March 3, 2025

This 'whom' is a keeper

Sometimes it seems like “whom” should die. It causes so many people so much distress. Not many people know how to use it. And a lot of people who think they know how to use it don’t.

For example, I see "whom" used a lot in ways such as this: “John is a man whom I know will always help us when we need him.” People who know that “whom” is an object figure that, in a sentence like this, it’s functioning as an object of the verb “know.” But it’s not. The object of the verb “know” in this sentence is not a single word but a whole clause “who will always help us.” Clauses need subjects. The verb “help” in this clause needs a subject. So correct here would be the subject pronoun “who”: “John is a man who I know will always help us.”

Sometimes it seems “whom” is just mean. And because it’s fading from all from the most formal uses, it’s tempting to look forward to the day we can bid it good riddance.

But here’s why “whom” is not going to die: in one specific construction, people clearly prefer it.

“I’m spending the day with my sister, with who I share many interests.”

That’s totally unnatural, right? Even in the most casual usage, someone who finds herself hemmed in to a sentence like this is going to say “with whom I share” and not “with who.”

In fact, anytime the pronoun comes immediately after a preposition, people seem to prefer “whom”

with whom

to whom

from whom

True, this situation doesn’t come up much. Casual speech usually sidesteps these constructions, for example by putting the pronoun at the beginning and the preposition at the end (“Who are you going to the movies with” instead of “With whom are you going to the movies”). But in those less-common situations, I don’t see “whom” disappearing anytime soon.

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February 24, 2025

'My boyfriend and I's'?

With all the working from home, cultural divisiveness, addiction to screens and the rise of AI “companions,” humans are becoming ever more isolated. That’s a bad thing. But there’s an upside. As we go through life desperately alone and starved for human contact, at least we’re less likely to make shared possessive errors like this one from a travel post on Reddit: “I bought my boyfriend and I’s tickets at the same time.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen “I’s,” but it’s still a shocker. Who thinks it would be a good idea to say, “That’s I’s car” or “I should get started filing I’s taxes” or “Do these pants make I’s backside look big”? No one.

We all know “I” isn’t used as a possessive. It’s a subject: I have a car. I filed my taxes. I am wearing unflattering pants.

So how do these errors happen? How can we get so confused about a pronoun we all know so well? Human contact. The other person. In the case of that Reddit poster, her boyfriend was the culprit. Had the poor woman flown to Hawaii alone, sure, she would have missed out on a marriage proposal, but at least she would have had the sense to say, “I bought my ticket.”

This error is related to the much more common “with John and I” mistake that, frankly, almost everyone makes. “With” is a preposition, prepositions take objects and “me,” not “I,” is the object form that belongs here: “with John and me.” But “I’s” takes this to a whole new level.

It’s a safe bet that people who misuse “I” labor under the false belief that “me” is incorrect or at least improper when paired with another person. A kid who says, “Billy and me are going to the park” gets corrected pretty swiftly: “It’s ‘Billy and I,’ not ‘me,’” adults tell them. The kid walks away with the lesson that, if he wants to get to the park with the least hassle possible, he should just always use “I.”

On top of all that, we’re not taught how to handle shared possessives. Is it “My boyfriend’s and my” or “my boyfriend and my”? I’ve studied this stuff for years and even I am not comfortable with this.

I know the rules for shared possessives: “Ed’s and Louise’s cars” is correct if they own the cars individually. If they own the cars jointly, it’s “Ed and Louise’s cars.” That’s because the rule says that if possession is shared, Ed and Louise share an apostrophe and s, too. But when people possess things separately, each gets their own apostrophe and s.

That’s an easy rule when you’re working with nouns like Ed, but when you’re working with pronouns like “my,” things get weird. “Ed’s and my cars” is easy enough if Ed and I own our cars separately, but if we share cars, a strict reading of the rules requires us to say, “Ed and my cars.” The absence of an apostrophe and s after Ed’s name strikes me as unnatural. And I don’t hear other people saying “Ed and my …” No matter who owns what, they say “Ed’s and my.”

