Month: January 2011

by Jennie Ruby

Who's Who books do have their grammar right. The proper usage is Who is who. But wait, you might be thinking, just last week, Jennie, you were telling us that we use who as the subject and whom as the object. Isn't the second who in Who is Who an object?

If you can ask that question, you have reached at least the intermediate level in the game of correctly choosing between who and whom. At this level, we must distinguish between action verbs and nonaction, or linking, verbs. The verb to be and all its forms, including is, are, was, were, will be, has been, and all the other forms for the 12 tenses, is a linking verb. It links a subject to one of three things: an adjective describing that subject, a phrase identifying the current location of that subject, or a noun or pronoun that refers to the same person or thing as the subject.

That last situation pertains to the who is who situation. When a linking verb links a subject to a noun or pronoun, it is almost as if that sentence has two subjects. Here is an example:
 

The instructor is Jennie.

In this sentence the instructor and Jennie are actually the same person. In a manner of speaking, then, this sentence has two subjects. You can actually mix and match the two subjects by reversing them, like this:

Jennie is the instructor.

So if a pronoun is in either of the noun positions in a sentence with a linking verb, the pronoun uses its subject form.

She is the instructor.

The instructor is she.

Old King Cole was a merry old soul. 

A merry old soul was he.

And since the word who is a pronoun, it uses its subject form in either position:
 

Who is that? 

That is who?

And, of course,

Who is who?

One thing to remember for these examples: there are no additional words after the word who at the ends of these sentences. If there are words after the word who, then you must enter the advanced level in the who vs. whom game. We'll go there next time. 

Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending my Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class. I also teach the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts class.

About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

by Jennie Ruby

In my most recent online writing class, I noticed that when deleting unnecessary words from a sample sentence, some students wanted to keep the word the before every item in a list, and some wanted to take it out. Here is the original wordy sentence:
 

You must order the lumber, as well as the nails, additionally to include the concrete and the sealant, at the very beginning of the planning stages of the project.

Here is the revised version, a simple list:

You must order the lumber, the nails, the concrete and the sealant at the beginning of the project.

Do we need the word the before every item? Grammatically, the choices are to repeat the word the before every item or use it in front of just the first item. Here is how the sentence looks without the repeated the.

You must order the lumber, nails, concrete and sealant at the beginning of the project.

The grammar is correct, but to me, the sentence now sounds too rushed or clipped. It has less of the feel of enumerating multiple items to be ordered. Now it sounds like lumber, nails, concrete and sealant are all one big thing to be ordered as a unit.

At this point, I think the sentence would sound better if we left off even the first instance of the:

You must order lumber, nails, concrete and sealant at the beginning of the project.

This version of the sentence sounds really smooth, but now the implication is that you are ordering general supplies, whereas including the word the meant that you were ordering the specific lumber, etc., needed for the project.

So here we have tried out three different ways to present this list and examined the slight differences in meaning, tone or emphasis. The one thing we cannot do with this list is include the word the randomly for some of the items and not others. You cannot use the on the first, third, and last items, for example, while omitting it from the second item. This rule is called parallelism-items in a list must be parallel in structure. But exactly how you make them parallel is a choice based on meaning, tone and emphasis. 

Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending my Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class. I also teach the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts class.

About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.