To this, I say: “Bogus!”

Essentially, the reasoning behind these rules is convention and/or a matter of giving someone the opportunity to be condescending. “Oh, you end your sentences with prepositions? Pssh, you do not write English very well, do you?” Tell these people that they’re wrong, and then they’ll reiterate this artificial rule. Just reply: “Look it up.” Words that we typically consider participles are often used as particles. In other words, they’re a piece of the verb. Compare the clause “it is full of hope” to “it is taken care of” and note the difference. All of the words in “taken care of” constitute the verb phrase; removing or moving one of them changes the meaning. It actually can be more complicated than this, but I think this paragraph alone should put doubt into the minds of the hardened believers. People cling onto rules like the preposition one, because they went through the painful experience of learning them, so those people want to feel good about themselves.

Another common one is how active voice is somehow better than passive voice. Active voice is when the clause’s subject is performing the actual action. I wrote this post. Passive voice is when the subject is actually the recipient of the action. This post was written (by me). The “by me” is optional in this case. The passive voice is helpful for politicians, because it’s easy to avoid blame. The economy was really messed up. It’s also useful when you don’t know certain details or those details aren’t important. The Old English epic Beowulf was written about a thousand years ago. Basically, passive voice is useful when the noun performing the action is not as important as the object in the topic being discussed.

I bought a cheap briefcase to use during my teaching internship and in it came directions for setting the locks. I couldn’t believe how many errors were in these directions. Here’s a sample:

Now turn the dials to your own secret number and mark the number down in some place where you can refer to it in case you forcet the number,Be sure to use three numbers you are famar with,you might consider using part of your telephone number,birthbay,street address, social securliy number,etc.

FIGHTS CAVITIES * PLAQUE * HEALTHY GUMS * STRONG TEETH

At first, I would assume this is a list of things it does/provides. Of course, it probably doesn’t provide plaque. Then I am led to think “fights” must go with everything. Fights cavities. Fights plaque. Fights healthy gums…. oh wait! I guess it’s supposed to be something like “Fights cavities and plaque; results in healthy gums and strong teeth,” but that isn’t too clear from the text itself (and there aren’t any visuals to promote that interpretation).

Really, this isn’t that big of a mistake on one person’s part. We commonly leave words out of text that we think of as implied, but the review process should have caught this. Or maybe it does cause plaque…

Does anyone know what this is supposed to mean? It’s an advertisement from Newegg, a company that I usually praise, but it does not make any sense to me. This did not strike me as typical Newegg quality, so I looked into it a little more. The Seagate press release has this to say:

The content we create, collect and share – the movies, music, books, work, art and photos – defines who we are and has become an integral part of our digital lifestyle. And now, wherever you are, whenever you need it, Seagate Technology (NYSE: STX) makes sure “Your On.”

I added the bolding to point out that “Your On” is indeed their slogan. If it had been “you’re on” (i.e., “you are on”), the original advertisement would have made more sense. I think the best slogan (given the wording) would have been “FreeAgent: Wherever you are, you’re on.” Perhaps Seagate is using “on” as a noun and they want to be my “on.” Their slogan is on… my nerves, anyway.

After piecing my brain back together from the minor explosion that occurred in trying to comprehend this, I came across a related blog post. It seems this came up half a year ago and Seagate has not corrected the problem, so they obviously don’t care (or don’t want to publicly admit the mistake). I am saddened when I think of how many people must have seen this slogan and not caught the mistake. Just imagine the board room where the marketing executive was selling his/her point and all the “people with power” were nodding like bobbleheads dolls.

Those times long past are fading,
melting away with longing

A Tanka is a Japanese poem with 31 syllables. Since English and Japanese are such different languages, the English representation of a Tanka is quite a bit different from a “real” Tanka. The English version typically has a syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 with a concrete “Haiku” (the first three lines) and an abstract couplet.

Those living in glass houses
should take shoes off at the door.

I wrote the first part and classmate Julia Teichet wrote the Renga (the last two lines).

I try to not be too critical of English errors, but sometimes it is hard to overlook them. I bought new baking sheets recently and glued to them was a piece of thin cardboard with generic info. Now, I’m sure 90% of people never look at this stuff, but I started to read it while I was attempting to peel the glue off (so that I could recycle the cardboard) and the very first sentence contained an error.

If the recipe calls for, spray lightly with nonstick vegetable cooking spray and wipe off excess; or if preferred, apply a light film of shortening.

Really? No one caught this error? I would understand if it was farther on, but it is the first sentence! I guess you can’t expect much in terms of language from a company that is so “witty” as to call itself “WearEver,” but can’t even be consistent with the capitalization of its own name.

“It’s gaining weight, it’s very hungry, it drinks a lot of milk,” said Alexandra Foghammar, a spokeswoman for the city. The zoo announced Thursday that the cub is female.

First off, any decent writer should know that you can’t just keep adding sentences together with commas (“comma splicing”); semi-colons would have been appropriate. Of course, writers are people and make mistakes, so the editor should have caught that one. I was reading it casually early in the morning and saw the mistake, so I would hope someone whose job is to catch that sort of thing would notice it too. Unfortunately, the article does not seem to list the writer or editor. It might even be an AP story, but the site doesn’t say. Oh well, I shouldn’t expect quality from the media anyway.

The easiest trick is to substitute “he/she/they” or “him/her/them” into the sentence where “who/whom” would appear. Always remember that you are looking at the word’s function in a clause.

• ___ is the new person?
• To ___ are you speaking?
• I do not listen to those ___ interrupt.

The first one is “who,” because you could say, “He is the new person?” The second one is “whom,” because you could say, “To her are you speaking?” That probably sounds really weird, but if you rewrite it to sound natural (“Are you speaking to her?”) the choice is much more obvious. The third one is “who,” because the clause you are looking at is “___ interrupt” and you would say, “they interrupt” (not “them interrupt”).

Essentially, look to see if you can easily determine if the word functions as a subject (e.g., “he”) or an object (e.g., “her”). If you can’t, rewrite the sentence so that it is clearer to you (like in the second example) and/or remove all the words that are not part of the clause you are inspecting.

• Whom are you passing the paper to?
• Why don’t you give it to he who wants it most?

The first one shows how ending a sentence with a preposition can make the usage a little less clear. Simply rewrite the sentence in your mind as “You are passing the paper to whom?” and the choice is obvious. The second one illustrates that you just pay attention to the clause that matters (“(he) who wants it most”). Though that whole clause functions as an object (of a preposition, if you care), “who” functions as a subject within that clause

As I hinted in the intro paragraph, the most confusing part is that, in English, the subject of an infinite (“to” + verb, e.g., “to run”) is in the objective form. For example: “I gave extra time for them to answer the question correctly.” If you change the infinitive (“to answer”) to a finite verb (e.g., “answer”), then the sentence changes: “I gave extra time for they answer questions slowly” (I ended the sentence differently so that it would sound logical). “Who” and “whom” work the same way as other pronouns in these cases, but it’s a bit more clear to demonstrate with “them/they.”

Don’t worry if you are wrong once in a while (unless you make it a point to correct other people); I frequently find that noted journalists use the incorrect form (and I’m sure I make mistakes). If you pay enough attention, you’ll start to notice the patterns that can throw people off (such as “…who they thought was the killer…” (just drop the “they thought” to determine the correct use)) and you’ll even make sense out of much more complicated sentences. Some people on the Internet might be able to use the words correctly, but a quick perusal fails to reveal who.