At a football game a few years ago, the University of Notre Dame sold soda in cups that said, “Figthing Irish.” Did no one at this distinguished school have the time or pride to proofread a two-word slogan?<\/p>\n
Here are a few other items we’ve seen and now wish we hadn’t \u2026<\/p>\n
Back to Basics<\/strong>\u00a0 Many professional journalists can’t find the subjects in their own sentences, like this one: “The final installment of those tapes\u2014340 hours\u2014were made public.” Make it “was<\/em> made public.” The writer, distracted by “tapes” and “hours,” forgot that the subject, “installment,” was singular.<\/p>\n Ho-Hum: More Who-Whom\u00a0 <\/strong>We’ve frequently discussed the difference between who<\/em> (subject) and whom <\/em>(object). Pronoun confusion has plagued our language for centuries. Some now claim that English would be fine without whom<\/em>. But whom<\/em> holds some mysterious attraction for people who shouldn’t be using it, because they keep getting it wrong, as in “\u2026 a man whom he thought was ready” (make it “who<\/em> he thought was ready”).<\/p>\n Compare that with “Brown, who investigators had trouble reaching for interviews” and “Schulman, who he met on a blind date.” Here the writers were handed whom<\/em> on a silver platter, but instead chose “who.”<\/p>\n How the Cookie Deconstructs\u00a0 <\/strong>Flawed sentences like those result from either carelessness or grammatical cluelessness. Just as prevalent, and deadly, is poor word choice caused by fuzzy thinking. Here’s a writer who sabotaged his own metaphor when he wrote, “\u2026 before the whole house of cards crumbles.”<\/p>\n Dead leaves and old walls crumble. A house of cards collapses.<\/p>\n This was a classic article by our late writer-editor Tom Stern from October 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Try to spot the errors or lapses in these sentences, written by professionals.<\/p>\n 1. “The case is the latest in a series that have fueled public protests.”<\/p>\n 2. “He was convicted in absentia to 20 years in prison.”<\/p>\n 3. “\u2026 and Steenkamp, whom he believed was still in the bedroom.”<\/p>\n 4. “\u2026 a deadline to Syria to turnover its weapons.”<\/p>\n 5. “The first time either of them have heard the recording.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not all of these sentences have one right answer. See if your remedies agree with ours.<\/p>\n 1. The case is the latest in a series of events <\/em>that have fueled public protests.<\/p>\n 2. He was sentenced<\/em> in absentia to 20 years in prison.<\/p>\n 3. \u2026 and Steenkamp, who<\/em> he believed was still in the bedroom. (i.e., who was still in the bedroom, he believed)<\/p>\n 4. \u2026 a deadline to Syria to turn over<\/em> its weapons.<\/p>\n 5. The first time either of them has<\/em> heard the recording.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At a football game a few years ago, the University of Notre Dame sold soda in cups that said, “Figthing Irish.” Did no one at this distinguished school have the time or pride to proofread a two-word slogan? Here are a few other items we’ve seen and now wish we hadn’t \u2026 Back to Basics\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,25,8,39,43,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing","category-humor","category-pronouns","category-proofreading","category-subject-and-verb-agreement","category-whowhomwhoeverwhomever"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pop Quiz<\/h2>\n
Pop Quiz Answers<\/h3>\n