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Grammar - Bloggercises

You can't possess your its and apostrophise it too

December 7th 2008 04:30

This will be about the shortest lesson on apostrophes you will see; it will be in the plainest language; and by the end of it some of the mystery of apostrophes will have been banished.

This lesson is about the word its.

It does not take an apostrophe.

Its is about possession: its arm, its leg, its bum.

It does not take an apostrophe.

Yes, we normally use an apostrophe to show possession: Sam's arm, Sam's leg, Sam's bum.

But not with its.

You can write its with an apostrophe, but that is something different. That is the short form of it is. It's got everything to do with contraction and nothing to do with possession.

Just remember: You can't possess your its and apostrophise it too.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Grammar, Apostrophes

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Dark corners of the language: apostrophes

December 5th 2008 11:03

I had a friend, a woman of wit, charm and intelligence. She was about 50 years old when I met her, and she was successful in business and in life.

Three gym sessions a week, scrupulous attention to diet and natural good health left her looking and feeling a lot younger than her age. She was a vibrant, positive, powerful personality. In this world, there was only one thing she feared: apostrophes.

She had never learnt correct use of apostrophes, and many years earlier had simply decided to ignore them. In fact, she had decided to ignore capitalisation and commas as well, and her use of full points could be described as minimalist.

One evening, when our friendship had firmed and she had learned to trust me, she admitted in an emotional rush of disclosure that the eccentric writing style was just a ploy – a cover for the embarrassment of not knowing the rules of apostrophes.

“Would you teach me?” she asked. And I did. And within a few weeks she was, for the first time in decades, writing confidently in full sentences.

This post is the first of a series which will teach correct use of apostrophes. Several short posts will attempt to explain the rules in simple terms. Subsequent posts will present exercises which, like the spelling and redundancies exercises already appearing regularly in Bloggercises, aim to teach by repetition.

We promise it won't hurt too much. Apostrophes can be tricky devils, but with a little patience and resolve, the mystery will disappear, the devils will be banished, and you too will write with confidence.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Grammar, Apostrophes

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Dark corners of the language: the split infinitive

November 30th 2008 06:38

Take an infinitive and split it and listen to the howls. How dare you commit such a crime against the English language, they will cry. It is a common complaint and even those who don't know precisely what a split infinitive is have been heard to sneer.

What is it? For the answer to that, let us turn to Star Trek, the iconic television version which introduced every one of its episodes with a split infinitive: "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

When a verb is preceded by to (to eat, to drink, to walk), interposing a third word is to split the infinitive. To slowly walk, for example, is to split thoroughly. If the mission of the Enterprise had been to go boldly, rather than to boldly go, its travels would have been clear of the stigma of a grammatical crime.

Right?

Well, actually, no.

To split an infinitive is not incorrect. It is disputed, at times hotly, but it is not against the rules of grammar. The venerable Henry Fowler wrote, "No other grammatical issue has so divided English speakers." He shows which side he is on, however, in his Modern English Usage, by calling the rule against splitting the infinitive a "superstition".

The definition of the term split infinitive in the 2,672-page Shorter Oxford Dictionary (Third Edition) includes no mention of illegality, but does include an example, written by no less a luminary of the language than Lord Byron: "To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell; To slowly trace the forest's shady scene."

The perception that splitting an infinitive is ungrammatical stems from the fact that to do so is often considered poor style. The classic example is, "Writers should learn to not split infinitives." The anti-split school of opinion grew quickly in England in the 19th century, a time when the practice suddenly grew in popularity. The debate continues to rage in the UK today.

In the US, the debate rages not at all. They have always - well, at least since the advent of Star Trek, been content to boldly split infinitives. This is despite the advice of Strunk and White, that great voice of authority on American English. It says on P58, "There is precedent from the 14th century down for interposing an adverb between to and the infinitive it governs, but the construction should be avoided unless the writer wishes to place unusual stress on the adverb."

In other words, sometimes advisable, often inadvisable, but never wrong.

So, next time you hear someone ridiculing the use of a split infinitive, tell them to go read Fowler or Byron or Strunk or White. Or politely suggest they try rewording the following - the population is expected to more than double in the next ten years - without splitting the infinitive.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Grammar, Split infinitives, Writing

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10 rude rules for troubled bloggers

October 15th 2008 03:50

1.
Stop moaning. Stop whining and pouting and looking for someone or something to blame for your blog's lack of success. Admit that this is your fault. Yes, it is. Go on, say to yourself, "This is my blog, this is my responsibility, this is my doing." There, feels strange doesn't it. That's because you are now ready for point two.

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