September 25, 2023

What's a fused participle — and is it really an error?

TOPICS: GRAMMAR

I saw you working hard.

I appreciate you working hard.

At a glance, these sentences seem grammatically identical. But in fact, the grammar of the second one is wildly controversial, with some experts insisting it’s an error called a “fused participle.”

The fused participle concept comes up most often in the sentence: “I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.” Critics of this form say it should be: “I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me.” And that one-letter variation, “your” replacing “you,” makes all the difference in the world. But to understand how that changes the grammar, you need to zoom in on how all the parts work together in the sentence.

In “I saw you working hard,” the object of the verb “saw” is “you.” I saw you. The next word, “working,” is a verb participle functioning as a modifier — essentially an adjective. It may seem odd to classify a verb form as an adjective, but we use verb participles this way all the time: a cooking class, a walking stick, your thinking cap, growing pains, a hiking excursion. In all these examples, a verb participle is modifying a noun, meaning it’s working like an adjective. The participle in “you working” has the same role, even though it comes after the noun.

So when you say, “I saw you working,” you get a grammatical sentence with a verb (saw), followed by its object (you), followed by a modifier of that object (working).

But in “I appreciate you driving him home,” the object of the verb “appreciate” isn’t really “you.” You’re not saying, “I appreciate you as a person” or “I appreciate that you exist.” It’s the driving that you really appreciate. So “driving” is the true object of the verb “appreciate.” Yet the first word after “appreciate” isn’t “driving.” It’s “you.” Between the verb and its true object, there’s another word — “you” — just sitting there with no grammatical job to do. The participle “driving” is just kind of fused to “you” with no clear role. From a standpoint of pure grammar, it’s nonsensical. Here's the full story in my recent column.

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September 11, 2023

'All told' or 'all tolled'?

TOPICS: GRAMMAR

Should you write "all told" or "all tolled"? The first one: all told.

There’s a good chance you knew that already. I knew it for years, right up until I stumbled across some bad information on the subject, which led to a series of unfortunate events.

For years I knew the term as “all told.” Again, that’s correct. I considered “all told” a close cousin of “when all is said and done.” That’s not exactly right, but it’s a good way to think of it because it equates the telling in “told” with the saying in “said.” Both words refer to talking.

Then, some years ago, I came across a wrong bit of information. I read, I don’t remember where, that “all told” is wrong and that it should be “all tolled.”

I wrote a column about it before I realized it wasn’t true. A writer friend of mine who read the column repeated its incorrect message in a book. Only by sheer luck did we realize the error before the book went to press.

To get this right, remember that it’s about telling – when all has been told. But for a historical understanding of the term, well, that’s not exactly how it works.

“One archaic meaning of ‘tell’ is ‘to count,’” says Garner’s Modern American Usage. “Hence the idiom is ‘all told’ -- ‘All told there were 14 casualties’ -- which dates from the mid-19th century. Some people write ‘all tolled,’ perhaps because ‘toll’ can mean ‘to announce with a bell or other signal.’ But this is an error.

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September 5, 2023

'For Joe and I' and other reader peeves

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, OBJECT PRONOUNS, SENTENCE ENDING PREPOSITION

 Reader Louise wrote: “My big pet peeve is those who say, ‘It was a great trip for Joe and I.’ … I want to scream, ‘You wouldn't say it was a great trip for I.' It's ‘me’!"

There are several standards of correctness in English. Grammar is one. Idiom, or common usage, is another. A subject pronoun like “I” in an object position is ungrammatical, but you can’t say it’s 100% wrong because it’s idiomatic. Still, to anyone who cares about grammar, it’s bad form. Plus, it’s a minor tragedy because people who say “for Joe and I” usually choose “I” because they’re trying to be grammatically correct — and failing. To get these right, follow Louise’s model: Try the sentence without the other person: “A great trip for I” is clearly wrong, so that’s how you know the most grammatical choice is “It was a great trip for Joe and me.”

