In the interest of being concise, is it acceptable to use “Following is a complete list of tags...” instead of “The following is a complete list of tags...”
3 comments • Posted in Grammar
I was speaking to my administrator and explaining how I met another person in our company. I said “her and I traveled to Kansas together”. She stopped me and said it should be “she and I traveled to Kansas together”. I feel both were appropriate, but she disagreed. Could we both be correct?
22 comments • Posted in Grammar
There was a pen and three pencils on the table
or
There were a pen and three pencils on the table.
In this example, the singular noun must precede the plural noun. Which verb is the correct one?
11 comments • Posted in Grammar
Consider a scenario where a bloodstain was discovered and analyzed. It was determined the blood came from a single source. Joe is not the source of the blood. Jack is not the source of the blood. Which of the following statements is correct and why? Joe and Jack are excluded as SOURCES of the blood. Joe and Jack are excluded as THE SOURCE of the blood.
4 comments • Posted in Grammar
“His being chosen as a headmaster have surprised us.”
Is the sentence above right? Do I have to change the gerund to:
“His having been chosen as a headmaster have surprised us.”
6 comments • Posted in Grammar
When one has rendered a female animal unable to bear young, one spays the animal. If it happened last week, the animal was spayed. Over and over, including in vets’ offices, I have seen references to “getting an animal spade,” and even worse, “We had our cat spaded.” I don’t know what that would be: Hit over the head with a small shovel-like object?
2 comments • Posted in Grammar
I’d love to know your take on the plural form of sense of humour. Is it sense of humour or senses of humour?
4 comments • Posted in Grammar
In the following sentence, would “me” or “myself” be correct and why?
Serious gardeners like my wife and me/myself always use organic fertilizer.
Since the person talking is also a gardener and has referred to himself once already in the sentence as being in the group serious gardeners (”we gardeners”), it seems as if he should use “myself” in the reflexive. Yet this sounds wrong.
Please help! The horrid trend of using “myself” in place of “me” is starting to wear me down and confuse me.
25 comments • Posted in Grammar
I’m stuck on the correct use of “un-” (as in “reverse action”) and “de-”. Specifically, I want to write that a student should change an incorrectly capitalized word to the lower case. Should he “uncapitalize” it or “decapitalize” it? It’s true that the word should be uncapitalized, but since he incorrectly capitalized it in the first place, must he now decapitalize it?
5 comments • Posted in Grammar
“It has a great construction” sets my teeth on edge every time a writer I work with uses the phrase in written English. Is this correct/standard usage? It sounds so wrong to me, but I can’t point to the rule it violates.
Am I simply biased against... A perfectly acceptable construction?
These sound/seem so wrong:. My t-shirt has a durable cotton construction.
That house has a great construction.
With a construction of 100% cotton, her dress...
I think you omit the indefinite article.
4 comments • Posted in Grammar
When using the word prohibits... which is correct?
...which prohibits fences 4 ft in height from being erected ... or ...which prohibits fences 4 ft in height to be erected
...which prohibits any fence from being constructed... or ...which prohibits any fence to be constructed
2 comments • Posted in Grammar
Apart from the fact that convention is clearly “Table of Contents”, is there a grammatical reasoning for “Table of Content” vs “Table of Contents”?
I guess it comes down to whether the noun “content” is one that can be counted, i.e. several contents, or not.
My instinct is that in fact, content is not an enumerable noun, i.e. it should be Table of Content. But does that mean that MS Word, LaTeX and all other Desktop Publishers out there are just wrong?
YD
19 comments • Posted in Grammar
Good Day All,
I live in Trinidad and Tobago and for the last 46 years there’s been an argument about a point of grammar in our National Anthem. The last line is (what we learn in kindergarden):
“Here every creed and race FIND an equal place”
Some say this is grammatically correct. Others argue that it should be, “Here every creed and race FINDS an equal place”. Thousands of Letters to the Editor have been written arguing about this issue. Anyone care to help us solve this dilemma?
8 comments • Posted in Grammar
On the DC Metro, we are told: “The next stop will be X”.
When will the next stop be x?
I’m pretty sure the next stop *is* X!
3 comments • Posted in Grammar
What about proper nouns as in team mascots? Our school mascot is a Grizzly. Would students be Grizzlies or Grizzlys? Since it’s a school’s mascot I’d like for it to be correct, but for the last 20 years it’s been spelled Grizzlies. I believe that spelling to be incorrect. Academic input please:o)
12 comments • Posted in Grammar
I heard an ad on the radio recently for a company that performs medical procedures. At the end they said “We accept all major insurances.” That didn’t sound quite right to me, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard the plural of the word “insurance”. If it were me, I would’ve said “We accept all major insurance plans.” Am I right that there is no plural form of the word?
On a related note, I’ve heard, mostly on TV news shows, “damages” a lot. I know that the word exists, meaning a monetary judgement awarded by a court, but they used it when they meant “damage”. For example, “Due to the ice storm, many damages were done to homes,” or “The car suffered severe damages from the accident.” This is improper usage, correct?
26 comments • Posted in Grammar
I have a feeling I’ll look at this again in a while and find the answer screamingly obvious. Do these parallel the form of “independent” exactly? As “independence of” seems really wrong, though “independent of” seems ok. I’m confused.
8 comments • Posted in Grammar
I heard this sentence on radio or TV and while it seems correct grammatically, I believe the verb be is in the subjunctive mode, somehow it did not feel colloquial. Any comments?
9 comments • Posted in Grammar
What is an infinitive without “to”?
He need not wait. or He needs not wait.
Can you explain more about this?
5 comments • Posted in Grammar
In one of the discussions here, Brian W. tells me that the following sentence is wrong:
“This is one of the most common errors people make…”
He says it should be: “One of the more common…”
He explains:
Proper use of ‘most’ requires the size of the set in which the subject is a member: “one of the 10 most.” Without a numeric qualifier, all but the last are potentially included in the set “one of the most.” That (unfortunately) makes it as meaningful as “up to 10… or more!”
Now, is this a grammatical issue or stylistic issue? I see “one of the most” being used quite often.
As a side note, in Japanese, “one of the most” would be an oxymoron because the concept of “most” implies that it is at the top of the list, that is, there is only one thing that could be “most” or “best”. I remember feeling awkward about the phrase “one of the most” when I was first learning English.
24 comments • Posted in Grammar
