“My heart was literally beating out of my chest.”

These words were uttered recently on the reality show known as Momma’s Boys. Does anyone see what’s wrong with this sentence? If you don’t, then you’ve been using the word “literally” wrong all this time. It’s not hard. Let’s learn.

From dictionary.com:

literally-adv.- 1. in the literal or strict sense 2. in a literal manner; word for word 3. actually; without exaggerration or inacuracy 4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.

Now, don’t let definition number four lull you into a false sense of security. It is not correct to say that your heart was literally beating out of your chest unless it really was (in which case you should probably quit talking about it and get yourself to the hospital). A basketball player is not literally twelve feet tall when he’s only 6′4″. Your cat, despite her death defying capers, does not literally have nine lives.

I love a good hyperbole (extreme exaggerration) as much as the next English major, but when you’re hyperbolizing, it simply doesn’t do to tack on a “literally,” because that just nulls the whole literary device.

A quick checklist for your proofreading enjoyment.

Those of you who are students, especially my college chums, probably write a lot of papers. Not everybody’s an English major, so here’s a list of things for which you should check when you’re doing that quick proofread before you hit print and dash off to class (if you’re like me). Or if you’re a little more studious, do an indepth check, but make these a priority before you send it off to your proofreader.

1. Don’t rely solely on spellcheck. While it’s a lovely program and a great help to mankind, it can also trip you up. Go back through your paper and make sure you didn’t spell anything wrong by way of turning it into another word. For example, sometimes I type “form” instead of “from,” and one time I accidentally turned in a paper with the word “extant” instead of “extent.” I was highly embarrassed.
2. Check your tenses. Sometimes writers slip into present from past and then into future, and so on. This is especially common in narratives. Nothing makes your reader stagger to a halt more than an uncalled for tense change. Remember that if you start in the past, stay in the past. If you start talking about something that happened prior to the action that’s already in the past, make it paster than past.
3. Watch your punctuation. Don’t abuse your commas (or your colons, or your semicolons, or your ellipses). If you’re unsure of how to use a special punctuation mark, it’s best to stick with something you know. Better yet, refer back to one of my numerous posts on punctuation. Please remember that commas are not a seasoning, and you are not permitted to salt your paper to taste with them.  Additionally, avoid exclamation points unless you think long and hard about it and decide that you really really need it (as in you’ll get an F if you don’t have this one exclamation point). Too many exclamation points look silly! Use your words to cause excitement!
4. Keep your audience in mind. In a formal academic paper, you shouldn’t speak in the second person, as I’m doing now. That means don’t talk directly to your audience by using “you.” If one should happen to need it, he should replace the “you” with “one” and third person pronouns, just as I’m doing now. Also, unless you’re specifically asked about your personal experiences, you should stay away from speaking in the first person. And in formal writing, don’t use contractions (and don’t start your sentences with conjunctions).
5. Stick to your required style. Whether it’s MLA, APA, Chicago, or whatever else your professor can come up with, check and double check that you’re using it correctly and consistently. Make sure everything that needs to be italicized or underlined or quoted is (and is done correctly). When it comes to citations, triple check them.
6. Watch out for homonyms. This was kind of covered in step one, but I’ll reiterate just in case you missed it. Do not misuse there/their/they’re, then/than, it’s/its, effect/affect, or any other of those tricky little homonyms. Spellcheck will not catch them. If you don’t know the differences between these words, refer to my previous posts.
7. For God sake, watch out for homonyms. I can’t say it enough. Just check for them, ok?

There you have it. Seven easy steps (which are really only five and a half easy steps) to minimize the red pen and to make your proofreader’s job easier. There are other important matters when it comes to writing, of course, but this is supposed to be a quick checklist for a quick proofread. Happy writing! <—-I decided that I really really needed that exclamation point.

G-L-A-M…

Hello! Matilda’s English is back from a long hiatus. I found that I didn’t have enough time to devote to the blog during the Fall semester, but now that I’m (almost) on Christmas break, I’ll be posting a whole lot more. You’ll be happy to know that I’m fresh from an entire semester of a class called Phonics and the History of Language, and oh, the things I’ve learned. I’m chock full of English trivia and etymology.

