Goodness-Gracious Grammar

So, a Southerner writing about grammar sounds ironic even to the Southerner herself, who stands by "ain't" and is even acquaintances with "y'all." (Please note it's y'all, not ya'll.) But bear with me. Southerners have better grammar than y'all think.

We'll start with the basics:

The Parts of Speech

• Noun person, place, thing, idea (dog, house, Siberia, love, Edison)
• Verb action or state of being (is, runs, have, made, do, was, will)
• Adjective describes a noun (smiley, mad, glittering, red)
• Adverb describes a verb, adjective, or other adverb (really fast, very small, walked happily, was yesterday)
• Pronoun stands in place of a noun (his, your, mine, I, we, you, they, myself)
• Preposition describes relationship to a noun (in, on, under, towards, from, to, fro, next to)
• Conjunction joins together two or more words, phrases, clauses, etc. (and, or, although, because)
• Interjection exclamation or expletive (dang it! oh! wow! shoo! for heaven's sake!)
• Article definite (the) or indefinite (a, an)

A Basic Sentence*

The dog ran.

• Begin with capital letter
• End with period or other appropriate punctuation
• All sentences have a subject. (In sentences such as "Go!" the subject, you, is implied.)
• All sentences have a verb, or predicate.

The Four Sentence Types*

• Declarative or Statement telling someone something (I want ice-cream.)
• Question asking something (May we have ice-cream?)
• Imperative telling someone what to do (Give me your ice-cream.)
• Exclamation exclaiming something, in surprise, anger, joy, etc. Always ends in an exclamation point (Ice-cream now!!!)

The Real "I before E" Rule

I before E, except after C,

Except when sounding like A, as in neighbor or weigh,

And forget it when C sounds like S or SH.

(There are still a million exceptions to this rule - caffeine, for example - and the last half doesn't rhyme, but oh well.)

For information on style (not fashionable style, but technical style), consult The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. (White is EB White, the guy who wrote Charlotte's Web.)

* For information on crafting sentences that are not only grammatically correct but also meaningful, read Several Short Sentences on Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg.

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Then there are some words that are just hard to use.

Take farther or further, for instance. Which one? They're often used interchangeably, but there's actually a right and wrong way to use them. Farther is used in the physical world: someone can get farther away from you by running. Further means is used in the nonphysical world: you can grow further away from a friend.

Perhaps the most common cause of confusion in word usage is the lay/lie issue. To lay is to lay something down: you can lay down a book on a table. To lie is to lie down, like on a bed. You can lay yourself down, or you can lie down. Things only get confusing when you get into the past tense: the past tense of lie is lay, and the past tense of lay is laid. The easiest way to remember is that laid is always used with an item - she laid her head on the pillow. Her head is the item, in this case. Not only that, but laid is the past participle of lay, and lain is the past participle of lie. ("Past participle" means the variation of the word you use when you're using a "helping verb" such as have.)

Then there's can and may. Use can when you're physically able to do something and may when you're allowed to do it.

And then there's affect vs effect. Remember: Affect Verb, Effect Noun. It spells RAVEN. The exception: affect can be a verb in certain cases. If you're affecting an emotion, then you're pretending to have that emotion, or pretending it's stronger than it really is. The way to remember is that this form of affect is more like affection.

Finally, the bane of all young writers' existence: it's and its. It's is a contraction meaning "it is," while its is the possessive of it.

Now a few things that might clear up common issues and surprise you in the process:

When you type, do you use one space after a colon or period, or two? I'd love to know the statistics on that today compared to thirty years ago. (Typing has been taught in schools since 1880, on typewriters and then computers.)

When I type, I use one space after a colon, one after a period. This is how I learned. When my mom types, she uses two after a period, two after a colon. Apparently, this is how she was taught. We debated over which one was right, and surprise! They both are.

About one third of people today use two spaces. The two-space habit dates back to typewriters. On typewriters, each character takes up the same amount of space, so two spaces at the end of a sentence after a period helped show where a new sentence began. As for the colon, two spaces helped people tell it apart from the semicolon.

About two thirds of people today use one space. Now that there are so many fonts and typefaces with better spacing, using two spaces is unnecessary and is discouraged by style guides.

Since so many people use two spaces, and so many use only one, I suppose it's more of a matter of taste than anything at this point.

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I confess - I usually use "they" when referring to a single person whose gender isn't specified. It's a lot easier than saying "he or she" - and it sounds a lot better in writing. But it's also just wrong. "They" is always plural and cannot refer to a singular noun. So what's a writer to do?

There's really only one easy, good-sounding, grammatically correct solution: use "he." Now how the heck does that make sense, you wonder? Well, look at the Bible: "man" means "mankind," "he" who does something can always be "she" who does something, too. Using only the male pronouns is perfectly acceptable and easy. "Man" pronouns have been used as "mankind" pronouns since the beginning of the world.

