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Michael Taber, Department of Philosophy

 Here are some sentences to illustrate how to disentangle certain common confusions:

  1. In the battle of verses, it's Keats versus Shelley.
  2. Should a landlord be able to reject prospective tenants just because the landlord doesn't agree with their basic tenets on some point?
  3. It's simple to understand the apostrophe and its role; for “it’s” is always short for “it is.” Always. Forever.
    It’s a rule with no exception to its application. Never. Ever.
  4. Are you conscious of your conscience?  Or only of your consciousness?
  5. By ensuring passage of gun control legislation, would Congress be insuring citizens against senseless violence?
  6. One criterion, two criteria. One phenomenon, two phenomena.
  7. Did Texan posses actually possess any legitimate authority?
  8. We led the kids away from the lead paint chips, and plan to lead them away again, if necessary.
  9. After having trekked across two deserts, I can count indulging in some desserts among my just deserts. (The third is derived from “to deserve,” which has but one “s.”)
  10. One effect (result; usually pronounced eh-FECT) of having strong affect (emotions; pronounced AH-fect) is that having strong emotions can affect (to act on; pronounced af-FECT) interpersonal relations by making it difficult to effect (to initiate; pronounced ee-FECT) meaningful dialogue; this difficulty can arise even if one were merely to affect (to feign; pronounced ah-FECT) the strong affect. (Note that the first and third uses are the most common. Therefore, most commonly "effect" is a noun and "affect" is a verb (as holds also for the fifth use). But due to the second and fourth uses, this rule of thumb does not always hold.)
  11. The school principal may be a pal to the students, but is still the principal architect of the school's principles.
  12. When I heard her compliment me on my shirt, I knew that our differences, though real, could complement each other.

13.  Remember furthermore that in American usage, neither judgment nor existence has exactly two e's. Unless you are using British spelling, judgment is spelled with one e, and no matter where you're from, existence has no a.

14.  Eschew the “try and” formulation, in favor of “try to.” Consider the example “Pat will try and show that it’s mistaken to think that....”  Pat is not doing two things: trying and showing. Pat is undertaking but one enterprise: attempting to show.  (And lest you think that “try to” is equivalent to “try and,” consider whether you would grant that Pat’s “trying and failing” to win the race was necessarily Pat’s “trying to fail” to win the race.)

15.  Another common confusion concerns when to use quotation marks and when to italicize when referring to a work of literature, music, drama, and so forth. The rule is that the titles of works which stand on their own (novels, but not short stories; album titles, but not songs) are italicized; titles of others are enclosed in quotation marks. Book titles are italicized. Article titles are in quotation marks; and the title of the journal in which those articles appear is…is…is…that’s right…italicized. (Use the i-i rule as a mnemonic: independent works are italicized.) So the following two sentences are correct:

15a. Is "Let It Be" the longest song on Let It Be?

15b. Do you prefer Hemingway's stories, like "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," to his novels, like The Old Man and the Sea?

16.  To use the Oxford comma or not to use? Check out this take on what’s at stake (and don’t miss the final shot, a famous example mentioning Ayn Rand): http://ed.ted.com/lessons/grammar-s-great-divide-the-oxford-comma-ted-ed

17.  i.e. vs e.g. vs viz.

·       Use i.e. (short for the Latin id est, meaning “it is”) when “in essence” or “in other words” would fit: “I like some grains, i.e., the seeds or small fruit of grassy crops grown for food.”

·       Use e.g. (short for the Latin exempli gratia, meaning “for example”) when giving an example that is not an exhaustive list: “I like some grains, e.g., wheat and oats.” (There is no claim here that these are the only grains I like.)

·       Use viz. (short for the Latin videlicet, a contraction of “it may be seen,” usually pronounced “vizz”) when “namely” or “as follows” would fit: “I like some grains, viz., wheat and oats.” (This is an exhaustive list; I’d be saying that these are the only grains I like.)

