A Correct “Only”

Usually I post about mistakes, but the mistake of putting “only” in the wrong place is so common, I’m posting an example of it being used correctly! In the only speech in the comic:

People often say “…only covers your parking.” Wrong!

Always put “only” directly in front of the word it refers to, not at the beginning of the whole clause!

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Remember, in English, adjectives go directly in front of the word they modify. As I mentioned in the last post, people frequently get “only” wrong. Here’s another similar goof. Last panel

O think he means “look of quiet desperation.” I confess, a look can be pretty quiet, too.

But we English speakers are rather used to other orders of those parts of speech. Third panel:

For one thing, it’s not a sentence; no verb—all three words are nouns. So she read it as “Customers: do the appreciation today” or something like that. How would you re-word the sign?

English is relatively uninflected, so where the words are in a sentence makes a big difference. One rule is to put the verb as close as you can to the subject. Here’s and example of not doing this:

What??? The murder goes to auction?

You need two sentences here:

Rare ‘Ides of March’ dagger coin goes to auction. The coin was minted by Brutus after Julius Caesar’s murder. Make sure your writing is not easily misunderstood.

Here’s a picture of the coin:

Here’s the sentence, from a guy I read regularly:

This isn’t about Suzi, but her predecessor, Vaska, a Rhodesian ridgeback who was very good on leash but would nearly tear my arm from its socket if he spotted the letter carrier, who he knew carried doggy cookies.

Toward the end: “who he [the dog] knew carried doggie cookies.”

Shouldn’t that be “whom” before “he knew”? He knew him, right?

Nope!

The rule is you go from the inside out. The dog knew he carried doggie cookies. “Who” is the subject of the subordiante clause, “who carried doggie cookies,” and he is the subject of the main clause, “he knew.”

Tricky tricky. Don’t let the word order fool you!

Here’s a slightly related comic from that essay because I like to have pictures in my posts.