Five Easy Fixes for Your Everyday Bad Grammar

by Emily Walls

I've had a request for a little grammar workshop on the ol' Infusion. Obviously, I am going to fulfill this request because 1) grammar has only ever improved my social life and 2) someone talked to me! Because the breadth of the subject is so great, I have decided to limit this post to common errors and easy slip-ups. For a comprehensive study, see these:

1. The Chicago Manual of Style: my style guide of choice, my dear companion, and my overdue library book
2. The Grammar Girl: great online resource for your grammar queries
3. The Elements of Style by Strunk and White: tips for everything having to do with writing; this book belongs on your shelf and in your glove compartment (for emergencies)

#5 It's its.

It's is a contraction of the words It is. Its is a possessive pronoun that means [blank] belongs to it. I know these two are tricky—really I do—but you can master them if you slow down while you're writing. Do this: mentally place a little red flag by each of the words. Are your little red flags waving? Excellent. From now on, you'll see your red flags waving whenever you write the words, and you'll stop to evaluate your usage. Here's our practice sentence:

"It's a beautiful day to burn down the enemy garrison," said the minotaur to its companion.

The first is a contraction of the words It is, so we use an apostrophe. The apostrophe basically says, "Hey, there used to be a space and an i here, but I beat the crap out of them and took their place."

Its, in the second part of the sentence, tells us that the companion belongs to the minotaur. Now, here's where our minds mess with us. We know that to make any noun possessive, we add 's to the end (e.g., my sister's bangs, my enemy's rotting corpse, my fish's sparkling personality). It is logical to us to do the same for it, but WE ARE WRONG. It is a pronoun (meaning a generic word used in place of a specific noun), and pronouns are tricky. Possessive pronouns do not use apostrophes. This is easy to remember with words like hers, his, and ours. Those look weird with apostrophes. If you saw "The house is our's" on a page, you would immediately see the problem. It might help you to remember that possessive its does not use an apostrophe if you can remember that its belongs in the same family as hers, his, and ours.

More than likely, however, you'll remember the contraction it's as a replacement for it is. Imagine the apostrophe as a militant terrorist who wants to exterminate all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. The apostrophe isn't strong enough to take out entire words, but it can assassinate a few letters at a time. If its campaign is successful and it murders letters A to Z, our future Verbal Infusion posts may become a bit...dull.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''.

  

#4 Spell Definitely

Split it into three parts: de-finite-ly. Remember that your trouble with spelling definitely is not infinite; it is finite. If you can remember that the middle of the word is finite, then you won't be tempted to throw in a wayward a. Try it.

#3 Jonny and I took a picture. This is a picture of Jonny and me.

I'm going to be specific here because this is the error I see daily on Facebook.

Correct: This is a picture of Jonny and me.
Incorrect: This is a picture of Jonny and I.

Everybody knows the easiest way to work through it is to drop the other person's name and read the sentence with only the personal pronoun. This is a picture of I sounds absurd; therefore, it must be me. Bam. Problem solved.

But sometimes it sounds wrong both ways. Take this sentence:

Jonny and I are spicing up our marriage with a steamy read-through of the California driver's manual; it's not going well.

If you take out Jonny, it reads, "I are spicing" or "me are spicing." Both sound infantile, so you must look beyond the sound test for your answer. Ask yourself a few questions:

1. Are you the subject of the sentence? In other words, are you the one doing the action?
2. Is the action being done to you, not by you? (A dead giveaway is a preposition like of, to, or for before the pronoun.)

If you are doing the action, the correct pronoun is I. In our practice sentence, I am the one spicing up my marriage (i.e., doing the action), so I is the right word to use.

If the action is being done to you, the correct pronoun is me. For example:

A representative of the DMV issued a cease and desist to Jonny and me, demanding that we halt production of our highly anticipated marriage counseling book, Take Your Sex Drive into the Fast Lane.

Because the action (issued) is being done to me, not by me, the correct pronoun is me. To top it all off, the sentence also includes the preposition to, which is a great big flashing light that tells you me is the way to go.

#2 Then/Than
Then is used to give a measure of time. "We'll quash the Great Western Rebellion then. For now, let's drink."
Than is used for comparison. "Our benevolent new masters of the Great Western Rebellion are far more magnanimous than their humanoid predecessors."
If it helps, remember that then has an end and than has an and (as in, you're comparing this and that).

#1 Dangling Participles
A participle is an adjective that looks like a verb, and it usually ends in -ing or -ed. For (a completely fictional) example:

Panting with the effort of his sprint toward freedom, fifteen-year-old Steven congratulated himself on his victory over the Fuzz and his escape into the night.

Perturbed by their friend's easy getaway, Adam and Jonny immediately surrendered the name of their accomplice to their arresting officers.

Panting and Perturbed are participles that spearhead the participial phrases beginning both sentences. You'll notice that immediately following the phrases, the subjects of the participles are identified. Steven is panting; Adam and Jonny are perturbed. When a writer fails to identify the subject directly following the participial phrase, he creates a dangling participle, the bastard child of a capricious sentence.

Consider an alternative:

Perturbed by their friend's easy getaway, the arresting officers listened as Adam and Jonny surrendered the name of their accomplice.

See what I did there? I made it look like the arresting officers were perturbed, because I placed them directly after the introductory participial phrase. But why would they be perturbed? Their job is being done for them. THE SENTENCE MAKES NO SENSE. And that is the cry of every person who reads a dangling participle.

Don't dangle your participles in front of your readers. It's rude.