The Oxford Comma

Source: etsy.com via Katie on Pinterest

I have something to tell you that may reduce your belief in my love for grammar.

I didn't know what the Oxford comma was until after I graduated with an English degree (and courses in linguistics).  I had to look it up on (oh, this hurts) Wikipedia.  I know, I know, I should have gone to a better-credited source, but it's so easy to just pop over there and type in your search.  For the record, I did follow the wiki search with a perusal of the OWL at Purdue, just to verify what I was reading.

But anyway, once I knew what it was--ah! the serial comma!--I realized that it was the comma I actually quite love.  It's the one that comes after the last item before the conjunction in a list.

This is all a bit of history (I almost wrote "backstory" before remembering this article) to tell you why, exactly, I loved and laughed at this story on NPR.

I am so happy to hear that the Oxford Comma is safe (because I am not a fan of unnecessary ambiguity, unless it serves some rhetorical purpose).

grammar guide and more

I had a busy and lovely weekend, filled with good food, graduations, friends and family, and a lot of sun.  It's already hitting ninety degrees and I'm a little afraid we're going to have a ridiculously hot summer.

{by Claudia on Flickr}

Today, in lieu of writing up my own grammar post, I'm going to send you to the recently rediscovered series of grammar posts on The Oatmeal.  Have you ever read/seen them?  They're part snarky, part just funny, and part informative.  You'll probably laugh out loud.  I did, at least, especially while reading the one about semicolon use.  I am searching for my notebook (among other things hiding in boxes) that has my list of future grammar-related posts in it, but I can't find it and my mental list seems to be in hiding at the moment.  Does that ever happen to you?  

Remember how I posted about a haircut?  I went ahead and got one.  I like it quite a bit; it's short and simple to keep up.  I changed my blogger picture accordingly.

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar: Comma Splicing

Be nice to your sentences and don't splice them.  

The comma splice is any easy mistake to make.  I went years without knowing exactly what it was--all the way through to AP English in eleventh grade.  I know I was taught what a comma splice is, but I think I overcomplicated it and confused myself.  It's so simple, though, that I can't believe I never figured it out on my own.  

Put simply, a comma splice occurs when you try to connect two complete sentences (more commonly--and accurately, if not understandably--called independent clauses) with only a comma.  Strunk and White are not fans, to say the least.  In some languages, comma splices are grammatically correct, but not English.

So how do you recognize and avoid them?

To begin, review what makes a complete sentence: a subject (a noun or noun clause) and a verb (or verb clause) that go together.  The girl smiles.  The cat runs.  The horse neighs.  Purple polka dots are bright.  Now, each of these can stand alone; each is an independent clause.  Commas are intended to connect dependent clauses (like prepositional phrases) to each other or to independent clauses.  A comma used correctly will look like this:

When the girl smiles, the cat runs.

"When the girl smiles" has a subject and a verb, but the word "when" changes the function of the phrase to a dependent clause.  Thus, the comma is place after the dependent clause and is actually necessary.  However, if we dropped the word "when," then "the girl smiles" would become an independent clause, and it would be incorrect to use a comma like this:

The girl smiles, the cat runs. 

This can be corrected easily with any number of changes, depending on the context.  If the two independent clauses are very closely related, a semicolon (;) is generally acceptable.  If the two independent clauses are connected a little more loosely, then a comma followed by the word "and" usually will suffice.  Other times, a comma followed by "but," "or," or "then" is more appropriate, but some sort of conjunction is necessary.  If you can't figure out which one to do, then you can simply separate the two independent clauses into two sentences with a period.  

The girl smiles; the cat runs.

The girl smiles, and the cat runs.

The girl smiles, but the cat runs.

The girl smiles, then the cat runs.

The girl smiles, or the cat runs.

The girl smiles. The cat runs.

Any of these would be acceptable.  Oftentimes, a comma is not used before "and" unless you are joining three independent clauses; however, I used it here for the sake of simplicity, and because either way is technically correct.

another love

If you read this blog, you know I've got a thing for books, crafts, and pretty things.
You've  also figured out that I'm a nerd for correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Every now and then, I come across things that combine the two with pleasing results.
Would you like to see?