Other pronouns pose the same difficulty:  If you want to talk about the jointly owned “Ed and Louise’s cars” but you’re using a pronoun for Louisa, you’d get “Ed and her car,” which is unclear and sounds wrong.

In these cases, I openly defy the rule about sharing possession. I say “Ed’s and her cars” no matter whether they own the cars together or separately. As long as I’m not using “I’s,” it’s unlikely anyone will even know if I’m wrong.

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February 17, 2025

'Predominantly' or 'predominately'?

Here’s a word that caught my eye while I was editing an article a while back: predominately.

The context was something like “Brazil is a predominately Portuguese-speaking country.” I didn’t notice the spelling of predominately until my second read.  And spell-checker didn’t notice either.

I quietly congratulated myself for catching the error, changed it to predominantly and continued reading the piece. But a few minutes later, I got the urge to check a dictionary. To my surprise, it was in both Webster’s New World College Dictionary (the dictionary required by the style guide I was using that day) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (which is the one I use when I’m editing in Chicago style). Both list predominately as a variant of predominantly.

I understand that the dictionaries’ job is to document usage, but I don’t think I’d ever seen predominately before. Unless this spelling had been slipping unnoticed under my nose for years, I had only ever seen predominantly.

Not that it mattered. In editing, we always use to the dictionary’s preferred forms and never the variants. So predominantly was the right choice for the article.

But the whole thing was pretty surprising — not just that a spelling I’d never noticed before warranted listing in the dictionary, but because it’s a strange one.

Adverbs often derive from adjectives: smart/smartly, nice/nicely, true/truly. So the adverb predominantly makes sense as a form of the adjective predominant. But predominate is a verb, and verbs don’t usually spin off adverb forms: walk/walkly, know/knowly, keep/keeply, dominate/dominately.

Chalk this one up as another example of our ever-surprising language.

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February 10, 2025

Can 'quote' mean 'quotation'?

Years ago, someone told me you can’t use the word “quote” to mean “quotation.” As in, you can’t say, “There aren’t enough quotes in this article.” You have to say, “There aren’t enough quotations in this article.”

I think it came with a little lecture on nouns vs. verbs — that is, that “quote” is a verb, you quote someone, and “quotation” is a noun, you use his quotation. But I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.

When you get a piece of advice like this, the logical thing to do is check it. The answer’s as close as the nearest dictionary. So of course, I didn’t. I just spent the next who-knows-how-many years deleting “quote” and replacing it with “quotation” anytime I was worried who might see it.

There’s an old saying about laziness — something about how it ends up causing you more work. I’m sure I could find it if I tried.

But instead, I’ll spend my one precious bit of energy today looking up “quote.”

Surprise, surprise. In Merriam-Webster’s, Webster’s New World, and American Heritage dictionaries, after its main entry as a verb, it says that “quote” can also be a noun — a synonym of “quotation.”

So all these years I could have been saying, “Let’s add another quote” or “I don’t like this quote” instead of worrying that I’d get rapped on the knuckles for not using “quotation” instead.

What’s that famous quote? “Better late than never”?

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February 3, 2025

Dashes, colons and commas should often be replaced by a period

Are you a dashaholic? It’s a thing, apparently. I’m more of a colon abuser myself: as if everything I write is so important it requires the colon’s drumroll effect. I’ve known more than a few comma junkies, too.

No matter your punctuation poison, there’s an easy antidote. The period. Let’s look at the role of each of these marks and how not to abuse them.

Dashes are widely misunderstood. A lot of people call hyphens dashes. Heck, even I call hyphens dashes when I’m reading my insurance policy number over the phone: “Two, nine, three, dash, one, one, eight.” But in text, dashes are something quite different. Unlike hyphens that connect a word with another word, prefix or suffix, as in “best-dressed,” dashes work at the sentence level — like this.

Dashes have two main jobs. A dash can signify an abrupt change in sentence structure — a shift like this that doesn’t fit with the grammar of the first part of the sentence. Or a dash can work like parentheses — setting off lists, parenthetical information, etc. — when you feel parentheses won’t cut it. Rules for dashes do not say you can use them to join complete clauses — this clause is an example. This is one of the most common abuses of the dash I see — people use them to string together two things that could stand alone as sentences. I suppose a loose interpretation of that “abrupt change in sentence structure” rule makes this OK. But when I’m editing, I make each clause into its own sentence, separating them with a period.

