Two Technical Terms in Poetry

You know the difference, right?

• Rhyme means they end with the same sound
• Alliteration is when they begin with the same sound.

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The young lady is not usually an example of good things in the Luann comic, but she illustrates a good point here.

You have permission to end a sentence with a “preposition”!

Actually it’s an adverb, or part of a separable verb, if you prefer. Use the search box on the upper right corner to see more posts on this subject.

Okay, so here’s the comic.

Maybe that last panel is a good illustration of why you can do this.

I don’t have to say a lot today; the parents say it for me.

The lesson: Think about what you write!

First speech bubble. It’s correct!

That “whom” sounds wrong because we’re used to hearing the subject of the sentence first. That ‘whom’ is really the object of “of.” You can also say that the “whom” is introducing the noun clause that’s the direct object of “know”!

To fix the word order a bit, you’d have:

Do you know of whom she reminds me?

Of course now you have a rather awkward question. I fear that “who” will become the only form to appear at the beginning of a sentence regardless of the word’s function in the sentence.

PS—If it were me, I’d write. “Hey! She reminds me of someone I knew.”

PPS—Since I ran into it today, here’s a strip that gets it wrong twice. Second panel:

PPPS—And here’s one where he gets it right. First panel.

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

The last post was rather heavy duty, so here’s something lighter. The lesson is important, though. Being concise is one of the five main characteristics of good expository writing. Look up “concise” in the search box in the upper right corner, or request that essay about five critical techniques of good writing mentioned in the column on the right.