Category: Writing & Grammar

Posted on

Writing & Grammar: Answers to Periods with Abbreviations Challenge

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn
 
A few weeks ago I issued a challenge to standardize the abbreviations in the following paragraph using either the general audience or the scientific audience rules:

The flowerbed should be 12 feet wide and 5 ft deep. To determine how much sunlight the area receives, start at 5:30 AM and observe the area at 1-hour intervals until 8:00 p.m. I prefer to use the guidelines published by Ms Good Gardener in her blog, but you may want to consult others if your garden is outside of the US. Also be aware that some plants are sensitive to U.v. radiation. You can find additional information on the amount of sunlight your lawn receives by typing your Z.I.P. code into a search tool. If your garden is big enough, you may need an ATV to get from one side to the other with all your tools. FYI, yours truly once had an RV and an S.U.V., but now drives a Prius.

Making abbreviations consistent is one of the most difficult areas of editing. Here are some tips on things that slipped through in the revisions by various respondents:

The acronym for Zoning Improvement Plan, according to bothThe Gregg Reference Manual and the Associated Press stylebook, should always be written this way: ZIP code.

The social title Ms. should have a period in American English, to match Mr., even though it is technically not an actual abbreviation.

If you are abbreviating the measurements, such as ft for feet, you should abbreviate hours (h), minutes (min), and seconds (s) also. And notice that you don't add an s to the plurals of units of measure or time or their abbreviations.

In the phrase "outside of the US," almost every style guide agrees, US should be spelled out as United States. The short form US should be used only as an adjective in front of another word, as in US Navy, and not as a noun on its own.

No respondent escaped unscathed the wrath of my eagle editorial eyes, but Sonia Verma comes the closest, having missed only the "US as a noun" thing. Here is her paragraph:

The flowerbed should be 12 ft. wide and 5 ft. deep. To determine how much sunlight the area receives, start at 5:30 AM and observe the area at hourly intervals until 8:00 PM. I prefer to use the guidelines published by Ms. Good Gardener in her blog, but you may want to consult others if your garden is outside of the US [s/b United States]. Also, be aware that some plants are sensitive to UV radiation. You can find additional information on the amount of sunlight your lawn receives by typing your ZIP code into a search tool. If your garden is big enough, you may need an ATV to get from one side to the other with all your tools. FYI, yours truly once had an RV and an SUV, but now drives a Prius.

Posted on

Writing & Grammar: Periods with Abbreviations

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn
 
Should I use periods in the abbreviation U.S.? What about USA? What about Mr. and Ms.? What about m, s, ft, in? Wait, what were those? They were meter(s), second(s), feet, and inches.
 
The issue of periods with abbreviations is largely a style matter–a matter of convention. Knowing what the conventions are will make you a faster writer and editor. You won't have to stop and wonder and Google these and accidentally be drawn into those endlessly intriguing "This five-year-old walked out, winked at the audience, and you will never believe what happened next!" videos. (Don't bother to look. I just made that one up.) 

Instead, you can punctuate or not punctuate, create your own style guide if necessary, and get on with your writing.

So here are some general guidelines that will get you through punctuating abbreviations and acronyms.

Guideline 1: Make an arbitrary decision, right now, about US/U.S. and UN/U.N. It is a coin toss.

Guideline 2: Are you in a scientific/technical field? Or is your writing for a more general audience? Pick one, and then go to the matching section below.

General Audience

Guideline 3: Abbreviate units of measure only when preceded by a number. And even then, only if they occur a lot in your material. If you abbreviate units of measure, use lowercase letters and periods.

We asked how many feet the water rose during the flood.

They installed a 10-in. border around the flowerbed, which was a 3 ft. by 12 ft. area on the south lawn.

Guideline 4: If it is only one capital letter, use a period.

Guideline 5: If it is all capital letters, no periods. If there are any lowercase letters in the abbreviation, use periods.

Mr.

Ms.

Ph.D.

