Writing professionally is very different from writing papers in school. The biggest difference (and one of the reasons I’m a writer) is that I get to choose the topics.

A couple of weeks ago, a fellow Shaw scholar asked me to write a paper about Bernard Shaw and language for a book he’s proposing. Should I accept the offer? I haven’t done that kind of research in several years. Do I want to devote….

Boing. My stomach started to vibrate. Sounds weird, but there’s no other way to describe it. When I get that feeling, I take on the project. Quickly, before I could talk myself out of it, I emailed Fellow Shaw Scholar to say yes.

This is going to be fun. If you love to write, like I do, a project like this energizes you. Here’s what excites me most (another “sounds weird” confession): I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Meanwhile I’ve started roughing out a plan for tackling this. (I have a year before the paper is due.)

So here’s where I am right now: Looking for something new to say. This is going to be both the toughest and the most exciting part. I’ve already written a book about Shaw and language, so I have a lot of information ready to summarize in the article. But what’s been going on since 1998, when my book was published?

My best friend, Sherry Siler, has already suggested tying Shaw’s spelling reform to the spelling innovations used in texting. Wow!

I’m rereading my favorite book about deconstruction – Christopher Norris’s Jacques Derrida – to see if I can mine any ideas I haven’t already explored. And I’m going to talk to a librarian to see if I can find out what’s breaking in linguistic theory right now.

Illogically (funny how I keep saying “sounds weird” – maybe that’s because writing and research really are weird), I’ve already begun looking for examples from Shaw, even though I don’t have all my big ideas ready yet. I bought a copy of Agitations, a collection of Shaw’s letters to newspapers.

And here comes another funny thing about writing. Mind you, I devoted 13 years of my life to researching Shaw, thinking about Shaw, and writing about Shaw for my doctoral dissertation and the book that followed. I’ve written papers, been to conferences, and seen plays in the years since then.

But I’d forgotten how much I love Shaw. It’s a little like falling in love all over again.

Stay tuned to see how this plays out (ha!).

Today’s Quiz  ANSWER Today’s sentence is incorrect. When a sentence begins with “there,” you need to think carefully about whether to use “is” or “are.” Reversing the sentence will help you hear which verb is correct. There’s good reasons why we should change the policy. When you “reverse the sentence,” it reads like this: Several good reasons why we should reverse the policy are there. So here’s the correct version: There are several good reasons why we should reverse the policy. CORRECT To learn more, click here and read Rule 1.

British vs. American English: The age-old debate.

Here’s how the argument goes: The English language originated in Great Britain. Obviously British English is more correct than American English, right?

Wrong.

They’re simply different–and we’ll be taking a look at some of those differences today.

It would be natural to assume that England has preserved the real thing, and that America has corrupted the English language. The truth, though, is much more complicated. American English has actually preserved some words and expressions that were gradually forgotten in the British Isles. For example, Americans still use “fall” to refer to the season after summer; in UK, most people use “autumn.”

Another factor to keep in mind is that English has changed drastically over the past 1500+ years. What’s correct at one time is wrong at another. For example, the word “silly” originally meant “innocent.” Today it means foolish. Which is right? The answer is that both are correct – at different times in the history of the language.

But let’s stick to today’s subject: The differences between American and British English. Here are a few of the most important ones. You can learn more at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_British_English

Punctuation

• The British tend to use more commas than Americans do, especially with introductory words and phrases.
• In the UK, periods and commas are placed after quotation marks. In the US, periods and commas have to be placed inside.

Joe said, “Let’s go out for a pizza.”  AMERICAN

Joe said, “Let’s go out for a pizza”.  BRITISH

Incidentally, quotation marks are called inverted commas in the UK, and periods are called full stops.

WORD CHOICES

This chart lists some of the most common differences between British and American words:

Spelling

Noah Webster (1758 – 1843) was an American lexicographer and spelling reformer who simplified some English spellings. Those changes live on today. For example, the British centre became center, theatre became theater (although many American institutions still use theatre, as does The New Yorker magazine), colour became color. All right is often spelled alright in the UK, even in formal writing.

Usage

In the UK, collective nouns often take a plural verb: The team are ready to play. In the US, they rarely do. Technically a plural verb can be used to signify disagreement (The team are quarreling about the proposed new rules), but most American writers would simply write it this way: The team members are quarreling about the proposed new rules.

Slang

Common expressions can have very different meanings when you cross the ocean in either direction. In the US, knock up is a vulgar expression meaning to get a woman pregnant. In the UK, knocked up can mean tired; knock up can also refer to knocking on a door to wake someone up the morning.

Which is Better? Neither!

