Sigh. They do it twice, panels 1 and 2
“Snuck” is too common; everybody uses it (except my spell checker!) The correct word is “sneaked.”
In conversation, go ahead and say “snuck” if you want, but when you write nonfiction adult material, go with “sneaked.” No one will notice that you didn’t use “snuck,” but you’ll sound more mature.
Sigh. Here’s another one.
The Newark (DE) News Journal, no less. C’mon, guys—you’re professionals. It’s “sank”!
But this guy gets it right! Last panel.
I generally recommend against using adverbs (use a good verb instead) but here’s one where the guy got it right:
Looks like he even used an M-dash, though the spaces around it weren’t necessary.
Speaking of adverbs, I ran into a comic that I can’t find now that had the theme of using multiple adverbs. The punch line ran something like
Are you really absolutely positively utterly sure you turned off the oven?
The point being that the more adverbs, the greater the degree of certainty about something.
Okay, I ran into another string of adverbs, including a compound adverb!
Remember in grade school or high school science class when you put a magnet under a piece of paper and sprinkled iron filings on the paper to see the lines of force?
Magnetic fields ain’t got lines of force! Magnetism is a field, and fields are smooth. Those lines you saw are a result of smearing the iron particles around, and they’re a handy (and artificial) way to visualize the direction of the magnetism. If you were to draw lines showing equal strength (analogous to contour lines on a topographical map), they’d be perpendicular to those lines everybody mentions. Here are a few examples of someone using both terms interchangeably. He’s being imprecise.
Jets of hot plasma, propelled by a bunch of magnetic field lines, rise from a small sunspot roughly the size of China.
If all goes well, the spacecraft—safe in the shadow of the shield—will beam back a record of the corona’s plasma and the tangled net of magnetic fields that shape it.
Earth’s magnetic field deflects most solar wind particles
Researchers have proposed two mechanisms by which magnetic fields could turn kinetic energy from the sun’s roiling surface into coronal heat
Quotes from an article emailed to me by a friend. The writer is Joshua Sokol, a journalist based in Boston
You’re not likely to write expositorily about magnetism very often, but be sure you get it right when you do.
“Lend” is a verb. It’s something you do.
“Loan” is a noun. It’s a thing.
This guy (panel 2) has it wrong.
Don’t do that! It’s “did I lend you a book”! harrumpf
Been a while since I posted a comic, so here’s one:
Rule of thumb: Prepositions are especially tricky when you have to translate something into another language. Always get a native speaker to check your work.
I haven’t mentioned fluff in writing for a while. Fluff is one or more unnecessary words in what you (or someone) writes. You can also call this redundancy in writing. I hear people say “tiny little” a lot, as if it were one word. Here’s something similar:
Meteors are tiny dust-size particles of rock and metal that Earth passes through as it orbits the Sun.
http://www.astronomy.com/magazine/observing/2018/08/party-with-the-perseids
Take out “tiny”! Or take out “dust-size.”
If I may also wax astronomical, I shall add that the sentence describes particles that are too small. I don’t think a dust particle has enough molecules to create a flash of light bright enough to make a streak seen over a large area dozens of miles away.
This post isn’t exactly a lesson, but it is about writing. After you read the post, I invite your comments.
Here’s a passage I ran across:
Plants need three things to grow: air, water, and nutrients. Farmers usually take care of the last bit by fertilizing their fields.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/corn-variety-grabs-fertilizer-from-the-air/
The first sentence mentions three “things.” But the last thing in that list is a plural! That means more than three, right? Maybe the writer should have said “three categories.” But are air and water mere categories? ehh… “Nutrition” is a singular, but it’s not quite parallel with the rest of the list. Maybe ignore the subtle incongruity and leave the plural in there? After all, in the next sentence, the writer referred to nutrients as a “bit.” Maybe re-write the sentence: Plants need air, water, and nutrients to grow. That eliminates the incongruity, but the sentence isn’t as dynamic; makes for a weaker beginning for the article.
So. Hmm. Uh, well, er, what do you think?
Here it is, folks. Got it from a friend off Facebook. Don’t know whether the link still works, but the source appears to be something called Captain Grammar Pants.
Too bad the guy on the left isn’t a monocle. Then I wouldn’t have thought, “should be ‘corrective lenses.’ “
People seem to play fast and loose with irregular verbs. They use “snuck” when they should have used “sneaked,” for example. And they tend to use the wrong form when the verb is irregular. Even professionals do it (for shame):
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will have a 25-foot golden mirror that will be able to collect light from the first stars and galaxies that sprung to life just after the Big Bang.
It’s spring sprang sprung, guys. Simple past is sprang!
While I’m complaining, here’s another grammatical goof from the same article:
In recent months, much of the focus has centered around the telescope’s primary contractor Northrop Grumman.
You center on something, not center around. I even wrote about this. Twice.
I like to put pictures in my posts, so here’s one of the telescope.
Even the caption to this picture has a goof, though a subtle one. Here’s the caption:
An artistic rendering of what JWST will look like in space
Artistic? This is a caption, not an opinion piece. Remove the word. Keep things factual. Harrumpf.
“None” is is derived from “not one” and since the “not” is an adjective, you can ignore it; all that to say that “none” is singular. So this sentence from an NBC news article is correct, even though it feels wrong.
None of the 103 people on board — 99 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants — was killed.
“Was killed” feels wrong because of attraction, which was permitted in classical Latin, but not in modern English. Attraction is when a word picks up its grammatical form from a nearby word rather than from the “correct” word. And this sentence has a whole lot of plurals for “was killed” to wade through before you get to the subject, and “none” isn’t a strong singular anyway (People tend to give it its number from the context. When they talk about plurals, “none” becomes a plural, even though it isn’t.).
Nobody’ll criticize you if you get this construction wrong, but you’ll score points with the experts if you get it right.
