Brooklyn Comedy Company

A definition, as you no doubt know, is the explanation of the meaning of a word. When you define a word, you should follow a few rules. Here are two:

• a definition may be a sentence fragment
• a definition should not contain the word you’re defining.

Here’s a good example of breaking that second rule:

I preach conciseness as an important feature of good expository writing. This comic’s punchline is about her timing, but her summary of the whole Valentine legend is excellent:

She did it in five sentences. When I find an article on this topic, it’s usually several pages.

Be like her, but watch your timing, too.

Stuffy English teachers are famous for promulgating the idea that we shouldn’t put anything between the “to” and the verb when you use an infinitive. A guy name or Robert Lowth was the origin of this, by the way. (cf the post for March 14)

Anyway, the meaning is subtly different between splitting and not splitting that infinitive.

Charlie stuck his head through the dive shop door. Karen appeared to be waiting on someone in the military, so he slipped in quietly, to not interrupt.

Charlie stuck his head through the dive shop door. Karen appeared to be waiting on someone in the military, so he slipped in quietly, not to interrupt.

The first selection says he doesn’t want to do something, period. That second one, though, implies that you have an alternative verb in mind, such as

Charlie stuck his head through the dive shop door. Karen appeared to be waiting on someone in the military, so he slipped in quietly, not to interrupt, but to be sneaky.

See? It matters. So write what you mean, and forget about Robert Lowth.

Some punctuation puns.

I should add that an M-dash is three times longer than a hyphen. And be sure to pronounce the second “s” in asterisk.

This post has to do with three usages of the root word accident that make it into an adverb.

• If you ain’t got no good taste, use “on accident.” See the comic below, though the comic itself is worth subscribing to if you’re an intellectual.
• If you’re normal, use “by accident.”
• If you want to be top-notch in your writing, use “accidentally.”

Harrumpf. Ain’t never tried rye whiskey, myself…

Agreement, remember, is singular words connecting to singular words, and plural words connecting to plurals. We say “Tom jumps,” not “Tom jump,” “John and Paul run” not “John and Paul runs.” We say “the party is,” not “the party are” and so on. With long complex sentences, it can get tricky.

Take a look at this sentence:

Financial institutions, merchants, and individuals are all concerned with their reputations, which prevents theft and fraud. 

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/02/blockchain_and_.html

Look at all those plurals! institutions, merchants, individuals, reputations. And we have a subordinate clause, (“which prevents theft and fraud”) which refers to something, but its verb is singular! What does the clause refer to? Well, what does the preventing? It’s their concern. All those plurals have a concern, singular. That subordinate clause is an adverb clause, not an adjective clause.

How, you ask, can a plural verb represent a singular noun? Well, it can. I said these long sentences can be tricky. You just have to think.

I’ve heard this usage several times.

Just don’t call the practice of using the word “adult” as a verb “adultery.”

They covered this mistake rather regularly in English class, but I don’t see it very often in real life. Perhaps the latter is because of the former, eh?

Here are the definitions:

• Imply—to suggest something without saying it explicitly
• Infer—a type of logic when you look at a bunch of examples and detect a pattern

I think this guy means “imply.”

Enough said. Use “infer” and “imply” correctly.

I like it when a comic has a character who’s a compulsive grammar corrector. Saves me having to do it.

The comic says it all; she’s right. (In other strips, though, she’s a terrible driver.)

Let’s start with some rules

• An antecedent is a word toward the front of a sentence that a word farther along in the sentence (called the proform) refers to.
• Antecedents and proforms have to agree, which means they have the same grammatical form (both have to be singular or both plural, for example.)
• “Who” refers to people, “that” refers to non-people

Here are two examples, both from this article:

This news organization sat down with Crandall at Attivo’s headquarters to discuss the company’s work for customers, which include consumer-goods companies, tech firms, law offices, and government agencies.

Okay, is it the comany’s work or the company’s customers that’s included? It’s the customers! Even besides the list making sense as a list of customers, both “customers” and the proform, “include” are plural. So the grammar tells you, too.

There is this very advanced set of attackers that will use all sorts of social engineering to figure out how to get around the security systems.

“That” goes with non-humans, right? And attackers are human, right? So it should be “who will use etc.” right? But “set” is a math term, right? Non-human, right? Well… the context indicates that this is a set of humans, so I think “who” is still appropriate. (And “will use” can be either singular or plural, so that’s no help.) But that’s the editor in me.

What does the editor in you say?