Me, Myself, and I

I know, I know. GrammarTip harps on the use of pronouns too much. But the trouble is, we keep hearing people who should know better - newscasters, politicians, celebrities - butchering them to a fare-thee-well. We ran these tips months ago, but it's summer vacation time, plus people keep making the same mistakes. So until the world gets it, we'll keep at it, hoping that someday all three of us--me, myself, and I--can live in pronoun peace.

IS IT I or IS IT ME: Linking up.
Guideline. Favor the subjective case form for pronouns that follow linking verbs, but don't force the issue in conversation.

• It was they who initiated the idea of holding the water ski tournament in Alberta next year. (They is in the subjective case because it follows the linking verb was.)
• It is we who must take the responsibility for the injuries we suffered when we jumped off Frye's Leap. (We is in the subjective case because it follows the linking verb is.)
  But:
• If anyone can vouch for Talullah's dependability, it's me. (I is technically correct, but me is the natural choice in conversation and is considered acceptable in all but the most formal writing situations.)

MYSELF or ME. Beware of self-indulgence.
Guideline. Confine your use of pronouns ending in -self to those situations in which the -self forms are appropriate. Don't fall victim to the misguided assumption that "myself" is a more elegant way of saying "I" or "me."

• Sassafras and I would love to judge this year's slam-dunk contest. (There is no need for myself; I is the proper choice.)
• We would like to invite Mortimer and you to travel with us next spring to Two Egg. (There is no need for yourself; you is the proper choice.)
• Q: How are you? A: Fine, and you? (NEVER answer "Fine, and yourself?" It is less than substandard English. It is like answering, "Fine, and how is yourself?" And that sounds flakey.)

A closer look. There are two legitimate uses of pronouns that end in -self. One is for emphasis. The other is with reflexive verbs.

Emphasis

• I myself will be driving the towboat for the slalom competition. (Following I with myself emphasizes that the speaker intends to take full responsibility for the driving.)
• Matilda herself will write the acceptance speech. (No speechwriters need apply for the job.)
  
  Reflexive Verbs
• The children amused themselves by barefoot skiing and by skiing backwards. (Themselves is the object of amused [a reflexive verb] and refers back to children.)
• Lucius has a habit of causing injury to himself whenever he starts skiing from the beach. (Himself is the object of the preposition to, and refers back to Lucius.)
• I nearly killed myself when I hit the wake at 75 mph. (Myself is the object of the verb killed and refers back to I.)
  
  Possible exception:
• As for myself, the plans for the airplane trip are still up in the air. (Me is probably the better choice, but myself could be defended on the grounds that the writer or speaker wants to emphasize the first-person pronoun and has elected to omit me.)

Partial source: Grammar for Smart People by Barry Tarshis.

Headline Style -- Read All About It!

If you're in the newspaper business, you know how to properly capitalize headlines. But people writing white papers, press releases, brochures, and even résumés need to know what's right and what's wrong in order to retain the respect and admiration, to say nothing of the trust, of their readers. So take note!

Most style guides call for lower-casing prepositions, articles, and many conjunctions. But there are lots of extenuating circumstances that call for uppercasing those words sometimes. Read on, but first:

- A preposition is a word that could describe your relationship to a cloud: you're in the cloud, under the cloud, above the cloud, around the cloud, by the cloud, before the cloud, after the cloud. These italicized words are prepositions.
- The articles are the, a, and an -- they point out things: the boy, a man.
- Conjunctions join things: and, or, nor, while, etc.

The Chicago Manual of Style says to always capitalize the first and last words of a headline, no matter what. Lowercase prepositions, regardless of length, except when they are stressed (as through in A River Runs Through It), are used adverbially or adjectivally (as up in Look Up, down in Turn Down, on in The On Button, etc.), are used as conjunctions (such as before in Look Before You Leap), or are part of a Latin expression used adjectivally or adverbially (e.g., De Facto, In Vitro, etc.). CMS specifies lowercasing the conjunctions and, but, for, or, nor. Always lowercase to and as.

Examples:

• Mnemonics That Work Are Better Than Rules That Don't
• Singing While You Work
• A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing (is is a verb, and verbs in headlines are always capped)
• The Water Skier as Bride
• Tired but Happy
• Traveling with Bosco, but A Good Dog to Travel With
• Progress in In Vitro Fertilization
• Voting For and Against the Tennis Court Proposal

The Gregg Reference Manual says to capitalize all words with four or more letters, including four-letter-plus prepositions. You might find this rule more attractive especially with regards to long prepositions such as through and multisyllabic prepositions such as around and underneath.

