Written by Grammar Girl
March 4 is National Grammar Day. So I’ve created a special grammar-related top 10 show to celebrate the occasion.
Organizer Martha Brockenbrough, who writes about grammar and language for Encarta, has fun suggestions for National Grammar Day, including holding a good-grammar potluck at your office or school and mixing drinks she calls grammartinis. She also suggests correcting other people’s grammar, but I hope that instead of marching into grocery stores and scratching out misplaced apostrophes, people will spread the word about the language myths that well-meaning people argue about every day in offices around the world.
To help you along that path, here is my list:
Grammar Girl’s Top 10 Language Myths:
10. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence. Wrong! They can actually be quite short. In a run-on sentence, independent clauses are squished together without the help of punctuation or a conjunction. If you write I am happy I am glad as one sentence without a semicolon, colon, or dash between the two independent clauses, it’s a run-on sentence even though it only has six words. (See episode 49 for more details.)
9. You shouldn’t start a sentence with the word however. Wrong! It’s fine to start a sentence with however so long as you use a comma after it when it means “nevertheless.” (See episode 58 for more details.)
8. Irregardless is not a word. Wrong! Irregardless is a word in the same way ain’t is a word. They’re informal. They’re nonstandard. You shouldn’t use them if you want to be taken seriously, but they have gained wide enough use to qualify as words. (See episode 94 for more details.)
7. There is only one way to write the possessive form of a word that ends in s. Wrong! It’s a style issue. For example, in the phrase Kansas’s statute, you can put just an apostrophe at the end of Kansas or you can put an apostrophe s at the end of Kansas. Both ways are acceptable. (See episode 35 for more details.)
6. Passive voice is always wrong. Wrong! Passive voice is when you don’t name the person who’s responsible for the action. An example is the sentence “Mistakes were made,” because it doesn’t say who made the mistakes. If you don’t know who is responsible for an action, passive voice can be the best choice. (See episode 46 for more details.)
5. I.e. and e.g. mean the same thing. Wrong! E.g. means “for example,” and i.e. means roughly “in other words.” You use e.g. to provide a list of incomplete examples, and you use i.e. to provide a complete clarifying list or statement. (See episode 53 for more details.)
4. You use a before words that start with consonants and an before words that start with vowels. Wrong! You use a before words that start with consonant sounds and an before words that start with vowel sounds. So, you’d write that someone has an MBA instead of a MBA, because even though MBA starts with m, which is a consonant, it starts with the sound of the vowel e–MBA. (See episode 47 for more details.)
3. It’s incorrect to answer the question “How are you?” with the statement “I’m good.” Wrong! Am is a linking verb and linking verbs should be modified by adjectives such as good. Because well can also act as an adjective, it’s also fine to answer “I’m well,” but some grammarians believe “I’m well” should be used to talk about your health and not your general disposition. (See episode 51 for more details.)
2. You shouldn’t split infinitives. Wrong! Nearly all grammarians want to boldly tell you it’s OK to split infinitives. An infinitive is a two-word form of a verb. An example is “to tell.” In a split infinitive, another word separates the two parts of the verb. “To boldly tell” is a split infinitive because boldly separates to from tell. (See episode 9 for more details.)
And now, the number one grammar myth, which my Twitter friends chose over splitting infinitives [fanfare music]
1. You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. Wrong! You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition when the sentence would mean the same thing if you left off the preposition. That means “Where are you at?” is wrong because “Where are you?” means the same thing. But there are many sentences where the final preposition is part of a phrasal verb or is necessary to keep from making stuffy, stilted sentences: I’m going to throw up, let’s kiss and make up, and what are you waiting for are just a few examples. (See episode 69 for more details.)
You can find more information about each of these myths in the Grammar Girl archives at quickanddirtytips.com, where you can also find my contact information and all the other great Quick and Dirty Tips podcasts such as Money Girl and Legal Lad.
Grammar Girl Summer Tour
Thanks to everyone who has voted on the cities I’ll be visiting this summer. I’ll probably announce the results the week after next. The tour is to promote my print book, which is coming out in July, and I just found out that you can preorder the book online. Right now it’s available at Amazon.com, BooksAMillion.com, and you can also preorder it from your local bookseller by searching Booksense.com. I imagine it will also be available soon online through Powells and Barnes & Noble. So preorder it now to get an extra 5% off and you’ll also be one of the first people to get it when it comes out in July.
