think on his or her feet, especially if you continue describing the antics of the genderless person. You don’t want to keep writing “he or she,” “his or her” or “him or her.”

Some grammarians allow a plural pronoun to refer back to a singular subject if the gender is unknown. While it might be all right to do so in informal speech, I recommend rewording the sentence and avoiding this problem. In a longer work, you can choose to alternate between masculine and feminine pronouns, or you can make the antecedent plural: Improv comedians must think on their feet.

Now it’s your turn to think on your feet. Please help the pronouns in these Criminal Sentences get on the right base, and send your rewrites to curiouscase@hotmail.com:

1. Me Tarzan, you Jane.
2. Bill wrestled with Gunther. He eventually won the bout.
3. A writer must choose their words carefully.
4. After he arrived at the hospital room, the chaplain comforted the widower.
5. Between you and I, I don’t like getting up early.

Criminal Sentence 345: Size Matters

From an article in the paper:

"The complaints are small compared with the number of vehicles involved."

Were the complaints teeny tiny, itsy bitsy? Or were there just not that many?

An apple can be small, but complaints must be few if you're talking about amount.

I know why the writer used "small" instead of "few." See how the sentence sounds with the correct word:

"The complaints are few compared with the number of vehicles involved."

A little fuddy-duddy, eh? (Had to put that in as a nod to the Vancouver Olympics.) If you don't like using "few," then you can recast the sentence:

"When you consider the amount of vehicles involved, not very many actual complaints were registered."

Criminal Sentence 344: New Vehicle on the Road

I saw an interesting vehicle on the road yesterday and wanted to take a picture, but I couldn't get close enough. So you'll just have to take my word for it!

The letters that identified the model of a car said EXPOLRER.

Criminal Sentence 343: Sad Death, Sad Verb

From an article about the death of the luge athlete at the Olympics:

"Should video of death been shown on TV?"

I chose not to watch the video, but I was watching the verb in this sentence. Something is missing here. You need to add another helping verb: "have":

"Should video of death have been shown on TV?"

Poll Results 74

Here was the question:

Is the comma here wrong or right? "February, 2010"

Correct comma 34 (28%)
Incorrect comma 84 (71%)

Congrats to 71% of you. When you have just the month and the year, no comma is necessary. If you have a day, though, you do need a comma: February 15, 2010.

Criminal Sentence 342: In the Past (Participle)

A statement about the secret identity of the person who will light the Olympic flame:

" 'And I have gone to bed and woke up every day for the last 90 days praying I wouldn't see it on the front page of the papers.' "

No medals for grammar here!

"I have gone to bed ... and woke?" This should be "and woken": "I have woken up."

Criminal Sentence 341: Breakfast Grammar

I was asked to participate in a coffee/breakfast survey. As you know, grammar is the most important meal of the day. "Everyday" is an adjective meaning "regular/normal"; "every day" means "each day." Youcan'tjustforgetabouthespacesinwords.

Criminal Sentence 340: Things Are Lookingup

I have been interviewing applicants to where I went to college, and this appeared on the Web page where I have to create a report about the applicants:

"Lookup applicant"

I've complained about this before, but I like repeating myself! This is called a phrasal verb, and there's always a space between the root verb and the preposition following. It should be "Look up applicant."

If it were a noun, as in "workout," you would smush the words together.

Criminal Sentence 339: "The" or "they"?

From a Web site:

"The embraced after the hearing and left without addressing reporters."

Just a slight typo here.

Poll Results 73

This was the question:

How many errors are in this sentence? "Walking down the street, a car stopped with two ladies and he got in."

None	6 (6%)
One	12 (12%)
Two	32 (33%)
Three	45 (47%)

It seems that 47% of you feel there are three errors. I myself feel there are two, so I would like to hear what additional error you see. Here are the errors I see:

1) "Walking down the street, a car": A car is obviously not walking down the street. The "he" of the sentence is.
2) "a car stopped with two ladies": This sounds weird. "A car containing two ladies stopped" would be better, don't you think?