I spotted one of the illustrated pages of this guide to Portuguese grammar.  Don't you wish they still illustrated book covers, instead of putting exceptionally clichéd photos all over the front?  The man in the striped shirt looks pretty fantastic, I think.

{click here for complete source information}

I really wish my French textbook was this fun inside.  I wonder what the story was in this lesson?

The colors in this are great together.  This textbook might have actually made learning math a little more fun.  

{from Katy Elliot}

I have a pack of vintage papers that I got from Alex Keller a few months ago (when I was lucky enough to win a certificate to her store) and I plan to scan some of them soon--I guess with the ease of digital photography and layouts, fun and whimsical illustrations in everyday, more utilitarian sorts of books, have sort of gone away. 

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar: there, they're, their

This one really gets to me.  It hurts my grammar snob eyes.  I try to be open-minded in most things, and I know a lot of people just can't keep track of rules for word usage in the same way that I can't keep track of the order of operations in mathematics (but I still remember PEMDAS!), but I get a little bothered when otherwise intelligent people write "there" to mean that something belongs to them.

Here are the simple rules for there, their, and they're:

Use "there" to indicate a position or place or in forming "there are" or "there is" phrases.

I parked the car over there.
There are many ways to park a car.

Use "their" to indicated that a plural noun possesses something.  This noun, more often than not, will be they.

They lost their way.
My mom and dad like their house.

Use "they're" when you could use "they are" instead.

They're going to the fair.
When do you think they're going to arrive?


You could even occasionally have all three words in one sentence, like this:

I think they're going to lose their way getting there.


I know that homonyms (words that sound the same but have different meanings) can get terribly confusing, but you can think of it this way: "there" has the word "here" in it, "they're" has "they" and part of "are" in it, and "their" is used the rest of the time.  Does that help?

Sometimes I think I'm a bit more snobby than I'd like to be by going about grammar like this, and I understand that a lot of people just don't care.  But isn't posting a little series about grammar rules better than leaving pointed comments on people's blogs?  I haven't decided yet.  It's not as effective in reaching people, sure, but it does pretty much take care of my irritation with all the misused words I find on the internet. 
By the way, our internet connection will be turned off tomorrow afternoon, so I'm not sure if I'll get posts up or be able to read and comment on your blog.  My time in the writing lab will be spent tutoring and working on my French class.  I've got a post or two scheduled, but if you don't hear from me, I'm probably still alive, just disconnected.  Have a lovely week!

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar: I'm late, I'm late for a very important date!

Yes, I forgot about posting the grammar guide.  Yes, I have completely fallen off of my brilliant schedule (like I ever keep one anyways!).

Since last week's post came from a question asked by Gram, I though I'd extend an invitation for grammar questions you have.  Is there some sneaky little thing that you can never remember?  Did your teachers always circle or count off for something on your paper without telling you why?  What would you like to know?

I have quite a few grammar-related things to post about still, but I figure they're a little boring and possibly irrelevant if they're not something you've been trying to figure out.  Today, I'm going to post a fun little something from The Grammar Devotional, which I receive in my email regularly from DailyLit.  If you're a nerd for all things grammatical, then you can sign up for The Grammar Devotional emails here.

Is anyone else amused to see the little pop culture reference at the end?  New words do get made up frequently and old words disappear or change in meaning almost as often.  On the first day of my first linguistics course, my instructor informed us that there are only two things we really know about languages: they exist, and as long as they are alive, they change.  So once again, even though I'm rather picky about writing things correctly, it's quite probable that ten years from now, I may be able to permit students to write something a way that's incorrect right now.  It's not that language is always getting messier or less intelligent (though that is sometimes the case), but that it changes.  

There's your little linguistic tidbit for the day.  I hope you enjoyed it!

P.S. Did you know that blog is also a portmanteau word?  It comes from "web log."  Blogger, blogging, and the like are derivations that I believe will be in the next edition of most major dictionaries.  I've got to check on that. 

