Inauguration Day was a glorious day, which I spent with my daughter and two of her friends from 7:00 in the morning to 6:00 at night
•    getting into downtown Washington on the subway,

•    shuffling along like a penguin in the crowds pouring out of the station,

•    breaching a “secure” area to get onto the Mall,

•    staking out our few square feet of space in front of a Jumbotron, where we stood for hours getting       to know the people around us,

•    finding a warm place after the swearing-in to hang out until crowds thinned at the closest sustation (which they never did), and

•    finally giving up on public transportation and walking 20 blocks to a friend’s house where we waited     for my husband to drive in from the burbs get us.

It was a marvelous, moving, historic day, and I thought of grammar only twice.

First during the oath of office when Chief Justice Roberts moved the adverb “faithfully” from the midst of a compound verb to the end of the sentence, where the word was left barely hanging on to the sentence, ready to be blown away by the chill gusts of the day. How awkward, and how much better as our forefathers wrote the words, with the adverb right there in the middle of the sentence’s predicate: “I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.”

Afterall, didn’t Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise not say, “to boldly go where no man has gone before”? There is absolutely nothing wrong in my grammar book with inserting an adverb in the midst of a compound verb.

The second time I had a niggling grammar thought was when President Obama, in his address, referred to the “selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job.” Oh dear, I thought, there’s that ubiquitous “they.” Why couldn’t he have said “see friends lose their jobs”?

Or maybe I’m the one who needs to change and accept this use of “they” with singular entities, either as a substitute for “his or her” or when referring to an entity comprised of many people. (I believe I heard Daniel Zwerdling on NPR this morning say something along the lines of “Before they took over, the administration planned. .  . .”)

I’ll reserve judgment a while longer on “they” but may just have to give in if someone as well spoken as President Obama has accepted this useage.

Here’s a current quandary of mine that I urge you readers (if there are any!) to comment on.

The October-November issue of Copyediting: Because Language Matters advises not to apply conventional rules about collective nouns too stringently or your writing will come off as jarring.

This is the example:

                “Here’s hoping that this year’s crop of economic
                advisers has the courage of their convictions.”

Here’s the advice:

                “The word has . . . should be have. . . . It is really
                a case of notional agreement: a crop of advisers
                is notionally plural, which we can see because
                ‘their convictions,’ an instinctive use, so clearly
                refers to the people and not to the noun (crop)
                used for the group.”

I agree with this argument entirely. I’ve long felt that if the individuals and their actions within a collective are being emphasized, then a plural verb is correct. If it’s the single entity that is most important, then stick to the rigid singular. Remember to be consistent and don’t mix a singular verb with a plural pronoun in the same sentence.

                “A new generation of scientists have begun a serious
                assault on the mysteries of the canopy, and it will be
                a pleasure to travel with them vicariously.”

                “A smorgasbord of fruits plucked from the canopy
                in Borneo owes its abundance to bats.” [both from NGM,
                December 1991]

Now, here’s my quandary: Should I allow the argument of notational agreement to extend to companies, organizations, governments, and other single entities made up of individuals? For example, in a 2002 political cartoon by Tom Toles this statement emanates from Air Force One:

                “We won control of Congress, but they are more
                confused than ever.”

Or this example from a memo I recently received:

                “The venerable Chautauqua Institution in upstate
                New York is dedicating an entire week of their
                nine-week summer program to literature.”

Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage defends this construction in an entry titled “on agreement: organizations considered as collective nouns.” Not only is it OK to treat companies as plural, but mixing a singular verb with a plural pronoun is permitted.

I’m not quite there—yet. What are your thoughts?

I’ve written before about danglers, modifiers—usually phrases—that are misplaced in a sentence and instead of clearly modifying what they are meant to, create confusion in the reader’s mind and may even lead to chuckles.

A phrase that set me off recently was one from a photo exhibit at National Geographic, featuring the work of four legendary photographers. The offending sentence, about photographer Kurt Wentzel, reads:

                                “After serving with the Allies in WWII, Wentzel’s boss
                                gave him one of his first assignments with the now
                                famous instructions: ‘Do India.’ ”

The person who had just served in WWII was Wentzel, but by the structure of the sentence that modifying phrase is linked to the boss, the only nearby noun to which a modifier can rightly attach. I was distracted almost too much to appreciate the simple instructions from a bygone era.

Since spotting this dangler in National Geographic’s own copy, I’ve had my eyes drawn to examples in other publications. Here are some.