Standard newspaper rules call for capitalizing the first word in every line of a column headline that is forced to wrap onto two or more lines. For example,
Federal Tax
Dollars Wasted
In "Big Dig" Fiasco

Always refer to your chosen style guide and be consistent.

Word Test -- What does YOUR last name mean?

Okay, so your last name is Farmer. Duh. But what if your last name is Crocker? Some long-lost ancestor was into making pottery crocks. Read on - the list gets more interesting.

1. cooper: (a) one that makes or repairs wooden utensils; (b) one that makes or repairs book bindings; (c) one that makes or repairs wooden casks or tubs; (d) a keeper of records.

2. chandler: (a) a maker or seller of tallow or wax candles and usually soap; (b) a collector of natural dyes, especially yellow; (c) a person who cans food; (d) an instructor.

3. tinker: (a) a silverworker; (b) a usually itinerant mender of household utensils; (c) a person who makes knives and scissors; (d) none of the above.

4. farrier: (a) a person who shoes horses; (b) a person who collects and sells feathers (for bedding); (c) a person who raises and trains falcons to hunt wild game; (d) a maker of gloves.

5. smith: (a) a barrelmaker; (b) a wheel maker; (c) a worker in metals; (d) a seller of metal goods.

6. currier: (a) one that dresses furs; (b) a glassworker; (c) a person who shoes horses; (d) one who cleans the coat of a horse.

7. wainwright: (a) a maker and repairer of wagons; (b) a maker and repairer of boats; (c) a maker and repairer of farm equipment, especially plows; (d) one who dowses for water.

8. packman: (a) thief; (b) peddler; (c) minstrel; (d) musician.

9. draper: (a) a man who guides a plow; (b) a man who operates a loom; (c) one who operates a saw mill, especially a water-powered mill; (d) a dealer in cloth and sometimes also in clothing and dry goods.

10. clark: (a) cartmaker; (b) soldier; (c) lawyer; (d) clerk.

 

To see the answers, click here.

While - Don't Overuse It!

While is a conjunction primarily. It has overflowed its primary meaning, during the time that, into realms that belong to although, whereas, and, and the semicolon without connective.

• Thirty-five of the fifty female skiers made their way through the course, while only thirty of the fifty male skiers completed it.
  
• Sixteen of the female skiers were American, while nine were Australian.

The first while plainly means whereas (= but by contrast); the second means nothing (sixteen were American; nine were Australian).

• He said his daughter could jump, while (should be "and") his son and nephew could slalom.
  (should be "although") born right-handed, he had learned to ski 'right-footed.' (should be "and") in the next decade this heavy figure is expected to double. (should be "and") two popular prizes will be given on the last day.
• He recalled that while
• In the past six years alone college enrollment has jumped 45 percent, while
• Cash prizes will be presented the first day of the show, while

What is worth noting about these specimens is that the facts linked with while belong to times expressly stated to be different. To write that something happened today while something else happened ten years ago is to work hard at achieving contradiction.

Ideally, the conjunction while should be restricted to the linking of simultaneous occurrences in a situation where simultaneity has a point.

• Then it is the brave man who chooses, while the coward stands aside.

No writer, surely, can do himself harm by declining to use it otherwise. Yet as things stand, it is impossible to make much headway against such a use as

• While there have been more than 100 callers soliciting in this area, it has not been possible to call on everyone.

This while is a concessive that means although, and its claim to grudging acceptance is that it entails no temporal clash between facts. To tolerate while as a link between events patently not simultaneous is to misapply tolerance:

• In the daytime he's star of his own show, while at night he becomes the general announcer on the nationwide talk show.

The mind accustomed to ignoring what while means will soon not respond to its true meaning in One idles while the other works.

Test Your Vocabulary

Variety of Garden Words

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With prose that sells, and no misspells, and smart quotes all in a row.

So how's your green thumb today?

Test your knowledge of these garden vocabulary words. You'll find the answers at the bottom of the post. No cheating allowed!

1. beneficials: (a) the basic chemicals necessary for plant life, being nitrogen, phosphorous, and iron; (b) service plants that assist other plants in healthy growth; (c) organisms (as ladybugs, lacewings, and bacteria) that feed on or parasitize pests of crops, gardens, and turf; (d) British: the receipts of a well-tended vegetable garden.

2. bower: (a) a shelter (as in a garden) made with tree boughs or vines twined together; (b) a garden plant (Brassica oleracea botrytis) related to the mushroom that grows in a characteristic bent low shape; (c) a garden or park walk bordered by trees or bushes; (d) British: a frog.

