3 Appositive Errors

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Confusion often arises as to how or whether to punctuate appositive phrases, which are descriptions that identify someone or something named in the same sentence. Here are three statements with punctuation problems that illustrate the peril of improper punctuation, with explanations and suggested revisions.

1. “The fog arrived unannounced — ‘on little cat feet,’ as the American poet, Carl Sandburg, put it.”
Framing Carl Sandburg’s name with commas implies that he is the American poet — the only one. The accurate revision is “The fog arrived unannounced — ‘on little cat feet,’ as the American poet Carl Sandburg put it.” (In this case, the, preceding the epithet, is optional — and American is included only because the source sentence is from a book published in the United Kingdom, where Sandburg’s name is not as well known as it is in the United States.)

2. “But he had another particular passion, and that was water, ‘especially dramatically moving water,’ writes his biographer Robert Jones.”
It’s quite possible for a famous personage to have more than one biographer, but in this context, only one, the source of the quote, is referred to, so his name should be set off in apposition to the epithet biographer: “But he had another particular passion, and that was water, ‘especially dramatically moving water,’ writes his biographer, Robert Jones.” (In other contexts, “writes biographer Robert Jones” — which from its lack of commas denotes that more than one biographer exists — might be correct.)

3. “Here’s what the CEO of World Wide Widgets John Smith said to his employees in a blog post.”
The identification of the subject of this sentence is incorrectly ordered. Four solutions present themselves: “Here’s what World Wide Widgets CEO John Smith said to his employees in a blog post” is journalistic style, in which the simple affiliation-title-name syntax erases the need for punctuation, but formal writing favors a more relaxed arrangement.

“Here’s what John Smith, World Wide Widgets’s CEO, said to his employees in a blog post” helpfully sets the subject’s affiliation and title off from his name, but it’s better yet to reverse the order to title, then affiliation; either that combination or the name can come first (“Here’s what the CEO of World Wide Widgets, John Smith, said to his employees in a blog post” or “Here’s what John Smith, the CEO of World Wide Widgets, said to his employees in a blog post”; in the latter example, the is optional).

Grammar-Checking Software Is Soft on Grammar Errors

Image The Fremd High School English Ning

 

You want to improve your grammar, but you’re disinclined to invest time and energy to laboriously study print or online resources about sentence construction. You’ve seen ads on the Internet about grammar checkers, and you decide to check them out. How useful is grammar-checking software?

After visiting five grammar-checker websites and using (the free versions of) their products, my conclusion is that software is no substitute for wetware (otherwise known as your brain). Here are my brief reports about the software I sampled.

Grammarbase.com
Grammarbase.com fallaciously flagged “ought to be” and “may be” as examples of passive voice — a common misunderstanding of the topic. (Passive voice is a backward-facing construction such as “This sentence was written by me”; “I wrote this sentence” is the active alternative. Verb form is not the primary issue.) Worse, there were several real grammatical and syntactical errors in the site’s introductory text (which I used as a test sample for this and the other sites); the grammar-checking tool found none of them.

GrammarCheck.net
When I copied and pasted the sample text into GrammarCheck.net’s tool, it showed the same poor results as Grammarbase.com’s. However, when I clicked on the site’s Advanced Report button, it took me to . . .

Grammarly
Grammarly found nearly fifty errors (or, more accurately, instances of concern), mostly involving what the site terms “writing style,” in the introductory text taken from Grammarbase.com. (The free version did not specifically identify the errors.) When I then plugged in the raw, error-laden version of a copyediting test, it found fewer mistakes than revealed in the Grammarbase.com text but gave the test text a lower score.

PaperRater
PaperRater found no errors in Grammarbase.com’s text and only two in the text for the copyediting test — both concerning misuse of hyphens.

Spellcheckplus.com

Spellcheckplus.com was stymied by the phrase “not only should the structure of your writing be solid,” reminding me about noun-verb agreement (irrelevant in this case) and by the phrase “your basic default word processor grammar checker,” alerting me that if by using your I meant “you are,” it should read you’re (again, irrelevant).

