Month: June 2014

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Writing & Grammar: Qualifying Possessives

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

A frequent reader of this column, Michael Stein, sent in an interesting question about the possessives we have discussed here recently:

Perhaps you could address possessives again in an upcoming column. Specifically, how should a qualifier be added concerning a person in a sentence who possesses something. For example, "We played with John's, the kid who lives in the white house, ball." Is this correct?

Here are my thoughts on this gnarly problem. In his email to me, Michael observed that in the spoken language, we would say,

We played with John, the kid in the white house's ball.

And in fact, there is a sound grammatical grounding for that.

A description in commas right after a name is called an "appositive." The Gregg Reference Manual, my favorite guide for such things, says to add the possessive to the end of the appositive and omit the trailing comma that would ordinarily belong there. The examples, however, are short, as in these:

Washington, DC's streets

Joe the plumber's bill

But I think that in a professional writing context, or with longer appositives, this falls apart and becomes awkward and possibly even confusing:

We saved the file in Tim, the manager for the project's shared folder.

Yech. And is it the project's folder, or Tim's folder? And the way this comes out, it actually means that Tim is not the manager of the project but just of the project's folder. Even the Gregg says to rewrite such sentences to avoid the awkwardness.

So we pretty much have to go for the re-write in order to both identify the person and make the person clearly possessive:

We saved the file in the shared folder belonging to Tim, the manager for the project.

Or

 We saved the file in the folder shared by Tim, the manager for the project.

Or (and I don't dislike this one as much as Michael does)

We saved the file in Tim's shared folder. Tim is the manager for the project.

Long-time readers may sense a pattern here: for many of these awkward, confusing grammar and punctuation conundrums, my solution is to rewrite the sentence. No sentence is sacred. Every sentence can be rewritten. Keep rewriting until everything is correct and works smoothly.

Challenge: Rewrite Around Awkwardness

  1. Margie, my sister in Baltimore's house has a sump pump.
  2. The tree with the hanging swing's strong limb is beginning to bend.
  3. The day on which her son is to graduates's date is May 30.
  4. The cabin with the gravel driveway's fishpond overflowed last week.
  5. The golf cart with the broken wheel's driver was not injured in the crash.

As always, please post your answers as comments below.

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Answers to the challenge on single quotation marks are brought to you by Jenny Zoffuto. Her clean-looking examples for numbers 1, 4, and 5 come from not giving special treatment to the defined word when the sentence is clear without it.

  1. In a client-side application, the accessing computer does the calculations.
  2. The instructor said; "As Laura LeMay stated in the assigned reading, 'For more control over your sounds, you'll need different software.'"
  3. Her boyfriend said, "The top song on my favorite radio channel says, 'You are perfect in my mind,' and I think it is talking about you!"
  4. "The Wicked Ale effect," according to my colleague, "Is a marketing technique for covering several media at the same time."
  5. A picture placed directly in the text, rather than floating, is called an in-line graphic.

Alternative correct answers came in from Kay Honaker. Notice what she did with the Wicked Ale example (no. 4). The single quotes are not the British usage, but are in fact what happens to double-quotes when they occur inside of an already double-quoted sentence. Nicely done!

  1. In a "client-side" [or client-side] application, the accessing computer does the calculations.
  2. The instructor said, "As Laura LeMay stated in the assigned reading, 'For more control over your sounds, you'll need different software.'"
  3. Her boyfriend said, "The top song on my favorite radio channel says, 'You are perfect in my mind,' and I think it is talking about you!"
  4. "The 'Wicked Ale effect,'" according to my colleague, "is a marketing technique for covering several media at the same time." [also could be done without quoting the colleague, and just putting quotes on the defined word]
  5. A picture placed directly in the text, rather than floating, is called an "in-line" graphic.

Correct answers also came in from Ginny Supranowitz. And I missed one from last time: Ginny should have been listed as a winner on the British spelling challenge. Thanks for letting me know!

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Flipped Learning Gaining Steam

Flipped classrooms are gaining in popularity. If you've never heard of the flipped classroom, here's a definition courtesy of the Flipped Learning Network:

"The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Short video lectures are viewed by students at home before the class session, while in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects, or discussions."

 From the Flipped Learning White Paper:

"A teacher stands at the front of the classroom, delivering a lecture on the Civil War and writing on a white board. Students are hunched over desks arranged in rows, quietly taking notes. At the end of the hour, they copy down the night's homework assignment, which consists of reading from a thick textbook and answering questions at the end of the chapter. This dramatic, defining period in our nation's history, which left questions unanswered that are as relevant today as they were then, has been reduced to a dry, familiar exercise. The teacher is acutely aware that many students do not understand the day's lessons, but he/she does not have the time to meet with them to help during the 50-minute class period. The next day the teacher will collect the homework and briefly review the previous night's reading assignment. But if students have additional questions there won't be time to linger; the class cannot fall behind schedule. There is a lot of material to cover before the test at the end of the unit.

"Although it conflicts with decades of research into effective practices, this model of instruction remains all too common in American K-12 and post secondary classrooms. However, more and more educators now recognize that the learning needs of students, rather than the curriculum pacing guide, should drive their instruction. Educators are developing ways to personalize learning, using technologies such as video, digital simulations, and computer games. However, unless the traditional teaching model is altered, technologies such as these will have limited effects. One alternative model gaining attention and advocates is called Flipped Learning. In this model, some lessons are delivered outside of the group learning space using video or other modes of delivery. Class time, then, is available for students to engage in hands-on learning, collaborate with their peers, and evaluate their progress, and for teachers to provide one-on-one assistance, guidance, and inspiration."

Read the full White Paper.

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How hot is flipped learning? Check out these factoids:

  • Two years ago, 73% of teachers recognized the term "Flipped Classroom," in 2014 that is up to 96%
  • Two years ago, 48% of teachers had flipped a lesson; in 2014 that is up to 78%
  • 96% of teachers who have flipped a lesson or unit would recommend that method to other teachers
  • Flipped classroom teachers indicated that a majority of students with special needs, English language learners from low income households, and those in advanced placement classes particularly benefit from flipped learning
  • The majority of flipped teaching still occurs in high school–however the number of elementary teachers and college instructors has increased over the past 2 years
  • Over the past 2 years, flipped instruction has expanded in all subject areas

Source: Sophia.org.