Another Example of the Importance of Hyphens
When you use a noun to modify an adjective, you create a compound adjective, which requires a hyphen. Here’s a headline from a Smithsonian article:
Smithsonian Inspired Stamp Collections Available Now
Does that mean that the Smithsonian inspired the collections? Not quite! When you keep reading the headline, you hit a bump in the road when you get to “available.” What’s that verb doing there?
Aha! It’s Smithsonian-inspired collections that are available.
C’mon, folks, get your punctuation right. Harrumpf.
Here’s one of several pictures from the article:
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How Do You Make an Adverb out of a Separable Verb?
The verb I’m thinking about is “to blend in.” Do we have an adverb for it? Well, here’s the pattern I’ve seen in this situation. Last panel.
How would you say it? What verbs can you think of to change into adverbs?
A Missing Past Perfect
Use the past perfect when something ends in the past, not merely happened in the past. This guy should have used the past perfect! Last panel.
“I wish I had known,” not “I wish I knew,” because the knowing could end in the past, and the simple past implies the knowing is still happening. Too late!
A Good Example of an Incorrect Parallelism
- This is a really long sentence, so I made the parallel words bold.
- The sentence is also from two months ago, so the politics is out of date, and I always tell you to ignore the politics anyway; this is a blog about writing and grammar.
Okay, now to the grammar. The rule is that parallel constructions should have the same form. See what the writer did here?
As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that breaching the debt ceiling would delay Social Security payments and military paychecks, as well as jeopardizing the status of the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) offered Senate Republicans “a way out” from having to participate in raising the ceiling, despite the fact that the Republicans had added $7.8 trillion to the now-$28 trillion debt during Trump’s term.
https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxtkEtuxSAMRVfzGEb8QsOAQSfdRsTHIagJRIa0ze7LexlVqmTZA1_76lxvG8SClzlKbeTZ5nYdYDJ81w1aAyRnBZxTMGKiUilFgpGBTeNEUp0XBNht2kzDE8hxui1521LJzwNORyHIavS4LHqUIMBap8AHRynTzrugGXDhb1t7hgTZg4EvwKtkIJtZWzvqQ7w_-EevFWxbAX35weRXi6GWPNTT1Wb95-DL3jUkdVvOqOaajlxxOfCB-YXxYIOeqFfL4gdcXVTbZh-S7pH_eUHQYImAdYhQMEKXxCfga9f55j73M6d2zZCt2yDc6O0O8BXGHCED9mDDbJthSvBJC0nZxMcbtWcjmZZv48RINw-lX2XzH94vakuPUg
Sounds funny when I point out the crooked parallelism, doesn’t it? The second verb should be “jeopardize” to match “would delay. (You can assume a “would” before “jeopardize.”)
I Preach This: Proofread!
I’ve saved my neck countless times by developing the habit of proofreading everything before I press Send.
One of the documents I send out to requesters (see the column on the right) emphasizes proofreading.
If you want me to preach to you more about this, use the instructions on the right to request my essays.
