Subject-Verb Agreement

Subject-verb agreement is the technical term for the mistake that this article from NPR discusses. Read the whole article; I could hardly have said it better myself.

But since I want to post more than a mere link, here’s the gist:

• The 2016 Republican party platform has a section about homosexuality.
• The first sentence in that section has two nouns near the beginning, “homosexuality,” and “truths.”
• The verb is singular.

The rule of subject-verb agreement says that singular verbs take singular subjects, and plural verbs take plural subjects.

The intent was to use the rest of the sentence to describe truths, but the grammar had it describing homosexuality. Oops.

I think the last sentence in the article is particularly interesting.

Pay attention to your English teacher, kids! And to be really sure, have another pair of eyes look at what you write.

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I often show mistakes in writing and use them as starting points for how to do it correctly. Here are a few places where they did it right!

One of my favorite things to complain about is the expression “begs the question.” It’s a logical fallacy in which someone offers the conclusion as evidence for the conclusion! Usually people use the expression to mean something completely different: “begs us to ask the question.” Or in this case, “…raises the question.”

I recommend you follow the link. It’s the one for May 17. When you get there, click the British flag in the upper left corner. The essay is too long to include here. So if you think a topic is begging you to ask (or raise) a question, say that.

I recently mentioned the problem of people misusing “affect” and “effect.” Here’s an example of using “effect” as a verb, meaning “to cause,” correctly. (Most of the time “effect” is a noun, meaning “a result.”)

Finding out who they are, and where they come from, is a quest being taken up by a handful of vocal advocates slowly effecting a change. Deborah Halber reports.

It’s in an article on Digg about identifying bodies.

Another one I love to hate is the expression “the exception proves the rule.” I haven’t seen anyone getting this right; I’ll put it in a post when I do.

We had a riddle in sixth grade: How much dirt is in a hole two feet by three feet by four feet. (Well, none. A hole is empty.) I ran into someone using “massive” to refer to a hole. I’d say they have it backwards.

As you’ll see in this photo, there is a positively massive crater in the middle of the woods, and officials are operating on the principle that it was “dug by hand.”

Normally articles at Motherboard are pretty well written, but his guy was a little too informal for my taste. What’s wrong with “huge”? or “big enough to hide in”? even “curiously large”? Instead, the writer (and the editor allowed it) used a word that means “has lots of mass” to describe something empty. Here’s a picture of the hole:

Okay, the more actually massive something is, the larger it is likely to be, but this guy must not see holes very often.

Since I’m in a curmudgeonly mood, I’ll point out two more things he could improve:

1. “as you’ll see…” Avoid the future tense unless you have to use it. Should have written “as you can see…”
2. “there is…” Avoid using the false subject. You miss a chance to have some meaningful content when you use “there is.” How about something like “The woods near our house recently acquired a large hole…” or maybe, “An unexplained hole just appeared in our woods…”

Harrumpf.

Okay, I favor using “whom” wherever it’s grammatically appropriate. “Whom” tends to be unpopular because you have to think to use it correctly, especially when you create a sentence that’s not a basic declarative sentence. “Whom” is still useful, though. Here’s why I think “whom” will fall out of use. This is a passage from a writer whom I respect, and who, I’m sure, knows how and when to use the word correctly. (I made the incorrect words bold, in case there was any doubt.)

It wasn’t the who-drafted-who part. I know who drafted who.

I won’t cite the source because it’s not important. You can find passages like this all over the place. I think the writer decided to use “who” to fit the tone of his writing. He no doubt knows how to write a direct object, but he decided the “when” dictated using “who,” as in, “When I’m writing to fans of professional athletics, I shouldn’t regale them with stuffy grammar techniques.”

I still think using “whom” in those sentences would be a little snappier, but hey, he’s a professional and can make his own editorial decisions. (Besides, I’m more of a curmudgeon than he.) Because more professionals are doing this, I think the battle is going the way of not using “whom” at all. I’m not quite ready for it yet.

Here’s an example of someone giving in to this movement who shouldn’t have. It’s a heading on a page of a professionally written website about one of the largest companies in the world.

Who we hire

Seems inappropriate to me to go the informal route here, especially considering the international flavor of the company. If they don’t want to say “Whom we hire,” they could write something like “The people we hire.”

Harrumpf.

PS I just ran into this sentence in my company’s Standards of Ethics and Business Conduct document. They got it right!

You are responsible for ensuring that your own conduct and the conduct of those whom you observe (and, if you are a supervisor, the conduct of those who report to you) is honest and ethical at all times and complies not only with the law but also with our policies and these Standards.

Prefix those three words with “Grammar” and you have the topic of today’s post. You could add a few other terms to the list: expert, teacher, nuisance. But that would make for an awkward title.

What are the differences?  (Yes, I know, it could be “What’s the difference?”)

Grammar Geek—likes grammar, likes to discuss the topic, likes to play with grammar and analyze differences in meaning.

Grammar Curmudgeon—complains about bad grammar in general, often stimulated when he sees instances of the same. Frequently uses the word “harrumpf,” generally more good-natured than he pretends to be. (The female version is a curmudgeonne, but I digress.)

Grammar Nazi—someone who corrects others’ grammar, often without being asked to do so. Most people consider these folks to be rude nit pickers.

Grammar Expert—any of the above if you ask them for their opinion about grammar.

Grammar Teacher—me, a century ago. Most grammar teachers are paid for their service, and have an opportunity to change people’s lives, teaching them how to communicate well, and protecting them from nazis and curmudgeons, but sometimes turning them into geeks.

Grammar Nuisance—I leave this definition as an exercise for the reader.

My thanks to Mike Peterson for (unintentionally) giving me the idea to write this post when he wrote this:

It’s like a columnist using an apostrophe that doesn’t belong, thus offering the Grammar Nazis a chance to fling tomatoes over that instead of over the actual content.”