However, it advised changing you’ll to “you will” and noted that a letter space should both precede and follow an ellipsis and that the first two words in “run on sentences” should be hyphenated — all valid but superficial corrections.

My tests were not rigorous, and I did not purchase any of this software — I merely took a test drive of each company’s freeware trial. However, the only difference I can see between the free and paid versions of these software products is that the paid versions not only flag your errors but also analyze them. The problem is that, whether in simple or advanced mode, these tools missed just about every error that matters in a grammatical review.

These tests confirmed my suspicion that grammar-checking software can at best note only the most elementary errors (and sometimes marks valid constructions as mistakes). Grammar is much too complicated and nuanced to trust to technology. If you want to write well, learn to write well. If you want to have your writing reviewed and evaluated, access the brain of another human being. But don’t even think of relying on software.

10 Ways to Avoid Gender Bias

How do you write around the outmoded usage of the pronoun he or him when a male is not necessarily the subject of the reference? Here are ten strategies — none ideal in every circumstance — for achieving gender neutrality.
 

1. Use He or She

Before: “Ask the student whether he is prepared to give a presentation.”
After: “Ask the student whether he or she is prepared to give a presentation.”
This solution is stiffly formal and is awkward in repetition; use sparingly. Using he/she, s/he, or any such alternative (or an invented neutral pronoun like ze) is not advised.
 

2. Alternate Between He and She

Before: “Ask the student whether he is prepared to give a presentation. If he is ready, tell him that he may begin when he is ready.”
After: “Ask the student whether he is prepared to give a presentation. If she is ready, tell her that she may begin when she is ready.”
This solution works only in the case of two or more references to a hypothetical subject of either gender. In the proximity of the references in the examples, this solution is awkward, but when the references are at some distance from each other, it can be effective in moderation.
 

3. Omit the Pronoun

Before: “Ask the student whether he is prepared to give a presentation.”
After: “Ask whether the student is prepared to give a presentation.”
This revision does not clearly indicate whether the student or another person is being asked; writers must recognize and respond to such lack of clarity if it affects comprehension.
 

4. Repeat the Noun in Place of the Pronoun

Before: “Ask the student whether he is prepared to give a presentation.”
After: “Ask the student whether the student is prepared to give a presentation.”
When the noun is repeated in the proximity shown above, the sentence is awkward; in a more complex sentence, the repetition may not seem so obvious.
 

5. Use a Plural Antecedent for the Pronoun

Before: “Ask the student whether he is prepared to give a presentation.”
After: “Ask the students whether they are prepared to give their presentations.”
Employing a plural noun and a plural pronoun may change the meaning somewhat; writers must be alert as to which other nouns, if any, should be made plural as well.
 

6. Replace the Pronoun with an Article

Before: “Ask the student to prepare his presentation.”
After: “Ask the student to prepare a presentation.”
 

7. Revise the Sentence to Use the Pronoun One

Before: “A prepared student is more likely to succeed than if he has not done sufficient research.”
After: “A prepared student is more likely to succeed than an unprepared one.”
 

8. Revise the Sentence to Use the Pronoun Who

Before: “A student is more likely to succeed if he does sufficient research.”
After: “A student who does sufficient research is more likely to succeed.”
 

9. Revise the Sentence to the Imperative Mood

Before: “A student must be well prepared for his presentation.”
After: “Be well prepared for the presentation.”
 

10. Use a Plural Pronoun

Before: “Ask the student whether he is prepared to give a presentation.”
After: “Ask the student whether they are prepared to give a presentation.”
Many writers reject this solution because traditional grammar rules frown on using a plural pronoun when the antecedent is a singular noun. However, the bewildering absence of a gender-neutral plural pronoun in English calls for a radical solution. This one is widely used in informal writing and in conversation, and it’s commonsensical to welcome it in formal writing. That welcome, however, has not yet been forthcoming, and, regrettably, writers should use the plural pronouns them and they in place of singular pronouns with caution.