Unfortunately, most writers are in a rut. They (acceptable usage) are so used to saying "they" when they mean "he or she" that it's pretty much automatic. Well, as good news for that type of writer (a group that includes me), "they" as a singular is quickly becoming accepted as normal. So in a few more years, we won't be in violation anymore. Funny how things change.

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One day I was reviewing some stuff I'd written, and I came across an interesting question: a useless modifier, or an useless modifier? In other words, do we use 'an' before a vowel sound, or a vowel letter? 

Here's what I found out: it's grammatically incorrect to use 'an' before words like 'useless,' 'university,' and 'universe,' and it's also grammatically incorrect to use 'a' before words like 'hour.' For once sound trumps spelling.

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I know, a section devoted to aren't and its usage sounds incredibly boring, but I've always thought this was interesting.

A solecism made even by the scholarly is to use the plural contraction, aren't, as a singular, as in "Aren't I great?" This is incorrect. Uncontracted, this version of the sentence would read: "Are not I great?" That sounds weird. The proper sentence, uncontracted, reads: "Am I not great?" or "Am not I great?" This sounds too old-timey for modern use, so what contraction should you use? This will flabbergast you: ain't. This is proper use of it, no matter what your mom or teacher may say. Ain't, in this case, is a contraction of "Am not I" or "Am I not" and it is perfectly grammatical to use it in "Aren't I great?" Ain't I great?

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 Here are two sentences. Which of them is correct?

"The produce is overripe."

"The produce are overripe."

I guess the real question here is, are collective nouns plural or singular? In Britain and some other places, collective nouns are treated as plurals. "The committee are deciding what to do" would be a normal sentence. In America, collective nouns are singular. "The committee is deciding what to do." So it really just depends on where you live.

(A collective noun is a noun that refers to a group of things. Some collective nouns are really fun, like a murder of crows or an ostentation of peacocks. Others, like cattle or produce, are boring.)

These aren't so much answers to questions and much as interesting problems to consider. Your solutions may be better than mine.

Have you ever called moose 'meese' or houses 'hice?' After all, goose is geese and mouse is mice, right? Some people (you know who you are) think no, and some think yes. In our household, meese is
acceptable and hice is not, and while there are recorded instances of saying 'fishies,' my brother gives me an odd look when I say 'sheepies.'

Is roof pluralized 'roofs' or 'rooves?'  I think both are acceptable, actually. Then why can't leaf be leafs as well as leaves? Who made these rules, anyway? Elf is elves and never elfs, but dwarf can be dwarves or dwarfs. At least, spellcheck doesn't go crazy on either. Hoof is hooves or hoofs. So what's the rule and what's the exception?

What about mouse/mice, louse/lice, and grouse/grouses, house/houses? What's the exception, and what's the rule? (Cows, cowses? Or cows, kice? Now I'm just being silly.) (Another thing that will never make sense: two dice or one die.)

Should the singular of battle be bat; cattle, cat; and rattle, rat? (I got bored during math today.)

It's he and she, so why not him and shim, his and shis?

Who invented this stuff?

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What do pantorium, borry, beyant, fortin, lieve, sodger, and gramarye all have in common? They're not in any of my dictionaries! (Okay, now I sound like a giant nerd with multiple dictionaries. Which I am.)

Yet they are all "real words." In fact, they are the words of Eudora Welty, George Eliot, L.M. Montgomery, and others - well-known writers. All of these I found in printed books, some of them classics. None are in foreign languages. The computer spellchecker thinks I'm insane. What's wrong here?

Pantorium is a relatively new word that means 'market-place.' Borry I recently discovered is a dialectal version of bury or borrow. But the rest I sought in two different dictionaries, and they're not there.

Maybe it's because many of these authors wrote in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Older books have older diction. Or maybe these are real words that the authors spelled wrong, but I didn't see any other misspelled words, so this seems unlikely. Most likely, they're simply dialectal.

The easiest way to remedy this is to look them up on the Internet. I haven't bothered to do that for beyant, fortin, lieve, sodger, or gramarye, but I would probably find meanings.

In fact, I'll do it now!

• Beyant either means errant or obvious from what I can figure out. (This would be a time to hunt down context.)
• Fortin is an obsolete word meaning 'small fort.'
• Lieve is a dialectal version of lief and also a girl's name that means 'beloved of God.'
• Sodger is a dialectal version of soldier.
• Gramarye means magic, enchantment, or the occult, and sometimes even necromancy.

Lesson: Remember, just because the dictionary weighs thirty pounds doesn't mean it isn't missing a few ounces of words. :)

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I hope these tangents help with any grammatical or usage-related issues you may have--and maybe you'll give "ain't" a second chance?