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar: -ible or -able

At the request of my husband's grandmother--Gram, as she is best known, I am writing about a confusing little piece of spelling, one of those that's hard to discern by sound cues.  Lots of words end in -ible or -able, which sound almost identical in most American accents.  I decided to look it up for myself, since spelling is oddly natural to me (except when I try to write without putting in my contacts!) and I've never had a problem differentiating, even though I have no idea what the pattern or rule is when it comes to using -ible and -able.  So I ventured over to the online writing lab (OWL) at Purdue, which is one of the best resources you can possibly use for rules on writing and formatting, and discovered that the rule is astonishingly simple for any rule in the English language.  This is it: if the root word is a complete word that can stand on its own, use -able.  If not, use -ible.  For good measure, I'll give you a few examples.

Take the word "manageable."  You know you can write or say "manage" as a complete word, so "manageable" is correct.

However, "incredible" uses the -ible ending because "incred" is not a complete word; it must be attached to something else.  

The OWL has a few more examples, so you can take a look there.  

Happy writing!

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar: Your or You're?

"Your" and "you're," like "it's" and "its," are easy to mix up.  They sound the same (unless you're a weird hybrid of northern/midwestern and southern accents like me and pronounce "your" like "yer") in conversation, so transferring them to the written word correctly can get them mixed up.  However, they are completely different in meaning.  "Your" is a possessive adjective, meaning that X belongs to you.  "You're" is a contraction of the pronoun "you" and the verb "are," and means "you are."

A quick substitution test (like with "it's") can be performed to determine which form to use.  

If you could replace "your/you're" with "you are" in a sentence, then "you're" is appropriate.  Here's an example, with the substituted words in bold.

After reading this post, you're going to know the difference between "your" and "you're."

After reading this post, you are going to know the difference between "your" and "you're."

If "your/you're" cannot be replaced with "you are," then "your" is the correct form.  You can see the difference in this example, again with the substituted words in bold.

After reading this post, you will check your spelling.

After reading this post, you will check you are spelling.

Does it make sense?  No, you can see that it doesn't.  It would sound strange to say it out loud.  In this context, the spelling belongs to you--it is yours.  

Now, wasn't that easy?

By the way, "ur" is never an acceptable form of "your" or "you're," except maybe sometimes in texting when brevity is usually of greater importance (though I always spell words out).  I actually have seen it in an academic paper that was submitted for a grade.  Needless to say, the student lost points.  The way you write on twitter, facebook, or in text messages is definitely not how you want to write for something that gets graded or that will be circulated in the workplace.  

Well, this is going up a little later in the day than I meant, but I've been busy working and getting some photographs of my little town before we leave in twenty-six days, not that I'm counting.  But hey, you'd count down, too, if you knew that you would be moving from a town with no bookstores to a city with at least ten, wouldn't you?  Today my boss asked me how I am about grammar and proofreading before I looked over some documents.  I laughed and said that I'm nitpicky. 

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar: Where's my preposition at?

It's been a long-held tradition, often used as a determinant of a person's skill with language, that you cannot end a sentence with a preposition. 
However, it's rather difficult to construct many kinds of questions without ending in a preposition, as evidenced by these examples.

How does this fit in?
What page does this go on?
Where do we go out?

Many a grammar snob (which I guess I am) turns up his or her nose at these constructions, but then turns right around and uses them.  Yet these constructions are actually correct.  They are not always the best, but they are correct, with one stipulation: they are not appropriate for formal (typically academic) writing. 

The Scribner Handbook for Writers notes that prepositions, as their name indicates, are meant to be placed before their objects, "the noun or pronoun it connects with another part of the sentence."  They usually initiate a prepositional phrase, which (you may remember from a few weeks ago) must be followed by a comma.

So don't you worry too much about using those prepositions at the end of a phrase.  They are okay!  Of course, you should watch for unnecessary prepositions, like the one in my title.  "Where's my preposition?" covers all the meaning necessary.  "At" is not needed, because I've already asked where the preposition is.  The Scribner Handbook for Writers offers another example of unneccessary prepositions:

"We met up with the director at noon." 

This sentence could simply be said like this:

"We met the director at noon."

If you're trying to reach a word requirement for a paper, you could leave in the "up with," but if you're trying to be clear and concise, you don't need them.  Now, I'm generally predisposed to over-wordiness, so I'm not one to talk about being concise, but in my experience, teachers and professors seem to like it.  I'd recommend the shorter sentence in formal writing, but otherwise, I think you could let it go.

