A Writing Warning!

Okay, the comic is dated, but the message isn’t:

Don’t trust the spell checker!

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Here’s a rule:

Semicolons separate independent clauses.
Commas separate parts of a sentence.

An independent clause is a sentence that happens to be attached to another sentence. An independent clause has its own subject and verb, and could stand alone. In fact, the decision as to whether to make something a stand-alone sentence or an independent clause is often a matter of preference—the choice can affect the tone of the writing, but both choices are grammatical.

Here’s a sentence that gets it wrong:

A transition is a one-way link, if an issue moves back and forth between two statuses; two transitions should be created.

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/jira/jira_quick_guide.htm

That comma should be a semicolon. Even a period would work. And that semicolon should be a comma. The “if…” part goes with what follows; it’s a dependent clause (called an apodosis, if you want to know the technical term). So here’s what the sentence should look like:

A transition is a one-way link; if an issue moves back and forth between two statuses, two transitions should be created.

Feels better now, doesn’t it?

The past tense of the intransitive verb”lie” (as in I lie down) is lay. We tend to use “laid” (past tense of “lay,” which is transitive, as in” I will lay the book on the table”) because we’re used to having a -d on the end of our past-tense verbs. This guy gets it right:

The caption is: “Aircraft hangars lay scattered in pieces across the flight line at Tyndall Air Force Base after Hurricane Michael made landfall on Oct. 10, 2018. The storm had exploded from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in two days over warm Gulf waters. Credit: Staff Sgt. Alexander C. Henninger/U.S. Air Force”

Good for him!

Changing the subject is a common defense mechanism, I think.

The kid is right about the grammar, though. “Whom” is the object of a preposition.

I run into this mainly in spoken English. Saying “is” twice.

“The reason that technology is interesting is, once you do this process of focusing the light to get heat, you can store heat much more cheaply than you can store electricity,” says Asegun Henry, lead researcher on the study. 

https://newatlas.com/mit-molten-silicon-energy-storage-system/57562

Having “is” in there twice seems wrong, doesn’t it? It’s not!

Let’s parse the sentence. The subject is “reason”; “that technology is interesting” is a subordinate clause that functions as an adjective describing “reason.” So what’s the main verb? It’s that second “is.” (Everything from “once” to “heat” is parenthetical, so you can set that part aside.) Then we have “you can store heat…” and that’s a noun clause, a predicate nominative.

So we end up with “The reason is (that) you can store heat.” It’s a perfectly grammatical sentence, if somewhat cumbersome.

Woof! Let’s do a comic in the next post.