By the way, we’re talking about em dashes, not en dashes, which are shorter, less widely used and have more in common with a hyphen than with a dash. En dashes are often seen in compounds like “post-World War II,” connecting longer names and proper names with prefixes and other words. Dating back to days when newswires couldn’t transmit certain marks, news media have traditionally avoided the en dash and today just use a hyphen instead.

Colons are similar to dashes, just with a little more oomph: They set off an idea from a main sentence, but they suggest a greater emphasis. This can be a single word, as in this Associated Press Stylebook example: “He had only one hobby: eating.” Or one or more complete sentences can follow the colon. If the words that follow the colon don’t make up a complete sentence, don’t capitalize the first letter. But if one or more sentences is introduced by a colon, capitalize the first letter. Never double-space after a colon.

Colons can also introduce examples and lists, as in this sentence from the Chicago Manual of Style. “The watch came with a choice of three bands: stainless steel, plastic or leather.” But never use a colon after the word “including” to set up a list. “The watch came with a choice of four bands including stainless steel, plastic and leather.””

Colons that scream “listen to what I’m about to say” too loudly should probably be replaced by a period. I’ll try to take my own advice on this.

Commas have a lot of jobs, but they can’t connect two independent clauses without an “and,” “or” or “but.” This sentence is an example of a comma splice, you shouldn’t use commas this way.

Technically, a semicolon can link independent clauses. But they shouldn’t because — well, yuck. Semicolons to link clauses make sentences longer and less readable with nothing to gain except a chance for the writer to show off her knowledge of semicolons. Rude.

Dashes, colons and commas have a proper role to play between clauses. But if you’re using them to cram multiple ideas into a single sentence, ask yourself whether a period would make the passage more palatable to your reader.

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January 27, 2025

Don't assume 'each' is the subject of the verb. Sometimes it's an adjective.

OK, fellow wordy types: See if you can spot the grammar mistake I fixed when editing the following sentence.

“Our team wrote, published and promoted a series of 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly.”

Don’t see a problem? Don’t feel bad. This was a tough one. In this sentence, the verb “honors” should be “honor.”

If you have an advanced understanding of the word “each,” this edit may seem wrong to you. But hear me out, because this isn’t your typical “each.”

Grammar buffs know that “each” is usually singular, which means it gets a singular verb. “Each has its issues.” “Each knows the way.” “Each is better than the last.”

We can also see the singular nature of “each” in sentences like “to each his own.” If “each” were plural, we’d get “to each their own,” which is clearly wrong.

When “each” refers to a unit that contains multiple individuals — for example, a family — it may be more natural to treat “each” as plural: “A number of families will participate and each have their own priorities.” This is called “notional agreement” and it’s a legitimate reason to give “each” a plural verb, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Otherwise, if “each” could only be singular, we’d have to write: “A number of families will participate and each has its own priorities.” That could work, too. But you can see how the rule loosens up in these situations.

But that doesn’t explain why I changed “each honors” to “each honor” in our original sentence. To understand why the plural verb “honor” is correct, we have to dive deeper into the word “each.”

Those of us who were taught that “each” is singular didn’t get the full story. That rule deals with only one form of “each” — the pronoun form. But “each” isn’t exclusively a pronoun. It can also be an adjective or an adverb. In those cases, “each” is not the subject of the verb. Instead there’s some other noun or pronoun in the sentence that governs the number of the verb.

Here's an example from Merriam’s: “They each have too many possible meanings.” There’s no disputing the correctness of that verb conjugation. The alternative, “They each has,” is clearly ridiculous. The subject of the verb is “they,” which is plural, and not  “each.”

Another example from Merriam’s:  “If we and our Atlantic community partners each take our respective share.”  The subject here is the plural “we and our partners.” So “its share” or “my share” wouldn’t work. We need the plural “our share.”