Some writers reject the notion that one should avoid gender-specific pronouns in universal contexts at all. After all, why change long-standing usage that has only recently been challenged? But these writers, though sensible in the logic of their argument, are culturally insensitive and, ultimately, are on the wrong side of linguistic history. I hope, too, that integration of the singular they and them in any usage will eventually occur.

Three Cases of Extraneous Hyphens

Writers, even professionals, have a difficult time with hyphens, frequently perplexed about whether to use one — or, worse, blithely certain they’re inserting or omitting a hyphen correctly when doing so is wrong. Here are some sentences that should be bereft of hyphens.

1. “In the city’s first cop-killing since 1935, a detective was found shot at a residence.”

There’s no reason to link the adjectival use of cop with the noun killing, unless killing is joining cop as a phrasal adjective, as in “The suspect is a cop-killing menace.” The correct usage is “In the city’s first cop killing since 1935, a detective was found shot at a residence.”

2. “A privately-built spacecraft will try a second flight in an effort to secure the prize.”

Writers frequently confuse adverbs ending in -ly, which are never connected to the verbs they modify, with adjectives, which are usually hyphenated in phrases like the one referred to in the previous item. Complicating the matter is that adjectival phrases including an adjective ending in -ly, such as grandfatherly-looking in “a grandfatherly-looking fellow,” are hyphenated before (and after) a noun.

The difference in these usages is that privately describes how the spacecraft was built; privately modifies built. In “grandfatherly-looking fellow,” however, the first two words are hyphenated to indicate that together, they modify fellow. The sentence should read, “A privately built spacecraft will try a second flight in an effort to secure the prize.”

3. “They prefer to dump the label for a more-effective brand.”

When a comparative or superlative modifier — less or least, or more or most — modifies an adjective, do not connect the terms with a hyphen: “They prefer to dump the label for a more effective brand.” (If the sentence is ambiguous without the hyphen, as in “The team had several more successful seasons,” revise the sentence according to the intended meaning: “The team had several seasons that were more successful” or “The team had several successful seasons after that.”)

Five Parallelism Problems in In-Line Lists

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Constructing an in-line list — a series of items in a sentence — seems like a straightforward task, but writers frequently err in their attempts to produce parallel structure. The following sentences illustrate some of the pitfalls of parallel construction and how to fix them.

1. “You can pay using your bank account, debit, or credit cards.”
This list refers to two types of financial resources: a bank account and a card (two types of which are mentioned). The sentence structure mistakenly suggests that the list consists of three elements, rather than two (“your bank account” and “a debit or credit card”), one of which is a compound item — one consisting of two or more nouns or noun phrases. The following revision reflects the correct organization: “You can pay using your bank account or a debit or credit card.”

2. “Her writing was accurate, complete, and demonstrated attention to detail.”
Of the three items in this list, two are accompanied by verbs, but the writer has erroneously assumed that complete can share the verb that precedes accurate. It can do so, but only if accurate and complete are linked with a conjunction rather than separated by a comma: “Her writing was accurate and complete and demonstrated attention to detail.”

3. “It’s free, secure, and takes no time at all.”
This sentence suffers from the same slight but clumsy error as the one in the preceding example. It can be solved in the same way (“It’s free and secure, and it takes no time at all”) — a comma is required before the conjunction in this case because the pronoun’s presence makes the second clause an independent one. Alternatively, each item in the list can be assigned its own pronoun: “It’s free, it’s secure, and it takes no time at all.”

4. “The pension system divested in firms doing business with apartheid-era South Africa, avoided oil and energy investments in Iran, and it dropped tobacco companies from its portfolio in 2008.”
Here, too, the problem is of inconsistency of structure, but because the subject is a noun and the sentence is more complex, the simple error might not be apparent. Basically, each segment of the sentence needs a subject noun or a pronoun as if it were a distinct sentence, or, better, all segments must share the subject: “The pension system divested in firms doing business with apartheid-era South Africa, avoided oil and energy investments in Iran, and dropped tobacco companies from its portfolio in 2008.” (Alternatively, the comma following Africa could be replaced by and, but the lengthy sentence is better served by a rest-stop comma rather than another move-along conjunction.)

