Grammar Moses: When bad grammar makes your heart race

I'd like to tell you that reading this column will make you feel better, and that might not just be wishful thinking.

It might, however, offer the equivalent of patting you on the hand and assuring you that everything will be all right.

Hey, I'll take it.

My book publisher passed along a story written by the Daily Mail's Deputy Science Editor, Xantha Leatham, that explores the physical manifestations of encountering poor grammar.

In her story, she cites researchers at the University of Birmingham (England) who brought in 41 British English-speaking adults (that's Britons who speak English rather than people who speak British English) who listened to 40 speech samples, half of which contained grammatical problems.

They were wired up for this, their heartrates measured throughout.

You guessed it: The more bad grammar they heard, the more their hearts registered signs of stress.

The researchers suggested bad grammar can trigger a fight or flight response.

Trolling, politics, misinformation and disgusting food videos notwithstanding, I conclude that bad grammar is the main reason so many people are fleeing Facebook. And without any empirical evidence to back me up, I suggest, too, that it could be a Top 3 driver for why more than 30% of first marriages end in divorce.

I do suffer a hitch in my giddyup when I see disastrous grammar use, and if you're reading this you probably do, too, but I never realized it might give me heart palpitations.

But I do have this column as an emotional outlet and so, dear readers, do you.

Now let me pat you on the hand and say, "There, their, they're. Feel better."

Too many words

Myra Rutstein wrote me with a few complaints.

"I have seen other readers raise serious questions," she wrote. "My observations are more in the nature of what happened to rereading everything before it is printed."

One was an unfortunate misspelling in a headline in one of our feature sections. I won't embarrass the person who wrote it, because I'm sure she's already mad at herself.

"The UAW story in Wednesday's Suburban Business caught my attention in the seventh paragraph. Not only was it one long, drawn-out sentence, but David Koenig added an unnecessary last word: 'common ground is still being sought out.' Common ground can be sought. Out? Out of what? Has he never heard of short, declarative sentences?"

David Koenig writes a lot about the airline industry for the Associated Press. He is a solid reporter and writer. We use his stuff from time to time.

When we edit wire copy, we look for the same kind of problems we do with our own stories: balance, libel, accuracy, fairness, spelling, grammar. Oh, the list is nearly endless.

But we do less with wire copy than we do with our own reporters' work. Not because it needs it less, but because we generally have one person prioritizing, curating, editing, headlining, trimming and paginating wire copy on a given day. I even take a shift once a week to keep me young and remind me that nights aren't just for sleeping.

We also do less with wire copy because it's already been through a battery of editors at AP and we view it as a more-or-less finished work.

We look for big problems. We ordinarily tweak it rather than shape it.

Myra made some good points, and in the case of "sought out" I would agree that if this were a staff-written story I would have viewed "out" as unnecessary and struck it (out).

But I would also suggest that "sought out" is perfectly idiomatic in these parts - where it is de rigueur to say things like "Where'd I leave my phone at?" - so not a great offense to the ears and not something that muddies one's understanding of the passage.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/executive editor of the Daily Herald. You can buy Jim's book, "Grammar Moses: A humorous guide to grammar and usage," at

grammarmosesthebook.com. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com

and put "Grammar Moses" in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.