A Correct “Only”

Many people put “only” at the beginning of a string of words even when the word they want to emphasize is someplace inside. Don’t do that. Put “only” directly in front of the word!

Here’s an example of someone getting it right.

Don’t put the “only” in front of “survive”!

This post first appeared on writing-rag.com.

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I’m not talking about ordinary single words such as “fish,” which can have a plural meaning.

Two phrases just occurred to me that are singular, but always connect to a plural meaning.

• Next of kin
• Head of cattle

I just read a news item about an auto accident. The last line said ” Next of kin has been notified.” “Has” is singular, and it doesn’t sound right, because we presume that people have more than one next of kin. (Ahem. Unless we say there’s only one.) Another example: “My next of kin are in Ireland.” You wouldn’t use the singular verb in that sentence, would you?

And cattle is plural, okay, but it’s the object of the preposition. “Head” is a singular, and I have never heard the phrase used to refer to one bovine without spelling out the number. (Mah kid’s whole herd is one head that he got from 4-H.) Farmer Jones always means more than one when he says “head of cattle.” And he never says “heads of cattle.”

Can you think of any other phrases that are singular but mean plural?

“Not” is an adverb. It negates the verb, adjective, or adverb that it refers to. So far so good. “Not” does not modify nouns or noun clauses.

Cover the bottom sentence in the picture, then read the top sentence, then think about it.

That can’t be right! Discernment has something to do with knowing the difference, right? Now read the bottom sentence. Aha!

Let’s go back to the top sentence. “Not” doesn’t modify “knowing,” it modifies “is”! Having “not” modify the wrong word is an easy mistake to make without the context of having that bottom sentence. To make the top sentence unambiguous, you need to separate the “not” from the noun clause, which happens to start with a present participle. (Present participles are verb forms, so “not knowing” feels okay.)

You could do the separation four ways.

• Put a colon after the “not”:
  Discernment is not: knowing the difference between etc.
• Put the noun clause in quotes. Do this to both sentences to make them parallel:
  Discernment is not “knowing the difference between etc.” It is “knowing the difference etc.”
• Reorder the sentence:
  Knowing the difference between right and wrong is not discernment.
• Speak the sentences, and pause after the “not” in the first sentence.

Myself, I’d repeat the word “discernment” rather than use “it” as the subject of the bottom sentence. But who am I to tell Charles Spurgeon how to write? Of course, Spurgeon was a preacher, and he probably first said these sentences in a sermon, and someone wrote them down to make the poster. So maybe I’m not criticizing Spurgeon after all.

Every now and then I mention this habit of our English language taking nouns and making them into verbs. Some are so common we don’t even think about them. “Race,” for example, and “cup,” and “jump” to mention only three. In fact, “mention” is another example!

Some of these, however, we curmudgeons disapprove of, and this comic is about one of them.

We already have a perfectly good verb to use in this situation. it’s “give.”

Harrumpf.

First the comic…

Two lessons here. Maybe three.

• First: first panel. She’s actually asking “Who is it?” That’s correct. “Who” is the subject of the implied sentence.
• Next: third panel. He misstates her question, but “whom” is okay in his sentence. “Whom” is the object of the preposition.
• Finally: Her displeasure is appropriate, I suppose, but she should have used “who” because it’s the subject of the sentence.

I guess the moral is to be careful about whom you play video games with.