Do you find yourself shying away from party conversations because you don’t know the difference between who and whom?
Are you confused on whether a subordinate clause is a part of speech or one of Santa’s elves?
Don’t worry. We’re here to help.
The copy desk at The Wichita Eagle is known for its sense of humor and spirited discussions on usage, grammar and style.
Starting Monday, we’re sharing that knowledge and sense of fun through The Eagle’s first podcast on Kansas.com: the Grammar Monkeys.
Each week we’ll tackle a new topic. First up is one of the most common usage errors, lay vs. lie.
Impress your friends with your knowledge and my bosses with our number of downloads by going to http://blogs.kansas.com/grammar every Monday.
If you have grammar questions you want us to address, write us at grammarmonkeys@wichitaeagle.com.
A couple of readers recently took issue with The Eagle ending sentences and headlines with prepositions.
While I have great affection for those who love grammar, I have to disagree with them on this rule, or, more precisely, myth.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, this is the kind of “rule” up with which we should not put.
Like another grammatical misconception, never split an infinitive, we can blame this one on Latin — preposition comes from the Latin pre (in front of) + ponere (to put). One of the wonderful things about English is that it’s more flexible than Latin. This linguistic freedom allows us to move beyond restrictions dictated by 18th century grammarians and sound natural, not stuffy.
For example: Where are you from? sounds right; From where are you? sounds like the writer has a concussion, or is Yoda. She knows what she’s talking about. Good. She knows about what she is talking. Blurg.
This isn’t to say prepositions should always go at the end. That would be an equally troublesome proposition. Many times a preposition doesn’t present the stress that is necessary at the end of a sentence and times when formality is the goal.
In general, the best course is to sidestep awkward constructions and let euphony be the guide.
Today is National Punctuation Day.
Please use commas responsibly.
A reader wrote me today wondering about an apostrophe in a Local and State section headline: Your opinion’s wanted.
I can see why the reader thought it was wrong. It could be read as Your opinions wanted with extraneous punctuation.
But it wasn’t a mistake. Here, the headline writer used opinion’s as a contraction of opinion is.
As always, though, I do like hearing your opinion.