If you (like me!) speak American English, don’t apologize. Our version of our wonderful language is just as rich and valid as the British version. Different doesn’t necessarily translate into one-is-better-and-one-is-worse.

Today’s Quiz  ANSWER Today’s sentence is incorrect. Capitalize directional words (north, south, east, west) only when they refer to a specific region: He was born in the Northeast but moved to the West after college graduation. (Notice that “the” is a good clue that you probably need a capital letter: the Southwest, the Eastern Seaboard.) Here’s today’s sentence, corrected: Linda and John are buying a lot two miles north of the center of town.  CORRECT

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Did you notice the dangling modifier? It’s the phrase “once a pariah.” Dangling means hanging, and a modifier is a description. So we’re saying that “once a pariah” is hanging there, not attached to something specific.

Who used to be a pariah? Al Sharpton. So his name should come right after “once a pariah,” like this:

Once a pariah, Al Sharpton is finding that everybody wants to be his friend.  CORRECT                                                                                   

Today’s Quiz  ANSWER Today’s sentence is incorrect because ”it’s” means “it is.” (The apostrophe is like a little “i.”) The possessive of “it” has no apostrophe, like his: its. Here’s the corrected sentence: I like the credit union because its fees are low.  CORRECT

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I think Pearls Before Swine is overstating the case today:

I think you can use whom and still be a worthwhile person. Having said that, however, I have to admit that whom a) can easily sound pretentious and b) is often used incorrectly. The who or whom question does not interest many writers nowadays. Whom is on its way out, and good riddance.

But please – if you run into someone (like me) who still uses whom, be kind. There aren’t many of us, and we’ll go quietly when the time comes.

(Want to join our dwindling group? Click here to learn how to use who or whom correctly, to the tune of “Tea for Two.”) 

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If someone asked me for a list of the most troublesome words in the language, I’d put “that” high on the list.

Don’t get me wrong. “That” is a wonderful word that I use all the time (notice the that there?). But that also causes more than its fair share of problems–something I was reminded of again in this morning’s newspaper.

In an article about the nation’s debt, a senior fellow from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center had some cautionary words for both parties–and a sentence that illustrates why that is a problematic word. 

What’s so interesting is that the speaker–Roberton Williams–used that correctly. Still, I would have rewritten the sentence to eliminate a pronoun problem I’ll explain in a moment.

Let’s take a look at Williams’ sentence. After warning the president that he needs to be more realistic about raising taxes “across the board on a broader group of people,” Williams had this message for Republicans:  “On the other side, the Republicans are going to have to realize that not increasing taxes requires the very, very large cuts in spending that disproportionately benefits low and middle-income households.”

My husband, who read the newspaper before I did, pointed out the sentence to me. “Shouldn’t it be benefit?” he asked.

Makes sense–but no. He (like me and everybody else who has ever taken a writing class) was taught that you ignore the prepositional phrase when you choose your verb. So the sentence would essentially read like this: “very large cuts that disproportionately benefit low and middle- income households.” You would skip over “in spending” because it’s a prepositional phrase.

But sophisticated sentences don’t always work that way. Sometimes the prepositional phrase (“in spending”) is connected to something important.

I instantly knew something was wrong. Nobody in this political climate is talking about cuts that would make life better for low and middle-income households. Well, there’s been some talk about cutting oil subsidies, but that ain’t gonna happen.

What’s really on the table is cutting spending that disproportionately benefits low and middle-income households.

To put it in another way: Are we talking about “cuts that benefit” or “spending that benefits”?

Good writers care less about grammatical correctness and more about clarity. Yes, Williams got it right. But I would have rewritten the sentence so that the meaning would be clear the first time you read it:

On the other side, the Republicans are going to have to realize that not increasing taxes will require very, very large cuts in spending and, as a result, disporportionally cut benefits for low and middle-income households.

I suppose you could use Williams’ sentence to argue for a return to sentence diagramming. Anyone diagramming that sentence would have immedately seen the difficulty–what’s the antecedent of benefit?–and fixed it.

But there’s an easier and better way that’s especially beneficial to people like me who don’t have time to diagram sentences and (frank admission here) don’t know how to do it. If a sentence seems complicated or confusing, rewrite it.

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Every couple of weeks I get an email from Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor for The New Yorker magazine, commenting on the art of creating cartoons. Often the emails include a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what makes a cartoon work…or not work.

A few weeks ago, Mankoff surprised me with a discussion of cartoons and accuracy. Did you know that fact-checking is essential to cartoons? I didn’t.

For example, Mankoff talked about this iconic New Yorker cartoon by Leo Collum. Do you see a problem here? (I didn’t.)