Guideline 6: Make an arbitrary decision right now:

am and pm

or

a.m. and p.m.

or

AM and PM

Scientific/technical audience

Guideline 3: Abbreviate units of measure even when not preceded by a number. Don't use periods, except with in. for inch, because it matches the word in.

Guidelines 4 and 5: Almost never use periods for any abbreviation. See your style guide for exceptions.

Guideline 6: Why aren't you using the 24-hr system?

***

Challenge

Standardize the abbreviations in this paragraph. Use either the general audience or the scientific audience rules. Caution: there may be other stylistic issues besides the punctuation of the abbreviations.

The flowerbed should be 12 feet wide and 5 ft deep. To determine how much sunlight the area receives, start at 5:30 AM and observe the area at 1-hour intervals until 8:00 p.m. I prefer to use the guidelines published by Ms Good Gardener in her blog, but you may want to consult others if your garden is outside of the US. Also be aware that some plants are sensitive to U.v. radiation. You can find additional information on the amount of sunlight your lawn receives by typing your Z.I.P. code into a search tool. If your garden is big enough, you may need an ATV to get from one side to the other with all your tools. FYI, yours truly once had an RV and an S.U.V., but now drives a Prius.

When you're ready, feel free to post your answers below.
Posted on

Writing & Grammar: Parallelism

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn
 
Use parallel grammatical structures for parallel concepts. That is the grammatical rule called parallelism.
 
If you are going to use two verbs with one subject, for example, the two verbs have to be parallel in structure.

Not parallel: Ben had both to attend the ceremony and was going to the rehearsal.

Parallel: Ben had to both attend the ceremony and go to the rehearsal.

The examples I see in the grammar materials I teach from are often like the example above, where the verb is the only thing mismatched. However, in real life, or in the wild, things get a lot more messy.

A student I worked with last week was struggling with a bullet list with interlocking, nonparallel items. I have had other students send me similar lists asking for help in disentangling multiple problems at once.

Challenge

This week your challenge is to solve these gnarly parallelism problems. Two of these are examples I randomly found while reading magazine articles, and one is made up based on my student's text. Credit will be given to the best rewrite of each of these examples.

  1. At XYZ company, we strive to help people
    • Engage with the materials in a new way that let's them
      • Work asynchronously
      • And also allows self-monitoring of course progress through our LMS
    • While it also gives us reporting functions and
    • Allows for full statistical analysis with visual graphing.
  2. "You never saw them coming, and it's enough to knock you right off your chair and lose your concentration."
  3. "I'm all for companies making the lives of employees more fulfilling, engaging and satisfying, but that means designing game systems that enhance work, and not simply try to exploit workers." 

As always, please send your answers directly to me.

***

Answers to Last Week's Challenge

The answers to my last challenge are brought to you by Anne Goldenberger. Correct responses also came in from Joanne Chantelau Hofmeister, Michele Rose, and Ginny Supranowitz.

  1. The doctor standing by the podium, Dr. Jasper Caspar, is a specialist in joint repair.
  2. A very important concept, grouping, will be discussed in the next section.
  3. ABC Senior Director Sing will speak at the all-hands meeting.
  4. The one topic we should not ignore, reproducibility, is the very one we most often neglect.
  5. The very important insect drosophila melanogasteris the topic of our next lesson.
  6. This insect's main predator, the predaceous wasp,cannot alone control the population.

And for Chris [last name withheld to protect the innocent but you know who you are], I can imagine a scenario for number 2 where the comma after grouping could correctly be left off, so I'm giving credit for that. Here is the difference:

With both commas, the sentence says "A very important concept will be discussed in the next section." The word concept is the subject of the sentence and grouping is a grammatically nonessential interruption. But what if in the previous sentence something about grouping had been said, such as "Some of you may be wondering why we have not yet discussed grouping. A very important concept, grouping will be discussed in the next section." Here, the phrase "a very important concept" serves as an adjectival phrase modifying the word grouping, and the word grouping is the subject of the sentence. Hope that helps. But for number 5, the second comma is required.

