21st Century Grammar Handbook (9 page)

There are three cases in English:

    1.
Subjective
(or
nominative),
which is used for the
subjects
of sentences or
clauses,
as the
predicate
(or complement) of
linking verbs,
and as the
appositive
of any of the previous functions: “I see him, and
he
sees me.” “
Who
sees whom?” “The
person
who sees is the
subject
, and the person seen is the
object.
” “The viewer’s eyes are her
instrument
of vision.” The underlined words are all in the subjective case.

    2.
Objective
(or accusative), which is used as the
object
of a
verb,
verbal construction, or
preposition
and as the appositive for any of these functions: “The thing that is seen moves
you
or leaves
you
cold.” “People believe
what
they see; they trust their
eyes;
they trust
them
too much.” The underlined words are all in the objective case.

    3.
Possessive,
which is used to indicate ownership: “His eyes are blue, and
hers
are green.” “
Her
vision is as bad as
his
, and they must always wear
their
glasses.” “
Nature
’s ways are unavoidable, yet
people’s
ability to adapt is remarkable.” The underlined words are all in the possessive case.

Look at entries for specific pronouns to find the proper forms of these words in cases and more examples of how they are used correctly and incorrectly. See also
capitalization, lower case,
and
upper case.

Catch, caught, caught.
An
irregular verb
in its main,
past tense,
and past
participle
forms.

Caught.
See
catch.

Censor, censure.
These
homonyms
sound alike to some people but have different meanings. A “censor” is a person who checks things for acceptability and removes offensive matter, while “censure” is condemnation of someone for acting badly. The words are also
verbs.

Censure.
See
censor.

Century.
The word “century” is commonly miscapitalized and erroneously hyphenated in
compound words.
Centuries should appear in
lower case
unless they are parts of
titles
of works, captions, or being emphasized for some other reason: “It happened in the thirteenth century.” They should not be hyphenated when they function as
nouns,
as in the example just given. When centuries are used as
adjectives,
they are hyphenated: “I read an eighteenth-century novel set in fourteenth-century Spain.” When centuries are capitalized, as either nouns or adjectives, both elements of the compound are
upper case:
“Variations in Nineteenth-Century Grammar.” See also
capitalization, hyphen,
and
emphasis.

Cf.
This
abbreviation
for “compare” or “see” should be confined to footnotes or endnotes and should not appear in the main text. Even in notes, it is better to use the English word rather than the
Latin
abbreviation.

Choose, chose, chosen.
An
irregular verb
in its main,
past tense,
and past
participle
forms.

Chose.
See
choose.

Chosen.
See
choose.

Clarity.
Just as it is impossible to define
“awkwardness,”
so it is difficult to spell out just what its opposite—clarity—is and how to achieve it in writing and speaking. The only certain test is to give your writing to people and ask if they understand it all quickly, completely, and easily. If they don’t, chances are that it is not clear.

Today it is assumed that clear writing is
colloquial—
close to everyday speech in
style,
complexity, directness, and
vocabulary.
While this idea seems self-evident to all of us who live in the late twentieth century and is probably an adequate
rule
to follow, writers or speakers who try to convey very complex or unusual concepts might find these guidelines hard to follow. How do we describe what we understand about nature or technology in simple ways? See
scientific language
and work hard to make your statements clear in a time of confusion, bafflement, and shifting standards.

Clause.
Clusters of words that include a
subject, verb,
and
object
or
predicate
but that are parts of larger
sentences
are called “clauses.” In themselves, clauses work in more or less the same way as whole, simple sentences, but clauses often are linked by
conjunctions
of various kinds that make them operate within the larger sentence as
nouns, adjectives,
adverbs,
or other
parts of speech.
When clauses assume the role of other parts of speech within a sentence, they must be in
agreement
with the other words or clauses they refer to or modify. As with most grammatical categories, you need not know the names of clauses, but you should use clauses correctly. Errors in agreement across clauses are frequent and glaring.

Since clauses let you build up complex and varied relationships between clusters of words and ideas, they help you avoid
bland writing
or weak writing. Clauses are an important element of
style
and therefore merit particular care in their use. Here is a review of the
rules
and pitfalls of using clauses.

Many clauses are in fact whole
sentences
joined by
conjunctions
like
“and”
or
“but”:
“Collins is a vice president, but Martell is a senior editor.” Either clause in the example could stand by itself as a sentence; both are therefore “independent” clauses. There are no
rules
mandating
parallelism,
or balance, between independent clauses, but common sense says that ordinary language in ordinary moments does not mix wildly different elements. So independent clauses in most straightforward writing probably should be of roughly the same length, complexity, and
tone
or
style.
As with all such guidelines, there are many circumstances in which they do not apply and are best violated for effect or
emphasis.

When
pronouns
introduce or
conjunctions
join clauses in such a way that one or more of the clauses cannot stand alone as a
sentence,
the sentence is said to include both independent and dependent clauses. Those clauses that cannot stand alone (with their conjunctions) are the dependent ones: “When we have reorganized, Martell will be vice president.” “When we have reorganized” is a
fragment
or dependent clause that means nothing by itself. The core of the clause (“we have reorganized”) could be a sentence by itself, but the addition of the
subordinating conjunction
“when” makes the clause dependent.

