Common Grammar Errors

A week or so ago, my dogs were cuddled on the bed with my wife and me while we watched TV and ate ice cream—TV with benefits. Every light in the house was off except the one in the bedroom. Being the gentleman that I am (and feeling an almost impossible-to-be-denied need to roll off the bed and do something productive), I grabbed the ice cream bowls and headed off to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. Because of the dogs, I closed the door on the way out and headed toward the kitchen, one glass bowl in each hand. The dark, silent hallway and a short jaunt through part of the living room were all that separated me from the kitchen and the awaiting sink—I thought. Unbeknownst to me, a dog gate was propped in the entryway because as people in the Northern United States definitely know, there is often snow on the ground outside…and people with house dogs might know that when the pets go outside to do their business, they come back in as happy, furry snowmen, barely recognizable as canines…and therefore, the gate is to keep the freshly bathed and de-snowballed dogs in the kitchen on the tile until they dry off adequately. Well, the dogs were in the bedroom, so the gate shouldn’t have been wedged in the doorway to the kitchen, but I wouldn’t have known that because the house was void of any light whatsoever.

I walked merrily on my way until the gate hit me just above the thighs. I flipped forward onto my waist, two glass bowls stretched out in front of me for their protection as I balanced myself on a thin wooden frame, looking remarkably—I’m sure—like Superman posed in flight. It was quite an athletic feat, but it was one in which the inanimate gate wasn’t impressed. Seemingly, the gate was only concerned about its own preservation, and it determined all by itself that it wasn’t made to hold the weight of a grown man—it was made to keep fourteen-pound puppies in the kitchen. It started to slip, but what was I to do? I couldn’t see a thing, and I had a glass bowl in each hand that would surely shatter on the tile floor over which I was hovering. All I could do was wait for the inevitable, and sure enough, the gate collapsed to the floor with a nervous homeowner splayed on top. I did my best abdominal banana pose and plopped to the floor, bowls stretched before me for safety. The gate crashed and I dropped to the tile unharmed, but most importantly, the bowls lived to tell their version of the story as well. Afterward, a crease of light appeared as my wife stuck her head out of the bedroom. “Are you all right?” she asked. Two dogs charged out the door, raced down the hall, trampled over my back, and started licking the bowls in my outstretched hands. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had planned the whole thing themselves.

The story is true, but the application has yet to be made. I am an author, but I’m also an English teacher who moonlights as an editor. I vowed to use this blog to occasionally give editing tips, which is what I’m just about to do. Examples are highlighted above.

1. Toward vs. towards (afterward vs. afterwards, etc.):  I did a whole blog about this, but I want to say again that “toward” is still considered the proper usage. All sorts of experts agree with my former statement. It appears, however, that outside of North America, “towards” and “afterwards” are much more commonly used and accepted. I don’t use “towards” because so many sites warn me that using it is likely to offend educated people while “toward” offends no one.

2. All right vs. alright: I did a blog about this too, but I want to say again that if you would do readings on the internet, you will see that no one thinks “all right” is a misspelling and lots of people think “alright” is spelled incorrectly. You will see that people claim that the “alright” spelling is becoming acceptable, but you’ll see over and over again that educated, intelligent people widely, crazily claim that the only correct spelling is “all right.” No one says “all right” is wrong. The majority say the other spelling is incorrect.

3. Hyphens: Hyphens always join words together to make one word. Fractions, compound numbers, and compound words (like mother-in-law) use hyphens to make more than one word into a single word. Where people seem to fall short in their understanding of this concept is when they take two separate adjectives and combine them to form a single description. “Fourteen-pound puppies” is an example. They aren’t “fourteen puppies” or “pound puppies.” Fourteen and pound form a single description…a single adjective…a single word. Therefore, they are hyphenated.

4. Coordinate adjectives: This is where you would use two or more adjectives in succession to describe the same word. You would place commas between these words if the words coordinate (work together equally). This is how I explain it to my eighth-graders. If you can put the word and between the adjectives and it sounds natural, you need a comma. “Furry, happy snowmen” was used above. I can say the snowmen were furry and happy. They were happy and furry snowmen. That sounds natural, as does “the hallway was dark and silent.” When I said “my best abdominal banana pose,” for instance, they didn’t coordinate because the pose is not my and best and abdominal and banana. The pose is not banana and abdominal or abdominal and best. That does not sound natural.

5. Punctuating dialogue: I actually have a prior blog post about this too, but some of the concepts need to be reviewed. First of all, put commas, periods, question marks, etc. before the quotation marks. There is a very, very infrequent exception, but it is rare. Example #1: “I’ll do it,” said Jimmy. There is a comma after “it”—not a period—because the sentence doesn’t end until “Jimmy.” The comma is written before the quotation marks as all punctuation (except a rare question mark exception) always is. The word “said” is not capitalized.  Example #2: “I’ll do it.” He nodded in affirmation. In this example, there is a period after “it” because that is the end of a sentence. “He nodded in affirmation” is another new, complete sentence. It is not a dialogue tag because “nodded” is not how a person can speak. Example #3: “Are you all right?” she asked. This example has a question mark and a period. The quote needs to be punctuated properly, hence the question mark, but it is not the end of the sentence. The dialogue tag ends the sentence, so there is no capital letter on “she” and there is a period at the end.

6. I vs. me:  This is a lot more complicated topic than I have time to cover thoroughly, so let me just say that “I” is always used as a subject and “me” is always used as an object. “With my wife and me” is a prepositional phrase with both “wife” and “me” as the objects of the preposition. If you eliminated “wife and” from the equation, the phrase would be “with me,” and that would sound right to everyone. It is also between you and me (I hear this as you and I very, very often).

So here I am at the end, and I still don’t know what I should call this blog post. Laughter and Language Lessons? Casual Stoll in the Dark? Ice Cream and Near Catastrophe? Gates and Grammar? Fourteen-Pound Puppies Pouncing? My Best Superman Banana Pose? I’m open for suggestions.