Grammar Moses: This Dude can't abide
I asked for it.
In my first column last week, I requested your grammar pet peeves. I asked for your criticisms, should I run afoul of any rule.
And I heard you loud and clear (I know that is the idiom, but "loudly and clearly" technically is better because they are adverbs modifying how I heard you).
At any rate, this is cause for celebration. I have heard from and chatted with more than 60 of you. I thank you for your interest. Clearly there is a lot in your collective craw. I hope you'll continue to vent to me about grammatical injustices so that we all may learn a thing or two.
Rick Barlow of Schaumburg suggested that I level a "syn tax" against anyone who makes an egregious error. He was kind enough to grant me permission to use the term.
So I dish out the first syn tax to ... myself.
Pretzel logic
Reader Dave Gauger wrote to tweak me for the awkward phrasing in this sentence from the inaugural column: I've been compelled to write grammar quizzes ... and, through them, make miserable the people with whom I work and at the same time make better their copy."
In my zeal to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition while maintaining parallel construction, I managed to twist myself into a pretzel.
You'd need a sextant to navigate that sentence.
One way to make the passage clearer would have been to break it into two sentences: "I've been compelled to write grammar quizzes ... and, through them, make my co-workers miserable. At the same time, though, I helped them to improve their writing."
Much more understandable.
Touché, Dave.
The Dude can't abide
Reader Nancy Sigel told me that she and her husband feel I erred in this sentence:
"Still, there are some hard-and-fast rules to which all of us should abide."
She felt I should have written "abide by."
But her husband gets the gold star. He knew the word I should have used instead of "abide" is "adhere."
To abide is to put up with; to adhere is to stick to something.
A winner!
Emilie, who asked that I not use her last name, is the winner of my first treasure hunt.
From time to time I will leave an error in a column intentionally.
I didn't think anyone would find this breadcrumb, but four of you did. Eagle-eye Emilie was the first.
Emilie spent almost 30 years at a legal publishing firm in the proofreading department.
I have no doubt she'd be a whiz as a grammar columnist.
She noted that in ending a sentence with a parenthetical, I should have put the period outside the close parenthesis rather than inside.
I admit that is a master's level punctuation issue.
Let's end this session with something more basic.
Final thought
Jeannette Clark of Naperville wonders whether it is correct to say "all of a sudden" as she learned it or "all of the sudden," which is common today.
If you go by pure numbers of grammar experts, "all of a sudden" wins hands down. "All the sudden" is an even worse bastardization.
But since it means "suddenly," why not just use that?
Write carefully!
• Jim Baumann is assistant vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can follow or friend Jim on social media at facebook.com/baumannjim.