3. knot garden: (a) a garden of hemp weeds; (b) an elaborately designed garden especially of flowers or herbs; (c) a garden specially planted in the rotted stump of a felled tree; (d) a garden in which thistles are allowed to thrive in order to crowd out other, more prolific weed forms.

4. marrowfat: (a) a fungal disease attacking primarily tomatoes; (b) the liquid produced from the squeezing of petunia leaves, valued for its medicinal qualities; (c) any of several wrinkled-seeded garden peas; (d) capitalized: the gardener in Dickens' Great Expectations.

5. parterre: (a) a scoop-shaped or flat-bladed garden tool for taking up and setting small plants; (b) a maze (as in a garden) formed by paths separated by high hedges; (c) an ornamental garden with paths between the beds; (d) a trench in the earth made by a plow.

6. rockery: (a) a garden swing; (b) a quarry; (c) a breeding ground or haunt especially of gregarious birds or mammals (as penguins or seals); (d) British: a rock garden.

7. Gethsemane: (a) the garden outside Jerusalem mentioned in Mark 14 as the scene of the agony and arrest of Jesus; (b) the Roman god of gardening; (c) a legendary garden at the western extremity of the world producing golden apples; (d) the garden where according to the account in Genesis Adam and Eve first lived.

8. boll: (a) to take unawares; (b) the pod or capsule of a plant (as cotton); (c) the first leaf of a potato plant forming a protective sheath about the plumule; (d) a usually glazed printed cotton fabric.

9. determinate: (a) detrimental; (b) characterized by growth in which the fruit show significant resistance to disease; (c) an old variety which has been maintained either because it has appealing attributes like extra large size, unusual coloring, special connoisseur qualities, or because of family sentimental reasons; (d) characterized by growth in which the main stem ends in an inflorescence and stops growing with only branches from the main stem having further and similarly restricted growth.

10. refugium: (a) the state of denial with regard to global warming; (b) an area of relatively unaltered climate that is inhabited by plants and animals during a period of continental climatic change (as a glaciation) and remains as a center of relict forms from which a new dispersion and speciation may take place after climatic readjustment; (c) the garden area of a monastery or nunnery; (d) a planting or growth of shrubs for the purpose of blocking access to something, as a patio edge or a rooftop garden edge.

 

 

Answers: 1:c 2:a 3:b 4:c 5:c 6:d 7:a 8:b 9:d 10:b

 

Rate Yourself:

• 1 to 2 correct: Can't even grow a ch-ch-ch-chia pet.  
• 3 to 5 correct: Petunias...maybe.
• 6 to 7 correct: You can probably manage two varieties of tomatoes.
• 8 to 9 correct: Moving up to roses.
• All 10 correct: Neighbors voted your lawn the lawn of the week again.

Horrible Homonyms: What Your Spell Checker Won't Tell You

The following post is by guest blogger, Tom Drinkard. Tom challenges all of us to see how well our spell checkers work.

~~~~~~~~~

Homonyms are devilish things.  They are, of course, words that sound alike—and may even be spelled alike—but have totally different meanings.

For a writer, they can be like poisonous vipers.  Misuse of a homonym can ruin an otherwise literate document.  A reader, noticing homonym errors, may simply stop reading.  Whether in business documents, fiction or personal correspondence, a poorly chosen word—quite frequently a homonym—can be deadly.

But, a writer may say, “My word processor has an excellent built in spell-checker.” Good, but consider the following fictional story from WWI.  How many homonym errors do you spot?

Treat this as a test, and then grade your score at the end of the article.  Copy/paste the story and run it through your word processing program for a quick spell cheque  (bet your software found that one).  How many of the errors did your program find? 

~~~~~~~~~

Major General Wytheby-Foster stood in the lea of his squadron’s hanger, sheltering from the vicious wind. 

His aid stood nervously by, watching as his superior officer checked the fabric of each wing of every biplane. The general’s meticulous inspection had the affect of making the aid remember one of his boss’ guiding principals, “Check everything twice.”

All night long, the general had poured over the plans for today’s operation.  With the terrible weather, an ariel attack on the gorilla bases was virtually a case of the old saw, “Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t.”  Was it reasonable to send his fliers up with the wind roaring and lightening ripping the skies? Wytheby-Foster asked himself again and again.