Posted on

Writing & Grammar: More Commas

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

Answers to last week's challenge on commas are brought to you by Joanne Chantelau Hofmeister. Other respondents with all answers correct were Roslyn G. Hager, Anne Goldenberger, Douglas Daniel Blackley, and Vera Sytch. And, yes, number 4 was correct as written, meaning that technically the instructions should have mentioned that. Nevertheless, 55% of respondents answered correctly.

Number 2 elicited the most errors. Look carefully at that opening noun phrase, "The president of Super Simplistic Solutions." Because of the word the, this phrase completely identifies the one individual who is the subject of the sentence. His name is then grammatically nonessential. Contrast that with number 6, where the job title is used in front of the name without the word a or the. For that reason, the job title does not stand alone as a noun fully identifying the subject. Instead, it is merely an adjective modifying the proper noun George Baker. But be careful. Sometimes the word the or the word a may be present, but the opening phrase still does not narrow the discussion to one specific noun. Check out the examples in this week's new challenge on essential versus nonessential appositives.

Answers to Last Week's Challenge: Add or subtract commas to correctly punctuate these sentences

  1. "Another electrolyte, potassium, works with sodium to generate the electrical current necessary for muscle function."
  2. The president of Super Simplistic Solutions, Biff Bifferson, opened the competition to clients as well as staffers.
  3. A nurse's aide, Jon Boxco, greets each patient at the desk.
  4. "Important for bones and teeth, this element is even more essential in cell physiology."
  5. Ramakrishna Sing, a research associate at the National University, created a new way to purify water.
  6. Administrative associate George Baker set up the new device.
  7. Built just a year ago, the senior center is already full.

This Week's Grammar Challenge: Essential versus nonessential appositives

  1. The doctor standing by the podium Dr. Jasper Caspar is a specialist in joint repair.
  2. A very important concept grouping will be discussed in the next section.
  3. ABC Senior Director Sing will speak at the all-hands meeting.
  4. The one topic we should not ignore reproducibility is the very one we most often neglect.
  5. The very important insect drosophila melanogaster is the topic of our next lesson.
  6. This insect's main predator the predaceous wasp cannot alone control the population.
Feel free to post your answers as comments below.
Posted on

Writing & Grammar: Is a Comma Necessary?

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

When adding a job title or description before or after someone's name, you have to decide whether you need commas. You need two commas if you have inserted a nonessential additional description after your noun. If you feel that your first word or noun in the sentence is specific enough that the reader needs no further information in order to identify it, then a subsequent interruption to give further description should be surrounded by commas, like this:

My only child, Jim, is applying to colleges right now.

The words "my only child" are specific enough to fully identify who I am talking about. They narrow my discussion to one human being. Giving his name is merely additional, nonessential information. The term nonessential refers to whether the information is needed in order to narrow the discussion down to the one person or thing I am talking about.

My cousin Ruth called one day last week.

The name Ruth is essential in this sentence, because I have more than 20 cousins. In my family, the words "my cousin" do not fully do the job of narrowing the discussion down to one person. It doesn't matter whether my readers know that–the fact that I know it is enough. I know that the specific name is needed for precise identification of the person I am talking about.

The File menu, located at the upper left of the screen, contains the Share command.

Here, the words "the File menu" fully identify the exact part of the software being discussed. The additional description "located at the upper left of the screen" is not essential for precisely identifying which screen item you mean.

If you start your sentence with a job title right before a name, don't put a comma between the job title and the name, and don't put one after the name, either:

Instructional designer Bob Henderson will show us how to plan our lesson.

But if you put the word a or an before the job title, meaning you are using it generically, then you do need the commas:

An instructional designer, Bob Henderson, will show us how to plan our lesson.

If you start your sentence with a description that applies to the subject of the sentence, use just one comma to separate the introductory description from the beginning of the sentence:

Built just last year, the parking structure was already overcrowded.