For instance, did you know that the words grammar and glamor have the same root? It’s true. An early meaning of “glamour” was “a spell or enchantment” before it came to mean “physical attractiveness.” And how does one remember all those spells? Why, you put them in a book, of course! Ergo, people who were able to read back in the day were sometimes viewed with suspicion, because for all you knew they were reading from a spellbook and putting a blight on your crops or whatnot. So you can see how grammar and glamor came to be associated: through books. Isn’t that awesome? Yeah, I thought so too.

Grammar is, as Fergie would say, glamorous.

Build me a story.

Did you know that plays are not written, but rather wrought? Think about it. You don’t call Shakespeare a playwrite. You call him a playwright. When you think of a play being wrought, being formed, doesn’t that change your whole outlook on writing and literature? It does mine. Something that is wrought is worked on, like wrought iron. It is something substantial, not fleeting or imagined. You can practically hold the words in your hands as you work your writing. And I’m not talking about the sheets of paper on which it’s printed. Being wrought implies something so much more permanent than that. Interesting, no?

Let’s all be in agreement.

Agreement is one of the most difficult aspects of English to master. It’s human nature (just think of Judge Judy or any of the various and assorted “reality” shows): people don’t like to agree.

Well, let’s all be New Agey and become one with our inner conflicts, or some such nonsense. Today we’re talking about subject-verb agreement. It’s gonna be one big peace fest.

In a sentence, the subject and the verb must always, always agree in number (and tense, but that’s another post). The kittens, for example, are playing with the yarn. Sarah and John are putting their skis on.

It’s easy enough in present tense. I know that especially around where I live, past tense gets to be a little tricky. The kittens was playing with the yarn. Not correct. Not at all. “Was” is a singular verb, and “kittens” is a plural subject.

Sarah and John might be a little bit sneakier. When speaking, it would feel natural to say something along the lines of, “Sarah and John’s putting on their skis.” But this stretches out to, “Sarah and John is putting on their skis,” and we all know that doesn’t sound natural at all because Sarah and John are two separate people.

One must be cautious in discerning subject-verb agreement, however, because it can try to trip one up. The store called Steve and Barry’s are not anything. Steve and Barry’s is something because it is one entity. Just think back to your Power Rangers days. The Zords are plural. They fight the giant monsters separately. But when they join up to form the Magazord, they become one entity, even though it’s made up of five or six zords. The Magazord is singular, like Steve and Barry’s. Sarah and John, however, do not form a super robot that can destroy an entire cardboard city in mere moments. They remain separate from one another, and are therefore plural.

Another tricky one is a word like band. It is, believe it or not, correct to say, “The band are tuning their instruments,” because each individual band member is tuning his own separate instrument. Conversely, the band is playing a song, because one song is being played by one uniform group. It’s another shape shifter in the terrifying complexities of the English language.

That’s enough of that for now. Right now, we’re moving on to the main course.

In writing a formal paper, it is often difficult to convey a neutral gender when one is attempting to form an argument or to make a point. One is not allowed to use “you” and write in the second person, so one must be forced to make a choice. One may utilize the word “one” and use it every time one needs a pronoun, but it tends to become grating to one’s nerves.

I have nothing against using “one,” of course, because I like it; I use it often, but not exclusively. The other choice for the writer of the paper is simply to choose a gender and stick with it. In a politically correct world, a person may often blanch at using one gender in an argument or paper. He may think it will make him sound sexist, but when it comes down to it, he really has no other choice. He could keep using “one,” but that’s tedious. And he can’t keep using “he or she” because repetitive use of that phrase is against the rules (it’s also tedious). But instead of turning to one gender sentences, his first thought it to go where?

Their.

No, not there.

Because the English Language has no word for a person of unknown or neutral gender, people often turn to they and their in order to convey the fact that they don’t know the gender of a person because they and their are gender neutral. The problem is the fact that these words are plural, and they’re being used in a singular manner. That’s not done.

We all do it. If you’re sitting in a classroom and someone in the hallway starts screaming bloody murder, you turn to your cohort and you say, “Heavens to Betsy, who is that in the hallway? I say, they’re screaming bloody murder!” Or something like that. Because you don’t know what gender that screaming person is.

