<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Several weeks ago, a Vatican-endorsed medal honoring Pope Francis had to be recalled because Jesus<\/em> was spelled \u201cLesus.\u201d Just last week, a political placard at a Washington, D.C., press conference spelled filibuster <\/em>\u201cfillibuster\u201d and against <\/em>\u201cagaints.\u201d In light of these disgraces, it seems the right time to reopen our Media Malfeasance file\u2026<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cThey have arrested two suspects, neither of whom are British.\u201d This decades-old problem is only getting worse. To journalists it may concern: The pronoun neither<\/em>, like either<\/em> and each<\/em>, is always singular. Make it \u201cneither of whom is<\/em> British.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cProp. 32 is an initiative to curb union\u2019s influence.\u201d Ah, apostrophes. Note that one could also say \u201cto curb the influence of unions\u201d\u2014that\u2019s unions<\/em>, plural. Plural nouns ending in s<\/em> show possession with the apostrophe after the s<\/em>, not before. So make it \u201ccurb unions\u2019<\/em> influence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cGuess who\u2019s coming to dinner?\u201d Looks all right, you say? The problem is the unnecessary question mark. \u201cGuess\u201d is an imperative<\/strong>\u2014a direct order, not the first word in a question.<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cRebecca Solnit\u2019s book, Unfathomable City<\/em>, was celebrated last week.\u201d Remove the commas. This is slipshod editing. With the commas, the sentence means that Unfathomable City<\/em> is the only book Solnit has ever written. In fact, she has written over a dozen.<\/p>\n The rule is that commas set off nonessential<\/strong> information. If the author has written only one book, its title is not essential to the sentence: \u201cRebecca Solnit\u2019s [only] book, Unfathomable City<\/em>, was celebrated last week.\u201d But since she has written several, we must be told which <\/em>book directly\u2014no commas. Similarly, The actor, Robert De Niro, was there<\/em> is incorrect with commas. But The president of the United States, Barack Obama, was there<\/em> is correct.<\/p>\n As writers\u2019 skills decline, so do readers\u2019 standards. The acerbic avant-garde musician Frank Zappa (1940-1993) once described a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll magazine as \u201cwritten by people who can\u2019t write for people who can\u2019t read.\u201d Were he alive today, Zappa might not limit his assessment to rock-music journalism.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pop Quiz<\/strong><\/p>\n See if you can spot the flaws in these actual quotations from the media.<\/p>\n 1. \u201c\u2026shot himself with a riffle.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. \u201cIs it fair to compare the two crisis?\u201d<\/p>\n 3. \u201cIt does so many other things that drives up the cost.\u201d<\/p>\n 4. \u201cEveryone has come out looking badly.\u201d<\/p>\n 5. \u201cDow closes at new record high.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pop Quiz Answers<\/strong><\/p>\n 1. \u201c\u2026shot himself with a rifle<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. \u201cIs it fair to compare the two crises<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n 3. \u201cIt does so many other things that drive<\/em> up the cost.\u201d<\/p>\n 4. \u201cEveryone has come out looking bad<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n 5. \u201cDow closes at record high.\u201d (\u201cnew record\u201d is a redundancy)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several weeks ago, a Vatican-endorsed medal honoring Pope Francis had to be recalled because Jesus was spelled \u201cLesus.\u201d Just last week, a political placard at a Washington, D.C., press conference spelled filibuster \u201cfillibuster\u201d and against \u201cagaints.\u201d In light of these disgraces, it seems the right time to reopen our Media Malfeasance file\u2026 \u2022 \u201cThey have […]<\/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":[16,13,37,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apostrophes","category-commas","category-spelling","category-subject-and-verb-agreement"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108"}],"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=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}