The key concern with clauses is
agreement
among their elements across
conjunctions,
particularly when clauses depend on others. Often the agreement that is needed extends beyond grammatical needs to logical concerns. That is,
subordinating conjunctions
cannot in themselves create the connection of meaning between clauses; there must also be sensible construction of the clauses to support the relationship suggested by the conjunction. WRONG: “When we have reorganized, Martell was vice president.” Grammatically, this example could be considered correct, but the relationship between the
tenses
of the
verbs
makes no sense—the dependent clause suggests an action to come in the future, while the independent clause depicts a condition in the past. The two things don’t go together. Many writers, however, fail to provide logical consistency
or agreement between clauses and rely too heavily on the connecting power of conjunctions.

More formal grammatical agreement errors are also common. WRONG: “When Jones is vice president, their problems will be solved.” The error is the lack of agreement between the singular nouns in the dependent clause and the plural
possessive pronoun
“their,” which has no clear plural
antecedent
with which it can agree. The only way to avoid such errors is to reread, revise, and check everything you write to make sure clauses agree logically and grammatically. The more complex or longer the pieces of a sentence, the more careful you must be to preserve clear, sensible relationships between clauses. Having more than two clauses in any one sentence simply multiplies the need to pay attention to agreement among all the statement’s elements. See also
revision, number,
and
plural.

Remember that clauses can function in
sentences
as virtually any part of speech: noun,
adjective, adverb,
and so on: “What you are deciding bears on who will attend the meeting.” The first dependent clause in the example (“What you are deciding”) operates as a
noun
and the
subject
in the sentence; the second clause (“who will attend the meeting”) is also a noun, but here it functions as the
object
of a
preposition.
It is important to treat clauses functioning as
parts of speech
in the correct grammatical way.

Cliché.
Clichés are overused expressions of various kinds that have become Worn out and should not be used in most
standard English
writing.

Just when an expression becomes tired and looses its expressive force is not clear, so the danger of clichéd writing is always present, particularly when writing contains hidden metaphors or similes. That is, what once seemed to be a fresh and interesting comparison may now have been used so often that we don’t even recognize it as a metaphor or simile invented long ago to good purpose. We talk and write more or less automatically about aims and targets, for instance, without sensing the underlying metaphor of weapons and war that long ago shaped such expressions. While using such hidden images isn’t wrong, one would do better to find new expressive means wherever possible to enliven one’s writing. Clichés are, on the other hand, quick ways to convey a known or assumed bit of information or idea.

Co.
This
abbreviation
stands for “company,” “country,” or “county.” Like all such shortenings of words, it is acceptable in some business prose, but it is best to spell the word out fully in most formal writing.

Collective noun.
Collective
nouns
are words that refer to groups of people or things: “orchestra” is a single word that names many people; a “pride” of lions or “handful” of pins similarly is one word representing many individual things. In standard American English, collective nouns are singular and agree with singular verbs: “The orchestra is playing.” “The pride of lions sleeps under a tree.” “A
handful of pins sticks in your palm.” In standard
British English
such words are often
plural:
“The orchestra are playing.”

Some collective nouns can be either plural or singular, depending on how they are used in a sentence: “A number of lions are sleeping under a tree.” “The number of lions sleeping under the tree is small.” See
agreement
and
standard English.

Collective pronoun.
Collective
pronouns
like
“none”
are generally singular and agree with singular
verbs.
But
standard English
is evolving in this regard, finding acceptable the use of “none” with
plural
verbs in many cases. See
agreement.

Colloquial.
Everyday speech and writing are called “colloquial,” a word whose derivation suggests two important aspects of
grammar
and
usage.
“Colloquial” comes from
Latin
roots having to do with both talking and words; it evidently was used in ancient times to distinguish the formal, high
style
of communicating from the mundane, day-to-day language of the people.

While the ancients could perhaps make such a distinction clearly—between the way to talk or write in different, easily separated forums—in our age the “formal” and the “familiar” mix and blur. In part, the fuzzing of borders between high and low styles results from the twentieth-century literary trend toward incorporating speech patterns into written art (a trend not limited to but most marked in our age). More and more words were written in poems, stories, and novels as various populations spoke them, and
more and more variants and violations of grammar
rules
and standards began to appear in print as a reflection of the looser way people speak.

Newspapers, magazines, and other public forms of communication led or furthered this deformalization of communication, as did the explosion of commercial and business writing that became more public in our age as education became universal, the working place became an acceptable topic of conversation and writing, and daily lives of all people took center stage in general.

With the emergence of the colloquial came the decline of the formal, standard, rule-driven ways of speaking and writing. Decline, but not disappearance. There are still many moments, places, and people that demand grammatically correct language. And, as is pointed out repeatedly in this book, the safest, clearest, most economical way to communicate is still
standard English
in most circumstances.