Sonia Jaffe Robbins, Editing Workshop, G54.1123, WEEK II

Grammar concerns the rules that govern how words are formed and put together in written and spoken language. Native speakers learn these rules unconsciously, in the ordinary course of learning to speak, and many of the rules that apply to writing are never explicitly articulated unless they are learned in school, and promptly forgotten.

Grammar also provides the copy editor with the vocabulary needed to analyze problems in written language and to explain the problems and their solutions to the writer. What follows is the basic grammar vocabulary copy editors use. The lost art of diagramming reveals visually how these grammatical forms relate to each other. Prof. Charles Darling's PowerPoint presentation shows diagramming in action.

PARTS OF SPEECH

noun

person, place, or thing; may be a common noun (mother, building, institution) or a proper noun (Leah, Madison Square Garden, Common Cause)

Nouns are usually preceded by an article: a, an, the. Plural nouns often have no article.

pronoun

substitutes for a noun; can be personal (it, he, her, they), indefinite (anyone, none, most), relative and interrogative (that, which, who), and demonstrative (this, those). Pronouns have different forms depending on whether they are subjects or objects.

verb

expresses action, state of being, or happening; the essential element of any sentence (go, be, do, say, hop); almost any verb can be a complete sentence by itself.

Verbs have tense (present, past, future, etc.), voice (active, passive), number, person, and other forms not commonly found in journalism (mood [subjunctive]; aspect).

Participles are a verb form that share the features of other parts of speech, such as adjective, nouns (or gerunds), adverbs, or verb phrases, and may be present (appearing) or past ( appeared).

adjective

describes a noun or pronoun (happy, blue, empty)

A possessive is a specific form of adjective indicating possession (Jean's car; Steve's book), most commonly formed by adding 's, but, for effect, may be formed with a prepositional of phrase (the works of men and women, the books of the Bible). Pronoun possessives, however, do NOT add the apostrophe (its, hers, theirs).

adverb

describes a verb, adjective, another adverb, phrase, or clause; in English, adverbs often end in -ly (hopefully, restively, very, then)

preposition

indicates relationships and links words or phrases to nouns, to verbs, or to adjectives (of, to, at, by, in, with); prepositions almost always exist as part of a prepositional phrase (The mayor went to his office; She is at the topof her form; The rocket whizzed by their heads)

conjunction

joins or separates words, phrases, or clauses; may be coordinating, joining terms of equal weight (and, but, or, yet, while), or subordinating, joining terms of unequal weight (after, although, before, since, unless)

interjection

an exclamation of emotion, without any other grammatical structure (Wow! Oh, my! ah); often the only excuse for using an exclamation point

SENTENCE COMPONENTS

predicate

the verb and any of its modifiers (adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc.) that describe what is happening in the sentence; the essential element of a sentence (Get out of here right now). The simple predicate is the verb (Get out of here right now.)

subject

the doer of the action in the predicate (The elected president was inaugurated last week). The simple subject is the specific noun (The elected president was inaugurated last week.)

object

the noun that receives the action of the verb; objects can be direct (Give me the book) or indirect (Give me the book).

clause

a group of related words that includes a subject and a predicate; an independent clause is a complete sentence (An independent clause is a complete sentence). A dependent clause is not a complete sentence (If a dependent clause is not a complete sentence, what is it?).

antecedent, aka referrent

the noun a pronoun is substituting for; the pronoun should always follow its antecedent, never precede it; the pronoun should also closely follow its antecedent

restrictive, essential; nonrestrictive, nonessential

nouns, phrases, or clauses that are either essential to the meaning of a sentence (restrictive) or not essential (nonrestrictive). Commas usually set off nonessential elements of a sentence, while essential elements must not be separated by commas. (Sarah's sister, Jean, is moving to Florida to be near their brother Charles. The commas indicate that Jean is not restrictive because Sarah has only one sister, while Charles is restrictive because Sarah has more than one brother. In this sentence, the names are appositives; see below.)

appositive

word or words that add information and may be restrictive or nonrestrictive

SOME COMMON GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS

agreement

Subject, verb, and pronoun should agree in number. Common problems include the collective noun (singular or plural?), noun followed by a prepositional phrase (does verb agree with subject noun or with object of prepositional phrase?), apparently singular subject (noun or pronoun) in an independent clause as antecedent for pronoun subject in compound sentence. Which is correct in the following examples?

The committee adhere/adheres to their/its decision.
The committee signed its/their names to the report.
One of the women is/are absent today.
Is she one of the women who was/were picketing?
The audience rose as one, and put on its/their coats.
Rolls-Royce has/have announced plans to open a factory in Albania.

dangling modifier, aka dangling participle, misplaced modifier, dangler

A descriptive clause or phrase that either refers to nothing in the sentence or is in the wrong part of the sentence for what it modifies is said to "dangle."

Living in this house, the noise is driving me crazy

false titles

False titles are created by piling up adjectives before a proper noun. How could the following sentences be improved?

Nero Wolf book lovers may be interested to know that Norton/Rex Stout-estate endorsed Wolf franchise author Sharon Witkowski is expected to produce a book a year over the course of her five-year contract.
Community college math teacher, former campus radical, and ex-Weatherman Mark Rudd was an underground fugitive for seven years in the 1970s.

irregular verbs

Verbs that do not follow the normal pattern of adding d or ed to form the past tense and past participle and ing to form the present participle. English does not have many of these, but here are a few examples (in the first-person singular).

present	past	present participle	past participle
go	went	going	gone
be	was	being	been
shrink	shrank	shrinking	shrunk

run-on sentence, aka comma splice

two independent clauses joined only by a comma (The director ordered a complete audit, the accountants spent several weeks in the organization's office); can usually be fixed by changing the comma to a semicolon or a period, or by adding a conjunction.

the wandering apostrophe

Never use an apostrophe in a verb. Only use an apostrophe with a noun when it acts like an adjective. Where does the apostrophe belong in the following sentence?

The professor split's hairs at a moments notice.

who/whom

Who is the subject; whom is the object. Which are correct in the following sentences?

The actor who/whom won the Academy Award for Best Actor was out of the hall when the award was announced.
Who/Whom did the mayor nominate to be police commissioner?