by Cherie Tucker
March 2014
If you have only one adjective describing something, there is no need for a comma to separate it from the word being described. (That’s a beautiful rose.) If you wax rhapsodic and add more adjectives, then you need commas. (That’s a beautiful, delicate, perfect, red rose.) Most of you have that one down. But the crime of separating subjects from their verbs with a single comma is becoming epidemic.
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February 2014
It’s time for New Year’s Reminders. We did talk about using the apostrophe with the New Year’s holiday before, but it’s been quite a while, and since both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day have come and gone and you might be asking people what they did to celebrate, here’s a quick review of how to do that correctly.
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December 2013
The worst mistake you can make involving parentheses is to leave off the last one so that readers don't know when to stop whispering. Parentheses serve to interrupt the sentence or the paragraph to add something sotto voce to what you are writing, which can be as simple as one word to add clarification or a whole sentence. However, because you are interrupting with those parentheses, there are a few rules to consider.
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November 2013
One of the first grammar articles to appear in Author was about the serial or Oxford comma, that little mark that comes before the and, or, or nor in a horizontal list of more than two items. Do you like dark, milk, or white chocolate? There is a new swell afoot to get rid of that comma by those who say it is unnecessary. Journalists are taught not to use it, which is why you sometimes have to re-read things in the paper to figure out what they mean.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
October 2013
There are several verbs that people don't need to have trouble with, but for some reason they do. Regular verbs are made into past or future tenses by changing the ending: walk, walked, have walked, am walking. Easy as that. It is usually the irregular ones that make us crazy: lie, lay, have lain, am lying (remember those?).
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
September 2013
They're trying to kill the apostrophe. Again. A recent article in the newspaper declared that apostrophes really are unnecessary in company signs. Apparently they take up too much space. And you know they don't appear in names on maps (think Pikes Peak, even though there was only one Pike).
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
August 2013
It’s amazing how many people seem to be upset that the new little prince in Britain is named George. Maybe they’ll feel better when he’s King George VII. One thing is for certain, however: he will be able to sign his name, and people will know he’s a male. Not all names are so decisive.
by Cherie Tucker
June 2013
Mrs. Jackson, my second grade teacher, had our class remain standing after the flag salute and repeat “Feb-ru-ary, li-brar-y, and pump-kin.” Anyone who said “liberry” or “Feb-you-ary,” or, heaven forbid, “punkin,” was taken into the cloakroom and paddled. She would have had a field day with the fellow I heard on the radio this week say “mis-cheevʹ-e-ous” instead of “misʹ-chiv-us.”
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
May 2013
Last month we talked about when to capitalize and when not to when using colons. That caused a lot of questions about other capitalization problems (did you notice “a lot” is two words?). We talked about some of this a couple of years ago, but here is a review.
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A student at the University of Washington just asked me when to capitalize words that follow colons. She wondered if there were rules or if it was just a matter of taste. Well, yes, Virginia, there are rules. In fact, there are two pages of them in The Gregg Reference Manual, but let’s boil them down.
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There are only a few rules regarding these combinations, and fortunately they are easy. First, put your fingers on your adam’s apple and say, “elephant.” Do you feel it move (your adam’s apple, not the elephant.) That movement is called a glottal stop, and you must keep the glottal stops of the beginnings of “either” and “or” together. If you start with “either,” you cannot go to “nor.” Conversely, you must keep the ns together if you start with “neither.” Do not combine them incorrectly.
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We just reviewed pronoun usage, so I thought any confusion was all cleared up. But, alas, it seems we have a bit more work to do. What with all the recent elections, people appear to be quoting the Constitution a great deal more than usual—that is, misquoting. When Jefferson wrote “We, the people . . .,” the use of the pronoun “we” was entirely correct, because the sentence goes on to show that “We” actually “do” something:
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In the New Year, may we resolve to:
Learn that the past tense of sink is sank. If you must use sunk, it has to have has, had, or have with it. Example: Three boats sank in the marina. It’s the first time any have sunk. Journalists seem to have forgotten this one.
by Cherie Tucker
Lately I’ve received numerous agendas or minutes from meetings, and they are written in the strangest formats. I think we’d better review how to outline.
Remember, you must have at least two things in order to subdivide, or there is no need for an outline. If you find yourself with a single supporting point, combine it into the main point or discover a second point. It makes no sense to say, “First,” and then have no “Second.” For every 1 there must be a 2, every A requires a B, and every bullet must have another bullet. It’s the law.
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I just spent a couple of weeks working with some very smart college students who begin every sentence with me or her or him, as in “Me and Kelley already did that.” So just in case you are guilty of this felonious speech pattern, here is a pronoun review.
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The placement of the word only in a sentence can make all the difference in what your reader thinks you mean. Look at this one:
We only heard two guys singing last night.
Does that mean you heard them but didn’t see them last night? Or might it mean that last night not more than two guys were singing?
by Cherie Tucker
The other day I was in a shop waiting my turn when another customer and the owner asked me where I was from. I told them I grew up in Seattle. Then the customer asked me what my area code was. When I said, “Two zero six,” she and the owner looked disappointed.
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In the old typewriter days, there were no brackets on the keyboard. Legal documents that could have no handwritten corrections had to use parentheses inside of parentheses. Consequently, interruptions within parentheses were confusing. Double parentheses at the end of a sentence looked strange and always reminded me of the eyes of Charles Shultz’s Lucy when she’s upset or surprised. Fortunately we don’t have to worry about that anymore. We have both brackets and parentheses, and they have separate duties.
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When you are writing about amounts of money, should you use figures or spell them out? I’m pretty sure you already know that when you are adding a column of figures that contain a combination of even dollars and amounts with change, you add two zeros to the even amounts.
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I’ve noticed in things I’ve been editing lately that many people don’t know about Oh. When you begin a sentence with it, it must be followed by a comma.
Oh, I forgot to lock the door.
Oh, here it is.
Oh, well, we can catch the next ferry.