That’s all. Thanks for listening and happy National Grammar Day.
Thanks for the grammer tips !
Oh, man, shouldn’t this web be renamed as “The Cheesiest Article Every Day”?
or the unnecessariest article every day?
Actually “Irregardless” isn’t a word. I just read it on another list on this site.
I believe that with possessive words ending in -s, the rule is for a plural noun ending in -s you just use apostrophe, for singular nouns ending in -s you use apostrophe s. I don’t think it’s a style issue, I think there is a rule. I’ve seen it in several grammar books. However, I will say that most people probably aren’t aware of this, and so would never know.
I’ve always found that writing it with an apostrophe works. But I’m a fan of the Japanese way of not having a plural for words:
One Ninja, many Ninja.
So if you have one pack of corn chips, you have Doritos, and if you have many packs of corn chips you have many Doritos. Or is it Doritos’?
Damn, now I’m hungry!
“Never begin a sentence with ‘however'”? Since when? Sticking a comma after anything doesn’t automatically make it acceptable if it’s not normally otherwise. It’s perfectly acceptable to begin a sentence with “however” AS LONG AS IT IS ACTUALLY A SENTENCE. Simply beginning an orphaned phrase with “however” does not make it a sentence, which is the actual “rule” (i.e. a common error among early school students) that I think you meant. “Irregardless” is NOT a word; I’ve no doubt many ignorant people use it, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. It’s a double negative, and it means “without without regard to”. The proper way of saying this would be “regarding” or “in regard to”, but “irregardless” is universally used in place of “regardless”, and never at any other time. So, not only is it not a real word, it’s NEVER used CORRECTLY. Please don’t encourage people to continue using it. “Phrasal verbs”? I think you mean idiomatic verb usage, unless they’ve recently changed the terminology. Yes, it’s fine to end a sentence with an idiom that ends with a preposition, but it’s lazy and ungrammatical to end with a preposition at any other time. There is always a better way to restate a sentence without ending with a preposition, and it’s only “stuffy” or “stilted” to people who can’t be bothered with the mental effort. I suspect you are an adherent of this new movement to take English back to a pre-Industrial age before the advent of dictionaries, in which spelling and grammar were random, and language was hopelessly imprecise.
Why not simply explain that “i.e.” stands for the Latin “id est” — in English “that is”? It doesn’t have to “roughly mean” anything since it actually means “that is.”
Grammarians are going to be a very difficult group of people to agree with so long as they keep changing their absolutes.
Why “an historic” instead of “a historic?” That one has always gotten me, as it seem like a consonant.
“Why ‘an historic’ instead of ‘a historic?'”
In a sentence, the h in historic is often muted, sounding more like “istoric”, hence the need of “an”. Pronounced, “a nistoric” comes off the tonuge more easily than “a historic”.
As to Number 3, you are a bit off target. The main offense concerns people who insist of answering the question, “How are you doing?” with “I’m doing good.” This response would be correct if the responder was Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela. Good is an adjective , not an adverb. (And yes, I use the Oxford Comma. So sue me.)
Irregardless may be informal, but it should not be used. It makes no sense. With the negative prefix it translates to having regards for something. Also, irregardless is far different from ain’t. Ain’t is actually a word, it is merely used in the wrong way most of the time. Ain’t is the grammatically correct contraction of “I am not.” Other than these two errors, there are some cool tips here.
HECTOR. Apostrophe s is not meant to make things plural; it is to show ownership.
“I am happy I am glad.”
Instead of being a run-on sentence (read: I am happy, AND I am glad) could it not also be “I am happy THAT I am glad”? Which would make it kind of grammatically correct, if not exactly the most stylish of sentence structures.
Although…is being happy that you're glad even possible? No matter.
Actually your number 1 myth is not a myth at all. Two of your examples end in a compound form of a verb. “Throw up” and “Make up” are phrases in general usage that have a specific meaning together and thus should be treated as a unit. Therefore the rule can be disregarded because it does not deal with a stand-alone preposition. AS for the last example, any 4th-grader could tell you the sentence should read: For what are you waiting? not What are you waiting for?. Grammar isn't something to be argued about. You can ignore it or follow it, but you can't go around saying that things a grammatically correct when they just aren't.