Reader Mike is peeved by the phrasing “where is it at?” “It grates like fingernails on a chalkboard,” he writes. Over the years, a lot of people have told me they feel the same way. As an editor whose job is to delete needless words, I understand their reaction. The “at” at the end of “where is it” is unnecessary. But unnecessary isn’t quite the same as being wrong, exactly. Consider “where is it at” to be a casualism that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

Meanwhile, Reader Sherry wrote to ask about people who use “so fun” instead of “so much fun.” Reader Katie doesn’t like when people who’ve been asked “How are you?” respond with “I am well.”  And Reader Dick thought he spotted an error in my column. Read how I answered them all in my recent column.

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August 28, 2023

'Chaise lounge' isn't just a corrupted version of 'chaise longue'

TOPICS: CHAISE LONGUE VS CHAISE LOUNGE, GRAMMAR

One of my favorite summer activities is relaxing on a chaise longue under an umbrella with a good book. It’s a nice escape from the grueling work of changing “chaise lounge” to “chaise longue” in article after article this time of year — and wondering why I bother.

A “chaise longue” is, of course, one of those long lounge chairs you see situated around swimming pools, as well as indoor furniture in a similar shape. The term comes from the French “chaise,” meaning “chair,” and “longue,” which is the French feminine form of “long.” But because these chairs are for lounging and because Americans are less familiar with the French spelling, we English speakers often use “chaise lounge.”

This process of transforming foreign or less familiar words into something familiar is called “folk etymology” — like “duck tape” formed from “duct tape,” both of which are correct today.

But it would be a mistake to assume that “chaise lounge” came from “chaise longue” through this exact process. In fact, “chaise lounge” is almost as well established in English as “chaise longue.” The English spelling started showing up in dictionaries in the 1920s, just a decade or two after dictionaries started including the French term, which we used to hyphenate: chaise-longue.

But even before that, English speakers were using “lounge” to mean a type of chair, for example in this passage from the 1852 novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”: “He stretched himself at full length on a lounge opposite Marie.”

So we didn’t get this sense of “lounge” simply by rearranging the letters in “longue.”

Even more interesting: “chaise longue” and “chaise lounge” have sort of carved out their own roles over the years.

“The American ‘chaise lounge’ began to appear in print in the 1920s; undoubtedly it had been used in speech for some time earlier,” writes Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. “As a printed term, it seems to have become established first in the trade; many of our early citations are from manufacturers’ catalogs and newspaper advertisements. When the spelling began to appear in both the Montgomery Ward and the Sears and Roebuck catalogs, it could no longer be ignored.”

As “chaise lounge” was staking out its place in the business world, “chaise longue” became dominant in literature. Surprisingly, it still is. According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, “chaise longue” is about 50% more common in published works than “chaise lounge.” Editors like me could be the reason. I discuss why in my recent column.

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August 21, 2023

Avoid semicolons

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION, SEMICOLON ABUSE, SEMICOLONS

Semicolons have two functions. They connect independent clauses, and they work like commas in situations where a comma isn’t strong enough, for example in a list of items that already contain their own commas.

An independent clause is a unit that can stand alone as a sentence because it contains both a subject and a verb: Steve quit. So if independent clauses can stand alone as sentences, why bother connecting them with semicolons? Why not just punctuate them as individual sentences instead? Good question.

Sometimes writers want to show that two independent clauses are closely related; they go together. That’s what semicolons do; they tell you that two units that could stand alone as sentences are so important to each other that they should be in the same sentence. But is that really a good reason to force two short, tidy sentences into one long, unwieldy unit?

In my opinion, no. Longer sentences put greater demands on your reader — the mental equivalent of holding your breath till you get to the end. Shorter sentences are more easily digestible. A writer’s job is to deliver information or ideas to readers in the manner most useful to them. So when you start showing off your comma prowess at the reader’s expense, you’ve lost sight of the writer’s purpose.