Challenge: Add or subtract commas to correctly punctuate these sentences

  1. "Another electrolyte, potassium works with sodium to generate the electrical current necessary for muscle function."
  2. The president of Super Simplistic Solutions Biff Bifferson, opened the competition to clients as well as staffers.
  3. A nurse's aide Jon Boxco, greets each patient at the desk.
  4. "Important for bones and teeth, this element is even more essential in cell physiology."
  5. Ramakrishna Sing, a research associate at the National University  created a new way to purify water.
  6. Administrative associate, George Baker, set up the new device.
  7. Built just a year ago the senior center is already full.
When ready, send your answers directly to me.
 
***
Last Week's Challenge

Answers to the prepositional phrase challenge are brought to you by Karyn R. Smith, except for the second one in number 5, which is brought to you by Elisia Getts.

  1. The pigeons [on the balcony] ate the leaves off [of the chrysanthemum]. Adjective; adjective.
  2. [Because of the sudden noise], the birds all flew [from the railing] [at once]. Adverb; adjective; adverb.
  3. [High atop the chimney] is [where the mocking bird] liked to sing. Noun; noun.
  4. The eagle soared [over the building] and [out across the open plain]. Adverb; adverb.
  5. [During the rainstorm], the cats huddled [under the porch]. Adverb; adjective.
  6. [After the quiz], we will return [to the main body] [of the eLearning lesson]. Adverb; adverb; adjective.
Posted on

Writing & Grammar: Prepositional Phrases

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

The prepositional phrase is one of the building blocks of our language. It adds a noun to your sentence while simultaneously indicating how it relates to the other information. Being able to identify prepositional phrases will go a long way toward helping you understand the structure of any sentence. And understanding the structure helps you make sure your have designed your sentence in the best way to convey your point.

The classic prepositional phrase looks like this:

preposition the noun

on the table

before the meeting

Variations may have the word a or an instead of the, or may omit the word the altogether:

on time

under water

before noon

Other variations may add adjectives or identifiers before the noun at the end of the phrase:

on the pool table

before the important meeting

of the old, dusty book

Some prepositions are made up of multiple words:

because of

in front of

The prepositional phrase as a whole–as a building block–functions as an adjective, an adverb, or a noun within the larger sentence. Here are examples of each:

The earphones on the table belong to me. (adjective identifying earphones)

The class ended before noon. (adverb indicating when the action took place)

Before the important meeting was not the best time to call. (noun serving as subject)

Challenge

Identify all of the prepositional phrases. Extra credit: name the function in the sentence for each. (If you have a copy of the Abrams' Guide to Grammar, you can find a list of nearly all the prepositions in English on page 13.)

  1. The pigeons on the balcony ate the leaves off of the chrysanthemum.
  2. Because of the sudden noise, the birds all flew from the railing at once.
  3. High atop the chimney is where the mocking bird liked to sing.
  4. The eagle soared over the building and out across the open plain.
  5. During the rainstorm, the cats huddled under the porch.
  6. After the quiz, we will return to the main body of the eLearning lesson.

Feel free to post your answers as comments below.

***

Here are the correct answers to the challenge on There is versus There are, brought to you by Vera Sytch. The following respondents also gave 100% correct answers (in approximately chronological order): Chris Zimmel, Geri A. Moran, Ginny Supranowitz, Toni Wills, Krista Allen, Susan Grogan, Lacinda Vangieson, Sandra Lary, Linda Tromanhauser, Kolja Fuchs.

  1. There is/are two dialog boxes and three messages yet to get through.
  2. There is/are some plants on the balcony that need to be brought in before the frost.
  3. There has to be/have to be compelling reasons for omitting the planning stage.
  4. There has been/have been such a ruckus about the new upgrade schedule that some developers have turned elsewhere.
  5. There was/were a number of professional trainers involved in the program's development.
Posted on

Writing & Grammar: “There is” Versus “There are” and “A Number Of”

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

Starting your sentence with one of these "false subjects" may not always be the best choice (as I discussed last time in my article Talk About People), but when you do start a sentence with the word there, you'll want to use correct verb agreement.

Consider this sentence I found on the Internet (yes, identity masked to protect the innocent):

While there is a large number of Content Management Systems (CMS) to choose from, few CMS platforms are more popular and more widely used than [system A and system B].