You can usually get away with it in speech, because speech goes by so fast people don’t even notice it (unless it’s a glaring mistake, like “The kittens was playing with the yarn”). In writing, however, your they’re is there for all to see forever and ever, amen. So you can’t use it.

Therefore, when in doubt, pick a gender so that your subject and verb agree, and stick with it. I promise you won’t sound sexist, unless you actually are being sexist, and then I can’t help you.

I feel a little bit slighted.

I just read in the paper that one of my professors from Franciscan has been doing research on the Ohio Valley Dialect. There was a whole big article about him and he explained the history of the dialect and the different influences on it. He said he’ll be having students do some research on the Ohio Valley Dialect in the Fall, which is pretty exciting because I’m in his Phonics and the History of Language class next semester. I’d love to have the opportunity to do some research on my native dialect.

Oh wait. I already did that research.

I also already wrote that paper my first semester and published that article in the Local Yokel, the newsletter I run, almost a year ago. The article in the paper today sounded just like my paper from two years ago, except shorter.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not accusing anyone of plagiarism; that would be hubris, not to mention rude. I just feel a little left out because when I did my paper, there was no literature on my dialect. I had to do my own research and study three different dialects and form my own conclusions about the intricacies of the Ohio Valley Dialect (there wasn’t even a name for it). And now because a professor decided to study it, it’s a big deal. No one cared when a nerdy college freshman was so excited about her research that the ten page limit wasn’t enough. Now that a guy who has a doctorate wants to talk about it, the newspaper’s publishing stories about him.

I wonder if he read my article. Probably not. He probably thought of studying the dialect all on his own because we all talk funny (he’s from Buffalo) and he wanted to know what that was about. I would. So my original research wasn’t original at all. He might think I stole his idea.

In any case, I’m excited for my Phonics and the History of Language class next semester. This professor’s one of my favorites at school, so it should be worth the 8 am time. Maybe I’ll get to help with the research (that I already did) and since I actually speak the dialect, I might get to share my thoughts or pronunciations.

I’m looking on the bright side, but I’m still a little miffed.

Hey, at least I know my research was accurate. Everything he’s found out is what I found out. But no one calls it a “shopping buggy.” It’s just a buggy.

blogging post-beach

I’ve just returned from Myrtle Beach, where I spent a week sitting under an umbrella and contemplating grammar. It’s what I do.

There’s a sign near the hot tub in our hotel. It says “Hot water and chlorine can effect the fabrics of some bathing suit materials. We cannot be held responsible for this.”

Wait, what? A professionally made, permanent sign on the wall at a beach front hotel has fallen victim to the homonyms? It just figures that I’d be staying at that hotel.

“Effect” is a noun. It’s the result of something, as in “cause and effect.”

“Affect” is a verb. Hot water and chlorine can affect some fabrics and cause them to fade. The fading would be the effect.

It really upsets me when I see signs with mistakes like this. If it was a one man job, it’d be understandable, but a person had to decide what went on the sign. The sign had to be ordered, the sign had to be made, the sign had to be purchased and hung on the wall, and the sign has been hanging there for years. The owner of the hotel stands right there, every day, in order to make sure everyone in the neighboring lazy river uses a tube. Why hasn’t anything been done about this sign? It’s wrong, oh so very wrong.

The Secret

I never learned much grammar in school. Most of what I know has been gleaned from reading so much. I kind of picked it up through osmosis. When I was a freshman in high school, I asked my teacher to explain the difference between “who” and “whom”. He obliged and immediately launched into some long and complex explanation of the rules and the grammar that sounded less like an answer and more like a calculus formula. At least he knew, because when I was a sophomore, someone else asked our teacher to explain the difference, and she told us not to worry about it because she wasn’t sure herself.

You see why I never learned much grammar in school.

By this time, I had figured out the secret of who and whom myself. It was a wonderful find, akin to Indiana Jones’s discovery of the Ark of the Covenant. And it was wonderfully simple.

And now, dear friends, I share it with you.

The easiest way to figure out whether you need to use who or whom is this: if you can replace the interrogative pronoun (who/whom) with “him” and have the sentence make sense, then you need whom. Note that they both end in M. If you can replace it with “he”, then you need who. Note that they both end in a vowel.

Like this:

To whom did you send it?

