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Michael Taber, Department of Philosophy
Here are some sentences to illustrate how to disentangle certain common confusions:
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:
·
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.
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
Send me mail: mstaber
at smcm dot edu
Go to Michael Taber's home page.
Go to the SMCM home page.
updated April 2020