I suspect some of you might think a comma is required before "and." It might be a good idea to include a comma, but it isn't wrong to omit one. So what did I miss on my own test?

Criminal Sentence 338: Two Naughty Prepositional Phrases

From a book about Anne Boleyn:

"He wrote an account of what he had seen in 1559 in a letter to Elizabeth I."

The sentence is supposed to say that the man wrote a 1559 letter to Elizabeth I and in this letter was an account of what he had seen earlier than this date, when Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, was alive.

The sentence makes it seem that he saw something in 1559 and that thing was in a letter to Elizabeth I. In other words, the two "in" phrases are incorrectly placed. Let's rewrite it:

"In a 1559 letter to Elizabeth I, he wrote an account of what he had seen."

Criminal Sentence 337: Who Died?

I don't usually do two Criminal Sentences in one day, but this is so awful I couldn't wait. From a writing magazine:

"This month's installment, for example, spotlights So and So, the award-winning novelist and writer for young readers who passed away last fall."

Yikes! The young readers passed away?

Oops. The writer meant that the award winner has died. Too much is crammed in here, so let's bury this sentence and resurrect a new one:

"This month's installment, for example, spotlights So and So, an award-winning novelist and writer for young readers. Sadly, the author passed away last fall."

Writer Mag Column 17: Semicolons

Wink ;)

Ode to the semicolon

The inventor of the semicolon most likely didn’t envision emoticons, which use colons, hyphens, parentheses and semicolons to create winking, smiling and frowning faces. Although children and adults alike know what ;) and :-) mean, I’ll bet some are a bit fuzzy on how to actually use real semicolons in real sentences.

Professor Semicolon gave writers a slightly fancy punctuation mark. You do have to admit it’s a lovely little thing. Visually, it combines a period and a comma; as far as utility, it comes between them. Semicolons perform two main functions: they join ideas together, and they allow readers to take a medium-sized pause, especially when commas are nearby.

A period is an enforcer. It stops you cold. A comma is less severe. It lets you take a quick breath and then continue. When you mix the two together, though, shazam! A semicolon makes you stop and allows you to take a breath at the same time. Let’s look at these three punctuation marks in more detail. When you want to break the connection between ideas, use a period:

She devoured six donuts in one sitting. She regretted it later.

If you want to link the two thoughts, use a semicolon:

She devoured six donuts in one sitting; she regretted it later.

So, separate with a period; join with a semicolon. Now, you can’t put a comma between the two “she” sentences; that’s a comma splice. :( You could, however, add a conjunction such as “and” or “but” between the two complete sentences. Then you’re allowed to use a comma:

She devoured six donuts in one sitting, but she regretted it later.

You may also add certain words after a semicolon to smooth out the connection between the two sentences you’re joining. Examples are “however,” “indeed” and “on the other hand.” You could, for instance, write this:

She devoured six donuts in one sitting; however, she regretted it later.

Interlude to eat a donut or two. ;0

While we munch, two asides on punctuation. First, note the comma after “however” in the sentence above. It’s not mandatory, but I recommend one to help with readability. Second, be aware that if a quotation mark and a semicolon appear next to each other, the semicolon must go outside the quotation mark, as here:

She was known around town as “The Donut Devourer”; although this was a legitimate nickname, she preferred to be called Donna.

So how do you know which one to choose: period or semicolon? It’s up to you, the writer. Although semicolons lend an air of formality, try using them once in a while. And remember, a colon and a semicolon are not the same. No, of course they’re not. A colon indicates that both eyes of the emoticon are open. :) A semicolon indicates a wink. ;) Now for the real information you’ve been waiting for. A colon often introduces a list:

She munched on the following kinds of donuts: glazed, jelly, chocolate, powdered, cream puff and cinnamon.

Now it’s time to delve into simple and complex lists and their accompanying short and long pauses. Here, we get to choose between commas and semicolons. Commas are for regular, simple lists:

I invited my aunt, my uncle, and my grandma to see my new pet fish.

