GrammarPhile Blog

One word or two? That question comes up frequently, especially with respect to “A” words: Ahold or a hold? Awhile or a while? Alot or a lot? Alright or all right? Consider this sentence:

Thanks to everyone who took our quiz in honor of National Punctuation Day last week. Congratulations to our winner, Samir Hafza, who gets a $25 Amazon gift card.

In honor of National Punctuation Day today (really!), we’re giving you the opportunity to test your proofreading knowledge with a little quiz. In addition to punctuation, it covers grammar, clarity, accuracy and many other errors we’ve talked about in this blog.

The five numbered paragraphs below contain numerous errors (indicated in parentheses at the end of each paragraph). All are unequivocally wrong. Acceptable variations — such as words with different spellings (e.g., advisor, adviser) or sentences that could be punctuated correctly multiple ways — are not included.

Have you ever wanted to look up how to spell a word but couldn’t find it because you didn’t know how to spell it? That’s the same kind of problem many people have with this week’s topic: using possessives with gerunds. When you don’t know what to call the terms, how can you easily find guidance related to them?

Anyone old enough to remember the television series “Dragnet” no doubt remembers the title of today’s post as Jack Friday’s famous catch phrase. Only it wasn’t. He never uttered those exact words in any episode, although he commonly said, “All we want [or “know”] are the facts, ma’am.” Nor was his name Jack Friday. It was Joe Friday, played by Jack Webb.

Alison watched her son drive off through the window.

David waited patiently behind a teenager with baggy jeans carrying a full load.

The homeowner chased the intruder wearing nothing but his underwear.

Dangling modifiers … it’s one of those terms editors seemingly toss around arbitrarily, accompanied by a command to correct the offending phrases. Well, of course, nobody wants their modifiers — or any other grammatical part — to dangle. But what on earth does that mean?

Defining Danglers

Modifiers are descriptive words, phrases or clauses. When the noun they’re describing is missing or unclear, they dangle. Modifiers can also be misplaced, which is a different kind of problem — and one we’ll talk about in next week’s post.

Most danglers are participles (verb forms used as adjectives) — either present (ending in ing) or past (usually ending in ed) — although gerunds (nouns made from verbs by adding -ing) can dangle too.

Talking about misused words and phrases can be tricky, especially given that the definitions in many commonly used dictionaries (e.g., Merriam-Webster) morph to reflect popular usage — even to the point where a word contains two definitions that mean the exact opposite, as in these examples:

Literally: (1) actually, (2) virtually; in effect
Peruse: (1) to look at or read in an informal or relaxed way, (2) to examine or read in a very careful way

Last week we talked about when to use onto (one word) versus on to (two words). As promised, we’re talking about the distinction between into versus in to this week. While some of the same guidelines apply, into can be trickier because it has more definitions and different strategies for remembering which form to use.

Demystifying Into

Like onto, into (one word) is a preposition that indicates movement. But into can mean so much more. Understanding the various definitions of into can help in figuring out whether to use one word or two. If you’re questioning whether to use into or in to, start by determining whether the problem sentence fits into one of the definitions or examples below.