This blog addresses problems in grammar, research, and style that I have frequently encountered in my students' and my own writing. I aim to explain these problems and provide resources for others who may encounter similar difficulties.
Interjections are small words or phrases that we use to convey emotion (e.g. "wow," "hey," "oh my," etc.). We usually punctuate them with a comma or an exclamation point:
Hey, get off of my foot.
Ouch, that hurt.
Crosby sure can skate, eh? Struth! I can't believe Liam married Bianca.
As you will note from the previous examples, they can be quite regional. (Note: "struth" is often used like an interjection but is a noun, "god's truth.")
There are two rather unique aspects of interjections:
First, when they are punctuated with with an exclamation point (an intonation mark often used for complete sentences), they can stand by themselves. That is, they do not need a verb.
Second, they are not grammatically related to other parts of a sentence. They do not need to agree in number, time, or person.
Articles are used to introduce nouns. There are three articles:
1) indefinite articles ("a" and "an"). We use these when:
a) the noun is not specific or we are mentioning the noun for the first time:
- e.g. "A woman is walking down the street." (I do not know who she is, and I am mentioning her for the first time)
- e.g. "I put anapple on the table." (It could be any apple, and I am mentioning this specific apple for the first time.)
b) the non-specific noun is singular and countable:
- e.g. "Agiraffe, anemu, and ahorse are in my front yard." (We can easily count each one of these animals, and I am mentioning for the first time that they are in my yard.)
2) definite article ("the"). We use these when:
a) the noun is specific:
- e.g. "Thehouse next to my house is red." (We know specifically the house about which we are talking.)
b) we have previously mentioned the noun:
- e.g. "Thegiraffe, theemu, and thehorse are still in my front yard." (I mentioned the giraffe, the emu, and the horse in example 1b; you have already heard about them.)
3) zero articles (i.e. we do not use "a," "an," or "the" and we make non-count nouns plural). We use these when:
Adjectives describe nouns. They help us identify or quantify an noun. As we can see in this section from Jack
Kerouac's On the Road, adjectives generally appear before the noun that they describe, but they can also appear after the noun, particularly with forms of the verb to be:
Her
hair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big bluethings with
timidities inside. I wished I was on her
bus. A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who
was going the opposite direction in this too-bigworld.
Possessive adjectives (my, your, his, her, its, our, their) describe to whom an item belongs. If we look at that passage again, we can see that "her" describes "hair," the second "her" describes "eyes," the third "her" describes "bus," and "my" describes "heart":
Herhair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big blue things with
timidities inside. I wished I was on herbus. A pain stabbed myheart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who
was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
Demonstrative adjectives (this, that, these, those) specify which object and how far away that object is. Again, if we look back to the Kerouac passage, we can see that "this" tells us which "world":
Her
hair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big blue things with
timidities inside. I wished I was on her
bus. A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who
was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
As always, Schoolhouse Rock has a good video for adjectives:
Nouns are people (Wayne Gretzky, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Lawren Harris, the woman), places (Northlands Colosseum, Ottawa, Algonquin Park, the school), or things (a hockey puck, legislation, paint brushes, a desk).
Nouns can be concrete or abstract. Concrete nouns are available to the senses; we can touch, taste, see, smell, or hear them such as apples, sugar, a book, or the ocean. Abstract nouns are not available to the senses; they are ideas or concepts such as love, frustration, psychology, or happiness.
There are also proper nouns. Proper nouns are the name of an person, place, or thing and always begin with a capital letter: Anna, Canada, or Otago University.
Nouns sometimes can be very easy to identify in a sentence by their articles; nouns often follow "a," "an," (indefinite articles) or "the" (definite article). If you look at the following sentence, you can see that each word that follows a definite or indefinite article is a noun:
Thewoman walked to thestore and bought afreshcarrot and some oranges.
You can see that there are two exceptions here. First, though "fresh" follows "a," it is not the noun; rather, it describes the noun, "carrot." Sometimes there may be a describing word (an adjective) between the definite or indefinite article and the noun.
Second, you can also see that there is another noun ("oranges") that is not preceded by a definite or indefinite article. When nouns are plural (i.e. there is more than one of them--here "some oranges"), they do not follow "a," "an," or "the." Nouns can follow other words like possessive adjectives (myjacket, yourhat, herpants, or its colour) or another noun indicating possession (Michael'sfriend or the elephant'strunk).
When using a present participle (an "ing" verb such as "using" at the beginning of this sentence) in a phrase to begin a sentence, you should place the subject of that "ing" verb immediately after the comma that ends the phrase. Let's look at a couple of examples:
1) Waiting for the bus, I saw my friend.
2) Waiting for the bus, my friend saw me.
In both sentences, the modifying phrase is "waiting for the bus." "Waiting" is the present participle. The person who is "waiting" differs in each sentence. In sentence 1, "I" (the subject immediately the modifying phrase) am waiting. In sentence 2, "my friend" (the subject immediately after the modifying phrase) is waiting. When writers do not have the correct subject for the participle, the modifier is said to be "dangling." The dangling modifier can be comical or confusing:
3) When applying for jobs, my CV speaks for itself.
In sentence number 3, "my CV" is "applying" for jobs. To fix dangling modifiers, you need either to make the participle a complete verb or to put the correct subject immediately after the comma:
4) When I apply for jobs, my CV speaks for itself.
Quite frequently, we can find dangling modifiers in articles; in fact, the following article by Pierre LeBrun of ESPN (Nov. 25, 2011) about the NHL Winter Classic inspired me to write this post:
Gretzky told ESPN.com via text that he spoke with Sather this week. It was a "nice conversation," Gretzky said, but his answer remained the same.
Speaking of Gretzky, he is still owed about $8 million to $9 million from his Coyotes contract. The NHL met with former Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes in a mediation session on Tuesday. The league launched a lawsuit against Moyes in March 2010. Should mediation eventually produce an agreement, Gretzky will finally be paid the money he's owed, and frankly, it's long overdue.
Having said that, a source told ESPN.com the mediation session between Moyes and the league did not go swimmingly, so, at this point, it's anyone's guess when this will be resolved.
In the second paragraph here, Gretzky (the "he" that follows the comma) is speaking of Gretzky--which I do not think is the case. The third paragraph is a bit more difficult to understand: "that" in "having said that" seems to refer to the previous paragraph, which means that the "source" who had "said that" might also be Gretzky. Certainly we can guess what LeBrun means, but we do well not to have others guess at the meaning our writing.
Dangling modifiers also commonly occur with past participles (i.e. eaten, taught, walked) and infinitives ("to" plus a verb such as "to fix").