Give up? Turns out the buttons are on the wrong side of the dog’s suit. Here’s the corrected cartoon that was ultimately published in the magazine:

But sometimes, Mankoff notes, accuracy doesn’t matter. See if you can figure out the mistake in this famous James Thurber cartoon (I couldn’t):

Give up? In fencing, touché  is properly said by the person receiving the hit, not the person doing it.

All of which shows that sometimes it’s more important to make your point than to be correct. But please don’t quote me!

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I just finished reading a February 6 New Yorker article about Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers student facing a 10-year prison sentence and possible deportation to India in connection with the suicide of his college roommate, Tyler Clementi.

The article is a thorough and nuanced account of the uneasy relationship between the two young men that casts doubt on the claim that Dharun Ravi triggered the suicide when he electronically spied on Clementi having sex with an older man.

One paragraph in the article confused me. At first I thought I misunderstood, and then  I decided that an editor should have asked for a revision. Here’s the paragraph:

Dharun’s brother, who goes by the name Jay, was born in 2002. He is the family’s sole U.S. citizen. If Dharun is convicted, he could be deported, and this has influenced his thinking about a plea deal. A few years after Jay’s birth, the family moved to Plainsboro, which has an unusually high percentage of Indian-Americans. At poolside gatherings of family friends, Ravi was often the oldest child, and Kappa recalled that he was gracious with the younger ones, “tossing them around, teaching them tricks . . . never pushing them away.” Ravi, he added, had taught him how to rollerblade.

Did you notice the problem? It’s in this sentence: If Dharun is convicted, he could be deported, and this has influenced his thinking about a plea deal.

The difficulty lies with the word “he.” The paragraph begins with a sentence about Dharun’s brother Jay, suggesting that the whole paragraph is going to be about Jay. So when I read “he could be deported,” I assumed Jay was worried about his own future–and that didn’t make sense. American citizens don’t have to worry about deportation.

The sentence goes to say “this has influenced his thinking about a plea deal.” Presumably Dharun is the one thinking about a plea deal–but then why is Jay the focus of the paragraph?

English professors call this kind of difficulty an “indefinite pronoun reference.” I call it confusion about the word he. A plea to all the writers out there: Never use he or him in a situation when two men are present. Use names instead. (The same principle applies to women: Don’t use the pronouns she and her when two females are present.)

And here’s another plea: Be particularly careful with the first sentence in every paragraph, which should predict what the rest of the paragraph will be about. It’s confusing to jump from Jay Ravi to Dharun Ravi to Anil Kappa (a friend of Ravi’s father), all in one paragraph. An editor (or Ian Parker, the author) could have cleared all of this up in just a few moments.

Today’s Quiz  ANSWER Today’s sentence is correct. The thumb rule will help you decide whether I or me is correct in a sentence like this one: Joe invited Carole and me to his St. Patrick’s Day party.  CORRECT To use the thumb rule, shorten the sentence with your thumb. You’ll be able to hear whether I or me is correct: Joe invited me to his St. Patrick’s Day party. Joe invited Carole and me to his St. Patrick’s Day party.

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Happy National Grammar Day!

You’re expecting a discourse about imperatives, interrogatives, absolute modifiers, and object complements, right?

You won’t be getting it here. Truth to tell, I struggle with some of that terminology. (Just now I had to look up “absolute modifiers” – it’s a term I’d never heard before. Turns out it refers to words like unique and pregnant that can’t be modified. You can’t be very unique, sort of pregnant, or kind of dead.)

Lots of people believe that what’s wrong with writers today is their lack of grammatical knowledge. If you share their views, you believe that everyone should spend a lot of time in school labeling parts of speech and underlining various kinds of words and phrases in workbooks (or, if you’re trendy, on a computer screen).

I’m not one of those people. I draw a sharp distinction between grammar (the rules and terminology that construct a language) and usage (the rules that people follow when they write and speak).

I vote for usage.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: Just yesterday in the newspaper someone wrote that he “felt badly” about something that had happened to him. Wrong: It should be “felt bad.”

If you’re a grammarian, you’d go into a discourse about the differences between copulative and transitive verbs, and you’d explain that a predicate adjective rather than an adverb was needed in that sentence.

Shucks. Wouldn’t it be much simpler to note that educated people tend to say “felt bad”? Is all that grammatical baggage really necessary?

When I press the brake pedal on my car, I don’t think about the stopping process involving pedal, brake pads, and tires. I think about good driving practices.

Going back to the prohibition against “very unique” and “sort of pregnant”: I knew that already. Why impose a clunky discourse about “absolute modifiers”? Why do we have to complicate something simple?

So…have a great time celebrating National Grammar Day today. But while you’re at it, please raise a glass in honor of usage too.

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