The Day Is Nigh

The day when dangling participles stand erect, when subjects and verbs agree, when Americans conjugate all night long. 

Yes, National Grammar Day, celebrated on March 4, will be here in a few short days.

In honor of this glorious holiday, I will be spreading the grammar cheer by giving away five copies of my book on Goodreads. The winners will be chosen on March 4. Here’s the link. Sign up. NOW! 

Sorry ... I just got a little excited. 

How are you going to celebrate National Grammar Day? 

I was thinking about drinking COMMApolitans with friends and cruising the town for some cute singular nouns (not nouns that are too proper, though).

I Didn't Do It

The other day, a friend told me that he feels bad complaining to me because I never complain. 

And that’s not the first time I’ve heard that complaint from a friend.

Of course, I do complain sometimes, but I have to admit that I am one of those annoyingly optimistic people. I tend to believe that everything works out, that everything happens for a reason, that we are lucky because other people have it worse, blah blah blah. Basically, I’m like the least satisfying person to vent to because I am always trying to make you see the silver lining or help you fix the situation when all you really want to do is bitch.

Because of my annoying optimism, I tend to believe that everyone’s problems are solvable. When someone tells me about a problem they are having, my immediate reaction is to want to try to fix it. You hate your job; let me search Monster.com all night and find you a new one. You’re unsatisfied with your weight; I’ll wake up extra early and go running with you. You are having a fight with your boyfriend; let’s all three sit down and talk about it. You’re having problems in the bedroom; let’s have a threesome and I’ll give you feedback. 

I KNOW that’s not healthy behavior; I know it’s called co-dependence. 

This desire to fix everyone’s problems should make it hard for me to use sic. We use sic when we include quoted material in our writing and the quoted material contains grammar, spelling or punctuation errors. The sic basically tells the reader that the error is not ours; it’s the other person’s. 

If I were to include the following quote from my student’s essay in my own writing, this is how I would use sic:

“I use [sic] to have to wear my sisters [sic] hammy [sic] downs.”

Here’s another example using an email: 

“i [sic] am in your english [sic] class on monday [sic]. I am attaching the HW [sic] due tomorrow. Hopefully you can except [sic] it this way,[sic] if not i [sic] will also bring in a hard copy.”

You’d think I’d want to just fix their errors for them instead of calling them out. But I don’t. Grammar is where I draw the line. I want to shame my students into using proper grammar.

That’s healthier behavior, right?

Why I Can Have Any Valentine I Want

I’ve never had a cavity, and I never dangle my participles.

According to a recent survey of over five thousand people, “When judging a potential date, both men and women rate teeth at the top, followed by grammar.”

So, Jake, pick me up tonight at 8. 

Is grammar at the top of your list when judging a potential date?

 

Why I Drink

These are emails I received from my students this week: 

·        *  i pluged in my usb flsh drive and i opened the file for the
homewrk and i can't belive i repeated a question. could i turn the rght one in?

(You don’t need to conserve letters. Letters are not on the endangered species list.)

·        *  i can't make it to your class today. please email me today’s class notes. 

(Sure, let me just quickly type up notes from a three-hour class. And what’s your home address? I’ll hand deliver them.)   

·         * is 12 okay?

(Is 12 what okay? I have 80 students. A little context would be appreciated.)

AND WHY WON’T ANYONE CAPITALIZE THEIR “I’s”!

Oh no! I’m getting bitter.

Life After Grammar

I think it was fate that brought Shawshank Redemption to me last weekend as I was flipping through channels. The plight of Morgan Freeman’s character really helped me cope with something that happened in a meeting today. 

 

Today was our quarterly Student Success Meeting, a meeting dedicated to discussing strategies that will help our students be more successful. (See! We care!)

The conversation eventually turned to the students’ writing skills—or, more specifically, lack thereof. Somebody in the meeting ventured that this generation’s tenuous grasp of grammar will lead to grammar eventually becoming as relevant as the celebrities who appear on Dancing with the Stars.

All of a sudden, everyone looked at me with pity in their eyes. What’s Jenny going to do? She’s going to FREAK OUT! Without grammar, her life is going to be meaningless.

