Bryan A. Garner

LawProse Lesson #112

By / LawProse Lessons / / 4 minutes of reading
What are the rules for possessives with gerunds, or preventing fused participles? As you doubtless know, verbs have two forms we call participles. The past participle usually ends in –ed. (Exceptions occur with irregular verbs, such as swim>swam>swum — the last being the past participle.) The verb form ending in –ing is called the present […]

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: sublimate; sublime, vb.

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
These verbs overlap, but only in their secondary senses; they’re best kept separate. The primary sense of “sublimate,” the more common word, is “to transmute (an instinct) from one form to another, esp. to a more socially acceptable form” — e.g.: “The current popular outrage about corporate governance is mostly sublimated concern about declining stock

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LawProse Lesson #111

By / LawProse Lessons / / 4 minutes of reading
Why do plural possessives cause so much trouble?       Much confusion surrounds plural possessives. Is it as simple as adding an apostrophe to the final –s? What if the plural noun doesn’t end in –s? How do you form a possessive for units of time? What about joint possessives? The list goes on. This confusion

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subjunctives.

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
In modern English, the subjunctive mood of the verb appears primarily in six contexts: (1) conditions contrary to fact {if I were king} (where the indicative would be “am”); (2) suppositions {if I were to go, I wouldn’t be able to finish this project} (where the indicative would be “was”); (3) wishes {I wish that

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Separation.

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
The core words in a sentence are the subject and the verb. They are related both in sense and in grammar. And related words should go together. If you separate them too much, the sentence goes asunder — e.g.: o “Jurors’ need to hear that testimony again just minutes before reaching a verdict puzzled experts.”

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Miscellaneous Entries.

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Miscellaneous Entries *submittal (= [1] the act of submitting; or [2] something submitted) is a needless variant of “submission” — e.g.: “Town code requires members to act on applications within 180 days of submittal [read ‘submission’ or ‘their being submitted’].” Jonathan McNeilly, “New Rite Aid Plans Rejected in Henniker,” Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.), 1 May

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (9).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 1 minute of reading
Part A: “one in five”; “one of every five.” When the first number is “one,” this construction takes a singular: “one in three is not admitted,” “one of every five achieves a perfect score,” etc. Part B: Decades. Decades customarily take plural verbs: “the 1930s were a tough time in America.” The following is unidiomatic:

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A Bizspeak Blacklist

By / Bryan A. Garner / / 3 minutes of reading
It’s mission-critical to be plain-spoken, whether you’re trying to be best-of-breed at outside-the-box thinking or simply incentivizing colleagues to achieve a paradigm shift in core-performance value-adds. Leading-edge leveraging of your plain-English skill set will ensure that your actionable items synergize future-proof assets with your global-knowledge repository. Just kidding. Seriously, though, it’s important to write plainly.

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (8).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
Today: Plural Subject Intended to Denote Area or Statistic. Some writers fall into the habit of implicitly prefacing plural nouns with understood words such as “the idea of,” “the field of,” or even “the fact of.” To be sure, some of these wordings are perfectly idiomatic {mathematics is where my talent lies}. But the habit

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (7).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
Today: “more than one is;” *”more than one are.” The phrase “more than one” generally takes a singular verb, not a plural one {more than one was there} — even though the sense is undeniably plural. If the noun is supplied before the verb, the construction is necessarily singular {more than one woman was there}.

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LawProse Lesson #110

By / LawProse Lessons / / 3 minutes of reading
What are the most common misuses of apostrophes? The apostrophe does three things. Its first two uses are straightforward: To indicate a possessive <the plaintiff’s brief>. To mark the omission of one or more characters, especially in a contraction, as with can’t for cannot, or ’99 for 1999. The third use is a little tricky

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (6).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
Part A: Plural Units Denoting Amounts. In American English, a plural noun denoting a small unit by which a larger amount is measured generally takes a singular verb — e.g.: o “Five hours are [read ‘is’] enough time.” o “Fifteen minutes pass [read ‘passes’] more quickly than you might think.” Part B: “one and one

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (5).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
Today: Misleading Connectives. The phrases “accompanied by,” “added to,” “along with,” “as well as,” “coupled with,” and “together with” do not affect the grammatical number of the nouns preceding or following them. When such a phrase joins two singular nouns, the singular verb is called for — e.g.: o “For example, he says, America’s declining

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (4).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
Today: Compound Subjects Joined Conjunctively. If two or more subjects joined by “and” are different and separable, they take a plural verb — e.g.: o “At the same time, the democratic process and the personal participation of the citizen in his government is [read are] not all we want.” Charles P. Curtis Jr., Lions Under

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (3).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
Today: False Attraction to Predicate Noun. Occasionally a writer incorrectly looks to the predicate rather than to the subject for the noun that will govern the verb. The “correct” way of phrasing the sentence is often awkward, so the writer is well advised to find another way of stating the idea — e.g.: o “You

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (2).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 2 minutes of reading
Today: False Attraction to Noun Intervening Between Subject and Verb. This subheading denotes a mistake in number usually resulting when a plural noun intervenes between a singular subject and the verb. The writer’s eye is thrown off course by the plural noun that appears nearest the verb — e.g.: o “The stalled barges and the

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LawProse Lesson #109

By / LawProse Lessons / / 2 minutes of reading
What is the proper use of were in the subjunctive mood? The subjunctive mood of the verb is a tricky one to explain. Would that it were not so [subjunctive mood], but it is [indicative mood]. In the Three Dog Night song “Joy to the World,” the lyrics use a subjunctive in “If I were [not was] the

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Those Grammar Gaffes Will Get You

By / Bryan A. Garner / / 4 minutes of reading
People see your language as a reflection of your competence. Make lots of mistakes in your e-mails, reports, and other documents, and you’ll come across as uneducated and uninformed. Others will hesitate to trust your recommendation to launch a resource-intensive project, for example, or to buy goods or services. They’ll think you don’t know what

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Subject-Verb Agreement (1).

By / Garner's Usage Tip of the Day / / 1 minute of reading
Today: The General Rule. The simple rule is to use a plural verb with a plural subject, a singular verb with a singular subject. But there are complications. If a sentence has two or more singular subjects connected by “and,” use a plural verb. Yet if the subjects really amount to a single person or

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Miscellaneous Entries.

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Miscellaneous Entries. sty (= an inflammation on the eyelid) is the standard spelling. (*"Stye" is a variant form.) The plural is “sties.” Another word spelled “sty” (= a pen for pigs) also has the plural “sties.” stylish; stylistic. “Stylish” = in style, in vogue {a stylish hat}. “Stylistic” = (1) having to do with style

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