Awesome Grammar

PART I

PARTS OF SPEECH

Hold the Phone! Stuff You Need to Know

Humorist and grammarian Dave Barry once identified the parts of speech as the subject, the predator, the adjutant, the premonition, and the larynx. I think this is pretty funny, and I repeated it to one of my writing classes. To my horror, several people began writing it down.

All right, so you don’t need to know the names of every part of speech, and, if you think the concept is deadly, I understand. In fact, I’m not planning to cover all of them. Far from it. Why should you wade into the definition of a gerund, and do you really need to be told how nouns work? However, the information about the six most familiar parts of speech that I’ve included in this section should be part of everyone’s working knowledge. At least give each chapter a quick review: You might learn something, or discover you need to unlearn something you learned back when.

1

Verbs: Looking for Some Action

Verbs are of enormous importance because that’s, you should pardon the expression, where the action is. They can infuse your writing with strength and excitement. You need to take advantage of these hot spots by using your verbs correctly. By the same token, if you squander or misuse your verbs, your writing will suffer.

First of all, your verb tenses must be correct. Verbs in English, as in most languages, change their endings depending on who’s performing the action and whether the verb is something done in the past, present, or future. That’s a vast oversimplification: English has a lot of tenses. Here are just a few important ones using the verb to watch as an example:

Make Sure You Know the Correct Forms for Verb Tenses

If only all our verbs conjugated the way watch does! Alas, English is notorious for the irregularity of its verbs. If there’s even a chance that you don’t always use the right verb form, check your dictionary. Check it often. There is no excuse, in speaking or writing, for such substandard English as the following:

Mrs. Saunders says she done the work you wanted.

He come over yesterday to see my new gyrating spectroscope.

My nest egg has shrank with the stock market contractions.

When Describing an Event or Experience, Don’t Switch Tenses

This can happen when the writer gets excited about what’s going on:

Getting ready to scale the wall, Eleanor uncoiled the climbing rope, nearly 200 feet long. She put on her harness, then knotted the rope onto it. At last she begins her ascent.

Of course it should be began. This error is especially common in photo captions, where a writer starts out in the present, then slips into the past tense (because the whole thing actually happened yesterday or last month):

The president shares a light moment with the prime minister, who was wearing his country’s traditional headgear and robe.

It should be is wearing (and let us hope the president wasn’t laughing at the prime minister’s outfit).

Be Sure Tenses Are in the Proper Order

If two things happened, but one happened at a significantly earlier time than the other, your verb tenses must show this distinction:

No: She was every inch a queen, and was raised to be so.

Yes: She was every inch a queen and had been raised to be so. (The lady was raised before she became a queen.)

No: I learned that Meg’s husband died far from home in Pakistan.

Yes: I learned that Meg’s husband had died far from home in Pakistan. (His death happened first; the writer learned about it subsequently.)

Unvarying Truths: The Exception

However, if you’re writing in the past tense and refer to something that has always been and always will be the case, you should use the present tense:

Galileo was a follower of Copernicus, who stated that the earth revolves around the sun.

I reminded Miranda that it takes two to make an argument.

Don’t Use the Helping Verb Did if Have Works

No: Did you get your uniform in the mail already?

Yes: Have you gotten your uniform in the mail already?

No: Did Hector ask Amundson for a raise yet?

Yes: Has Hector asked Amundson for a raise yet?

Your clues are yet and already, which usually accompany this construction.

Learn to Use the Subjunctive Mood

The subjunctive verb form is increasingly rare today, but it shines up your writing nicely if you know how to use it. It can also be a weapon of minor destruction in ignorant hands: Using the subjunctive where it doesn’t belong spoils the impression you’re trying to give.

The chart on page 14 shows how the subjunctive looks. We’ll take the verb to be, which is often used in the subjunctive mood.

It’s the same with other verbs, though it shows only in he, she, and it (present): he take, she find, it carry, and the past imperfect, where to be is a helping verb: I were carrying, she were riding. You have my permission to think of that as another use of to be in the subjunctive and not to worry about the past imperfect.

It looks strange: We don’t say we be or Donald take in ordinary conversation. But this is now. The Elizabethans, Shakespeare, and his contemporaries high and low made frequent use of the subjunctive. Shakespeare wrote of his dark lady:

If snow be white, why then her breast are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

The Subjunctive in

Renaissance England

If she be not so to me

What care I how fair she be?

—Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Today, snow be and hairs be would be considered odd at best, if not wrong. We tend to use the subjunctive in the twenty-first century for just two reasons:

1. To express a condition contrary to fact:

If I were a wealthy man (but I’m not), I’d fly us to Bali.

If he were arriving tomorrow, we could go to the concert (but he’s not coming until next week).

My favorite brand of yogurt used to carry a note on the inner lid that said it tasted just as good as if the owner’s mother, Rose, were still making it as she had when he was a child. It gave me a happy feeling to see that subjunctive at breakfast—started my day off just right. To my dismay, the copy has changed and now reads as if Rose was making it herself. Sigh. Sic transit. Like the canary in the mine, my yogurt carton may herald the eventual demise of the subjunctive. But not yet. Stick with the subjunctive for conditions contrary to fact. It adds a shade of meaning by clearly communicating that something isn’t true. As opposed, say, to a simple condition:

If Ulrike was coming, he said he’d arrange to get the day off.