 

18.  Numbers love consistency. Eight minus three will never change. Five plus seven will ever be twelve. Likewise, keep consistent the number (singular vs. plural) of your nouns and pronouns. Note the inconsistencies in number in the following:

·       “Plato makes a point about how people should live their life.” (The no-no: although “their” and people have the same number, the “their” is being used here to modify a singular noun. We should write “their lives,” unless the context is one in which the author is saying that there really is only ONE life, as in “The couple is building their life together.”)

·       “Plato makes a point about how one should live their lives.” (The sin: note the move from singular pronoun to plural pronoun. Should be “...how one should live one’s life.”)

·       “Plato makes a point about how a person should live their life.” (A real mess: a singular followed by a plural that refers back to it, then modifying a singular noun.)

Some gentle rewording is usually enough to solve the problem. Hence, either make both singular (“Plato makes a point about how one should live one’s life”) or make both plural (“Plato makes a point about how people should live their lives”). Sometimes making both singular doesn’t work as well as going for the plural; for example, “Anyone who mixes grammatical numbers doesn’t know what they’re talking about” (“Anyone” is singular, and “they’re” is plural) is better rendered as “People who mix their grammatical numbers don’t know what they’re talking about.”

This having been said, uses of “they” (and its cognates “them” and “their”) can make sense as singular, but only where rewording of the sort described above doesn’t work. Examples (from the Wikipedia page “Singular they”) include:

“Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Would they please collect it?”

“Everyone loves their mother.”

“Everyone must judge according to their feelings.”

      These are all uses where the only grammatically sound alternative would be the onerous use of “he or she,” “her or him,” or “her or his.” Insisting on the disjunctive gendered pronouns comes off as ponderously retro when a gender-neutral “they” is just asking to be used as singular (the first documented use of which dates to the 14th century).

Most uses of “they” as singular, however, are just the result of carelessly not availing oneself of gentle rewording of the sort described above. That “they” can be used to indicate a singular does not entail that all (or even that most) such instances are grammatically sound.

 


Also, a little levity never hurts. See these Rules for Writing Real Good. And beware of depending on your spellchecker.


TheOatmeal.com sells 5 simple posters on writing: 

·       How to use an apostrophe

·       How to use a semicolon

·       10 words you need to stop misspelling

·       When to use i.e. in a sentence

·       What it means when you say literally


Here are some helpful English grammar and usage guides on the web.

  1. Grammar and Style Notes, by Jack Lynch, in the Department of English at Rutgers’ Newark campus, has a good site, touching on many matters of usage..
  2. 11 Rules of Writing, maintained by Junket Studies, a New Jersey educational and tutoring company, is just what it sounds like.
  3. Common Errors in English, by Paul Brians, professor of English at Washington State University, contains a large inventory of "don't"s; scroll down for an alphabetic listing.
  4. Guide to Grammar and Writing, in memory of Charles Darling, late professor at Capital Community Technical College (Hartford, Connecticut, USA), is an extensive and thorough site, and includes pages (and a quiz) on "Notorious Confusables."
  5. A page about writing mechanics, maintained by Purdue University's Online Writing Lab, includes grammar pages and even exercises to do.
  6. No usage advice would be complete without the classic Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr.

Here are some guides to assist you in studying and writing philosophy.  (A general listing of other guides is at here, as is a page put together by Andreas Teuber of Brandeis University.)

  1. Garth Kemerling's Guide to the Study of Philosophy provides a good overview of how to approach the study of philosophy. The site includes a helpful timeline on which are located various thinkers throughout history.
  2. Douglas W. Portmore's Tips on Writing a Philosophy Paper provides more detailed advice than Kemerling's site.
  3. Lesley Vos has useful tips on her Persuasive Essay: The Ultimate Guide on Writing It. (My thanks to Alisa Bagrii for pointing this site out to me.)

Send me mail:  mstaber at smcm dot edu

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updated April 2020