•    From the Washington Post, appearing both August 30 and 31 on a map:                                                   
                                “Unprotected during Katrina, floodgates have been built to
                                prevent the lake from surging into the city.”

Looking at the sentence by itself, I didn’t know what was unprotected during Katrina. It couldn’t be the floodgates, which had not even been built. With the help of the map, I concluded the phrase applied to three areas designated on the map. I know space is tight in map notes, but still, is that an excuse for obfuscation?

•    Again from the Washington Post and pointed out by another reader in the August 30 “Free For All” column referring to an August 24 description of Joseph Biden:

                                “. . . a 65-year-old with white hair jogging to the lectern.”

At least this example has humor and can almost be forgiven because the writer does know the difference between a podium and a lectern and uses the correct term.

•    Finally, an example in an email from a colleague and attributed to Groucho Marx:

                                “I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got
                                in my pajamas I don't know.”

This definitely left me chuckling, perhaps because I can hear in my mind Marx saying it. It was given as an example of a paraprosdokian (from the Greek words for "beyond" and "expectation"), a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader to reframe the first part. To me it’s not a paraprosdokian so much as a perfect example of a misplaced modifier. Other examples of paraprosdokians that do not have danglers:

                                Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

                                I'm trying. . . very trying.

So watch those modifying phrases and make sure they’re attached to the right noun, but be creative and, just for the fun of it, think up sentences that are “beyond expectation.”

As a child, I enjoyed having pen pals and writing letters (on actual stationery with turquoise ink in an Easterbrook fountain pen). Maybe that is why today I enjoy corresponding with our readers when they have questions about grammar and word usage in the pages of  National Geographic. Of course, I'm happiest when I don't have to admit an oversight on our part or the publication of an error.

Recently a reader challenged the use of us in this statement from the Stonehenge article in June: "Skeletal remains indicate that despite physically demanding lives, the people of Neolithic Britain were more light built than us."

The reader went on to say, "I was taught that it is understood that you are actually saying, 'more lightly built than we are built.' I know NG is not a grammar magazine, but I have a hard time believing that NG is wrong; on the other hand, my grammar ego is going to take it hard if I'm wrong!"

Fortunately, I was able to wiggle (or is it wriggle?) out of this one by responding:

"In this case both your grammar ego and ours can remain intact, although I believe you have a slight edge over us.

"The question with this particular construction is whether than
is a conjunction or a preposition. If it's considered a conjunction and
the sentence is shorthand for 'more lightly built than we are,' then
you're right, we should have said we. If than is considered a
preposition, which some grammarians argue, then us is correct. Since
the first version sounds rather stuffy and pedantic and the second one
incorrect to finely tuned ears, we should probably have recast the
sentence.

"There are times when the pronoun used can change the meaning of the sentence. For instance:

He likes John more than she. [more than she likes John.]
He likes John more than her. [more than he likes her.]"

For a usage discussion of than as a preposition, here's what Merriam-Webster's unabridged online dictionary says:

Jack’s question after my last column—is it correct to say “Where is it at?”—takes me back to my childhood visits with my grandparents, who lived in a small town on the edge of the coal mines in eastern Pennsylvania. I can still clearly hear their next-door neighbor screaming to someone else in her house, “Where are you at?” At the time, I lived in a suburb of New York City, where this particular construction was unknown. So also was “Hi, ya,” a typical greeting in my grandparents’ town and one that I'm told was among the first words I spoke. When I returned home from summers spent in Pennsylvania, it would take several weeks for the regional dialect to fade from my speech.

The marvelous multivolume Dictionary of American Regional English, edited by Frederic Cassidy, says, in the entry for at, that it is used redundantly, usually at the end of a where clause, in the South and Midland part of the U.S. and labels it informal, occasionally jocular or for emphasis. So the construction is certainly found in informal speech in some parts of the country. The dictionary, known to wordsmiths as DARE, is an amazing compendium of regional word usage that has taken decades to produce and will not be complete until the final volume, Sl-Z, comes out next year.

Another similar phrase, perhaps more widely heard, is the idiomatic “where it’s at,” a slang expression that gained popularity in the hippie era and in the 1990s became the title of a Beck single as well as the title for a Michael Quinion "World Wide Words" column on the use of the “at” symbol. According to Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary the expression means

Thanks for asking the question, Jack. It’s been interesting to answer. My advice would be to refrain from tacking an unnecessary at on to the end of questions starting with where, but to feel free to be hip and use “where it’s at”—in moderation, of course.

I received a phone call last week from a grammar friend who was appalled to find this sentence in a National Geographic publication:

            "When he invited my wife and I out to dinner with him and his fiancee,
            I jumped at the offer."