5. “There’s the Coke bottle and the old glove and sailboats gliding along the bay.”
This sentence (referring to iconic features at a baseball stadium) almost works in its relaxed state, unhindered by internal punctuation. But the lack of a comma suggests that all three things glide along the bay. A comma after “old glove” will catch that noun phrase and the preceding one, reserving the gliding action for the sailboats alone: “There’s the Coke bottle and the old glove, and sailboats gliding along the bay.”

Five Erroneously Constructed “Not Only . . . But Also” Sentences

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Writers often have difficulty determining the word order in sentences in which the phrase “not only” appears followed by an example and then, subsequent to “but also,” another example. Here are fixes to five such sentences.

1. “Digital cameras are not only changing photography, but our lives.”

The key to correct syntax in “not only . . . but also” constructions is, when sharing a verb between the two examples, placing “not only” after the verb: “Digital cameras are changing not only photography but also our lives.”

2. “He wasn’t only listening to tone, but also to the rhythms and patterns he would need to understand and communicate.”

This sentences partially conceals the problem because not is part of a contraction. To solve it, spell out the contracted phrase, and follow the rule stated in the explanation of the example above: “He was listening not only to tone but also to the rhythms and patterns he would need to understand and communicate.”

3. “Many people prefer the squatter neighborhoods not only because they provide affordable housing but freedom from government control and a sense of community spirit.”

This sentence is improved by the basic strategy of placing the verb before “not only,” but a further fix is recommended. Because the element following “but also” is a two-part phrase, freedom may be (at least initially) misconstrued as applying to both “government control” and “a sense of community spirit,” so distance the second phrase from the first: “Many people prefer the squatter neighborhoods because they provide not only affordable housing but also freedom from government control, as well as a sense of community spirit.”

4. “We house them in the nicest neighborhoods we can afford, the ones that are not only comfortable in themselves, but that mask direct evidence of the world’s unfairness.”

In this example, each corresponding phrase has its own verb. When this is the case, simply place “not only” and “but also” immediately following the respective verbs: “We house them in the nicest neighborhoods we can afford, the ones that not only are comfortable in themselves but also mask direct evidence of the world’s unfairness.”

5. “Eventually, I began to notice that dreams are not only inspirations for creative life and interesting puzzles to be solved, but that they provided access to a world of meaning that was even greater than the tactics of nonviolent social change.”

More complex sentences pose a challenge, but as in the other examples, simply break the sentence elements down. The two points of this sentence are “dreams are inspirations . . .” and “they provide access . . . .” To achieve parallel structure, precede the first phrase with “not only that” and the second one with “but also that”: “Eventually, I began to notice not only that dreams are inspirations for creative life and interesting puzzles to be solved but also that they provide access to a world of meaning that was even greater than the tactics of nonviolent social change.”

Five Errors in Treating Quotations

When you quote another person, be sure to avoid these pitfalls of quotation format.

1. Sometimes, LaPierre said, “The only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
In this sentence, the writer has inserted the word sometimes, though the speaker did not utter it verbatim, into the sentence because the speaker intimated it in other words. Because it wasn’t actually spoken, however, it is placed outside the quotation marks. But the sentiment begins with sometimes, not the, so the quotation becomes a partial one and the is not capitalized: “Sometimes, LaPierre said, ‘the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’”

2. Alfred North Whitehead wrote that “The best education is to be found in gaining the utmost information from the simplest apparatus.”
A similar rule applies to an attribution (“so and so said/wrote/agreed”) that leads into the quotation without intervening punctuation; the quotation becomes part of a framing sentence, and the first word of the original quotation is not capitalized: “Alfred North Whitehead wrote that ‘the best education is to be found in gaining the utmost information from the simplest apparatus.’”

