Grammar Moses: If I leaped to your defense, would you be angry?

Sometimes, politics takes a back seat to grammar and spelling.

And if I'm ever elected president, good grammar will be my top priority.

Jim Papak of Streamwood wrote this: "Ever since the national anthem protests began I was bothered by the term 'kneeled.' I've seen it in print and heard it on the various sports outlets. I thought that the past tense of 'kneel' was 'knelt.'

Well, Jim, it depends largely on which side of the pond you come from.

"Kneel" is an irregular verb, as are "dream" and "leap."

Regular verbs generally take a simple -ed suffix to create a past tense. There is no simple rule on how to make a past tense of irregular verbs.

Consider these irregular verbs and their corresponding past-tense forms: become/became; feel/felt; grind/ground; hold/held; forsake/forsook.

Brits tend to hold onto irregular verbs, while Americans tend to apply the rules of regular verbs to them.

Hence, the growing popularity of "kneeled" and "leaped."

I find irregular verbs to be a lot more interesting. Combine that with my constant inner battle with pedantry, and you'll understand why I chafe when people say Colin Kaepernick "kneeled" rather than stood (another good irregular verb) for the national anthem.

If you compare "kneeled" and "knelt" in Google's Ngram Viewer, you'll see that "knelt" is many times more popular than "kneeled."

Hurray for that!

However, since 1800 "leaped" has always been more popular in literature than "leapt."

And "dreamed" has been significantly more popular than "dreamt."

Jim asks: "Would you ever say, 'I dealed the cards'?"

Dear God, Jim, I hope it never comes to that.

I know my dear mother would have feeled the same way.

Except my apology

I have committed an error of omission.

In my haste in last Sunday's column I applauded the folks at Woodfield Mall for getting the signs changed on their Coke machines to fix the redundancy of "$5 dollars" but failed to mention that in one fell swoop someone fixed the accept/except homograph problem.

I pointed out that problem in my original column but not the follow-up piece. Thanks for all the kind emails pointing out the error of my ways.

But that's not the end of it, notes Stan Zegel.

"Modifiers of limitation are too often misplaced, modifying the wrong thing," he wrote.

"Woodfield Mall needs to move the 'only' to the correct place, so the sign will read 'This machine accepts only $1 and $5 bills.'"

Stan is correct.

To say that the machine only does one thing - accepts singles and fives - is incorrect. More important to the consumer is that soda machines dispense the nectar of the gods.

I was going to quibble with Stan that soda machines also accept change, but he was quick to the trigger and sent me a follow-up email saying so.

And, with that, I think we've finally exhausted the conversation on those pop machines.

Special dispensation?

Now we move on to another dispensing device: the gas pump.

You've seen all the warnings about how to dispense gas and how to avoid causing a spark, which really would ruin your day.

Bob Magnussen and Sharon Ogle sent me photos of two identical signs at different gas stations.

This one is a puzzler.

The top two-thirds of the sign makes sense. It's a little short on punctuation, mind you, but understandable.

The last sentence, though, clearly has problems.

No gas station owner would knowingly encourage customers to pump super unleaded into the gas station attendant. At least I hope that's the case.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.