Brooklyn Comedy Company

I just ran into a comic that is similar to the “like or as” mistake I mentioned the other day. Should the kid in the first panel use “us” or “we”?

He should use “we”! The sentence is easier to get right if you say “…dogs can smell better than we can smell.” It’s the verb he’s comparing, so “we” is a subject.

And here’s another comic with the same mistake. Of course, I don’t really expect kids in pre-K to get this right.

https://comicskingdom.com/marvin/2018-09-10

The last sentence in the second panel. It should be “…knows you better than I do.” The way it’s written, it means “…knows you better than they know me.”

Not a lot of content today. You have to supply the rhyme.

Reminds me of a poem we used to recite when I was a kid:

Mary had a little lamb
It fell into a well.
Mary threw some dynamite in
And blew it all to little pieces about so big.

Another poetry question: Is this a limerick?

A limerick writer named Drew
always ended his poems on line two.

How about this one?

A limerick writer, a Hun,

Enough! I’ll go to my room now.

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.