Merriam’s says these are examples of “each” as an adjective. That’s not how I see it. To me, these sentences show “each” in its adverb form, describing not the noun or pronoun but the action. In “We and our partners each take,” I see “each” as modifying the verb “take,” which would make it an adverb.

Back to our original sentence: “We wrote, published and promoted a series of 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly.”

If “each” had been the subject of the verb — “each honors a veteran” — then the singular verb “honors” would be correct. But that’s not how the sentence is structured. Instead, the true subject of the verb is “stories,” plural. The “each” isn’t a pronoun, so it’s not the subject of the verb. We’re not saying “each honors.” We’re saying “stories honor,” which is why I made the edit.

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January 20, 2025

Rightly right, wrongly wrong

Here are two weird words: wrong and right. And when I say they’re weird, I mean their adverb forms.

Do it right. Don’t do it wrong.

In both those sentences, right and wrong are functioning adverbially. They’re modifying the verb do. But neither ends with ly.

That’s not weird in and of itself. There are lots of “flat adverbs” in English. For example, if you look up quick and slow in the dictionary, you’ll see they can be used as adverbs in place of quickly and slowly.

Think quick.

Drive slow.

But right and wrong are different because they’re actually more standard as adverbs than their ly counterparts: rightly and wrongly.

Do it rightly and Don't do it wrongly both sound weird compared to Do it right and Don't do it wrong.

Of course, glaringly obvious reality doesn't stop everyone. Some are too eager to leap to assumptions you're wrong, like the guy who e-scolded me years ago when I wrote the sentence: Be careful not to use it wrong.

Here was his reply:

Dear June,

It seems that you do not agree that only adverbs can modify verbs. ... One cannot use anything "wrong," only "wrongly." "Incorrectly" would be a more appropriate adverb to use. ... In your incorrect use of "wrong" there is no doubt that you are wrong. I therefor challenge you to admit your mistake in a follow-up article for all to read. I am not holding my breath."

More amazing: He was one of two people who wrote to spank me for that "error."

I did, in fact, print their remarks in a subsequent column (without too much snickering at the misspelled "therefor"), with the note:

Please open your dictionaries to the word "wrong." Please see that, following the first cluster of definitions under "adj.," adjective, comes the abbreviation "adv." Adverb. "Wrong" is an adverb. And you are both wrong.

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January 13, 2025

Reader mail: Can 'won' mean 'beat'?

A while back, a reader of my column wrote to ask about "won" vs. "beat." He wanted to know whether “John won his opponent" can be used to mean "John beat his opponent."

He added:

Also, isn't "won" also referencing ownership? Jon won the trophy.  I hope you have the time to respond as I have a bet with my wife on the correct use.

After a few minutes of staring at my computer screen like a dog stares at a TV test pattern, here's what I replied:

Hi, Robert.

Are you saying you've heard folks say "John won his opponent" to mean he defeated his opponent? That's a new one on me.

As a transitive verb, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary definitions of win include to get, to gain, to attain, and to be successful in. In none of those usages does it seem that a person could logically follow (unless, of course, the person is the prize: Achilles won Briseis). The only times a human seems an appropriate object of that transitive verb is in definitions like to win someone over and to gain someone's support or sympathy — neither of which equates to defeat.

So, unless I'm missing something, the Ravens didn't win the Patriots.

As for Robert's other question: Does "win" mean "ownership"? Not necessarily. Some definitions include enough elbow room for that, others don't seem to. You don't really own an argument you won, do you?

Anyway, I wrote to Robert, "I hope that helps (and I hope your wife doesn't hate me now!)."

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January 6, 2025

Things editors worry about that no one else does (or should)

There are a lot of things I change in the course of my editing work that, in the real world, don't matter at all.

that and which

toward and towards

among and amongst

amid and amidst

underway and under way

cellphone and cell phone

healthcare and health care

child care and childcare

For about 99% of the population, these choices matter not at all. That is, you can say your character ran toward the explosion or he ran towards it. They mean the same thing. And almost no one will notice your choice anyway.

But editors will. And if you put the sentence "Joe ran towards the explosion" under the nose of an editor or copy editor, chances are it'll get changed to "toward."

The reason? Well, a lot of editing choices are about consistency, some are about efficiency, some are about voice and some, like that and which, are about nothing at all.

Style guides say that you can't use which for what are called restrictive clauses: That is the car which I'll be driving. But that's just a style rule, not a grammar rule. And most people wouldn't put which in that sentence anyway. Either that or nothing at all would be better.

For cases like health care and healthcare in which you have to choose between a one-word and a two-word form, it often doesn't matter. Dictionaries disagree on which is correct, and some allow both. So you can either check your preferred dictionary or just not worry about it.

As for amongst and amidst, however, I'd actually recommend cashing those in for their shorter cousins, among and amid, in most cases. The longer forms are so unpopular in professional publishing that they carry a subtle air of amateurishness in a lot of cases. Or maybe that's just my warped view. Bottom line: Unless you're the editor, you probably don't have to worry about any of these.

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December 30, 2024

5 language resolutions for the new year

Even if you know a lot about grammar, there’s always more to learn. And what better time than the start of a new year? Here are some language resolutions to consider for 2025.

1. Challenge a long-standing language belief by checking a dictionary.

Unless you have a Ph.D. in linguistics, chances are you’ve fallen victim to some misperceptions. Think “since” can’t mean “because”? Think “between” is never for groups of three or more? Think a university can’t “graduate” a student? A quick check of a dictionary will dispel all these beliefs.

2. Learn one new grammar term.

Up your grammar game with a bit of advanced jargon. I suggest “modal auxiliary verb.” You use them every day, anyway, so why not? The most common modal auxiliary verbs are “must,” “can,” “should,” “would,” “may” and “might.” They’re similar to the two regular auxiliary verbs — “be” and “have” — in that they team up with other verbs (think: “I have walked” and “I am walking”). But modal auxiliaries express possibility (may, might), necessity (must), permission (may), ability (can), etc. Congratulations. You just learned a new grammar term. Did you already know about modals? Try looking up predicate nominatives, copular verbs or subordinating conjunctions.

3. Learn to conjugate one verb in a new language.

I’ve talked to a lot of people over the years who’ve tried and failed to pick up a foreign language. When I ask how they studied, the answer is often some app or language software marketed to adults with the promise of “easy, practical” learning. That is, handy phrases that go in one ear and out the other. In my humble opinion, there’s a better way: grammar. At least in the Latin-based languages I’ve studied, if you can’t say “I am,” “you are,” “he/she/it is,” “we are” and “they are,” you don’t have a foundation to build on. Start with just one verb and you’ll be well on your way to forming your first sentences.

4. Learn an irregular past form.

Not sure if it’s right to say, “I have swam” or “I have swum”? Do “drank” and “drunk” or “hanged” and “hung” or “woke,” “awoke” and “awakened” trip you up? Resolve to learn just one. Check the main form of the word — “swim,” “drink,” “hang,” “wake” — in a dictionary, then look at the bolded forms that immediately follow. Under “drink,” for example, you’ll see “drank,” which you know is the simple past tense because those are always listed first, after which you’ll see the past participles indicated with “drunk or drank,” meaning both are acceptable with the auxiliary “have”: I have drank and I have drunk. If that’s not advanced enough for you, memorize the past forms of both “lie” and “lay.”  For  the most proper use of “lie,” the simple past is “lay” (yesterday I lay), and the past participle is “lain” (in the past I have lain). For “lay,” both past forms are the same (yesterday I laid, in the past I have laid).

5. Use “me” in a compound object.

You’d never say, “Thanks for visiting I” or “Send the memo to I,” so why do you say, “Thanks for visiting Beth and I” and “Send the memo to Tom and I”? Somewhere along the line, too many of us got it into our heads that “me” is wrong anytime another person is involved. But that’s not true. The object of a verb (like “visit”) or a preposition (like “to”) doesn’t change form just because it’s more than one person: Try dropping the other person from your sentence to see whether “I” or “me” works alone. Then add the other person back in. Between you and me (not I), it’s not exactly wrong to use “I” in an object position. But it’s a shame if you do so because you were trying (and failing) to use proper English.

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