The worst abuse of semicolons occurs when writers use them to create single-sentence paragraphs. Think about it: If you have a paragraph with just two sentences, it’s obvious those sentences are closely related. So there’s no reason to connect them with a semicolon, creating a single-sentence paragraph.

The other job of semicolons — stringing together items that commas can’t handle — is more practical, sometimes. For example, imagine you’re listing cities where you’ve lived: Burbank, California; Shreveport, Louisiana; Venice, Florida; and Albany, New York. Each of these places contains its own comma. So without semicolons, these four places would be punctuated in a way that suggests they’re actually eight places.
But writers abuse semicolons in this function, too. I explain how in my recent column.

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August 14, 2023

What to capitalize in a headline

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, HOW TO CAPITALIZE HEADLINES

Copy editors notice a lot of little stuff that other people might not. The online news sites that continue to nudge out traditional news outlets often contain tiny hints that they’re being produced by people who aren’t as well versed in language and style as older forms of media.

One of the most common examples has to do with headline capitalization. A lot of online writing uses title case for headlines, with the first letter of most words capitalized.

Fed Chair Will Keep Interest Rates Low

Often, it works out just fine, as in the headline above. But some situations seem to stump less experienced editors and designers

Fed Chair To Keep Interest Rates Low

See that “to”? Well, traditional news style calls for that to be lowercase: Fed Chair to Keep Interest Rates Low

A lot of inexperienced editors don’t realize that, so they just “initial cap” every word. But more of them, it seems, know that some words in headlines are supposed to be lowercase. And they know those tend to be short words. So many guess correctly that the T in “to” is lowercase, yet they still make other mistakes.

How to Know When it is Time to Make a Will

The capitalization in that last headline doesn’t conform with editing style.

Knowing Which Loved One to Make Your Will Out to

Neither does that one.

These two examples illustrate why it’s often a good idea to know and follow capitalization style for headlines. It just looks more professional, even to readers who aren’t consciously focusing on capitalization.

So here’s a simple system offered by AP that you should consider for any headlines you write:

Capitalize the first word of every letter except articles, coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions of three letters or fewer. There’s one exception: Any word that is the first word in the headline or the last word should be capitalized, regardless of its part of speech. So that last headline, in AP style, would leave the first “to” lowercase and capitalize the last one:

Knowing Which Loved One to Make Your Will Out To

The biggest problem writers have with this simple system is remember that "is" and "it," unlike "in," are not prepositions. Is is a verb and it is a pronoun. So they’re always uppercased in AP style headlines.

Candidate Asks What It Is

By the way, the Chicago manual uses a similar system, except it doesn’t contain the same three-letter stipulation for prepositions, etc. So though in AP you’d write Many Shoppers Wait Until Last Minute, in Chicago style that could be Many Shoppers Wait until Last Minute.

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August 7, 2023

Plural possessives are tricky

TOPICS: APOSTROPHES, GRAMMAR, PLURAL POSSESSIVES, possessives

When I saw “men’s’ clothing” with two apostrophes, I figured it must be a typo. I was editing a professional writer who’s been on the job for years, and I know from experience that writers make typos, but none — none of them — think that two apostrophes go in “men’s’ clothing.”

But then I saw “women’s’ clothing,” with two apostrophes. Then “children’s’ clothing.”
That’s when I knew that what I was witnessing was not a single accidental strike of an apostrophe key. Instead, it was the weirdest take on plural possessives I’ve ever seen.

Most writers, in my experience, stumble on plural possessives — even writers who have no problem with singular possessives or plurals that aren’t possessive.
They understand that the tail of a dog is the dog’s tail, singular possessive. And they understand that when one dog joins another dog, you have two dogs, plural, not possessive. But when they have to apply both those rules to the same word, they start to lose their grasp on them.