3. “We knew,” Jones says, “that the company would eventually become a major competitor, but, without a relationship, we thought we were in danger of not achieving ubiquity.”
In this sentence, the writer interjects the attribution into the midst of the quotation, which is standard procedure. However, the attribution should be delayed until a break between two clauses: “‘We knew that the company would eventually become a major competitor,’ Jones says, ‘but, without a relationship, we thought we were in danger of not achieving ubiquity.’”

4. “Schools may be the last place,” Smith said, “where the government is funding us to gather together into public forums to have conversations. We have got to protect that.”
This sentence, like the previous example, suffers from premature attribution. Because there is no natural break in the sentence, the attribution should be inserted between the two sentences: “‘Schools may be the last place where the government is funding us to gather together into public forums to have conversations,’ Smith said. ‘We have got to protect that.’”

5. “In many ways, it’s like the cowboys against the Indians. But the cowboys are fully backed by the state,” he said of the current situation.
In this case, the attribution is delayed too long. In a quotation of two or more sentences, as in the previous example, place it between the first and second sentences: “‘In many ways, it’s like the cowboys against the Indians,’ he said of the current situation. ‘But the cowboys are fully backed by the state.’” (Note, too, how this arrangement strengthens the sentence because it ends with a serious punchline rather than a dry attribution.)

Five Errors of Restriction

1. “Bank of America’s purchase of Fleet Boston for $47 billion will create the biggest bank in the United States with thirty-three million customers.”

The lack of punctuation in this sentence invites the impression that of all the banks in the United States with thirty-three million customers, the Bank of America will be the largest. But the last phrase merely refers to the size of the customer base after the merger.

This additional information should be set off from the rest of the sentence by a comma: “Bank of America’s purchase of Fleet Boston for $47 billion will create the biggest bank in the United States, with thirty-three million customers.” Alternatively, the information can be inserted parenthetically into the middle of the sentence: “Bank of America’s purchase of Fleet Boston for $47 billion, which boosts its customer base to thirty-three million, will create the biggest bank in the United States.”

2. “Take a visit to the military test kitchen where bad grub is taken very seriously.”

The implication here is that among military test kitchens, the one in question is the only one that focuses on bad food. However, it’s quite likely there’s only one military test kitchen, a fact this sentence indicates by the simple insertion of a comma: “Take a visit to the military test kitchen, where bad grub is taken very seriously.” (If there is more than one, the implied multiplicity of kitchens is distracting; a simple change of the article preceding the noun phrase will remove the obstacle: “Take a visit to a military test kitchen where bad grub is taken very seriously.”)

3. “Yesterday, ChevronTexaco announced the deal that’s expected to be complete within six months.”

The reader might get the impression that of two or more deals, this one’s expected to take up to six months to complete. But there’s only one deal, and it should be complete within six months. To communicate that information, set the time frame apart from the phrase about the announcement, and change that to which: “Yesterday, ChevronTexaco announced the deal, which is expected to be complete within six months.”

4. “Daniel Libeskind is the architect of the proposed $43 million Contemporary Jewish Museum project in San Francisco that will begin construction next year.”

This example is less likely than the previous one to confuse readers about the number of similar events expected to occur; it’s unlikely that anyone will assume that more than one museum project is in the offing. However, the sentence is constructed so that such distraction is possible. To clarify, undertake the same revision as in the example above: “Daniel Libeskind is the architect of the proposed $43 million Contemporary Jewish Museum project in San Francisco, which will begin construction next year.”

5. “The company’s incident-response can quickly and reliably identify events, which threaten an organization’s security posture.”

Note that this sentence, by contrast, errs in the other direction: The wording and punctuation implies that all events are a threat to the organization’s security posture. But the sentence intends to refer to a restricted type of events, so it should be worded to convey that meaning: “The company’s incident-response can quickly and reliably identify events that threaten an organization’s security posture.”