Recent cringe-inducers from the print media \u2026<\/p>\n
An upscale music venue ran ads for \u201cAn Evening With Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.\u201d The second line said, \u201cFormally of the 5th Dimension.\u201d It was only after several weeks that someone caught the silly gaffe and sheepishly changed \u201cFormally\u201d to \u201cFormerly.\u201d<\/p>\n
From an article about a musician: \u201cHe hardly fit the paradigm of an insecure singer\/songwriter.\u201d Why not \u201csinger-songwriter,\u201d with a hyphen, instead? In recent years the slash has become all the rage, but many authorities dismiss it as a substandard option\u2014\u201ca mark that doesn\u2019t appear much in first-rate writing,\u201d says Bryan A. Garner\u2019s Dictionary of Modern American Usage<\/em>. \u201cUse it as a last resort.\u201d<\/p>\n A columnist wrote, \u201cIt is I who is the bamboozled one.\u201d At least he didn\u2019t write \u201cIt is me.\u201d But written correctly, the sentence would say, \u201cIt is I who am<\/strong> the bamboozled one.\u201d In technical terms, the relative pronoun who<\/em> agrees with its antecedent (\u201cI\u201d) in both number and person. If who<\/em> is representing I<\/em>, it must take am<\/em>, the same verb that I<\/em> takes.<\/p>\n A curious sentence about a San Francisco neighborhood: \u201cThey can kiss goodbye to Alamo Square.\u201d No, they can say<\/em> goodbye to Alamo Square. Or they can kiss<\/em> Alamo Square goodbye<\/em>. They could even give<\/em> the beloved locale a kiss goodbye<\/em>. But \u201ccan kiss goodbye to\u201d?! Maybe the copyeditor was on vacation.<\/p>\n A world-famous writer of steamy novels fired a broadside at critics of her larger-than-lifestyle: \u201cReading the latest vitriolic article about the hedge around my house, my reaction was enormous sadness.\u201d The sentence falls apart under close analysis: it says her \u201creaction\u201d can read articles. A best-selling author who writes danglers? Say it isn\u2019t so. She should have either replaced \u201cReading\u201d with \u201cWhen I read\u201d or changed the second part to \u201cI reacted with enormous sadness.\u201d<\/p>\n Even seasoned professionals are liable to make loopy mistakes when they don\u2019t proofread.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pop Quiz<\/strong> <\/p>\n Pop Quiz Answers<\/strong> Recent cringe-inducers from the print media \u2026 An upscale music venue ran ads for \u201cAn Evening With Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.\u201d The second line said, \u201cFormally of the 5th Dimension.\u201d It was only after several weeks that someone caught the silly gaffe and sheepishly changed \u201cFormally\u201d to \u201cFormerly.\u201d From an article about a […]<\/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":[12,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing","category-proofreading"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436"}],"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=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe following are sentences recently heard over the airwaves. See if you can spot the errors.
\n1. \u201cIf he believes that canard, he\u2019s grieviously mistaken.\u201d
\n2. \u201cIt depends on Hillary Clinton or whomever gets the nomination.\u201d
\n3. \u201cI want to see if I have this correctly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n1. \u201cIf he believes that canard, he\u2019s grievously mistaken.\u201d
\n2. \u201cIt depends on Hillary Clinton or whoever gets the nomination.\u201d
\n3. \u201cI want to see if I have this correct.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"