Easy Holiday Grammar with Zombies

It’s holiday time and the Christmas/New Year’s cards are coming—some ripe with grammar errors, which mystified me since the grammar is straight forward. But then, a younger person (who will remain nameless) asked me a question about grammar on envelopes. I thought, “How do you not know this?” And I remembered that most young people rarely use the mail system. They text with their friends and pay bills online. So here’s a primer on envelopes. And I’ve enlisted my friends, the Zombies as helpers. Here you go.

You want to send a Christmas card to the Zombies, here are your options:

Zeno and Zenobia Zombie

1212 Dripping Blood Drive

Bloodthirsty, TN  37411

Or

The Zombies

1212 Dripping Blood Drive

Bloodthirsty, TN  37411

Or

The Zombie Family

1212 Dripping Blood Drive

Bloodthirsty, TN  37411

Under NO circumstance may you ever write:

Zombie’s (or Zombies’)

1212 Dripping Blood Drive

Bloodthirsty, TN  37411

Apostrophes are only used for contractions and to show ownership. Apostrophes are used correctly like this:

Next Saturday, Blood Suckers Anonymous will be holding a weekly meeting at the Zombies’ house. (Also note, it’s plural possessive because more than one person lives at the home of the Zombies.)

You can always double check whether you need an apostrophe by switching the sentence around. If you can use “of,” then you use an apostrophe.

Next Saturday, Blood Suckers Anonymous will be holding a weekly meeting at the house of the Zombies. 

Now go enjoy your holidays grammar-error free!

Grammar Snobs Unite

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I’m looking for part-time, from-home work. Much easier said than done.

I’ve had a good nibble, and I’m waiting to see whether the big fish bites. In the meantime, I keep applying. I heard back from another company the other day. The email told me I was being considered for a position. They explained I’d need to pass two tests first. (This is pretty standard.) I continued reading the email. It went on to tell me how much they pay per hour. (Twelve year old babysitters make more. Not a joke. I recently got an email looking for a reputable teenage babysitter, so I know how much they make.) The company’s email went on to tell me that if I had a PhD, I could make $2 more per hour—the wage someone was willing to pay a babysitter.

The email ended by saying I needed to hurry because the tests were due on June 11 and they were eager to hire for fall of 2012.

Um, yeah. A friend suggested that the email was the real test and I ought to correct it and send it back.

But the whole thing got me to thinking. Honestly, people don’t seem to care much about written communication anymore. Not a day goes by where I don’t see an error in a sign, newspaper, or book. (There’s an interstate sign in my city that drives me crazy because it has an abbreviation error. And don’t even get me started on mail that arrives addressed to the “Keller’s.” Really? Singular possessive?!)  I’m beginning to feel the urge to start carrying a red Sharpie on a string around my neck. The problem is I don’t think I’ll be able to limit myself to correcting only mail, newspapers, and books. Pretty soon, you’re going to read that Connie Keller was arrested for propping a twenty foot ladder in a lane of traffic on Interstate 24 so she could correct a sign. No doubt, all my grammar Nazi friends will rally to support me. It might not be a big group. But our signs will all be spelled correctly.

Stump a Grammar Snob, Hyphens

Before I self-published a book, I was very confident in my grammar and spelling. Yep, I knew my stuff. But when it was time to put my baby out there for the world, I learned some humility. No one knows all the rules. And those who think they do, really don’t.

And, I’m sure you know this, not everyone agrees. But I’m not talking stuff like Oxford commas. I’m talking more esoteric grammar. BTW, if you are not a grammar fanatic, you should probably stop reading now. You’ll be bored silly. But if nothing gives you greater delight than learning some obscure grammar rule, read on, baby, this one’s for you.

Hyphens. This rule should be pretty straightforward. Right? Just look up any word in the dictionary and you’ll know if the word is hyphenated. Easy-peasy. But what about hyphens and compound modifiers? If they come before the noun, hyphenated them. If they come after the noun, don’t. Also easy. But what if it’s an adverb-adjective combo like “freshly cut grass.” Hyphen or no hyphen?

After exhaustive research, most (though not all) experts agree that you use a hyphen. Except, with –ly adverbs preceding adjectives that together precede nouns. In other words, “freshly cut grass,” not freshly-cut grass. BTW, the Chicago Manual of Style says the reason we don’t use a hyphen there is “ambiguity is virtually impossible.” Of course.

Now you know.

Grammar Wars

Grammar is changing. And it’s not just the Oxford comma (which you can pry from my work over my cold dead body). Scads of commas are disappearing from usage. Lately, I’ve seen Saturday December 31 everywhere. (It makes me want to grab a sharpie and add the comma between Saturday and December.) And then there are dialogue commas: “Aren’t you hungry Bob?” (Beep! Noun of direct address alert.) And what about interrupters like “however, of course, etc.” that aren’t offset with commas? I want to smack the advertisers/writers over the head with The Chicago Manual of Style.

In the last year or so, I started seeing these grammar faux pas more and more, even in books published by the big three houses. And a niggling suspicion started. So I asked a fellow grammar lover who also has been writing for a big six publisher for years about the grammar “mistakes.” She confirmed my suspicions, style sheets* were changing.

I want to rage against texting and ignorance, and I want to extol the importance of semi-colons. And not because I’m some Luddite grammar freak (which may be true, but isn’t the point). Good grammar promotes readability. And clarity. And shades of meaning. And will keep the zombie apocalypse at bay. (Oops, that was a little over the top. Sorry.)

Anyway, I’m thinking of starting The Grammar Board. It’ll be like the language academies that promote linguistic purity, but we’ll guard grammar purity... Except part of the reason I like English is its fluidity of expression, the way it responds to culture and change. Hmm. Maybe I’ll just stick to writing whiney blog posts.

*If you’re not familiar with style sheets, they’re “sheets” (booklets) that many publishers/newspapers/magazines give to their authors to keep the grammar (sometimes even politically charged word choice) consistent throughout their publication. 

Conundrums

I am the proud owner of a summer cold. I can tell you right now that I need to get better ASAP because I have had a turkey defrosting since Monday (I defrost it in a cooler so it takes a while) and I do not want to stuff/roast a turkey and mash potatoes, etc., while I’m sick.

In order to speed health along, I spent most of the day crashed on the couch. I had the energy levels of a semi-dead slug. But, always eager to redeem the time, I decided to work on getting my YA novel ready. Okay, here’s the problem. Why is it that I always run into weird grammar problems that can’t be answered by The Chicago Manual of Style or Google? Surely, I’m not the only person in the world who has these questions. For example, how do you capitalize these sentences?

You were voted class nerd.

Or

You were voted Mr. Popularity.

or 

They called you The Fish.

Or

Do you use italics because the words are being used as a term and not what the word itself is used for?

Any ideas?

And then there’s my favorite conundrum “that.” Now I know it is a relative pronoun, and I know the difference between “which,” “that,” and “who.” I know that “who” is used for persons. “That” is used for restrictive clauses. And “which” is used for non-restrictive clauses and thus must take commas because it is parenthetical. (Unless it’s the object of a preposition. Or unless you’re British, in which case, you don’t use commas with “which.”)

M’kay, so we have the usage down. But then, I read books and there are no whichs or thats where they’re supposed to be. And it’s not even in dialogue. So what’s up with that?! Can you just leave them out if you so feel led? Is it a readability issue?

Ariel watched me pour over grammar tomes and asked how long I’d wasted on this fruitless project. I told her (that?) I had no idea and I didn’t want to know. She pointed out that if I couldn’t find the answer after all that work, probably no one cared either way.

Ack! She may be right, but I care. So now I pose the question to you all. Do you have any ideas? I’m sure that I’m not the only grammar junkie out there. Help me, please. Thanks.

The End of the World

My children, except for Luke who is a confirmed Luddite, continue to force me into the 21st century. So far, I’ve resisted Twitter and Facebook (though I’ve promised to reconsider it this summer), and I’ve succumbed to email (indispensible), blogging (really fun) and now instant messaging.