To fix the grammar of this sentence, we'll have to use two different concepts. The first is how to identify the true subject for which the false subject is a stand-in. The second is deciding whether to use a plural or singular verb with the expression a number of.

When you start a sentence with there, the true subject will be after the verb, like this:

There is one cat under the couch.

The true subject is one cat. If we removed the word there, we would use one cat as the subject of the sentence:

One cat is under the couch.

Compare that sentence with this one:

There are two cats under the couch.

Here are some more examples:

There are four good reasons to use System A.

There is only one way to delete the system file.

Now let's add a more complicated true subject:

There is none of this confusion when you start by learning the basics.

There are plenty of reasons for using system B, also.

Finally, let's look at the phrase a number of. The Gregg Reference Manual, an excellent grammar reference book, tells us that the phrase a number of is plural. In contrast, the number of is singular.

So in our original sentence from the Internet, the true subject,a large number of Content Management Systems is plural. The corrected sentence would read:

While there are a large number of Content Management Systems (CMS) to choose from, few CMS platforms are more popular and more widely used than [system A and system B].

I'll save a discussion of not defining an acronym in the plural for another day.

Challenge

Choose the correct verb agreement in these sentences starting with there.

  1. There is/are two dialog boxes and three messages yet to get through.
  2. There is/are some plants on the balcony that need to be brought in before the frost.
  3. There has to be/have to be compelling reasons for omitting the planning stage.
  4. There has been/have been such a ruckus about the new upgrade schedule that some developers have turned elsewhere.
  5. There was/were a number of professional trainers involved in the program's development.
Feel free to send your post your answers below as comments.
Posted on

Writing & Grammar: Want to Write Well? Talk about People

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

When you make people your subjects, you instantly raise the readability and interest level of your sentences. People are interested in other people and what they are doing. And even more than that, people are interested in things that involve them personally. So rather than placing other things in the subject role of your sentences, try to more often put people, groups, or organizations at the start of your sentences. And whenever possible, directly address your reader as the subject. Let's look at an example:

There may be a concern on the part of many employees that they do not fully understand their benefits.

The grammatical subject of this sentence is the word there. It contains no hint of any people that may be involved in the sentence. In fact, the structure there is, or in this case there may be, is called a false subject–an empty stand-in for the true subject of your sentence. Let's look further to try to find some people.

The next noun we find is concern–an abstract concept. It is the "real" subject that the false subject there is alluding to. So we have to go even further into the sentence to find some people. The next noun is part–still no people.

Finally, 11 words into the sentence, we find employees. These are the human beings who are having the concern that the sentence is about. Let's put them as the subjects of the sentence:

Employees may be concerned that they do not fully understand their benefits.

Now we clearly have people as the subject of our sentence. But have we missed an opportunity to talk directly to our reader? If we can talk directly to "you," the sentence will be even better. Is our reader one of the "employees" we are talking about? If so, we could do this:

You may be concerned that you do not fully understand your benefits.

Once we see the sentence that way, then we may realize that this is actually something we should ask the reader, rather than telling:

Are you concerned that you do not fully understand your benefits?

But maybe the employees themselves are not our audience. Maybe we are addressing business owners or human resources professionals, and we truly are talking about the employees with our reader. In that case, we could try this:

Your employees may be concerned that they do not fully understand their benefits.

But, you may be thinking, was there anything wrong with the original sentence? Not grammatically. And in fact, because all of the words in that sentence are short, it may even get a better score on Word's readability statistics than some of these others. But what it lacks is the important move of making people your subjects. Am I saying that you have to make people the subject of every sentence? Of course not. But I am saying that doing so more often will improve your writing.

Challenge: Make People or Organizations Your Subject

Find the people in these sentences and make them the subjects. Use "you" to directly address the reader when possible. Caution: sometimes the people involved are not literally mentioned in the original sentence. (Send your answers directly to me.)