He wasn’t a man who was phased by criticism.  He had personally led squadrons of warplanes into direct battle and, on occasion, had participated in strategic faints to draw the enemy into traps. It was his flare for unconventional, but successful tactics, which had earned him his stars. Catching the enemy unawares was his fort.  Today appeared to be the right time for audacity.  Weather that was barely fit for flying augered well for surprise. If his squadrons flue today, the enemy would be totally off-guard.  If he ignored the opportunity, it would be a gaff, a huge waste of a military advantage.  Wytheby-Foster could not foregoe this chance.

“Brixby, form the troops.” He said to his aid.  This was the queue to assemble the flyers in formation for his pre-mission address. 

Once the flyers and their crews were in formation and the general had given them their orders, he told them to take care of themselves above all, he said, “I don’t want you to hesitate to bale out if necessary. You are too important to your families and the Air Service.  Above all, come home.  I want to complement all of you on you’re courage, but don’t sacrifice yourself on the alter of unnecessary daring-do.”

“Now go to your plains and, for your old commander, once you’ve begun your assent, give me a wave from your cockpit.  Godspeed, gentlemen, we cannot afford to loose any of you,” he said as he concluded his remarks.

~~~~~~~~~

How many homonym errors did your computer spot?  How many did you spot that the spell-checker missed?

19 to 24	Excellent
13 to 18	Not bad, use your dictionary frequently
8 to 12	Have another proofreader look at the text before publishing
Less than 8	Some excellent homonym-finder software is available

Click here to see the errors!

 

Tom Drinkard is the lead editor for Pinnacle Editing and a writer.

Avoid Confusing Words When Writing for Business

The goal of this week's post is to help you become a better business writer. The better your writing, the greater your chances of success. It's just a fact of life. Sure, there are some exceptions to every rule. But why not better your chances by avoiding the following common confusions?

So; so that. So as a conjunction means "therefore"; so that means "in order that."

• The work is now finished, so you can all go home.
• Please finish what you are doing so that we can all go home.

Individual; party; person; people. Use individual to refer to someone whom you wish to distinguish from a larger group of people.

• We wish to honor those individuals who had the courage to serve their country in its time of great need.

Use party only to refer to someone involved in a legal proceeding.

• All the parties to the original agreement must sign the attached amendment.

Use person to refer to a human being in all other contexts.

• Please tell me the name of the person in charge of your water ski tournament.

If reference is made to more than one person, the term people usually sounds more natural than the plural form persons. In any event, always use people when referring to a large group.

• If you like, I can send you a list of all the people in our club who will be skiing in the tournament.

Doubt that; doubt whether. Use doubt that in negative statements and in questions. Use doubt whether in all other cases.

• We do not doubt that she is capable. (Negative statement.)
• Does anyone doubt that the check was mailed? (Question.)
• I doubt whether I can go.

Everyday; every day. As one word, everyday is an adjective. Don't use it for each day.

• You'll soon master the everyday (ordinary) routine of the job.
• He has skied every day (each day) this week.

Fiscal; financial. The adjective fiscal (as in fiscal year or FY) can be used to refer to all types of financial matters--those of governments and private businesses. However, with the exception of fiscal year, it is better to use fiscal only in connection with government matters and to use financial in all other situations.

How to Adapt Your Writing Style to Your Business

The following is a guest post written by Kyle Simpson.

When you got your bachelor’s in English, everyone told you how lucky you were to have a degree that would help you in any field you chose to work in, from corporate marketing to communications to service writing for an automotive shop.  But now that you’ve started your professional life, you’re having trouble adapting the lessons you learned from classical literature and poetry classes to practical purposes.  After all, how does penning a sonnet relate to organizing a marketing campaign for dog kibble?  However, having a strong grasp of the mechanics of the English language (spelling, grammar, vocabulary, structure) can only help you in any area where writing and communicating (or even thinking and organizing) are required.  You just have to work at it.

1. Write for your audience.  The first thing you’ll want to do is tailor your writing to the business you’re in.  For example, writing a service manual for a vacuum cleaner doesn’t exactly call for flowery prose (“Attach the hose with the utmost attention to detail, ensuring that all parts go together like cake and ice cream” will probably leave customers scratching their heads – and you out of a job). 
2. Format properly.  Every position is going to call for a specific style, so do whatever you can to learn the format as quickly as possible.  Advertising, marketing, and press releases all require completely different types of writing (even though they’re closely related fields), and you’re going to stand a lot better chance of excelling at your job if your writing is versatile. 
3. Be smart.  Believe it or not, there is a certain amount of logic involved.  If you want to run a successful ad campaign, you need to learn how to influence people in a subtle manner, whereas a press release is the very simple conveyance of information, largely unembellished.  You will benefit a lot more from learning how to say what you want if you understand the reasoning behind it.