Today's Source: DiYanni, Robert, and Pat C. Hoy II. The Scribner Handbook for Writers. Pearson Longman: New York. Fourth Edition. 2004.

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar :: i, t, and s

It's raining today.  It's miserable.  The sun is hiding its face from us all.

We use that funny little combination of i, t, and s every day.  It's short and easy to say and write.  But in writing, it gets mixed up constantly.  It also gives me a headache--okay, maybe not, but if I see i-t-s (referring to either it's or its, depending on the context) used incorrectly, I have a hard time concentrating on anything else.  How nerdy is that?  I once didn't buy a t-shirt that I otherwise loved because someone used the wrong i-t-s.  I am that far gone into the land of nitpicky English degree holders.

Anyway, I could go in depth and talk about all the different times to use and not to use an apostrophe, but I'll save that for another day and break it apart into contractions, possessives, and the like.  For today, I'm just going to talk about i-t-s, and when you need an apostrophe and when you don't.  It's very simple, really.  There is one governing principle: if you could replace i-t-s with "it is," then you need an apostrophe.  Here's your example:

It's horrible outside today.

It is horrible outside today.

Both of those make sense, right?  Think of the apostrophe as a replacement for the i in "is."

Now, if you're using i-t-s to talk about something belonging to it, then you forget the apostrophe.  For example, if you were saying that your dog has a tail and keeps chasing it, you would write this:

My dog keeps chasing its tail.

You can make sure you don't need that apostrophe if you replace "its" with "it is," like so:

My dog keeps chasing it is tail.

That doesn't make sense, does it?  No, it makes no sense at all, so you can see here that you don't need that apostrophe.  

Let's recap: if you could replace the i-t-s with "it is," you need an apostrophe.  If you can't use "it is" instead, then you do not need and should not use an apostrophe.  It's that easy!  

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar: Creating Complete Sentences



Let me be honest with you: incomplete sentences irritate me.  They break off and leave me wondering what, exactly, you meant to say.  When you're writing, even creatively, you always want your reader to know what you want to say.  If you do not convey your purpose and meaning, then why write anything for others to read?

In order to understand how to write a complete sentence, we (Why, yes, I am employing the so-called "royal we") must examine what makes a sentence.  To begin, we have the subject, highlighted in bold below.

The flowers are blooming.



The subject is the part of the sentence that performs an action of some sort.  Sometimes the subject is simple, like "the flowers."  Other times, it's a little more complicated, like in this example.

The tall, slim, and purple flowers are blooming.

In addition to the subject, we must have the predicate, the part of the sentence that contains the action, highlighted in bold below.  This must be a conjugated verb.  To tell if your verb is conjugated, look for two things.  First, if it ends in "ing," but does not have a helping verb before it (like "are" in the sentence below), then it is not conjugated.  Second, if it is in the infinitive form ("to" something, like "to play," "to run," etc.), then it is not conjugated.  If you have an unconjugated verb, then change its form or add helping verbs.  An example of a predicate is as follows:

The flowers are blooming.

Just like the subject, the predicate can be simple or complicated, like this example.

The flowers are blooming and growing rapidly.

Now, if we really want to break it down, the only essential part of the subject is the word "flowers," and the only essential part of the predicate is the word "are."  See, in a complete sentence, we need a noun and a conjugated verb.  So our sentence could actually be just like this:

Flowers are.

Sometimes, a group of words will have both of these features--a noun and a conjugated verb--but is still not a complete sentence.  You might look at that squiggly green line under your words in Microsoft Word and want to scream at your computer.  But the answer is actually pretty simple, once you know how to look for it: if the noun and verb are part of a dependent clause, then you do not have a complete sentence.

"A what?" you ask? Let me explain, with some help from a textbook I found in the writing center:

"If the conjugated verb and its subject are introduced by a danger word, you do not have a complete sentence; it does not express a complete thought.  It is a cliff-hanger, because it begins a statement but does not finish it.  Example: If you come home...[what?]" (Troyka and Nudelman 107).

