…or so goes the saying. “Well” and “Good” are often confused. Here’s a pretty (ahem) good example of correct usage, thanks to Flo and Friends.
Here’s the short version of the rule:
Good is an adjective. It describes things.
Well, is an adverb. It tells how.
And of course, as with many rules in English, the rule has exceptions.
Well is an adjective when you’re talking about health.
Good is a noun when you’re talking about morals.
So there you have it.
Here’s the rule: “Who” refers to people, “that” refers to everything else. So you say,
The person who sits next to me stinks.
Not
The person that sits next to me stinks.
Okay, maybe you shouldn’t say either sentence, but you get the idea.
I ran into an exception that works. Maybe we could call this personification. After all, aren’t dogs really people?
Besides, Mike Peterson, of Comic Strip of the Day is a dog person, so maybe that’s a good excuse, too.
PS—Unrelated bonus article: I don’t do politics here, but this appeared yesterday in The Washington Post and it’s about an English teacher correcting someone’s writing. I guess I gotta be proud.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/06/01/trump-sent-a-retired-teacher-a-letter-about-gun-policy-she-fixed-the-grammar-and-sent-it-back/?utm_term=.bdb58b698ae6
Ever the editor, this math goof from The Buckets jumped out at me. You know what the percentage should be, right?
I guess the writing lesson is when you proofread, check the math, too.
A common way to write poorly is to use “it” as the subject of a sentence when you decide you’d have to think too hard to come up with a real subject. For example, I could have written, “…when you decide it’s too hard…”
This use of “it” is called a false subject (or dummy pronoun in the comic).
You have to work harder, but your sentences will be clearer and have more punch if you avoid that two-letter monstrosity. (I should add that “there is” is just as bad.)
Of course, I have an exception. You may use “it” when you reference the weather. Hence this XKCD comic:
I confess that I sometimes wonder what the domain of that percentage refers to, myself.
I don’t do it, and I’ve written about it a time or two, but it’s been a while, and I kind of like this Adult Children comic on the subject.
A sequence of random punctuation to denote swearing is called a grawlix, by the way. The jagged edges on the speech bubble is a nice touch, too.
Yes, “as” is shorter than “because, and it’s even shorter then “since,” and I generally recommend the shorter word when you write technical material, but in this case, don’t! Here’s a bad sentence:
Melorheostosis is one of the most notorious diseases as the reason for its occurrence was a mystery.
“As” means something like “at the same time,” or “while.” But the intended meaning here is “because.”
So use “because”! Use the clearest words to say what you mean.
PS—Here’s an unrelated sentence where the writer gets it right:
It was dubbed dark matter because it does not emit light, but it is also mysterious: it is not composed of atoms or their usual constituents like electrons and protons.
Isn’t that better? Less pretentious.
Not much lesson today, just read it. It’ll help make up for the last, rather academic, post.
The guy in the last panel with the baseball cap is the cartoonist.
Regular readers (all three of you) know that I mention “whom” a lot. —Because a lot of people get it wrong, harrumpf.
Today I offer a vote against “whom”!
Review: Use “whom” when you have an object. Think of the stuffy
To whom it may concern
That’s correct. “Whom” is the object of the preposition.
And you use “who” when you have a subject. I remember my mom saying
WHO DID THIS???
I won’t go into details about the event, but her grammar was correct. “Who” is the subject.
Now for something tricky. First, the rule:
When you parse (analyse) a sentence, go from the inside out.
Here’s the tricky sentence, from Bloomberg:
No one said no to JPMorgan, or to whomever at Palantir volunteered to help Cambridge Analytica—or to another organization keenly interested in state-of-the-art data science, the Los Angeles Police Department.
(Whom, whomever, same thing.) “Whomever” comes after “to,” so it’s an object, right? No!
The rule, remember, is to work from the inside out, and “whomever” is actually the subject of the clause “x at Palantir volunteered…”
The whole noun clause is the object of “to,” and “whoever” is the proper subject of the clause. It’s “whoever volunteered.”
Pat yourself on the back if you got that. This is the kind of construction that separates the men from the boys. Or maybe I should say the professionals from the amateurs.
Using an apostrophe in “its” to show possessive is bad, and fairly common in the illiterate set. But at least they generally put the apostrophe inside, um, in The Barn. Like this. First panel. :
Makes me cringe to see that. At least he has the excuse of being a lot of bull (sorry). And it’s photon, not proton, but I digress.
Now when you have the possessive form on a noun that ends in “s,” (such as many plurals) the apostrophe goes after the “s.” You know that, right? Like this:
Both teams’ uniforms were blue.
Okay. So here’s the goof I hardly ever see:
It’s in the last panel, an apostrophe after the “s” in “its”! For shame! —I think maybe the cartoonist wasn’t fully awake. He used “A” instead of “I” in the second panel.
PS—This isn’t even particularly humorous, but it’s on topic:
PPS—and while we’re on this topic, here’s another guy getting it wrong.
For a long time, the plural of “medium” meaning a means of communication was “media.” So you might ask, “What medium do you as a painter prefer?” And the answer might be, “My favorite media are tempera and watercolors.” And then TV followed on the footsteps of radio and newspapers, giving us three major media for public communication, and we called them “the mass media.”
Lazy creatures that we humans are, pretty soon it became “the media.” But we curmudgeonly types continued to complain that the word had more meanings than just newspapers, radio, and TV.
Well, it looks like we’re losing the battle. Here’s National Public Radio, in writing:
Pulitzer judges whittled their winning group from a vast number of possibilities, and the works they’ve chosen represent a vast array of styles, mediums, and much more.
I guess the plural of “medium” is going to be “mediums.”
