GrammarPhile Blog

Never start a sentence with a conjunction. Never end a sentence with a preposition. How many times have you heard these and similar refrains?

Some find a certain comfort in such absolutes because correcting the problem is generally easy — they see one of these errors, and they fix it. But rigidity can be stifling, especially when the reasoning behind it is “because that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Does that mean writers can just make up their own rules as they go along? Of course not. But questioning the basis for rules serves two purposes: (1) It increases understanding of the rules and their application, and (2) it allows for evolution of the language.

Feeling lost? Rudderless? Unsure which way to turn? Unfortunately, we can’t help you find your way. We are, after all, a proofreading site. BUT … we can offer some direction on directions — specifically, whether to capitalize them.

At the most basic level, the standard advice is to lowercase north, south, east and west when used as compass directions and to capitalize them when they are used as part of a proper noun or adjective or refer to regions or geographic areas. So:

Reflexive Pronouns Crowned Tourney Champ

Beating back the persistent Plurals/Possessives in overtime, Reflexive Pronouns narrowly won our April Aggravations tourney. Both had advanced to the final round after Plurals handily beat One Word or Two, and Reflexive edged the upstart Misplaced Modifiers in the Final Four.

We couldn’t have asked for a more exciting championship, as the two teams traded the lead throughout both regulation and overtime. But a last-minute surge by Plurals/Possessive’s fell short, and Reflexive Pronouns itself emerged victorious.

March Madness refers to the excitement, fervor and general craziness surrounding the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, during which upsets, buzzer beaters and rowdy celebrations are the norm. That all ended Monday night with Duke edging Wisconsin to claim its fifth national championship. Or did it?

For those who simply can’t wait another year, we offer our own version of the playoffs, with a grammatical twist: April Aggravations. Below you’ll find our Elite Eight list of contenders competing for the coveted title of “Most Annoying Grammatical Error Ever,” collected from our editors here at ProofreadNOW.com.

Let us know in the comments below which ones you’d send to the Final Four, which two will end up competing for the championship and, finally, which error will win it all as “most annoying.” We’ll crown the winning pet peeve in next week’s post. Also let us know about others that grate on your nerves, and we’ll add them to the pool of contenders for our next grammatical error playoff.

… 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.