Bu then I thought about Morgan Freeman’s character. He thought he wouldn’t be able to make it outside of Shawshank. And, sure, he struggled for a bit there, but in the end (SPOILER ALERT!!!), he got it together and lived happily ever after with Tim in Zihuatanejo. 

So I guess if one day our writing is no longer bound by the shackles of grammar rules, I’ll be fine. I’ll figure out something else to do with my life. Maybe I’ll learn those “Gangnam Style” dance moves. I’ve never made lasagna. I’ve always wanted to visit the world’s tallest thermometer. Maybe I’ll become an actress just in time to get cast in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. 

But do you think I’ll have to get my SAG card soon? Is grammar on its way to becoming obsolete?

Hot in Translation

The Oscars are coming up, so there is a lot of talk about movies at my work. Here is a snippet from a conversation I had with someone yesterday:

Colleague: Did you see Silver Linings Playbook?

Me: Yes. I think it might actually be my favorite.

Colleague: Wasn’t Bradley Cooper great?

Me: He was, but have you seen him in that interview speaking French?

Yes, I am still obsessed with this interview from back in April 2012 when Mr. Cooper was promoting Hangover 2. It might be the sexiest thing I have ever seen. In my opinion, it’s his best performance to date.

In general, I think it’s so impressive when someone is bilingual. And since I am not bilingual but still like to be impressed with myself, I’ll slip in some foreign words every now and then.

For example, if someone asks me how I’m feeling, I might answer, “I am currently experiencing a bit of ennui.” And, voilà, I feel better about myself.

That’s why I am so happy that we use i.e. and e.g. in the English language. I.e. is the abbreviation for the Latin term id est and e.g. is the abbreviation for the Latin term exemplia gratia. Latin is super impressive!

I’ve already covered the difference in meaning between the two in this blog post, but what about how to punctuate them? Do they belong in parentheses? Do they require commas before? Commas after? Semicolons? Oh my!

The general consensus is that in the U.S. i.e. and e.g. are either encased in commas OR in parentheses followed by a comma:

Bradley Cooper’s best performance, i.e., his interview in French, should have won an award for best foreign film.

Or

Bradley Cooper’s best performance (i.e., his interview in French) should have won an award for best foreign film.

  

This website says it’s okay to use a semicolon preceding i.e. and e.g. rather than a comma:

There are other hot actors who are bilingual; e.g., Viggo Mortensen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Colin Firth.

C'est magnifique!

My Book Is Bi

During the time in my life most rife with rejection and tears—in other words, the time period during which I was querying agents to get representation for Missed Periods and Other Grammar Scares—there was one agent who expressed interest but said she wasn’t comfortable with the target market I had specified in my proposal. I had indicated that the target market was both men and women; she felt that men would never buy a book with the words “Missed Periods” in the title.

I understood her point. When I started writing the book, I thought my target market was going to be female, but then I started the blog, and I was getting lots of male readers too, so I thought I might as well have the book embrace both sexes- you know, make the book bisexual.

And, today, I am extra glad I did because I just received an email from a MALE student that included this sentence: 

That works fine see you then where do you have your office hours?

At first glance—and if you don’t read it—the sentence seems totally inoffensive, right? It looks like your average-sized interrogative sentence. 

That sentence is an example of when size doesn’t matter. (It may, now that I think about it, be the only time when size doesn’t matter.) This sentence is not particularly long, but it is still a run-on sentence. In fact, it’s a particularly offensive run-on because it fuses three sentences into one.

A run-on is when there are two or more sentences fused together without any dividing punctuation. And, look, we’ve got three sentences: 

1. That works fine.

2. See you then.

3. Where do you have your office hours?

Therefore, this is the correct version: 

That works fine. See you then. Where do you have your office hours?

Talk about missed periods: this guy isn’t missing just one period—he’s missing two! 

And the even scarier part is that when I posted his sentence into a Word document, it wasn't underlined in a green, squiggly line. I guess that means we can't rely on grammar check for protection.