Brooklyn Comedy Company

Whenever you have two (or more) of something in a sentence, they should share the same structure. For example, if you have a list, they should all be the same part of speech. Line items in bulleted lists should have the same structure. (I wrote about parallelism several times in the past. Look up “parallel” in the search box in the upper right corner.)

I’m not sure how this is wrong, but it’s wrong. The sentence has a compound direct object that doesn’t match itself:

This time around the threat is contained, but flight crews have detailed and practiced responses to more extreme problems.

Maybe it’s because the source is British. I Americanized the spelling.  https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/nasa-international-space-station-leak-iss-latest-alarm-soyuz-module-a8514291.html

“Detailed” looks like an adjective (a detailed response), and “practiced” looks like a verb (they practiced responses). Not the same. Bad. Maybe “detailed” is a verb? What is the sense of detailing a response? Is “practiced” an adjective? What’s a practiced response? I think the sentence is just plain not well written.

They could fix this with a simpler sentence; for example:

This time around the threat is contained, but flight crews have practiced detailed responses to more extreme problems.

One verb, one direct object. Nice. 

I can let this comic stand on its own. Expository writing needs to have the facts right, needs to be correct. (Do a search on “correctness” in the search box in the upper right corner of this page. I mentioned this several times in the past.)

Here’s a way not to do it! Don’t twist facts to make them not tell the truth!

One of my favorite hobby horses—getting “whom” correct.

Subordinate clauses are stumbling blocks for a lot of people because these clauses often put the direct object first, where the subject usually goes. So the nominative form, “who” gets used, even though the actual subject is “you.”

Whenever you have a who/whom decision to make, first decide what is the verb, then look for the subject. Then decide whether the “who” word is the subject or the object. “Who” is a subject, “whom” is an object.

Synonyms are words that have similar, but not necessarily identical meanings. 

Here’s an example: Recently I saw a headline that mentioned the auction price of a car:

Ferrari GTO Sold For $48.4 Million, Breaks Auction Record For Most Valuable Car

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/233773/20180826/ferrari-gto-sold-for-48-4-million-breaks-auction-record-for-most-valuable-car.htm

This wasn’t the only similar headline. My point is that the headlines used the word “valuable.” The correct word is “expensive.”

Value is subjective; it varies from person to person. It tends to have a certain emotional punch, too, certainly more than a mere number, which is what most expensive refers to. (To be fair, I should add that the fact-laden article used the less-emotional phrase “highest-priced car.”)

Emotionally charged words make better headlines, but if you’re explaining something, stay away from emotion; stick with the facts.

Here’s the comic. Read carefully.

Here’s the quiz: How many mistakes did you find? I got eight.

Not much content in today’s post, especially since this doesn’t apply to me: I have no trouble correcting grammar. When asked.

Hmm. You might say that it should be “peoples’ grammar,” but I suspect he talks to one person at a time; justifying use of the singular. Maybe. What do you think?

I mention compound adjectives occasionally; here’s a good example of the difference in meaning when you hyphenate or don’t hyphenate.

Sometimes you have two or more modifiers before a noun. If the first word refers to the next one, you hyphenate them and they function as one word. If they separately refer to the noun, don’t hyphenate. 

She is correct! To have “big” refer to the mosquitoes, it should be “big-mosquito lake.”

PS—yes, “mosquito” is a noun, not an adjective. But it’s being used as an adjective. We call this using the noun attributively.

The comic is about grammar, so go ahead; read it and chuckle. My lesson, though, is in the last panel. 

We call it direct address when you name the person (or persons—or readers, shall we say) whom you are writing to. Sometimes I start a post with, “Our lesson for today, class, is…” That’s direct address.

Here’s the rule, in case the rule isn’t already obvious:

Separate direct address from the rest of the sentence with commas.

Of course, the plural, “commas,” applies only if the direct address is inside the sentence. If it’s the first or last word, you need only one comma. duh.

PS—wouldn’t you know, the comic repeated the same joke a week later: