21st Century Grammar Handbook (3 page)

You can find explanations of the proper use of the following terms in the entries for each abbreviation or acronym: A.D.,
A.M.
,
B.C., ca., cf., Co., dollars, Dr., ed., e.g., et al., etc., hr., ibid., i.e., Ib., loe., cit., Ltd., min., Mr., Ms., N.B., op., cit., percent, Ph.D., P.M., q.v., sec, St.,
and
U.S.
See also
contractions.

About, around.
In
standard English
“about” should be used instead of “around” to mean approximately. WRONG: “He is around six feet tall.” RIGHT: “He is about six feet tall.”

Above.
Preposition
governing the
objective case:
“The balloon is above me.”

Accent.
In our multicultural, international age, we encounter more and more words from other
languages
that use accent marks. And more and more it becomes correct grammar to apply accents to names, words, and so on that come into English from other languages or that we use as we address those whose first language is not English.

If you are doing business with a company or person whose name has an accent, your correspondence will show more consideration and most likely be better received if you include accents. On the other hand, if you are uncertain how the name or word appears in the other language, omitting an accent is usually not very offensive or confusing to the person who is being addressed. If you are dealing with individuals or organizations that choose to use an accent in their names, then it is probably best to show the mark in all your correspondence.

Please look under the specific language for common accents and their use (
French, German, Spanish,
etc.).

Accept, except.
Do not confuse these two words that sound almost alike
(near-homonyms).
“Accept” is a
verb
that means to allow, tolerate, receive. “Except” is a
preposition
that means besides.

Accusative case.
See
objective case.

Acronym.
See
abbreviation.

Across.
Preposition
governing the
objective case:
“The pedestrian walked across the street.”

Active voice.
English is said to have two voices: active and
passive.
These grammatical terms denote two ways of forming
sentences
or two ways of thinking about and expressing action. While it is not necessary to know the distinctions of the grammatical categories (except in English classes), it is critical to understand the difference between the two forms of expression, when to use or avoid them and what the choice of one or the other suggests about your writing and you.

In the active voice, a sentence or idea conveys the fairly simple and direct sense of a
subject
acting on an
object
by preserving a
noun, verb,
noun structure: “The bat hit the ball, and Dukie chased it.” While active voice sentences can become much more elaborate and the sense of “action” can become quite remote (“Gaseous products of distillation amalgamate ionizing forces …”), the basic structure is still something acting or having an effect on something else.

In the passive voice, usually signaled by the presence of an
auxiliary
verb like “is” linked to the main verb, the sentence is turned around from the active pattern—the thing that is somehow the object or focus of the verb is its subject, while the thing or person that does the action moves into a
prepositional phrase:
“The ball is hit by the bat.” Thus, the passive voice shifts the emphasis of the sentence from actor to recipient of action.

Standard English
dictates that the active voice is preferred to the passive since it is a simpler, more direct form of
communication. This is true only to a certain extent, but it is a handy
rule
to follow: Avoid the passive voice where possible to give your speech or writing more direct force,
clarity,
and simplicity.

But like all rules, this one has many exceptions. There are many instances when the passive voice allows a subtle distinction or is otherwise the preferable form of saying something. And for some
audiences
it is more or less mandatory. Much scientific and scholarly writing is done in the passive voice because many scientists and scholars feel that removing themselves—their specific personalities and predilections—from the focus of the sentence lends their ideas “objectivity.” They believe that the sentence “I saw the bacteria grow” is more personal, more subjective, and more likely to be read as a single, nonverifiable action than “Bacteria were observed to grow” (see
scientific language).

When you speak to or write for a scholarly or scientific audience, you may prefer to violate the active-passive rule in order to adopt the more common passive, “objective” style. However, this stylistic preference has been subjected to many questions and doubts in recent times. Thus passive constructions are no longer so much the rule as the preference of scholarly and scientific writing, which has come to recognize that the observer, actor, or agent whose role is obscured by passive constructions still takes part in and influences activities reported in the passive voice. Writing or speaking in the active voice seems to make that presence more explicit, hence clearer.

A.D. This
abbreviation
stands for the
Latin
words “anno Domini” and means “in the year of the Lord” or the time
since the birth of Christ. It is added to dates to distinguish where they fall in the commonly accepted Western dating system. The abbreviation is usually not spelled out, precedes the whole date, and appears in capital letters with
periods.
Using
lower case
or dropping the periods is acceptable in many
styles
and less standard writing, though A.D. and B.C. (“before Christ”) usually appear in more formal works, where the standard
rule
should be followed. See
capitalization.

Adjective.
Words or
phrases
that add qualities to
nouns
are called adjectives. Few are usually needed to convey the essential attributes of the things, people, or places about which we are talking or writing. However, many writers and speakers pile up too many adjectives before nouns, thus weakening their writing by obscuring or thinning out their intent. Using too many adjectives can lead to a weak
style
or
bland writing.

Adjectives normally come before the nouns they apply to or modify. Quite commonly they stand in the
predicate
of simple
sentences
: “The house is red.” When more than one adjective is used to qualify something, the adjectives can be separated by
and
or by
commas
: “the red and white house” “the tall, strong, and athletic singer.” If the “and” is omitted between two adjectives of equal weight modifying the same thing, a comma separates the
modifiers:
“The tall, athletic singer ran.” If two adjectives modifying a noun are not of equal weight or would not normally require “and” to make the meaning clear, then no comma need be inserted: “a tall French singer said.” The distinction between these two cases is often not very clear, and the choice of using the
comma between adjectives is up to the writer, who may be indicating the relationship between the modifiers by putting in or leaving out the comma.

To indicate the qualities of adjectives, use
adverbs:
“the bright red house.” Only adjectives can apply to nouns, and only adverbs can qualify adjectives (and
verbs
or other adverbs). It is a common mistake to use adjectives to modify verbs or adverbs to modify nouns. When the qualifying word stands near a noun or verb, the mistake is fairly easy to notice. But when the modifier stands alone in the predicate of a sentence, errors are more likely. RIGHT: “I drive a fast car.” “I drive rapidly.” WRONG: “I drive rapid.” Some specific adjectives and adverbs that are particularly troublesome are treated in separate entries:
“good”
and “well,”
“bad”
and “badly,”
“real”
and “really,” and so on.

The most common problems with adjectives or adverbs in predicates come from using
linking verbs
like
“is,”
“looks,”
“seems,”
“appears,”
“sounds,” “smells,”
“tastes,”
“feels.”
All these words can be followed by adjectives or adverbs to make correct sentences. But the meaning will dictate which kind of modifier to use. If you are stating the qualities of a thing or person (noun), then the word in the predicate should be an adjective no matter how far away the noun being talked about might be located: “The expert who spoke at our meeting, held on March 25 at an alternate location (because the usual hall was being used by someone else), looked feeble.” This is a weak, wandering sentence, but it makes the point.

If you want to indicate the quality of action taking place—even if that action is embodied in bland linking
verbs—then use an adverb, again, no matter where the verbs, nouns, or other adjectives in the sentence fall: “The expert who spoke looked, perhaps because we weren’t in our usual location, feebly at me.”

Adjective
phrases
work the same way as single-word adjectives but are made up of more complex ideas expressed through combinations of more words, including, possibly, almost all other
parts of speech.
In the long, weak sentence about the feeble speaker, the
clause
that begins with “who spoke” functions as an adjective modifying “expert” the participial clause that begins “held on” is an adjectival phrase modifying “meeting.”

Nouns can also be used as adjectives: “computer program.” This is a simple way of conveying a more elaborate relationship in fewer words than “program written for the computer.” Take care not to use too many nouns as adjectives in a string because your
audience
will have trouble finding the end of the string and knowing what is modified by what: “Desktop computer writing correction programs are useful.” Such strings can often be broken into
prepositional phrases
or other kinds of phrases that are easier to follow: “Desktop computer programs for correcting writing are useful.”

Adjectives indicate qualities that may be more or less present in the thing they modify. This property is called
comparison
and is treated in a separate entry; see also
more, superlative, good, better, best, bad, ill, little, many, much, some,
and
worse.

Adverb.
The properties of
adjectives, verbs,
and other adverbs are conveyed or described by adverbs. Many
adverbs signal their role by ending in
“ly,”
but not all do: “He spoke rapidly and well.”

Adverbs cannot modify
nouns
or stand alone in
predicates
where they refer to nouns. WRONG: “The lecturer is angrily.” RIGHT: “The lecturer is angrily gesturing,” “The lecturer is angry.” While “angrily” in the WRONG example seems incomplete and probably incorrect to most readers, some adverbs can stand alone after verbs (though not usually after the
linking verbs “is” “seems,”
“appears,” “looks,”
“feels,” “sounds,”
“tastes”): “The lecturer speaks well.” Confusing pairs of adjectives and adverbs are treated in separate entries. See, for example,
good, bad,
and
real.

Because they are often marked in some way (such as having an “-ly” ending) and can modify so many different kinds of words or
phrases,
adverbs can appear in many places in a sentence. They therefore must be used with care to ensure that they clearly indicate what word or phrase they are qualifying. To help make decisions about adverb placement somewhat easier, a number of
rules
have evolved over the years. These guidelines are useful but are also commonly bent or broken by the best writers and speakers.

The first rule is that of the
split infinitive:
Do not put an adverb between
“to”
and the verb it commands. This rule would make the phrase “to boldly go” substandard. Many people will associate these words with a popular television show and will feel that alternate phrasing would be odd: “boldly to go” or “to go boldly.” While it is best to follow this rule in most cases, if the resulting sentence or phrase strikes you as awkward, stiff, or simply pretentious, then abandon the rule for fluidity’s sake.

The second rule is to avoid dangling adverbs that don’t bear a clear relationship to the word or phrase they modify. Generally, this is a rule that should be observed more firmly—revise your writing when possible to make sure what is being modified is clear. However, the broad qualifier (like “generally” in the preceding sentence or the conjunctive “however” at the beginning of this sentence) can sometimes float about to good or at least passable effect in a less formal sentence or where it does little harm. Moving such semidetached adverbs can create subtle changes in meaning or
emphasis,
however. So care should be taken to consider whether an adverb has been “dangled” so that your
audience
is misled. See
dangling modifier, modifier, awkwardness, conjunctive adverb,
and
revision.

Like adjectives, adverbs can indicate comparative degrees of a quality or property: “more concretely, most concretely.” Almost all adverbs form the comparative and
superlative
by adding
“more”
or “most” before the adverb. But there are a few irregular
comparisons
of adverbs: see the entries for
better, best, ill,
and
worse.

Advice, advise.
These two words sound almost alike (near-
homonyms)
but are quite different
parts of speech
with dissimilar meanings. “Advice” is suggestions or guidance given to someone when he or she is “advised” by someone else. The first word is a
noun,
while the second is a
verb.