National Grammar Day!

For the holidays, my mother-in-law gave me a t-shirt that said "I am the grammarian your mother warned you about."

Which is sort of true.

However, absurdly slavish adherence to grammar is a thing up with which I will not put.

I think splitting infinitives is often perfectly fine. Warnings against it are a relic of the fact that English grammar, unusually in European languages, has two-word infinitives. You can say, "to plainly see" in English, because the infinitive is "to see." But really, you can't split in half the French word for "to see": "voir".

Passive voice can be very useful. It's passive and not as firmly committed, so it's discouraged in writing focused on making and supporting arguments (and consequently, in introductory college writing courses) but sometimes passivity is what you want! What if you're speaking before a group and you don't want to single out one person as the architect of a bad decision? Then, some ambiguity about the responsibility of the action--the much-mocked "mistakes were made" option--can help your case.

On the other hand, while grammar has some rules that don't make sense, by and large it helps us understand one another better, and I'm all for clarifying your message. Often, even when your meaning might be clear enough with a grammatically incorrect sentence, it's not beautiful. Perhaps a spoonful of beautiful, grammatically correct prose makes the message go down in the most delightful way.

Even though I don't want you to become so encumbered by rules of grammar that you can't communicate, I do try to keep in mind the useful rules of grammar. So in honor of National Grammar Day, today, I'd like to point out some common and tricky matters of grammar, style, and English usage.

Momentarily and Presently
Momentarily means for a moment.
Presently means in a moment.

This might seem like a silly distinction, but think about it. If your coworker is going to meet you "momentarily", isn't it important to know whether she'll just drop by for a brief chat, or whether she'll be there soon?

The late George Carlin put this a bit more bluntly. "Momentarily means FOR a moment, not IN a moment. The word for "in a moment" is 'presently'. "I will be there presently, Dad, and then, after pausing momentarily, I will kick you in the nuts."

They're. Their. There.

"They're waiting. Where? There! That's their location, over there."

They're is short for "they are" or "they were." A test: can you insert "they are" where you've got "they're"? Think about it: They're engineers (they are engineers). They're waiting for us (they are waiting for us.) They're engineers, they're waiting for us, and they're plans look great. (They are engineers, and they are waiting for us, and they are plans look great--hey, wait a minute! That last one doesn't sound right!)

Their is a possessive. "Their hats." "Their skills." But: "My friends have arrived. Their waiting in the hall." isn't quite right. To test it, ask: could you use plural possessive language--language used to refer to something belonging to multiple people--instead of "their"? "Bob and Kathy's hats." "Our skills." These work just fine. "My friends have arrived. My friends' waiting in the hall"--huh? If that doesn't strike your ear wrongly, imagine flipping it into the first person. "We have arrived. Our waiting in the hall." Our is equivalent to their. Instead, for those unfortunate people who are still waiting in the hall for us, we should say, "They're waiting in the hall."

There denotes location. "The diner is over there." "It must be wonderful to live there." But never: "My friends brought there coats with them." It doesn't need to be a concrete location--it's perfectly correct to say "There is a problem with the software." However, putting other location words in where you're writing "there" is a way to test it in many contexts. "The diner is on Elm Street." "It must be wonderful to live on Cape Cod." Sounds great! "My friends brought on Elm Street coats with them--" Huh? Another option is to replace "there" with "here". Your meaning won't be the same, of course, but the sentence should still make sense if it's grammatically correct, and it should still be a good test if it isn't. So, "Here is a problem with the software." "The diner is here." "It must be wonderful to live here." "My friends brought here coats with them"--again, it strikes your ear oddly, and makes you go back to the sentence and look at it again. Which, for most of us, is all we really need to get it right in the final version.


Number
You want to make sure that your verbs and their subjects agree in number. So:

Please say:
"The group of students is going on a trip."
Don't say:
"The group of students are taking a trip."

Why?
Because the verb ("is/are") corresponds to "group," which is singular. You wouldn't write "the group are taking a trip" right? This is tricky for some because the number of the immediately adjacent word ("students") does not dictate the number of the verb--in other words, a plural noun, or plural pronoun, right next to the verb, is not necessarily the subject of it, and thus is not necessarily the one that needs to agree with it.

Similarly, you would always say:
The speaker who gave the presentations is one of the most eloquent speakers in Massachusetts.
and you'd never think of saying:
The speaker who gave the presentations are one of the most eloquent speakers in Massachusetts.

Why? Because the presentations can't be an eloquent speaker--much less the most eloquent speaker in Massachusetts!

In closing
Finally, do not trust Microsoft Word. It's a computer, and doesn't understand grammar, style, or usage--or, for that matter, spelling--as people do. Unfortunately it tends to enforce some of the least useful rules (like prohibitions on passive voice), and to overlook some of the most common mistakes.

Enjoy celebrating the rest of National Grammar Day! Maybe I'll watch some old episodes of Frasier later tonight. Oh, wait--that's right. It's not National Grammer Day!

(Yes, that's a very bad pun. I know. Does it make it less painful if I tell you that that's a specific kind of pun, called paranomasia?)