For regular nouns like “dog,” making the plural possessive isn’t tough. Many get it right: “the dogs’ tails,” with the plural S followed by the possessive apostrophe. But nouns with irregular plurals, like “man,” “woman” and “child” trip them up. Throw in some confusing expressions like “each other,” and almost everyone loses their grasp on how to use apostrophes: childrens’? childrens? childs’? They’re not sure.

So what’s the trick to writing plural possessives correctly? Just remember these basic rules and don’t get frazzled. To make a plural noun that ends in S possessive, add an apostrophe: kids’ clothes. If you want to make possessive a plural irregular noun that does not end in S, like children, add both an apostrophe and also an S: children’s clothes.

It’s easy. Or it should be. But plural possessives get confusing because the letter S has too many jobs in English and they all get jumbled in our heads.
In English, S is used to form plurals. To talk about more than one dog, you add S: dogs.

S also forms possessives of nouns: the cat’s pajamas.

S is also used for verb conjugations. For the verb “let,” for instance, the third-person form is “lets”: he lets the cat out.

S also stands in for not one but several different words in contractions, where it adds an extra layer of confusion by pairing with an apostrophe. “It’s raining” means “It is raining,” with the letter S serving as an abbreviated form of “is.” But in “Who’s been sleeping in my bed,” the S stands for “has.” And in “Let’s eat,” the S represents the word “us,” which is hard to remember because no one says, “let us eat.”
Then come even more curveballs. You can read about them here in my recent column.

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July 31, 2023

Should fiction writers care about grammar?

TOPICS: FICTION WRITING, GRAMMAR

A while back, a writer friend was teaching a fiction writing class and asked me some questions on behalf of some students who were struggling with grammar.

 I answered her questions — straightforward stuff about sentence-ending prepositions and placement of adverbs. Only afterward did I notice the nagging doubt in the pit of my stomach. These were fiction writers and I, indirectly, had them thinking about language “rules.” I could tell by the questions coming from Naomi that, as her students turned their focus to grammar, they were worrying about making mistakes and embarrassing themselves by exposing their imperfect grammar.

For fiction writers, this fear can be counterproductive. How can you focus on story and message and voice and character and description when you’re afraid every preposition or introductory phrase could be your downfall?

When you think about this long enough, you could easily conclude that fiction writers shouldn’t worry about grammar. But anyone who’s ever agreed to read a friend’s “novel in progress” knows the flip side of this argument. Grammar and punctuation errors aren't always nitpicky, minor things. They can make a big difference in the overall quality of a written work.

So what exactly is the role of grammar for the creative writer? Should he learn and follow the rules? Or should he cast them aside in the name of creative freedom?

The more I think about this, the more I think the answer is neither. Or perhaps both. I think that fiction writers who want to defy every grammar rule and convention under the sun should do so without hesitation. But the best way to get away with breaking the rules is by demonstrating a mastery of grammar.

Take for example the structure “might could.” That’s probably not one you want to use in a paper in an MBA program. “The leading economic indicators suggest that the GDP might could improve in the coming quarter.” Yet I’ve seen fiction writers like George R.R. Martin and Kerry Madden use “might could” to great effect. Martin uses it to strike a medieval tone in his “Game of Thrones” books. Madden used it in “Gentle’s Holler” to give her characters a Southern/rural voice.

Readers get it. It’s clear that the writers are using “might could” quite deliberately and not out of the belief that it’s more proper than a simple “might” or “could.”

What does that tell us about the grammar “requirements” on fiction writers? Well, it seems to me that if Martin or Madden had littered their manuscripts with “it’s” in place of “its,” the word “alot,” or evidence they don’t know “their” from “they’re,” they wouldn’t have earned the license to use structures that people consider “nonstandard” – terms like “might could” and “ain’t” and awkward double negatives and sentence fragments. (Indeed, they never would have been published in the first place.)