4. Never stop learning.  Chances are, you’re not going to write the definitive novel of your generation, or get the dream job working in a publishing house or writing literary reviews for a well-known magazine.  It’s much more likely that you’ll take a paying job wherever you can get it.
5. Have fun!  You can still use your writing skills to your advantage and enjoy whatever career you pursue.  And you’ll find that pushing yourself to learn a style that is not familiar to you will present not only difficulties, but rewards.  There is nothing more fulfilling than flexing your mind in a new and challenging way…and succeeding.

The main thing to keep in mind is that confidence is the key.  If you don’t believe you can master a particular style of writing, you’ve already lost the battle.  People don’t like to change, but we are, by nature, adaptable creatures, and teaching yourself to think and express your ideas in new ways can be as easy or as hard as you make it.  The truth is, being flexible will not only make your job easier, it will allow you more opportunities in the future.  And if you are writing that novel or blogging in your spare time, every technique you pick up will allow you a greater range of expression and help you to hone your individual style.

Kyle Simpson writes for Medical Billing and Coding Certification, where you can find more information about a career and training in the medical field.

 

Fun with Adverbs

Let's spend some time this week on parts of speech. This post is on the adverb. The fun is in getting them right, and, if your personality is such, helping others with their adverbs.

An adverb is a word used to modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. An adverb can also modify an entire sentence, as in Regrettably, my opponent won the slalom competition.

Almost all words that end in ly are adverbs (quickly, largely), but some are not (friendly and leisurely are adjectives, though the latter is correct, if awkward, as an adverb too). Many common adverbs do not end in ly (very, quite), and some of these are adjectives as well as adverbs (better, long) and may require a hyphen joining them to the word they modify to prevent misreading. Often a word that is usually a preposition becomes an adverb, as in Used-car buyers like to trade up, in which up modifies the verb trade rather than acting as a preposition.

Adverbs are often misused as adjectives, as in I feel badly. Adverbs are also often used when adjectival forms might be better, e.g. first...second vs. firstly...secondly.

Adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses are so called not because they contain adverbs—often they do not—but because they function as adverbs. He swore when shaving and sang while he showered contains the adverbial phrase when shaving, modifying swore, and the adverbial phrase while he showered, modifying sang. Since swore and sang are verbs, the modifying phrase and clause are considered adverbial.

A conjunctive adverb is one used to join clauses or to connect the thought of a sentence to the preceding sentence. In She made the first three buoys; however, she crashed before the end of the course, the adverb however is conjunctive. In However, she didn't win the tournament, the adverb However connects the thought of the sentence to that of some preceding sentence and thus is conjunctive. It is also a sentence modifier.

Now - go have fun writing your own adverbial phrases!

Misused Words

Most of us are prone to misuse words - some of us more than others. Whether in public speech, or in heated tête-à-tête, we panic and forget how a word is used. Don't despair—it happens to the best of us. Sometimes we're confused for just a fleeting moment: How many readers recall an incumbent U.S. president, speaking at his party's convention on live television, confusing Hubert Humphrey with Horatio Hornblower? Other times we're confused for a lifetime. 

Consider the word Frankenstein. In 1818 a young woman prodigy named Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (wife of the poet in today's Aside) published a horror story called Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, about a German student, Frankenstein, who fabricated a monster that ultimately became the agent of his creator's destruction. The aptness of the fable and of the foreign-sounding name popularized the plot and notion among the many who never read the classic novel. For decades it was therefore felt necessary to correct those who thought that Frankenstein was the monster ("What are you going to be on Halloween?" "Ooooh. I'm dressing up as ... Frankenstein!" "Um, no, you silly, you're dressing up as Frankenstein's monster." "Oh, yeah.").

In any direct reference to the story itself, this correction is still in order. But in alluding to situations in which the creature undoes the creator—e.g., man and his machines—it seems permissible to many writers to transfer the maker's proper name to his invention. The change follows the natural course of acceptance. Thus a mackintosh (not the computer), a Ford, a silhouette—to say nothing of a Rembrandt, a Malaprop, or a sandwich—are familiar extensions that would encourage legitimizing a Frankenstein, and not just by yielding spinelessly to a common misunderstanding.

Here are some additional commonly misused words:

• honed/homed: as in "We honed [read: homed] in on the solution at our staff meeting"
• climactic/climatic: weather changes are climatic, a Big Poppy walk-off grand slam is always climactic
• capitol/capital: the capitol often has a gold domed roof, and it is always in the capital city, and you write the name of the capital with a leading capital letter, as in "Carson City" or "Pierre"

What commonly misused words bug you?