Here’s another, as sung by Paul McCartney:

I would be sad if our new love was in vain.

In these cases, the outcome is simply unknown—maybe this will happen, maybe not. In this case, which is not contrary to fact, you don’t use the subjunctive. If you do, you’ll sound like a self-important smarty-pants (like people who say PROHCESS-EEZ, which is 100-percent incorrect) to people who know better.

Here’s a past condition contrary to fact resulting in a mistake: No: If he would have told me (but he didn’t), I would have taken him off that bus. No: If she would have worked a full day (which she didn’t), I would have paid her for a full day.

It should be simply If he had and If she had. I think perhaps people mistake the if...would have... construction as a subjunctive form. I see and hear it, and I cringe. And I’m not the only one, so please don’t do it.

While I’m on the subject, never, ever say would of. There is no such construction. It’s would have. If you’re tempted, remember that past tenses are created with the help, if they need help, of the verb to have: She has whistled, she had whistled, she will have whistled. Of, on the other hand, obviously isn’t even a verb. No (no, no!): If you had asked, I would of lent you my hat rack.

Yes: If you had asked, I would have lent you my hat rack.

The same goes for should of: There is simply no such construction.

2. With requests, suggestions, or demands:

I ask that you be dignified and refrain from laughing during the ceremony. I also ask that Shelley refrain if possible from weeping.

Roger recommended that Larry be on hand to launch the catboat.

The evil pirate king commanded that Davy walk the plank.

That’s it for the subjunctive these days: for a condition contrary to fact, and with verbs of requesting or demanding.

Try Not to Split the Infinitive Form of a Verb

Some people are frightened by infinitives in the abstract, and I don’t blame them. If you don’t know what it is, how will you know if you’ve split one? Happily, there’s nothing mysterious about it. Simply put, an infinitive is the to form of a verb: to handle, to help, to wander. The notion that the two words of an infinitive should not be parted seems to have originated in the 19th century when somebody noticed that in Latin the infinitive is expressed as one word: amare (to love), or esse (to be). For some reason eager to emulate the construction of a language that had been dead for centuries, influential grammarians proceeded to declare that splitting the infinitive constituted a no-no in English as well.

What’s the Problem?

While we’re on the subject: Certain words derived from Latin and ending in is form plurals by changing the is to es:

The plural is pronounced with a long e: base-eez. Please note that process does not end in is. Nobody likes a pseudo-academic, especially one who’s wrong.

Here’s an example of a split that could actually cause confusion:

Jerry asked us to more carefully and specifically than in the past plan for a hostile takeover.

It’s not nice to fool your readers, and you just might do it with this sentence because the two halves of the infinitive, to and plan, are so widely separated that someone reading casually could mistake plan for a noun. Right? Somebody made a plan in the past for a takeover. That kind of split is worth mending.

That said, many grammatical blunders are worse than a split infinitive, especially when the two halves of the verb aren’t widely separated:

She is inclined to sharply correct other people’s children.

It’s naïve to truly believe in magic.

Experts all agree there’s nothing wrong with such little splits, especially in cases where it would be difficult to put the word elsewhere:

I asked Gina to simply ignore the sign for the time being.

To ignore simply the sign? To ignore the sign simply? And asked Gina simply to ignore is ambiguous, too: Did I ask her simply, or was the ignoring simple? The sentence works best with simply splitting the infinitive, as you’d surely do in conversation.

Now here comes the big however. It seems that many people learned the rule about not splitting infinitives. They learned it so well I picture the type of teaching that’s accompanied by whacks of the ruler. This makes them very good at identifying splits and thinking less of the people who commit what to them is a huge and yucky error. These people tend to be older and in a position of authority. Do you see where I’m heading with this?

I won’t forbid you to split the infinitive, especially in cases such as the examples here, but I will tell you this: I myself absolutely refuse to do it. Why risk offending someone important? This is particularly true when you are writing to a large audience. Who knows who’ll read, see the split, and ignore everything you’re trying to say?

So I relocate:

She’s inclined to correct other people’s children sharply.

Or rewrite:

Some people truly believe in magic; I think that’s naïve.

Or remove the splitter. Did simply really add anything to this sentence?

I asked Gina to ignore the sign for the time being.

I operate with a simple philosophy: I believe in offending the smallest number of people as infrequently as possible. This informs much of my writing. If enough people think something is an error, I’m not going near it. A cowardly but effective strategy, it works for me and it’ll work for you.

Use the Passive Voice Sparingly

Verbs that take objects have two forms, or voices: active and passive. Here’s the active voice of a few common verbs:

The passive voice is formed by any form of the verb to be plus the past tense of the verb:

Using the passive voice of a verb, we say It is done, A good time was had, The food will be eaten, The house had been watched. I’m sure you’re familiar with the