And from that perspective, I can see clearly the importance of grammar for fiction writers. For them, grammar is important. They should know as much as possible about syntax and usage rules and punctuation and word choice and spelling. But, whenever they feel it's appropriate, they should ignore those rules completely. Once a fiction writer has demonstrated that he knows his craft, readers will give him the benefit of the doubt in all his language choices. But if it’s clear he has bad grammar, every departure from the “proper” can and will be chalked up to ignorance.

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July 24, 2023

Dissatisfied and unsatisfied

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, DISSATISFIED VS. UNSATISFIED, GRAMMAR

Have you ever thought about the difference between “dissatisfied” and “unsatisfied”? Neither have I. At least, not until I was flipping through my copy of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage recently.
If this book has a regular shtick, it’s debunking popular language prohibitions. For example: have you ever heard it’s wrong to split an infinitive? Well, this book will give you an earful on that one, making it quite clear there’s no such rule.

So I was more than a little surprised recently when I was thumbing through the usage guide and saw this: “dissatisfied, unsatisfied” Though ‘dissatisfied and unsatisfied appear to be synonyms, there are distinctions evident in the usage examples in the Merriam-Webster files.” (By the way, that’s what most language authorities base their opinions on: usage examples. That’s what academics do, too.)

The guide continues: “These examples show that ‘unsatisfied’ is more frequently used to modify nonhuman terms (such as ambition, debts, curiosity, demands, claims) than human ones and that in all instances the meaning is generally of something or someone being ‘unfulfilled’ or ‘unappeased.’”
The examples the book gives include published excerpts saying “… the curiosity was unsatisfied” and “a large unsatisfied demand for education.”

Then the book gives examples of dissatisfied, showing how it usually applies to people or groups and means “not pleased or gratified.” “Dissatisfied landowners stopped action” is one of the book’s examples.

Merriam-Webster’s usage guide makes clear that there’s some crossover. And a look at dictionary definitions proves there’s some overlap.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines “dissatisfied” as “not satisfied; displeased.” This dictionary doesn’t contain a definition for “unsatisfied.” So we have to think of it as a form of “satisfy” negated by the prefix “un.”

Because “un” can negate something, “unsatisfied” also means “not satisfied,” just as “dissatisfied” does.
According to this dictionary, the two words are overlapping. So it makes it that much more interesting that, in common usage — at least as far as Merriam-Webster’s usage guide can see — they’re not.

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July 17, 2023

Spot the complete sentence

TOPICS: COMMANDS, COMPLETE SENTENCE, GRAMMAR, imperatives, SENTENCE FRAGMENT

Can you tell which of the following, if any, are complete sentences?

Outside!

Now!

Stop!

Onward!

Beautiful!

Here’s your first hint: Yes, one of these is a complete sentence. But only one. The rest aren’t errors, mind you. There’s nothing wrong with punctuating an incomplete sentence as if it were complete. When you do so, it’s called a sentence fragment. And writers — even many of the very best writers — use sentence fragments all the time.

A while back, I wrote in a column that "onward" and "outside" are not complete sentences, which irked some readers. If you yell either of these words at someone, they argued, your point is 100% clear and complete. So why was I being such a pain and refusing to acknowledge they’re complete sentences?

Answer: Just because a thought is clear and complete doesn’t make it a complete sentence.

A complete sentence must contain at least one clause. A clause is a subject and a verb, and neither can be left implied, with one exception: Imperatives, that is, commands, always leave their subjects implied. It’s not a problem because the subject is always the same: “you.” So when you tell someone “Eat!” the subject is already built in to the verb, if you will.

But in four of our five sentences above, not only is there no subject, there’s no verb either. Outside! Now! Onward! and Beautiful! aren't verbs. Yes, they make clear the verbs that they’re implying. (Go) outside! (Do it) now! (Move) onward! (That is) beautiful! But verbs must be explicit in order to make a complete sentence.

So  on our list only Stop! is a complete sentence because it’s the only one that meets the criteria of having a verb (which must be explicit) and a subject (which, in commands only, can be left implied.)

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