What are these danger words?  Well, you can go back to last week's post and look at the list of prepositions in the link I included.  Those are always clues.  If they show up before the subject, then you probably have a dependent clause, which is most easily defined as a group of words that needs to be connected to a sentence (it depends on the sentence, you could say).  There are some other "danger words" that don't always show up before the subject, however, and these can be hard to spot.  They sneak their way in between the subject and the predicate on occasion.  Troyka and Nudelman's list consists of these words: who, whom, which, that, whoever, whomever, what, and whatever (107).  If you spot a group of words like this one, you know that it's not a complete sentence.

The flowers that are blooming.

In order to be a complete sentence, some changes would have to be made.  You could remove "that," or you could add to the sentence, maybe saying, "The flowers that are blooming are pretty."  Either option will give you a complete sentence.  Troyka and Nudelman offer two tips for correcting fragments caused by "danger words."  First, you could "attach the fragment to the previous sentence or to the one that follows, whichever is most closely connected in thought to the fragment."  You could also "complete the fragment with the necessary words" (108). 

So, in summary, you should look for three things when identifying a complete sentence:

1. a subject (a noun)*

2. a predicate (containing a conjugated verb)

3. no "danger words" (which would create a dependent clause)

If all of these check out, then you probably have a complete sentence.  Write on!

*The only exception to this rule is the command, in which the subject is not always stated.  If you have a sentence like "Go home," then it is complete, even though there is no noun before the verb.  The subject is an implied "you."  To check that this is accurate, write in the "you," and if it still makes sense, you most likely have a complete sentence.

I may have bachelor's degree in English and be preparing for a master of arts program, but I can't always explain things in plain language, so today, I pulled out a book that actually explains things pretty well, in spite of being a grammar textbook.  It's older in the realm of scholarship, but it's still accurate.  I wonder if my boss will let me keep it, since she was going to get rid of it?  How nerdy does that make me?  Anyway, here's the source:

Troyka, Lynn Quitman, and Jerrold Nudelman.  "The Sentence Fragment." Steps in Composition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1999. Print.

The Nitpicky English Major's Guide to Grammar :: Where does my comma go?

{logo image found on vintageprintable and altered by me}

Have you heard of the Oxford comma?  I like it.  I use it in lists of three or more items such as books, movies, or magazines.  See what I did there?  There's a comma after books, after movies, and after magazines (the Oxford Comma is the one after "movies").  But I'm not going to talk about the Oxford Comma all day, because it's really boring, even to those of us crazy enough to major in English.  I'll spare you. 

However, the Oxford Comma shows the reality that the use of the comma is often disputed.  One English teacher taught me to use the Oxford comma; another crossed it out in all my papers.  But there are always a few places that you pretty much always need one.  The first is after any sort of prepositional phrase that begins a sentence.  Here are some examples, with the prepositional phrase in bold:

When I go to the bank, I deposit money.  

Under the bridge, there was water.

In between the house, car, and garage, a kitten was asleep.

Now, a preposition does not always denote a prepositional phrase, like this:

Under the bridge was where the water collected.

Here, "under the bridge" works as the subject of the sentence, meaning that it performs the action of the sentence, which is, in this case, "was." "Under the bridge" functions as one noun.  You don't need a comma.  

So how do you ever tell the difference?  You can think about how you would replace the words in question.  If you could replace the group of words with "that," it's probably not a prepositional phrase.  Look at this example again.  The words that may be replaced with that are in bold.

Under the bridge was where the water collected.

That was where the water collected.

Meanwhile, you can see that replacing "under the bridge" with "that" doesn't work in this sentence:

Under the bridge, there was water.

That, there was water.

It doesn't sound or look right, does it?

So when you do have a prepositional phrase (like this little bit right here before the comma in this sentence), you will need a comma after it.  A pretty good list of prepositions can be found here, and if you have a phrase that begins with one, I'd recommend looking at the examples above and evaluating whether or not you need a comma.  

{image found on yourenglishlessons; original source noted in copyright on image}

In summary, you can reasonably determine your comma needs, at least when it comes to prepositional phrases, by answering these questions:

1. Is there a preposition in my sentence?

2. If yes, does it introduce a phrase (such as in something, through something, or because something)?

3. If it does introduce a phrase, where does this phrase end (usually after the "something" in question 2)?

If you answered yes to the first two questions, place the comma at the end of the phrase, as determined by question three.

I'll talk about comma use for interjections and other grammatical functions another time.  This is quite enough for now!