  1. There were some analyses conducted by NIH that show that sitting at a desk all day is not healthy.
  2. There are many ways in which online assessments can help management identify strengths and weaknesses among staff members.
  3. The transition from management into the executive suite may require a reorientation of thinking.
  4. When the mentoring of potential is an important goal, developing a prototype of the relationship may be helpful.
Posted on

Writing & Grammar: Writing Badly

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

One of the most basic facts about the English language is that sentences are made of nouns and verbs. The strongest sentences have people as nouns and their actions as verbs. The first step in writing badly is to get rid of the people as subjects and transform active verbs into abstract nouns. Consider this nice, clear sentence:

You should complete the lesson on HTML tags before you start this section on tables.

The person in the subject role in the sentence is you. The action verbs are complete and start. We also have the helping verb should in front of complete. Let's eliminate the person and change the action verb complete into the abstract noun form completion. We get this:

Completion of the lesson on HTML tags….

Great! We are seven words into the sentence and we have neither a person nor an action verb. That is an excellent sign of bad writing. But what are we saying about the completion of the lesson on HTML tags? Let's take that helping verb should and change it into a static concept:

…is necessary…

Now let's attack the second half. We'll eliminate the person youagain and make the verb start into a gerund, which is the noun form of a verb:

…before starting this section on tables.

For truly bad writing, I think the verb form starting is a little too clear. It is still a verb form, after all. Let's substitute a fancier word, and let's make it even more abstract:

…before commencement of this section on tables.

Putting it all together, we now have no people in the sentence, no action verbs, and some abstract nouns that merely allude to actions:

Completion of the lesson on HTML tags is necessary before commencement of this section on tables.

In just a few simple moves, we have taken a sentence that was written at the very clear and concise 6th grade level, with a high readability quotient, 73.1, and transformed it into a 12th-grade sentence with a terrible readability quotient of 37.2. Sweet.

Think you've got it? See if you can take these clear, straightforward sentences and give them this same treatment. Notice that we did not add any meanings or additional phrases. We just eliminated the people as subjects and made all actions into abstract concepts.

Challenge

Using the techniques described in this article, transform these sentences into "bad writing."

  1. We understood the mathematical formula after the instructor explained it.
  2. The customer service representative greeted the client within a minute and drove the car into the service bay for her.
  3. Timmy ran down the dusty road calling for Lassie.
  4. You must insert the DVD into the disk drive face up.
  5. I now click the drop-down arrow to see a list of choices.

As always, feel free to post your answers below as comments.

***

Answers to last Week's Challenge

Answers to the then versus than challenge are brought to you by Debra Mascott.

  1. The pen is mightier (then/than) the sword.
  2. The hummingbird sipped the nectar, (then/than) flew off.
  3. A chill wind brushed the treetops, (then/than) the sun rose.
  4. The raven is much larger (then/than) the crow.
  5. Yogi is smarter (then/than) the average bear.
Posted on

Writing & Grammar: Then Versus Than

by Jennie Ruby View our profile on LinkedIn

People often confuse the proper use of then and than. Pronunciation is likely the culprit. In the mid-Atlantic region people tend to pronounce both of these as "then." Here's the difference, with a quick memory aid: then rymes with when and is always about time:

When did he make the onside kick? First they made the touchdown, then he made the onside kick.

Than is about comparisons:

He is taller than I am.

The Cadillac is more expensive than the Camry.

You can have both meanings in one sentence:

Aunt Louise was taller then than now.

Or to complete the comparison:

Aunt Louise was taller then than she is now.

But the most important thing to remember is that the word thenis for time or sequence in time.

When was she taller? Back then.

It rhymes with–and answers the questions of–when. And here is a reminder about sequence:

First he did A, then he did B.

And again, comparisons require the word than:

He did A better than he did B.

Using than and then correctly is yet another of those little details what will make your writing clear and professional.

Challenge

  1. The pen is mightier (then/than) the sword.
  2. The hummingbird sipped the nectar, (then/than) flew off.
  3. A chill wind brushed the treetops, (then/than) the sun rose.
  4. The raven is much larger (then/than) the crow.
  5. Yogi is smarter (then/than) the average bear.

As always, feel free to write your answers as comments below.