Separable Verbs Don’t Have to be Logical
I like comics that feature grammarians, though I think he’s overdoing it a bit here.
“Tie up” and “tie down,” for example, are both idiomatic, and they have different meanings, but neither is exactly precise.
Can you think of any other separable verbs that technically don’t make sense? Put your list in the comments.
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Two Nicely Done Definitions
People often confuse these two words. This guy gets it right.
I think I’m a nerd.
A Battle We’re Going to Lose
Sigh. They do it twice, panels 1 and 2
“Snuck” is too common; everybody uses it (except my spell checker!) The correct word is “sneaked.”
In conversation, go ahead and say “snuck” if you want, but when you write nonfiction adult material, go with “sneaked.” No one will notice that you didn’t use “snuck,” but you’ll sound more mature.
Sigh. Here’s another one.
The Newark (DE) News Journal, no less. C’mon, guys—you’re professionals. It’s “sank”!
But this guy gets it right! Last panel.
Another Gender Item
English allows plurals such as “they” and “them” as a substitute for long expressions like “him or her” even when the person in mind is singular. We don’t, after all, have a gender-neutral singular third person pronoun.
Another gender-related quirk in English is to use the masculine to refer to everybody. This is falling out of style, but you still see it, such as in this Curtis, panel 1:
We have perfectly good gender-neutral substitutes such as humanity, humankind, humans, people, and so on.
Old habits die hard, though, so don’t make too big a fuss when someone uses the masculine to refer to people in general.
PS—Here’s another example of using the masculine to refer to everybody, this time from Darren Bell’s Candorville. Third panel, top line.
Interesting that he used “itself” referring to humans in the last line of the panel…
A Technicality That I Think No One Cares About
Seems I can’t resist Darren Bell’s Candorville comics in which the protagonist, who is a writer, interrupts and corrects someone’s grammar. Here’s another one. I think I make this mistake myself sometimes. After all, can “read” have both an active and passive meaning?
