Grammar & Punctuation Redux
There are issues that try writers’ souls. Closely related words can be confused, mistyped, completed improperly by auto-correction, or punctuation may be misapplied… and then there’s the basic stuff. You know your strengths and weaknesses. Use the FIND function to check on each occurrence of those that have plagued you.
Choose your nemesis:
- Lay versus Lie
- Affect versus Effect
- Adverbs
- Less versus Fewer
- Number versus Amount
- Passed versus Past
- Was versus Were
- Could have versus Could of
- Me/I, He/Him, She/Her
- They as a singular pronoun
- Who versus Whom
- As versus Like
- Using the Semicolon
- Commas
- The Oxford Comma
- The Real Basic Stuff (just in case)
Lay versus Lie
| To Set an Object Down | To Rest of Recline | |
| 1 – Lay | Present tense | 2 – Lie |
| 3 – Laid | Past tense | 4 – Lay |
| 5 – Laying | Present participle (doing it now) |
6 – Lying |
| 7 – Laid | Past participle (did it before) |
8 – Lain |
1 – “Don’t shoot. I’m going to lay the gun on the table.”
2 – “After that run-in with the police, I’m going to lie down for a nap.”
3 – “I fell asleep as soon as I laid my head on the pillow.”
4 – “I lay there for quite a while.”
5 – “I’m laying my gun back in the drawer.
6 – “And I’m lying down for another nap.”
7 – “Having laid the gun in the draw…”
8 – “…and lain down for two naps…”
Affect versus Effect
Affect is a verb and it means to change or influence.
• His bad driving affected his insurance rates.
• How is the injury going to affect his ability to play?
Affect has an alternate use regarding a facial expressions:
• From his bland affect, I couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad.
Effect is usually a noun meaning a result.
• The effect of the fire was to reduce the home to ashes.
• His bad driving had an effect on his insurance rates.
Effect can sometimes be a verb, too.
• We can effect change if we all vote.
Adverbs
An adverb is a word that adjusts or modifies (tweaks) the meaning of a verb, adjective, or another adverb. Adverbs are most easily identified by their ending of ly, but not always.
“I can’t marry him,” Ginger said. “Fred doesn’t dance.”
“But Fred dances beautifully,” Gene said.
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “If he didn’t, I couldn’t marry him.”
The adverb beautifully describing the quality of Fred’s dancing adds to the meaning of the sentence.
There’s a great deal of controversy regarding the use of adverbs. However, in this exchange Gene provides valuable information to Ginger who wouldn’t have accepted Fred’s proposal if he didn’t dance well. The man’s entire fate hinged on that one adverb.
Note that in the phrase, “If he didn’t dance well,” well is an adverb that doesn’t end in “ly.”
So, there’s a justifiable case for adverbs, certainly in Fred’s mind. The issue from whence the argument derives is the overuse of adverbs and their contribution to sluggish redundancy without adding meaning to the writing.
She angrily spit in his face. The adverb angrily is unnecessary and causes a stumble in the flow of the sentence. Would a reader not glean her anger from, “She spit in his face?”
Other common abuse of adverbs:
- Whispering quietly
- Shouting loudly
- Grimacing painfully
- Laughing happily
Place adverbs judiciously (as opposed to haphazardly or randomly). Whenever you’re tempted to use an adverb, reread the sentence without it to discern if the adverb’s absence changes the meaning or lessens the emphasis. Often, it won’t.
Less versus Fewer
The Associated Press style guide has recently opted to accept less in place of fewer in their unending quest for illiteracy. They’re wrong.
• The boss has scheduled me for less time on the clock.
If the item can’t be counted, “time” is not a unit measure, then less is correct.
• Yeah, I’m getting fewer hours, too.
If the items can be counted, as hours can be, then fewer is correct.
- There is less sand.
- There are fewer grains of sand.
- 🎵 One less fewer bell to answer, one less fewer egg to fry…
To benefit from the remainder of
Grammar & Punctuation Redux,
see page 23 of