Author: Patricia Nelson

Here’s a quickie. In English, “bring” and “take” are from the point of view of the speaker, not the point of view of the carrier. “Bring” is toward the speaker, “take” is away from the speaker. This is a rather mushy rule, but this Ben comic, in which the kid gets it wrong, definitely feels wrong to a native speaker, so it should help you remember how to use those two words.

Here’s the headline to a pretty good article about writing.

Clutter

How to remove extra words that make you sound boring

I quoted it because they jimmied up the graphics to make it hard to copy and paste, so you’ll have to follow the link in my first line to see what the formatting looks like.

The article is a pretty good read, even with an incorrect adverb in the first line of the first paragraph. I agree with what the writer says we should do when we write, but the motivation I offer is not about being boring (that’s egotistical), but about whether the reader can absorb the content of the writing without thinking about the writing itself. That’s getting the job done. Here are a few places where I mentioned this concept before: here, here, here, and here.

This probably seems a minor quibble, but the first panel in this comic has the wrong preposition. It should be “on” or “about.”

You pretty much need to be a native speaker of the language to get prepositions right all the time (and even then, you can find geographical differences, say, between the US and UK).

I don’t have a good solution, either. Maybe try googling phrases like “preposition for thesis topic.” Or ask a curmudgeon.

No comic today, but something to think about.

My second gold rule of writing is to be correct. This from This Day in History for July 20:

In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the dark side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit.

The whole moon is dark half the time! They went to the FAR side of the moon! I know, “dark” is a synonym for “unknown,” and I presume they were using a professional writer who decided to write, um, informally. Still, why not be accurate?

While I’m at it, here’s another example of bad writing from the same article:

After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19.

“Into” is unnecessary. (It’s redundant. “Entering” includes the idea of going into.) I call this kind of mistake “fluff.” It goes against my third rule, to be concise. If you don’t need a word, don’t use it.

Double harrumpf.

Maybe I’m passing up a good opportunity here; after all, this comic is even about a point of grammar. But I’ve mentioned that solecism enough times that both of you dear readers should know how to get “your” and “you’re” correct by now, right?

Here’s today’s Dustin:

So here’s my question. Well, two: Putting your fingers in an “L” shape against your forehead is a sign in American Sign Language. What does the sign mean? and does it matter which hand you use?

If you happen to know, send me a note in the comments, would you?

Some common words are one word when they’re adjectives and two words when they are nouns. Lots of text in this comic, but look at the bottom full line in the second panel.

“Everyday” as one word is an adjective! What she means is “every day.”

Here are a couple more that come to mind:

• altogether, all together;
• already, all ready;
• alright, all right;
• aftermath, after math. (Okay, not many are likely to confuse those two.)

Can you make a couple correct sentences with them? Can you list a few more such words? (Put them in the comments.)

That third one is particularly irritating to me. Here’s a good quote about it:

I’ve recommended A Word A Day a couple times in the past (and still do), and someone once asked about places to post their short stories, so I posted links to a few sites, and I always give credit when I quote comics (and usually other sites, unless it would embarrass them). Recently another site has been posting links to this site! I confess that I’m flattered, even though sometimes this sort of thing is a racket of some kind.

Well, the site is legit. At least I’m not the only one he mentions, and he stays on the topic of technical writing a lot. It’s an effort to have a social network site for tech writers. In fact, I joined up a long time ago and then forgot I had done so! Too busy tech writing, I guess.

Anyway, I’ll return the favor and post a link to his site:

Technical Writing World.

Give it a look. Maybe sign up.

I was going to continue with serious lessons, but today I ran into two comics that are not only both on the same topic, but they illustrate one of the finer points of punning.

Type 1: When the pronunciation of the misused words is the same,
https://comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2017-07-13

Type 2: When the pronunciation is almost the same,
https://comicskingdom.com/take-it-from-the-tinkersons/2017-07-13

Which reminds me of my sister’s favorite pun, which goes something like this: “I thought that was water dripping from your nose, but it’s not.”

She has a fiendish laugh to go with it.

Here’s a sentence. Is it right or wrong? (Maybe I should say, “Is the grammar correct?”)

While Subversion is still primarily a copy-modify-merge system, it still recognizes the need to lock an occasional file and thus provide mechanisms for this.

I saw this in some instructional material for a file management program named Subversion. (Yes, the first word should be “Although,” but that’s not the thing I’m thinking about.) What about “provide”? Shouldn’t it be “provides” to go with “recognizes”? After all, the subject of the sentence is “it,” right?

Well, yes, the word could be “provides” to go with the singular subject. But the sentence is correct nonetheless! Can you tell why?

Because instead of the sentence having a compound predicate, it has a compound infinitive! It’s “to lock” and “to provide.” That “to” serves both words.

This is one of those (rare) cases where no matter which you do, you’re right!