In this family-filled sentence, we take a short breath after each comma. Note that the comma after “uncle” is optional. Using the last comma in a series—called a serial comma—is a style choice, not a hard and fast rule. Read more here. (Add link to previous article.) If I want to add the names of these family members, though, this list becomes complex and we have to take two kinds of breaths: short ones with commas and longer ones with semicolons. We can’t stick with commas only; the sentence will become a jumble:

I invited my aunt, Betty, my uncle, Saul, and my grandma, Martha to see my new pet fish.

This is confusing—and punctuated atrociously! Let’s clear up this conundrum:

I invited my aunt, Betty; my uncle, Saul; and my grandma, Martha, to see my new pet fish.

Notice the last semicolon in this list of somewhat complicated items. Above, I told you that the last comma in a simple series, as in “I like a, b, and c,” is optional. The last semicolon in a complicated series is not optional, however. If you left out the semicolon after “Saul” in the sentence above, you’d end up with another mess:

I invited my aunt, Betty; my uncle, Saul and my grandma, Martha, to see my new pet fish.

So remember to put in that last semicolon, even if you don’t put the last comma in a simple series. Your readers will thank you for being clear. They may even send you a donut out of gratitude.

Now for some Criminal Sentences that misuse—or omit—our loyal friend the semicolon. Please fix them and send your rewrites to curiouscase@hotmail.com.

Criminal Sentence 1: A mailing can take many forms; letter, postcard, brochure.

Criminal Sentence 2: My cousin, Julie, Bob and my grandpa visited me last week. (Three people visited me.)

Criminal Sentence 3; Semicolons are used for two main purposes; to join sentences and to eliminate confusion when commas abound. (Look closely at this one.)

Criminal Sentence 4: We ate too many donuts, nevertheless we were still able to eat dinner.

Criminal Sentence 5: Her nickname was “Miss Semicolon;” she loved to wink.

Answers

Criminal Sentence 1: A mailing can take many forms: letter, postcard and brochure.

Criminal Sentence 2: My cousin, Julie; Bob; and my grandpa visited me last week.

Criminal Sentence 3: Semicolons are used for two main purposes: to join sentences and to eliminate confusion when commas abound.

Criminal Sentence 4: We ate too many donuts; nevertheless, we were still able to eat dinner.

Criminal Sentence 5: Her nickname was “Miss Semicolon”; she loved to wink.

Criminal Sentence 336: Microwaving the Kids

Our microwave broke and we had to buy this apostrophe-less replacement. Should I add the apostrophe after "kids"? What is Kenmore's excuse?

Criminal Sentence 335: I'm Losing My Site

This is from my kindergartner's homework instructions page:

"Site"=a place
"Sight"=vision

I think the teacher got distracted by the word "write."

Criminal Sentence 334: punctuation and capitalization dont matter

From the Comments section of an online article about the Oscar nominations:

"avatar was kinda boring for me haven't seen the hurt locker so cant say"

i know that texting lulls people into thinking that punctuation and capitalization dont matter i dont understand why people make no effort i did like the one correct apostrophe in this however the end

Poll Results 72

This was the question:

What's the best way to rewrite this sentence? "By leaving for school a few minutes earlier,
this might alleviate some of the congestion."

By leaving for school a few minutes earlier, 1 (0%) some of the congestion might be alleviated.
If students left for school a few minutes earlier, 27 (23%) some of the congestion might be alleviated.
Leaving for school a few minutes earlier might 78 (66%) alleviate some of the congestion.
The sentence doesn't need to be changed. 2 (1%)
None of the above. I can rewrite it a different way. 9 (7%)

Congrats to 23% of you. Let's break it down.
The first sentence is ungrammatical because "some of the congestion" is not leaving for school; students are.
The second sentence is the best choice because it is grammatical and it states who needs to leave earlier.
The third sentence would be my second choice. It is grammatical but no person is mentioned. I always advocate mentioning which person you're talking about.

I would be interested to hear from those of you who could rewrite the sentence in a different way.