Maybe This isn’t a Mistake

But it’s a pattern I’ve seen over the years: The word “anymore” belongs in a negative statement. For example, we say,

Nobody does it this way anymore.

So when I see it in a positive construction, it raises a flag:

I think the gal on the left should have said, “Everyone is so angry nowadays, aren’t they?”

What do you think?

PS— “Any more,” two words, is a somewhat different construction that we use for tangible objects, not the passage of time. So we say, “Do we have any more dressing for that turkey?”

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I’ve mentioned in the past that ambiguity is bad except in poetry. (For more on this topic, put “ambiguity” in the search box in the upper right corner.) When you explain something, you want to be clear. I ran into someone pointing this out in a recent Delaware Mensa newsletter, DelaMensa:

I read the newspaper everyday. —Is that past tense or current tense? Did you read that as “I red” or “I reed”? Both are valid. Context is usually helpful, but what if the paragraph started with that?

He suggested a solution, too. Context. I’m a little wordier; I say rewrite the sentence.

Write your sentences so they aren’t ambiguous!

One of my five gold rules of good writing is to be correct. I mention it a couple times. The gist is that you need to get your mechanics (grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax) correct; the other is that your facts have to be true. (I tell people that as a tech writer, I tell the truth for a living.) 

I just ran into an excellent essay on this subject. Here’s the incorrectness that triggered the essay:

Click the link under the picture. What he says is exactly my point about correctness. The sentence is not quite true. Some of you, no doubt, will be able to figure out that the inaccuracy is; it’s subtle. (And I’m not referring to the use of “which,” which should be “that.” —that’s an error in mechanics.)

So. Be sure you get your facts right. Tell the truth.

The last post featured a comic about politics. This comic appeared on the same page as one in the last post, and it’s also about politics, but I’m all about the grammar, and this time the guy gets it wrong:

It should be “Whom do you have?” But you probably know that by now. (“You” is the subject; the object should be “whom.”)

I wonder whether the solecism was part of the commentary. Oops. I don’t make political statements.

Normally I tend to avoid political stuff, concentrating on grammar and writing instead. My interest here is no exception. I like to point out any time someone uses “whom” correctly, politics or not. It’s in the third panel: 

“Whom” is the object of the separable verb “vote for” even though “whom” comes first. And objects take the objective case!

This sentence has an interesting ambiguity, by the way. The verb in question is an infinitive (to vote for) and the subject of an infinitive takes the objective case in English; hence, that “whom” here could be considered the subject of the verb!