Such a long journey

Book cover picture from Goodreads

It's the title of a book by Toronto author Rohinton Mistry. The phrase is a common one, and it emphasizes the length of the trip.

I had such a good time that I didn't want to leave the party. In this sentence, the emphasis is on how good the party was.

We use many similar forms:

I walked such a lot that...
It was such a good movie that....
Jane had such a good mark that....

The expression "such a long journey" follows the pattern such + a + adjective + noun. If the noun is plural, of course, the a is dropped (because a means one) and we get sentences like this:

She made such delicious croissants that they were all eaten within an hour.
Our neighbours are such good people that we hope they never move away.
I didn't expect to see such important people at the ceremony.
Dogs aren't such good pets as cats.

We can also say such a lot of + a plural noun or non-countable noun, like this:

Joe had such a lot of friends that he was out practically every evening.
Joe had such a lot of homework that there was no way he could finish it all.
He didn't expect the teacher to assign such a lot of homework.


The 'a' is also dropped when the noun is non-countable, like this:

I didn't expect to get such information (information of this type).
May didn't expect to experience such trouble at the border.
Such education is invaluable.


By the way, Such a long journey is a very good book. It's so good that when I read it a few years back, I remember that I stayed up nearly all night because I couldn't put it down.

In June 2012, Rohinton Mistry addressed the graduates of Ryerson University in Toronto.

"A fool such as I"

Picture of Elvis from Biography.com

I frequently have to explain to my writing students how to use "such as" correctly. Again and again I find myself talking about pools full of fish, and explaining that when you use such as, you are only taking out a few of these and leaving the rest in the pool. The pool represents the category, and the fish are examples -- an INCOMPLETE LIST.

We cannot talk about the sexes such as men and women, as those are the only two. Nor can I refer to my nephews such as Lee, Len and Irem, because those are all the nephews I have.

I've begun to feel like a broken record, going over my standard fish story again and again. [Meanwhile, the metaphor of the broken record is outdated -- we now listen to Ipods and CDs and suchlike. Nobody -- except maybe Stewart Maclean's protagonist Dave, of the Vinyl Cafe, has records any more.]

I've been looking for a new way to remind my students how to use "such as" correctly. Today I remembered Elvis Presley's song. Elvis sang these romantic lyrics back in 1961, to the accompaniment of screaming teenage fans.

"I'm a fool but I'll love you, dear, until the day I die;
Now and then, there's a fool such as I."

You can hear the whole song here on YouTube.

At the risk of sounding unromantic, let me paraphrase the meaning of the second line quoted above.  Only occasionally is there a fool like the singer. He is one among many who are not fools.

When commas and pandas go rogue

Book cover image courtesy of Amazon

The classic joke is shown on the cover of a book by Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Gotham 2004). The subject is punctuation, and the joke goes something like this: A panda bear walks into a coffee shop and orders a sandwich and a coffee. He eats his meal, then pulls out a gun and shoots into the ceiling. "Why did you shoot those holes in my ceiling?" asks the mystified owner.

The panda bear takes a wildlife manual out of his back pocket and hands it to the restauranteur. "It's who I am," he says. "Look me up." Then he turns on his heel and leaves the cafe.

The owner closes up and calls a plasterer. While he's waiting for the repairman to come and fix the ceiling, he opens the wildlife book and finds the definition of panda, "a large black and white bear native to China. Diet consists mostly of eucalyptus. Eats, shoots and leaves."

He looks on the publication data page of the manual and then pulls out his cell phone and calls in his complaint to the publisher. "There's one comma too many in the panda entry in your wildlife manual," he says, "and a panda bear came in here and took advantage. I'll be sending you the bill for my new ceiling."

Commas: where to use them

Commas are not like salt. They can't be sprinkled over prose to give it flavour. For the most part, their presence is an indication of a pause in speech. For instance, they appear before or after adverb phrases, like this. Christopher Altman, of Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York, explains this in more detail here. (By the way, did you notice how the commas were used in the previous sentence to set off the city and state?

As well as being used to set off adverbial sentence modifiers, commas are used to separate items in a list. To illustrate, a comma has been used after the opening phrase of this sentence, as well as after each item in the following list of parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

By the way, that last comma, the one before the phrase "and adverbs," is called the Oxford or serial comma. It's the one that comes just before the word and at the end of a list. As seen in the previous sentence, and the following one too, commas also set off appositive constructions. June, my teacher, loves commas.

Finally, commas are used to separate subordinate clauses from main clauses. This is illustrated by the following sentence. When Tom got home, Mary had already made dinner. The same punctuation pattern can be applied with "Whereas" or "As soon as" at the beginning of the sentence.

While we're on the subject of clauses, I should raise the thorny problem of restrictive versus non-restrictive clauses. As the name suggests, a restrictive clause (beginning with who or which) which restricts the meaning of a noun, and is therefore essential to identifying the subject, is not set off from the rest of the sentence by commas. Here is an example. The man who held the door open for you was the robber. (Without the who clause we don't know which man.)

On the other hand, a non-restrictive clause adds information that is additional, rather than essential to identifying the subject. Tom, who bought a used bicycle, asked me to go cycling with him. (This clause is non-restrictive, and therefore set off by commas. We do not need the information in the clause in order to identify Tom, who has already named in the sentence.)

Another role that commas play is to separate the main part of a sentence from quotations that are part of the same sentence, as follows. "John," she said, "Please come here." Here's another example: "Please come here, Sally," said John.

This brings us to one more use of commas. They are used to set off the name of the person being addressed directly in imperative sentences. "Bill, stop that." By the way, did you notice the second comma in the previous sentence? It sets off a phrase in the middle of the sentence, which in this case, happens to be a question.

One more use of commas is that they follow certain sentence connectors. For instance, we may use the word "however" to connect two main clauses, as in the following example. Tom hurried along the street when he saw the bus; however, it left before he got there. In the previous sentence, a semi-colon (more about those in a later post) is used before the sentence connector, and a comma after it. This punctuation pattern also applies to other sentence connectors, including "nevertheless" and "still."

If I had wanted to, I could have put an Oxford comma after "nevertheless" in the previous sentence. But since that is an optional comma, I chose not to.

Commas: where NOT to use them

One place where commas are NOT found (or at least they shouldn't be found) is between a subject and its predicate, that is, between a noun and a verb. What I mean is that commas should not come between a subject and its verb unless there are two of them, and they are there to set off "sentence interrupters." (See below.)

Apparently I am not the only English instructor to find that students want to put commas here. Christopher Altman, an Assistant professor at a college in New York, has written an article mentioning that this mistake is quite common, and explaining that this is wrong.

[By the way, did you notice the notice the commas in the "sentence interrupters," as Altman calls them, and the appositive construction above?]

Another error is the comma splice. A fairly common problem among novice writers, this is the mistake of attempting to join two independent clauses together with nothing more than a comma. When only a comma is placed between two clauses, the result is a run-on sentence.

Altman points out another error which writers make quite frequently. This is the mistake of putting a comma after "which," when actually the comma should come before "which." The following sentence illustrates.

The student forgot to put a comma before the non-restrictive clause, which was a mistake.

Lewis Thomas on colons and semi-colons

I like what the wonderful essayist Lewis Thomas has to say about these punctuation marks, and how he distinguishes them.

The semi-colon, which Thomas has "grown fond of," he describes as a reminder that something needs to be added to the sentence. With a semi-colon, he says, "you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come..."

Colons he finds "far less attractive," since they give the reader a feeling of "being ordered around, or at least having your nose pointed in a direction you might not be inclined to take if left to yourself..."

A further objection to colons is that they point to "sentences that will be labelling the points to be made: firstly, secondly and so forth, with the implication that you haven't enough sense to keep track of a sequence of notions without having them numbered."*

In a more prosaic world than that of the fanciful land of Lewis Thomas, the function of a colon is to indicate a list to come, whether this consists of words or phrases, like this: Tom, Dick and Harry, or like this: Tom's dog, Dick's cat, and Harry's monkey.

On the other hand, semi-colons, unlike mere commas, are permissible when you want to "glue" two independent clauses together. Of course, these clauses should be closely related; otherwise, you would be using a period at the end of the first one and starting a new sentence with the second.

*The quotations come from Thomas's essay "Notes on Punctuation," originally published in 1974 in a lovely collection called The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (Bantam: New York).

Try a free quiz by Jane Straus on Colons and Semi-colons here. 

Exclamation marks

Warning! Do not overuse these punctuation marks!

The exclamation mark is used to indicate an excited, angry or other strongly emotional tone.

Advertisers love them!!!

You may also be tempted to use them in formal writing. Let me give you a word of warning. Don't!

Or perhaps you are submitting something for publication. In an attempt to demonstrate your knowledge of how all the different punctuation marks are used, you may feel tempted to slip in an exclamation point or two.

Beware!!! That would be a mistake!

So who uses exclamation marks? Texting teens, like, duh!!!

And politicians, of course!

These punctuation shouts are used by anyone who wants to punch up the emotional tone of a piece without bothering to work with more complex rhetorical tools like word choice and sentence structure. This is done in the vain hope of getting the reader to pay more attention.

I'll let you in a secret. It doesn't work!!!

Want more information? Try the English Club.

Enough said.

Quotation Marks

There are two types of quotation marks, single, as in 'quotation,' and double, like this: "Quotation."

What's the difference?

Double quotation marks are more commonly used. Here are their purposes:

1. To enclose a quotation in a piece of text, as in the following: "My goodness," said Lucy. "I've lost my quotation marks."

2. To identify the titles of articles in newspapers, magazines, or books. They are also used to show the titles of poems, songs and short stories, or segments within books. For instance, one might mention that the short "Benny" is by Mordecai Richler.

3. To set off words that the writer is using ironically, as in the following sentence. The "elegant" dress turned out to be badly cut, sloppily sewn, and made of a cheap and coarse material.

4. To set off or differentiate words that are being referred to as words, as in the following sentence. Although the word "patience" sounds like "patients," the two are spelled differently and have different meanings; also, the former noun is non-countable and singular, while the latter is countable and plural.

Single quotation marks are used to enclose a second quotation within the first one, as in this sentence. Lucy shivered as she said, "Although the house was empty, I heard a weird voice say 'Hark!' just as I was going downstairs."

Want more details? Check out Writer's Block.

English is a stress-timed language II

Last time I wrote about this, I said we mainly stress nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and that's true.

On the other hand, we usually de-stress function words like prepositions, "helping" verbs or modals, pronouns and articles. In the rhythm of the sentence, the function words usually get a lot less time and their vowels tend to be elided.

However, there are some exceptions. When we use negative contractions such as don't and can't and won't, we stress these negative forms to distinguish them from their positive partners.

I've used upper case to represent strong stresses and lower case to represent unstressed syllables. Look at the pairs below:

i can GO. i CAN'T GO.
can you HELP? i CAN'T HELP.
did you SEE it? i DIDn't SEE it.

Prepositions take on strong stress when they are part of two-word or phrasal verbs, like this:

They DROPPED us OFF at the AIRport an HOur EARly.
I was aSLEEP when the PLANE TOOK OFF.

"But isn't the adverb 'when' stressed in the previous sentence?" you may ask.

WELL, it IS when it's a QUEStion Opener, like THIS:

WHEN did he GO? WHO WENT? WHY did he GO? HOW did he GET THERE?

THAT reMINDS me. deMONstrative PROnouns are ALso STRESSED, like THIS:

i like THESE SHOES but NOT THOSE.
THIS is YOURS, and THAT's MINE.

ONE MORE THING:
we STRESS PROnouns for EMphasis, LIKE THIS:

THESE are MY BOOKS. YOURS are on the TAble.
were you CALLing ME? NO, i was CALLing HER.
JOHN HUMphrey WASn't aGAINST the UNderdog; he was FOR the UNderdog.

This should give you a better idea of English sentence rhythms. Now here's the quiz. How many strongly stressed syllables are in this last paragraph? (Answer: 18)

English is a stress-timed language I

English is a stress-timed language. In other words, the strong stresses come along at regular intervals in a galloping rhythm. The stresses repeat evenly, like the hoofbeats of a fast-moving horse.

This has certain implications for those who are learning the language. One obvious one is that unstressed syllables are elided, sometimes almost to the point of non-existence. In unstressed syllables, the vowel is usually minimized, reduced to an unaccented schwa sound, and that can make these syllables hard for language students to hear.

A second implication, one that can be hard for second language learners to grasp, is that no matter how many unstressed function words and syllables occur between the stressed syllables, the rhythm remains fixed. More syllables between stresses just means that they must be elided more and pronounced faster. If there are no other syllables between the strongly stressed ones, there is enough of a pause between them so that the rhythm remains unaltered.

A further important fact is that in general, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are the strongly stressed. If these words are polysyllabic, only ONE syllable has strong stress; in fact, the others are elided, as in the word going. The stress is on the first syllable, and the /ng/ is shortened to /n/in rapid informal speech.

To see how this works in practical terms, let's look at a stanza from a poem by the fanciful children's poet Dennis Lee. The strong stresses are in capital letters.

"i WENT to PLAY in the PARK
and i DID'nt GET HOME until DARK
and WHEN i got HOME there were ANTS in my PANTS
and my FAther was FEEDing the SHARK."

As we can see from the stanza above, sometimes there are are a couple of syllables between the strong stresses, and sometimes there are none.

Stay tuned for Part II, where I reveal other parts of speech that get strong stress in certain contexts.

Capitalization: the basics

Deciding when to use capitals can be daunting, but there are rules. Capitalize proper nouns: the specific names of people, cities, provinces, states, counties, countries, languages, and nationalities.

• Marin County in California is located north of San Francisco Bay, on the Pacific Ocean.

• When Krakatoa, a volcano in Indonesia, exploded out of the water in 1883, the resulting tidal wave travelled around the world seven times.

Also capitalize the names of specific geographical features like seas, oceans, mountains and rivers. Examples include the Alaska Panhandle, the Mackenzie River and the Great Lakes.

Geographical regions can also have names that are capitalized, like the Prairies, (also called the Prairie provinces, and known south of the border as the Great Plains.) Another example is the Canadian Shield. This is a vast tract of rocky land with thin soil that includes the boreal forests north of the Great Lakes and stretches all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Historic events are also capitalized. An example is the Great Depression (1929-1939). This famous economic depression is thus distinguished from the other meaning of the word, which, like most other illnesses or conditions (except those named after people, like Alzheimer's or those that are acronyms, like SARS) is NOT capitalized.

• John Humphrey did not suffer from depression, even though he witnessed the hardships of the Great Depression.

For more rules on capitalization, check with expert Jane Strauss here. And be aware: the way we use punctuation is changing, as my next post shows.

Capitalization: a new wrinkle or two

We've all seen the new capitalization style, though until about ten years ago, it barely existed.

I'm talking about capitals that appear in middle of words, like eBay and iPhone, iPad and iPod. That's one group.

Another group is on the rise as well. These words have had their space stolen from between two words. Brand names are the main culprits here: think AdSense, MailChimp, MyMeetings.

These new uses of capitalization have had some strange implications. As grammarian-editor Frances Peck reveals in the February issue of West Coat Editor (pdf may be downloaded from the EAC website), writers of style guides are now scratching their heads and disputing with one another over whether the words in the first group, which begin with lower case letters, should be capitalized if they open the sentence, as in the example below:

eBay called me on my iPhone.

For the moment, let's not worry about the meaning. Is this sentence correctly punctuated? Or should it look like this:

EBay called me on my iPhone.

Afraid I don't have a definitive answer to that question. Not yet.

Capitalization in different styles

In MLA (Modern Languages Association) style, it is not customary to capitalize the content words of a title. The rule says to capitalize only the most important words of a title.

In other words, do not capitalize function words, including articles, prepositions or conjunctions. Lane Community College Library gives a list of the words that are NOT capitalized.

There are some exceptions, of course. First, when a word opens a sentence, it is always capitalized, and second, when a subtitle follows a colon, the first word of that subtitle is capitalized.

For more details on what words to capitalize in MLA style, check the OWL lab at Purdue University, here.

When using APA, the American Psychological Association style, the rules for capitalization are slightly different. Check here for examples.

Distinguishing their writing from that of academics, journalists have their own variations; find more about AP (Associated Press) style here.

Words that refuse to travel alone

What does the alphabetism ESL stand for? English is a strange language, some theorize, and I find it hard to disagree. One weird wrinkle is the huge variety of roles played by prepositions. Not only do they tell us where things are, they glom onto [d: inf] other words and refuse to let go of them. Many nouns, adjective and verbs, (except for separable two-word verbs) refuse to be separated from their prepositions.

If I could get away with it, I would leave out the phrasal verbs. But there are so many of these, and they are so common, that it I'd have to get around to discussing them some time. By the way, the "two-word" or phrasal verbs are not the only ones to travel with their prepositional allies. Other verbs can have pet prepositions too.

To illustrate, lean goes with on. As The Rolling Stones sang in 1969, "Well, we all need someone we can lean on, and if you want to, well, you can lean on me." [Caution: The rest of the lyrics to "Let it bleed" are low on the register of formality and far less useful for English learners. Poets and songwriters can be relied on for rhythm, but their lyrics are frequently impolite, ungrammatical or obscure.]

So we'll return to standard English words. Just as the gentry of the past couldn't go anywhere without their valets or lady's maids, nouns and adjectives are often accompanied by those firm allies, their special prepositions.

Let's look at some nouns first. Joy goes with of and so does pain. The joy of love is soon followed by the pain of conflict or the pain of separation. Respect travels with for. We have respect for the law, respect for authority and respect for our elders.

Adjectives, too, are often attached to, or fond of their prepositions. While the Stones may be proud of their lyrics, back in the sixties, a lot of parents thought those rockers ought to be ashamed of themselves.

As a further illustration, when we feel alone, we can be glad of company, even though we are friendly to some and unfriendly to others. This unkind behaviour may be unworthy of us, but we might still indulge in it. (Oops, that last was a verb.)

I'll close this post by letting you know that there are lots more of these unbreakable pairs and groups. What I've shared here is just the tip of the iceberg.

Preposition madness

1. First I cut down [felled] the tree; then I cut it up [chopped it into several pieces].

2. When I left my pruning shears out in the rain, they got rusty. [exposed to the weather]

3. Tom sat down in his new apartment, glad the move was over with. [finished, complete]

4. Tom and Jane were on holiday and the weather had been very hot. After dinner, Tom was still wearing his bathing suit and the weather was warm, so he washed down the deck. Since that made him perspire, he rinsed off with the hose and then went inside.

The house had no dishwasher, and Jane asked him if he'd mind helping her wash up.

"No problem," said Tom, "I'll wash the dishes, and you dry them."

Later, as Tom headed for the shower, Jane said, "Remember to rinse out your swimsuit and hang it up."

As darkness fell, the house was warm, so Tom and Jane decided to hang out on the deck for awhile. They drank lemonade and looked at the stars.

5. Tourist - Does this bus go uptown?
Resident - No, it goes downtown.
Tourist - [looking confused] Are those different places?
Resident - We don't have any uptown here, only downtown. You must be from New York.

Say what???

Language learners and Power Point presentations

Power Point is one of those technologies people tend to use just because it's there. It should be employed judiciously, however, because when misused, it detracts from a presentation rather than adding to it. Unskilled use of this technology can scatter audience attention rather than focusing it.

The biggest danger is that using Power Point tends to reduce rather than enhancing the speaker's ability to communicate with the audience. An important presentation skill is using eye contact to maintain rapport. Effective use of eye contact keeps an audience focused on a talk.

Needless to say, when presenters become so enraptured with their own Power Point presentations that they can't stop looking at them, eye contact suffers, and consequently audience rapport is lost.

Another problem arises when Power Point screens are filled with small font type. This distraction is compounded when the speaker reads this fine print to the audience -- even though it's projected on the screen.

A speaker is not a reader, and listening to a "speaker" read aloud from screens is uninteresting. Instead of using eye contact to maintain rapport with the listeners, unskilled presenters turn their backs, consequently losing their connection with the audience.

Nevertheless, there are some presentations that can truly be made better by using Power Point. If the presenter wants to point out features of a building, a painting, or a sculpture, or to explain a complex but clear and visible diagram, a picture really can be worth a thousand words.

Should benefit be followed by 'of' or 'to?'

Here is an important benefit to speaking English as a native language. Based on the context, it's easy to decide which preposition follows which verb, noun or adjective.

For second language speakers, these decisions can be a little harder to make. Fortunately, it's easy for a native speaker teacher to tell a student which preposition is correct in a given context. What's often a lot harder is explaining the reason for a certain choice.

Recently I was asked about the following sentence. There are many benefits of using cash. "To", I said. "I'd prefer you to say that there are many benefits to using cash." But why? I wasn't sure.

Here's another sentence. The main benefit of using cash is convenience. Here I definitely prefer of. Again, I asked myself why. Why use different prepositions in these two sentences? The meaning of benefit is the same in both cases.

I checked the Oxford Advanced English Learner's Dictionary and found these examples: to have the benefit of a good education, and to reap (or enjoy) the benefits of one's hard work. The same source also provides this example: "The insurance plan will provide substantial benefits to your family..." (OUP 8th Ed).

Finally, I consulted a linguist, who investigated a couple of possible reasons and then explained the answer. When the phrase containing the word benefit appears in the subject of the sentence, benefit is followed by of. When the phrase containing the word benefit appears in the predicate of the sentence, benefit is followed by to.

She used the following sentences to indicate what she meant:

There are five benefits to skiing. (correct)
*There are five benefits of skiing. (incorrect)
The benefit of skiing is getting out in the fresh air. (correct)
*The benefit to skiing is getting out in the fresh air. (incorrect)

These sentences check off perfectly with the ones above, and I am satisfied that this is the correct explanation.

Linguistic note:
The benefit phrase always subcategorizes for a noun (especially a gerund).Any other linguist or native speaker out there want to weigh in on this? If so, please leave a comment.

Money, happiness and transition use

Money doesn't buy happiness, but it is necessary to pay for groceries.

Money doesn't lead to happiness; however, neither does being poor.

Money doesn't buy happiness, even though a lot of people seem to think it does.

Although the wealthy businessman expected to be happy when he had a million in the bank, he found that in reality, the bank account numbers bore no relation to his level of happiness.

Donald Trump is very wealthy; even so, he tries to earn more money.

Since the wealthy man had more money than he could possibly use, he decided to become a philanthropist.

The family had little money to spare; nevertheless, they made a point of giving to charity.

The relationship between money and happiness is not one of cause and effect. It is perfectly possible to be both rich and happy; likewise, one can be rich and miserable.

Many fairy tales seem to suggest that wealthy people are not nice; in the same way, common sayings such as "Money does not buy happiness" promote a similar idea.

To conclude, it is difficult to establish a causal relationship between money and happiness.

The solitary introvert: only alone, not lonely

These words give a lot of trouble to English learners, not only alone, but also in combination. This confusion reflects not only the lack of a one-to-one correspondence between concepts in L1 and L2 (English), but also the specifics of English usage.

One source of confusion is the common misconception that lone, alone and lonely are synonymous. These three words are used differently and have quite different connotations.

Lone (adj) simply means single, unaccompanied, or solitary (adj). It can refer to people, abstract nouns or objects, as seen below.

The windy beach was empty except for a lone jogger. (one, the only one seen) Or, to quote Stephen Leacock, "A solitary horseman appeared on the horizon..."

The Jack Pine is Tom Thomson's most famous painting, shown and described in this video clip at the Virtual Museum of Canada. Observe the usage of the words lone and solitary in the commentary. Until I looked it up just now, I'd remembered this painting as the lone pine. (the only one on the horizon).

Only (adj) also means there are no others, but it is used in a slightly different way. By saying that I was the only one in the room, I simply indicate that nobody else was there.

On the other hand, if I say I was the only left-handed person in the room, the listener (or reader) understands that there were others, but they were not left-handed. This use of only distinguishes one person or thing from the rest of a group.

Another use of only is to emphasize the smallness of a group or number. To illustrate, saying that I was only a few minutes late de-emphasizes the idea of the lateness and puts stress on how minimal the tardiness was.

This is not to be confused with a similar use of alone which has completely different implications. For instance, I might say the museum was very crowded; there were a few hundred people in the lobby alone. This means that including the numbers of people in the other rooms would make the total much larger.

Alone is an adverb as well as an adjective. I can say that I often walk on the beach alone, or that I enjoy spending time alone. In these statements, the word has a neutral connotation; it simply expresses the idea that I am an introvert.

On the other hand, lonely has a sad connotation, as expressed in the lyrics of Roy Orbison's bluesy song Only the Lonely. Replace with the less common synonym lonesome, and you're into the very sad country songs. Then there's Billy Joel's song: Only the good die young. (This title implies that the bad live longer.)

Although these are not the only (sole) uses of the words in question, they the most common ones.

It or this?

Photo: Texas A&M IT

A problem that often crops up for my ESL students is the difficulty they have in deciding when to use it and when to use this to refer back in a piece of writing to what has gone before.

This is an interesting problem. As a native speaker and an ESL instructor, I have to find ways to explain this. The first of these is the grammatical rule: the word it is allowed only a single word as an antecedent. The word this that appears at the beginning of this paragraph refers back to the fact that the students have difficulty in deciding; thus, since the word it cannot have a phrase or clause as antecedent, we must use this rather than it.

However, it is quite possible that this rule, like so many rules in English, does not always hold. Wait! The word it in the previous sentence refers to the fact that it is possible..., so why not change it to this?

The answer is that in addition to knowing the rule about antecedents, we must take idiomatic phrases into consideration.  The previous paragraph uses the common expression "It is possible that" and that expression always begins with it. In the same way, we would say, It is strange that...It is interesting that...and so on.

Also, in the above examples, this refers not back, but forward in the text. Is this as clear as mud? Or is it still confusing? Did you notice that the last it referred back to the word this in the previous sentence?

I have to stop trying to explain this. It's driving me crazy. (Same pattern as previous paragraph.)

Picture: This on Vimeo

Conundrums of idiomatic usage

"Romance is in the air."

Ah, yes. Lovely image. But where is romance when it is not in the air? Can it be, for example, on the ground? Or in the trees? I rather think not. Indeed, in all my years of linguistic observation, I've never heard tell of it being anywhere but in the air. Yet I find it impossible to explain why.

"She marched out of the room in high dudgeon."

We get the picture. She was seriously annoyed. But is high dudgeon really a question of degree? It can't be; otherwise, it would be possible to stomp out in low dudgeon, just a little annoyed, and it isn't.

Idiomatic expressions have to be taken on faith. Those of us who know the idioms form the appropriate pictures. Unfortunately for language learners, those who don't know may not even be aware that they are missing the idea.

After all, if she left the building in high dudgeon, couldn't that be a vehicle? Or a high-collared coat? In that case, though, we would need an article in front of high dudgeon: a high dugeon. Native speakers know that an article is never used with dudgeon, but English article usage is so idiomatic that most second language speakers would be unlikely to notice that it wasn't there.

An Island can mean many things

Photo: Dry Island at the buffalo jump of the same name, CT 2012

An island is a strong metaphor.

In the case of Elk Island Park, it refers an island of sanctuary where wild animals -- elk, moose, and bison -- live off the land without fear of being disturbed by hunters, farmers, developers, or urban sprawl.

Dry Island Buffalo Jump is another kind of island: a formation left by the last ice age when all the land around it was scored by glaciers. This "island" contains pre-glacial grasses that grow nowhere else in Alberta.

An island of sanity, an island of quiet, alone on a desert island, an island in the sun. The list goes on.

Yet though many use the island metaphor, not all agree on its meaning. While the poet Donne tells us, "No man is an island," a well-known love song suggests that "Islands in the stream" represent love and togetherness.

Reported speech word order

"I didn't know."
"Oh. I thought you knew."

"We'll go soon."
"He said we'd go soon."

"What did Mary say?"
"She said Tom would be here soon."

"Mary saw you at Metrotown yesterday, but you didn't see me."
"Is that right?"

Later, to someone else:
"Joe said Mary had seen me at Metrotown but that I hadn't seen her."
"Really?"
 

Think you know this stuff? Do the quiz here.

Apostrophes indicate possessives and contractions

Picture: Printable alphabets

I. Apostrophes are used to INDICATE POSSESSION. They follow singular nouns, common or proper, coming before the s to form a singular possessive, as follows:


     The child's mother appeared at the door. (common noun)

     London's fame is indisputable. (proper nouns)

When the noun, whether proper or common, already ends in s, we have options. We may use 's or simply s', as shown below.

     Marcus's election was a surprise to many of us.

[The s's may be replaced with the 'of' possessive: The election of Marcus as president was a surprise.]

It is acceptable to write the possessive of a proper noun with or without the second s, as seen below:

    Morris's car broke down. [or Morris' car broke down.]


Technically, it is also correct to use an apostrophe alone after the plural s of a common noun to indicate that it is plural and possessive. However in general, these combination plural possessives are stylistically a bit awkward, and better avoided. (Use the of possessive instead.)

     We put away all the boys' belongings. (This refers to items belonging to more than one boy)
     We put away the belongings of all the boys. (alternative of possessive sounds better here)

[Note that the following sentences sound fine, because people and children are irregular plurals.]

     We put away the children's belongings.
     Marcus was the people's choice.

In the case of compound nouns, the 's comes at the end, like this:
     The five-year-old's shoes...
     The do-it-yourselfer's project...

Note that possessive pronouns (hers, theirs, its etc.) do NOT employ apostrophes.(exception: one's)

II. Apostrophes are also used TO JOIN CONTRACTIONS. Their presence indicates that letters have been omitted, as shown below:

    It's a long way to New York. (It is a long way...)
    He's been having health problems. (He has...)
    She's going home now. (She is...)
    We've nearly finished our meal. (We have...)

Apostrophes are NOT used to name decades with numbers, but they are used to talk about individual letters of the alphabet, as in dotting one's i's and crossing one's t's. (One is the only pronoun to be used with an apostrophe to show plural.)

For more information, read Jane Straus's list of rules and try her quiz, here.

Apostrophe as a Literary Device

Picture from xipix on glogster

Apostrophe is also a LITERARY DEVICE used in poetry and drama. It describes a particular type of  dramatic speech made to an to inanimate objects or abstraction. The plays of Shakespeare are full of apostrophes. For instance, in Julius Caesar, after Caesar is assassinated, Antony addresses his corpse thus:

"O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth..."

In Romeo and Juliet, the distraught young woman speaks to fate: "Oh Fortune, Fortune, all men call thee fickle," and later in the play, Romeo rails against destiny in a similar vein, "Then I defy you, stars!"

The famous lines of the British Romantic poet George Gordon Lord Byron provide another kind of example, with the poet addressing some aspect of nature, in this case the ocean:

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll
Then thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain..."

from Childe Harold 

Omitting relative pronouns

2013

Picture: desudjia.com

I was asked recently by a student whether, in a certain sentence, she could omit the relative pronoun that. Over my long teaching career, I've been asked the same question many times. Though I always know the answer, I can't always explain why.

The reason? My native-speaker grammatical knowledge is unconscious and ingrained. The rule about omitting relative pronouns is one I kept having to look up, and each time, I managed to forget it again.

Now I've done the research one more time, I've decided to post the rules and exceptions, along with some examples, for easy reference. Here they are:

1. If the relative pronoun is the object of the relative clause, it is usually omitted, as shown in the following examples:

     The girl (who/m) I was telling you about is the one sitting over there.
     Where is the food (that) you bought?
     The groceries (which) I bought are on the counter.
     This is the book (that) I lost last week.
     Do you have the same instructor (that/who/m) you had last term?

There are two exceptions to the above pattern. Both involve restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.* The first exception is when the relative pronoun begins a non-restrictive clause.

     The new coffee shop, which is near the corner of Broadway and Commercial, is nicer than the old one.
     The staff members, who were delayed by an interruption to SkyTrain service, were all late for work.    

The other exception is when the relative pronoun is the subject of a restrictive clause.

     The only man who got off the train at Metrotown stepped on my foot on his way to the door.
     It's a wonderful book, but I'm afraid I've forgotten the name of the author.
     Those who attend all the classes and do all the assignments usually pass the course.   

2.  If the relative clause contains the verb to be with a present or past participle, then both these verb parts can be left out.

     He's the man (who is) talking to our new neighbour.
     Anyone (who is) caught cheating will be given a zero grade and subjected to disciplinary action.
     Tom bought the necktie (which was) on sale.
     The delegates (who were) drinking coffee in the hall were asked to return to the conference room.

If you understand all these rules, try taking a quiz from the Frankfurt International School here. More detailed information on relative clauses here.

*Unclear on restrictive and non-restrictive clauses? Check back tomorrow.

Commas set off non-restrictive clauses

Photo from Grammar.about.com

Many writers feel doubt about the need for commas around relative clauses.The way to overcome this doubt is to understand the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. A restrictive (or defining)  clause is essential to identify the noun it modifies.

For instance, in the sentence "The boy who stole the bicycle was caught and punished," the restrictive clause (shown in boldface type) is necessary to the sense of the subject, and the sentence. In other words, the boy who stole the bicycle is not just any boy.

On the other hand, if we look at the slightly altered sentence "Tommy, who stole the bicycle, was caught and punished," we can see at once that the name Tommy identifies the specific boy. In this sentence, the phrase "who stole the bicycle" is not necessary to define or identify who is the subject of the sentence.

Commas represent pauses in speech, and when we speak this sentence aloud, we pause before and after this non-restrictive modifier, and when we write the sentence down, we mark these pauses with commas. The pauses, and the commas that represent them, clarify the meaning of the sentence.

The non-restrictive adjective clause is not the only type of modifier that requires commas before and after. Adverb clauses and other modifiers, sometimes called sentence interrupters, may also preceded and followed by commas, as the following sentences show.

     The sky, they say, is the limit.
     The moon, we were told, is made of green cheese.
     The sentence, we noticed, contained an improperly punctuated restrictive clause.
     The theatre, unfortunately, was not the only building that had to close due to the fire. 
 
These interrupter commas travel in pairs, one before and one after the modifier, unless, of course, the restrictive clause reaches the end of the sentence. In that case, it is preceded by a comma and followed by a period. Here is an example:

     I finally got a chance to see the old movie, which I had never seen before.

A word to the wise: To master comma usage, the writer must understand sentence structure thoroughly, including the relationship between the comma on paper and the pause in speech.

Ready for a quiz? Try one by Jane Straus here. Need more comma rules? Check where to use commas here and where NOT to use commas here.

Hard is not equal to hardly

 Picture: The Western Mysteries

These two adverbs appear similar; the meanings, though, could hardly be more different. In other words, it would be hard to find a pair of similar-looking words that had such different meanings.

Hardly* means very little, or almost not at all. Reasonably close synonyms are scarcely and barely.

Like many other adverbs, hardly can modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs, as we can see in the following sentences:

     The cat hardly moved all day. Translation: the cat sat around or slept for most of the day. [Adverb hardly modifies verb moved.]
     We hardly ever go dancing. Meaning: we almost never go dancing. [Adverb hardly modifies adverb ever.]
     A hundred years ago, it was hardly possible (almost impossible) for women to become doctors. [Adverb hardly modifies adjective possible.]

There, that wasn't too hard to understand, was it? In the previous sentence, hard is an adjective, as it follows the verb be.

When it's used for physical description, the adjective hard is the opposite of soft. For instance, a hard surface is one that does not bend or yield.

As an abstract idea, hard means effort is required to do something; it's difficult or challenging.
     Jane works hard; in other words, she makes a lot of effort.
     I couldn't solve the math problems; they were too hard.
     Bill also had a hard time doing the math test.
     It's hard to explain some of these usage and grammar points. [Notice that with the expression It's hard to, the preposition to travels with hard.]
     It's sometimes hard to use new expressions, even when you know the meaning.
The tense of the verb be can be changed, as illustrated below:
     After the holidays, it was hard to start getting up at 5:30 AM again.
     "It will be hard to get 100% on the vocabulary quiz," she said.
     She said it would be hard to get 100% on the vocabulary quiz. (Reported speech form uses past tense.)

To have a hard time is to go through difficulties.
     I had a hard time learning English, but I'm pretty fluent now.
     Mary said she'd had a hard time learning English. (Note: Past perfect tense in this sentence implies that she knows it now.)

Another common idiom is to give someone a hard time, or make it difficult for them. [With this expression, the verb give is the only word that can be changed to reflect the appropriate tense.]

There, that wasn't too hard, was it? Still, it's hard to say [another expression with hard] whether my ESL readers understood my attempt to explain. [It's hard to say or it's hard to tell means it is difficult to measure or determine.]

*If you check this link, ignore Definitions 4 and 5: these meanings are hardly ever used. In fact, in my long years of deep exposure to my native tongue, I've never heard or seen the word used this way.

If you're ready for a quiz, you can try one here.

Few is not the same as a few

Picture: Vector Fine Art

They were the few, so named in Churchill's immortal 1940 speech during the Battle of Britain. The few were the RAF Fighter pilots who stood between England and the Nazi air force that was attempting to obliterate London with bombs. 

"Never," said Churchill, "was so much owed by by so many to so few." The few stood for exclusiveness. After this speech, the fighter pilots of RAF became known as "the few."

In the book title (left), the phrase is set off by quotation marks. It implies the bravery of the few as they defended the many against the onslaught of bombing that went on for many months. While the few fought and died in the skies, the many, the people of London, huddled in Anderson shelters and Underground stations.

All that happened a long time ago. Still, on a recent trip to London, I met a few people who remembered the blitz. Most were children at the time. (In this sentence, a few means a small number, some)

In contrast, few as used in the special expression the few emphasizes the smallness of the numbers. Huge numbers of RAF pilots were killed in combat in the air or shot down; few (a very small number) lasted longer than a few (some) weeks or months.

Most of the time they get it right

At least, most of them do. Occasionally, though, my English learners make mistakes with the usage of most versus most of.

     "Most of students enjoyed watching The Life of Pi," someone said.

     I corrected her, explaining that you have to say either "Most students enjoyed the movie," or "Most of the students in the class enjoyed it." If you use most of, you must add the, and then use a modifying phrase or clause to indicate which specific ones from the general category (the plural noun).

Most of those who struggle with it eventually learn English, a vast, sprawling and somewhat lawless tongue, though there are some rules and patterns.

For most learners, language learning progresses in stages. First the learner is delighted to be able to communicate -- to speak and understand some words, sentences, and ideas in the new language.

When this ability becomes a relaxed routine, learning may plateau before the next stage is reached. Next, students of a new language start to pay attention to words and sentences before uttering them. They become aware of their errors, and are able to go back and correct most of them.

More calendar time passes, and learners keep practicing. Once they achieve a high level of fluency, they enter the next stage, in which they develop and perfect the ability to interrupt the mistakes before they utter or write incorrect forms.

Most students are also able, at this stage, to benefit from reflective correction -- when the teacher or other speakers reflects back their mistakes simply by using the expression correctly when responding to what has been said. (If reflective correction is tried too early, it doesn't work; language learners simply don't notice it, as they are busy struggling with other challenges.)

While they are perfecting the grammar, idiom and vocabulary, students may find that long periods of speaking and listening in English are still somewhat tiring; A conversation in English still demands much more mental effort than in does in the native tongue.

The final stage of language learning is mastery. Those who achieve this level are comfortable and spontaneous in the new language.  

Many of the students who tackle English never achieve complete mastery, but that's okay. They achieve enough fluency to get on with their lives. They make the most of (use to full advantage) the English they do know. Most of the time (usually), it is enough

Adjectives have a customary order

Chart by Michelle Henry

It's an amazingly complex system and it works like this:

Number pronouns come before articles, as in:
     A few of the children in the park were playing ball.

Adjectives of opinion precede general adjectives. We might say "a corrupt political appointee," but never "a political corrupt appointee."

(However, we could say "a politically corrupt appointee," in which case the adverb 'politically' modifies the adjective 'corrupt,' rather than modifying the noun 'appointee.')

Opinion adjectives precede general, size, shape, origin, and material adjectives, so we might say:
      "a beautiful little antique Ming vase."
On the other hand, if someone were to mix up the pattern and come up with, for example,
     "an antique beautiful Ming little vase,"
     the listener would undoubtedly be confused.

Similarly, we might say:
      "pair of old Dutch wooden shoes," but NOT
      "a pair of wooden Dutch old shoes," or
      "a pair of wooden old Dutch shoes,"
 since these latter two phrases violate the conventions of adjective order outlined above.

Another aspect of the adjective order pattern is that when nouns are used as adjectives (and they often are), then adjectives that describe the material precede the non-material type. Thus we could say:
     "velvet ballet shoes," but NOT "ballet velvet shoes"
     "a fur coat collar" BUT NOT "a coat fur collar"
     or a "wool horse blanket" but NEVER a "horse wool blanket." (In fact, this latter suggests that the blanket is made of horse wool, and of course that is nonsense.)

Adjectives that describe the purpose of a noun come closest to it, like this:
    "a nice new pair of gardening gloves," or
    "a wonderful warm sleeping bag."
    
When should we put commas between multiple adjectives?

If the adjectives are from different classes, we needn't separate them with commas, like this:
     "a gorgeous red silk hand-made shawl"

However, if all the adjectives in a list come from the same class, we put commas between them, like this:
     "an intelligent, insightful essay" (Both adjectives are general, so no comma is used before 'and.')
     but "a red, white(,) and green flag" (All three adjectives are from the same class, colour.) The parentheses around the second comma indicates that it is optional -- one may omit the comma before 'and.'

Ready for a quiz? Try one here.