You sent it to him.

To who did you send it? (Who did you send it to?)

You sent it to he.

Who gave you the card?

He gave you the card.

Whom gave you the card?

Him gave you the card.

Easy, right? Who is the subject. Whom is the object (notice the prepositions–to whom, for whom, by whom).

Please remember to use whom carefully. If you’re not sure, just use who because it’s the societal norm. Whom is not the fancy version of who, and should not be used as such. If you use it correctly, it makes you sound like you know what you’re talking about. If you use it incorrectly, it just makes you sound like a pretentious idiot because there are those of us who know how to use it.

The Hot Debate

What’s everyone in the media debating these days? Whether Obama will select Clinton as his running mate? The Pitt-Jolie family’s new thirty-five bedroom house? Who would win in a battle between cavemen and astronauts? No. None of these.

Today’s hot topic is the preposition. Yes, I know it’s shocking. I know it’s not quite PC to be discussing it, but the fact remains that there is the question of the preposition and its role in society, and I have the answer.

I said before that although the rule states otherwise, it is generally OK to start a sentence with a conjunction (with the exception of formal writing). Today we’re looking at the end of the sentence. The rule is this: one should never ever end a sentence with a preposition.

What do I think of this rule? It should be law. In writing, one should never ever under any circumstances end a sentence with a preposition. An example of this transgression is as follows:

“Where is the dog at?”

“I need a box to put this in.”

Writing is one thing, and speaking, I know, is a horse of a different color. We all have our own dialects, and dialects, like taxes, are unavoidable. In my dialect area, it is common for a person to end his or her sentences with prepositions, and I have been known to do so when speaking informally. I do try to catch myself whenever possible, but it’s hard to unlearn a behavior. However, I feel that there is at least one preposition that should never end a sentence, no matter who you are. That preposition is “at”.

In my opinion, one can slide by with “I need a box to put this in,” but “Where’s the dog at?” is the proverbial sore thumb. Ending a sentence with “at” screams hillbilly, and believe me when I say I know hillbilly.

I know what the naysayers’ argument is. That the preposition rule was arbitrarily made up by some guy who decided one day that it should be so. That just because he said so doesn’t make the rule valid. Well that guy was a grammarian, and he knew what he was talking about. Besides, he’s not the only one to have said so, because most grammarians since then have agreed with him, and that makes it valid. So follow the rules, and no one gets hurt.

How does one avoid ending his sentence with one of those pesky little words? In the case of “at,” one can generally simply leave it off, because another word has probably covered it. For example, in “Where’s the dog at?” the word “where” is already performing the same function as “at,” so the sentence should read, “where’s the dog?” There’s no need to make complexities of things. In our other example, we simply must switch the word order. “I need a box to put this in,” becomes “I need a box in which to put this.” Ta da! A grammatically correct sentence in one easy step.

Take a look at the following chart from this site to get an idea of some other prepositions.

about	behind	from	on	toward
above	below	in	on top of	under
across	beneath	in front of	onto	underneath
after	beside	inside	out of	until
against	between	instead of	outside	up
along	by	into	over	upon
among	down	like	past	with
around	during	near	since	within
at	except	of	through	without
before	for	off	to

The Queen’s English

I ran across an interesting Wikipedia page just now. There was a queen called Matilda of Flanders, who married William the Conqueror. Every king or queen of England since the mid-eleventh century has been a direct descendant of Matilda.

This is supremely awesome. Why, you ask? Well I’ll tell you. First, because my nickname is Matilda, and that in itself is cool. Second, because her husband was William the Conqueror! Perhaps you’ve heard of the Battle of Hastings in 1066? It’s only the most important date for any English major to remember, because that’s basically when the English Language came into existence. William, a francophone, came in and, fittingly, conquered. He became king of England, and French became the language of the court. It mixed with the native Germanic tongue and voila! English as we know it. Or at least a precursor of the language we all hold dear to our hearts. Anyway, that’s it in a nutshell.

Here are some links for you to further your knowledge.

Matilda of Flanders

William the Conqueror

Battle of Hastings

Also, you’ll notice that the Battle of Hastings took place on October 14, 1066. That happens to be my birthday, except 921 years earlier. My love of English was fate.