GrammarPhile Blog

A reader recently wrote to our Ask the Grammar Experts service about how to reduce the use of multiple prepositional phrases in writing. We offer five tips below for doing just that. But first, let’s look at why multiple prepositional phrases can be problematic. Consider this sentence:

None of the reports about the company’s current performance compared with last year’s provided members of the board with an understanding of the reasons for the drastic decline in profits.

Below are some excerpts from several emails I’ve received just in the past week … all from different people:

We see a variety of law firm documents come through ProofreadNOW.com — marketing (client alerts, blog posts, attorney bios, practice area brochures, website copy), business development (RFP responses, pitches) and legal (briefs, pleadings). Some of the writing is excellent, and, well … some isn’t.

We’ve seen a spate of errors recently in the use of time-related modifiers such as former, current, presently, last and past. So we figured it’s about time we talked about time. 

When I was a teenager (in the Dark Ages), my younger sister was reading a book passage aloud to our mom and me. She came to a word she didn’t recognize, paused, then came out with “muh-LANK-o-lee filled her days.” Mom immediately burst into laughter while I was still trying to figure out what my sister was saying. The word was melancholy — not an easy one for a 12-year-old, even a well-read one, to figure out.

We’re only about halfway through the primaries, and I don’t know about you, but I’m politically exhausted. As an antidote to the regular assault of poisonous barbs and diatribes flying about at every turn, we offer a lighthearted look at some of the more notable typos and grammatical gaffes made by politicians past and present. 

In our recent quiz, the word choice that most respondents struggled with was this one:

Whether a majority of Republican voters [deem / deems] Donald Trump electable remains to be seen.

Deem is the correct answer, and, as promised, this week’s post explains why.

Thanks to everyone who entered our proofreading quiz last week. Congratulations to Piyush Bakshi, who was the first of five respondents to answer all 15 questions correctly (of 134 total respondents). For his proofreading prowess, Piyush wins a $25 Amazon gift card … a timely salute to National Proofreading Day on March 8.

Presidential primaries and caucuses were front and center this week on Super Tuesday. In that same spirit, we’ve decided to do a little polling too — in the form of a proofreading quiz. The format’s a little different than what we’ve done before, but the prize is the same: a $25 Amazon gift card for the person who submits the most correct answers. In the event of a tie, the earlier submission wins.

Many ProofreadNOW.com customers are former do-it-yourselfers, commonly citing at least one of the following reasons for not outsourcing their proofreading:

• We save money by doing it in-house. Outsourcing is way too expensive.
• We can turn documents around much more quickly in-house without wasting time waiting to get proofread documents back from an agency.
• Our style/subject matter/process is complicated. We need to keep our documents in-house for quality control, because no outside editor/proofreader could conform to our standards.