Though I’ve succumbed to IM-ing, I’ve not sure I get the point of it. First, when a send-response thing gets going, the chatters tend to talk over each other, especially an impatient, fast typist like myself. And with multiple chatters, it’s chaos—I feel a migraine coming on.

Second, the grammar and spelling associated with IMs is appalling—the teacher in me has conniptions. (In case you aren’t familiar with a Connie-conniption: my eyes light up with dark unearthly burning, my voice become gravelly, the hair on the back of my neck sticks up and I prowl for child-flesh.)

But here’s the worst thing, my kids IM me from their bedrooms! Hello, get off your rumpus and find me—our house is not big and I don’t sit in front of my computer waiting to be IM’ed. Does anybody have any idea what this is going to do to interpersonal communication? Not to mention the grammar-spelling issue!

I could be wrong, but this may be the end of the world as we know it…

Pit of Despair

The Lord has determined that I am in great need of sanctification. Either that or He thought I needed another techno-blog entry. And so, Luke’s Live OneCare (anti-virus/anti-computer evil) program stopped working. Neither of us knows when it stopped working, but my computer notified me that Luke’s computer had “issues.”

With a heavy heart, I tried to run the program on Luke’s computer. It wouldn’t run and threw his entire system into a fatal loop. My heart now feels like lead because it means I need to troubleshoot the problem.

And, guess what? Microsoft doesn’t provide you with a phone number. You have to go to their website. I click the link. Now I feel like I’m a spider hanging by a thread over the bottomless pit of software malfunction. But maybe it’s not impending doom that I feel swirling up from the pit. This could all work out. Right?

Wrong. Microsoft wants you to troubleshoot using their handy-dandy fix-your-problem steps. I try problem fix number one. Another infinite loop. I crash and restart the system. Probable fix number two doesn’t work either. Crash and restart. Probable fix number three is “download this fix file”—it will send Microsoft the information they need to resolve the problem. My thread is unraveling. I click "file fix informational download". Infinite loop number three. The thread snaps, and I fall into the pit.

From my computer, I email Microsoft and tell them the operating system, the problem, and explained that I tried all their website fixes. A few hours later, I get an email from Lily. In her email (which has grammar errors, including improper verb tense shifts—English is not her primary language), Lily has the wrong operating system instructions and then tells me to do exactly what I told her that I already did.

But I do them again because who knows. However, the results are the same: infinite loop and restart. Three times. I email Lily again.

An hour or two later, the phone rings.

Microsoft phone person: Hello, Connie. Your computer problem fixed.
Me: No.
MPP: Oh.
Me (assuming these people actually communicate): Yeah, I emailed Lily and told her that all the stuff she had me do didn’t work. And I tried—
MPP (interrupting): I not technician. Just calling to find out.
Me: Right. The program still isn’t working.
MPP: So there is second problem?
Me, (sighing, clearly they aren’t using their computers to communicate customer information. Isn’t this why people buy Microsoft products?): No. I have just one problem.
MPP: Oh. You have identification number?
Me: Yep. (Then, I proceed to read off a 13 digit number—if they have to use 13 digits for a problem id number, they have way too many problems)
MPP: You want phone call tomorrow?
Me: No. No phone calls on Sunday. Can Lily call today?
MPP: Lily can’t call—she email only.
Me (thinking: Her English is worse than yours? What a bummer.) saying: Oh.
MPP: Someone else call today. What time is latest?
Me: 10pm
MPP: Okay, someone call between 3 and 8 tonight.
Me: Eastern or Pacific?
MPP: What your time?
Me: Eastern.
MPP: I make note of that.
Me: Great. Thanks.
MPP: Good-bye.
Me: Bye.

I hang up and say to Ariel: What was the point of that call?
Ariel: That was Microsoft’s we-really-care-about-you-as-a-customer-so-don’t-buy-an-Apple phone call.
Me: If I could afford one…

Now I’m freefall in the Great Pit of Computer Despair, waiting and hoping that I’ll get a native English speaker. Or least, someone who understands how verbs work.