Grammar Moses: 'Twas the night before deadline ...

There are days I'd like to ask for a do-over. I know I'm not alone, but my bad days tend to be more embarrassing, given the nature of my work.

No, I didn't leave a sponge in my patient, drive my school bus off a bridge or give my summary in a murder case to the wrong jury. But when I goof up the grammar in a column about grammar, well, I shouldn't have written it at all.

Thanks to the many astute readers who called me on it - especially the kind ones who assumed I had planted errors for you to find in a sort of grammatical egg hunt.

This time, it was a hastily written letter to readers on Monday that has me rethinking my career choice.

Let's kick off my self-flagellation tour with a note from Bob Dohn:

"I never would have imagined I'd be writing to you, of all people, concerning a grammar issue. Your article 'What - and who - shapes a front page' in today's edition is the matter in question," he wrote. "Shouldn't ' ... it's Managing Editor Lisa Miner or me who makes the final decision' correctly read 'Lisa Miner or I who make the final decision'? Also, shouldn't the headline read: 'What - and who - shape the front page'? As long as I've opened that door, here's one more: Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say you devote an entire meeting to the task, instead of a whole meeting?"

Bob is right on a couple of accounts: "and" suggests a plural; "or" suggests a singular.

So, "what and who shape" would be correct. But because I set off "and who" with em dashes, rendering it a nonessential clause, that would call for a singular verb for "what."

But what of the "Lisa or I" construction? The verb for "Lisa" is "makes"; the verb for "I" is "make."

According to News Editor Michelle Holdway, it's usually the proper noun or pronoun closest to the verb that determines your choice when you have an either/or or neither/nor construction.

As for whether I should have written "the whole meeting" or "the entire meeting," I consider the two equally fine. To see what contemporary authors use, I plugged the two phrases into Google's Ngram Viewer. "The whole meeting" was the dominant phrase in books until the end of World War I, when "the entire meeting" finally caught up. Ever since, they've been toe to toe, with a slight edge to "the entire meeting."

I'll mark this one up to personal preference, Bob.

Wallis Doan Sloat reached out to say I had used "it's" instead of "its" at the conclusion of my letter to readers.

Lisa Miner pointed that out after having read a draft of my letter, but I either forgot to correct it or did so after an online version of the letter was made.

Bonnie Eiffes chimed in with a question about this passage from my letter to readers:

"When the federal building in Oklahoma City was blown up, it's all we put on the front page. When terrorists flew planes into buildings on Sept. 11, 2001, it's all we wrote about."

"Shouldn't that be 'it was', not 'it is'?" she wrote.

The contraction for "it was" is "'twas" - with an apostrophe before the "t" to suggest a missing letter.

Going back to the Ngram Viewer, I found that use of the word "'twas" hit its zenith within two years of Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" being published in 1822.

As you probably know, "'twas" has steadily fallen out of favor in even formal writing over the years. I don't believe I've ever used it until today's column. Doing so feels, well, quaint and fussy.

Yet "'twas" was (and is) the official contraction of "it was."

The thing about contractions, though, is many of them are colloquial shortenings of words, such as gonna and wanna.

Unlike "'twas," the contraction for "am not" - "amn't" - would be nearly impossible to pronounce. You'd sound like you had peanut butter on the roof of your mouth, and you'd risk a tongue cramp.

So some bright person came up with "ain't," which is still roundly criticized as being lowbrow.

Perhaps I shouldn't have used the contraction "it's" to describe something that happened decades ago. But for the simple reason that by using "it's" in the context of a retelling events that occurred 28 and 22 years ago, respectively, leaves no confusion over whether I am talking about past or present tense, I'm going to give myself a pass on this one.

Clear writing supersedes hard and fast rules in my book.

Write carefully! I'll try to.

• 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.