GrammarPhile Blog

… at least in some parts of the country. In other parts, it sprang some time ago. Or is it “sprung some time ago”?

Spring the verb behaves in much the same way as spring the season — irregularly. Regular verbs march in lockstep, all forming their simple past tense by tacking on the easily remembered “ed” at the end. Some examples are laugh (laughed), cough (coughed) and shovel (shoveled).

But irregular verbs are misfits. They march to the beat of their own drum, using whatever past-tense form they feel like. Examples include drink (drank), begin (began) and choose (chose). The lack of any rhyme or reason for their behavior makes application of a rule difficult. That’s why we get questions like “Is it sprang or sprung?”

Thanks to everyone who entered our proofreading quiz last week. Congratulations to Barb Poole, who submitted both the first and the winning entry, missing just four of the 57 errors — even some of the sneaky ones.

The two mistakes that tripped up most people both appeared in paragraph 4: “airways” and “vaccine.” Regarding the first, we have only one airway, which is the area in the throat through which air passes to and from the lungs. The second word should be “vaccination.” Vaccine is the product; vaccination is the process. Consumers can’t “get” a vaccine other than through vaccination, so “vaccination” is the correct term here.

Now for the rest of the answers …

It’s standard testing time for many schools. But why should students have all the fun? In honor of National Grammar Day on March 4 and National Proofreading Day on March 8, we’re giving you the opportunity to assess your proofreading skills with a little quiz.

We’ve laced the five numbered paragraphs below with errors, some obvious and some a bit sneaky. But they’re all unequivocally wrong. Acceptable variations — such as words with different spellings (e.g., advisor, adviser) or sentences that could be punctuated multiple ways — are not included here.

The figures in parentheses indicate the number of mistakes in each paragraph. Indicate how you would correct the following by providing a corrected version, or do like our editors do and use Word’s Track Changes and Comments features:

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we talked about ways you can improve the content of your writing. This final installment offers guidance on fine-tuning what you’ve written.