Perhaps I’m more tolerant than my friend. I hear this overcorrection so frequently in speech, that I’m no longer appalled, just slightly annoyed. For those scratching their heads and wondering just what is the problem, lady, it's the first use of the pronoun I.

In the sample sentence, the object of the verb "invited" should be "my wife and me," the objective case—me, him, her, them. The second I is correct because it is a subject and rightly the nominative I —he, she, they.

The problem arises because we are so afraid of misusing an objective pronoun as a subject—him and me jumped at the offer—that we overcorrect and change a perfectly correct me to I. Overcorrection usually—but, alas, not always—happens when there is a noun coupled with the pronoun. If that noun confuses you, get rid of it and read the sentence without it: When he invited I out to dinner. Thanks for talking with I.

I’m too much of a lady to tell you how those two examples sound to my ear, but I hope you get the idea!

After I decided to write this blog about the misuse of the nominative I, examples leaped out from all directions.

        •   Luke Russert, whom I find to be an amazingly articulate and intelligent young
            man, speaking on NBC about his father used “my mother and I” several times
            as the object of prepositions when he should have said “for my mother and me”
            and “to my mother and me.”

        •   An editor sent an email to a colleague saying,
            "Thanks so much for taking a full hour to chat with Victoria and I.”

        •   And someone sent me an email that asked,
            "Can you meet with Lynn and I tomorrow?"

So faithful readers, tune up your ears, listen to your colleagues, and, when necessary, gently remind them to use me as a direct object or as an object of a preposition.

Jesse Ventura hit the airwaves of Washington in recent days. Listening to one of his interviews, I was struck by how articulate a speaker he is, with little hesitation, few ums, likes, and I means. He’s direct, knows what he wants to say, and says it with clarity. Perhaps that’s because, as he says, wrestling taught him to think quickly on his feet, something that carried over to his political career as the Independent governor of Minnesota.

So, being impressed with his speaking style, I grimaced just a bit when he said, “If you allow the third party equal footing, they can be successful.”

The use of they when referring to a single entity such as an organization, corporation, government, or, in this case, a political party is something I hear frequently on the radio, spoken by commentators and reporters as well as by those being interviewed. It’s also a grammatical error I find myself correcting more and more in proofs of articles to be printed in National Geographic, and that’s usually after writer and editor have spent some time on the text.

The Brits, of course, have long used plural verbs with an entity composed of individuals (“the government have instituted new procedures”), and it could be argued from the modern “notional” approach to grammar that a plural pronoun is acceptable because the single entity is made up of individuals.

I am not convinced by notional grammar in this particular structure, though apparently I don’t always persuade National Geographic editors and writers to follow me down the strict path of structural agreement (see, there’s a degree of wrestling in my work too!).

Here are two examples of pronoun and antecedent not agreeing. The first was corrected before publication in National Geographic; the second was not.

            • The crew was freed. Later, they were stunned when investigators revealed
               that one of their own had betrayed them.

            • That fall, Lishui [a city] applied to add another 13.5 square miles to the
              development zone. The expansion would require an investment of almost
              900 million dollars, most of which would come from bank loans. They planned
              to double the city’s population by 2020.

Jesse seems to be in good company. 

Why is it that in recent years the definite article the has become commonly attached to a description of a well-known person as if he or she were the only such person in the world?

For instance, one no longer says “paintings by cowboy artist Charles M. Russell.” Instead, it’s “paintings by the cowboy artist Charles M. Russell,” no doubt leaving the ghost of Frederic Remington a bit unsettled, not to mention the living, breathing members of an organization called the Cowboy Artists of America. In fact, if one Googles “cowboy artist,” a multitude of modern-day names appears before Remington’s, and still no Charley Russell. He’s obviously not the only cowboy artist of note.

One of the most annoying examples I’ve seen recently of what I consider a misuse of the definite article is in Joan Acocella’s otherwise entertaining and insightful critique of Dancing With the Stars, in the April 14 New Yorker (emphasis below is mine):

    “The new season kicked off last month with twelve stars:
    the comedian and magician Penn Jillette; the tennis
    champion Monica Seles; the rhythm-and-blues singer
    Mario; Jason Taylor, the Miami Dolphin’s defensive end;
    Kristi Yamaguchi, the gold-medal figure skater. . . .”

None of these people is the one and only in a category. There are many tennis champions, and Kristi is a gold-medal figure skater.

Elsewhere in the same New Yorker I came across “married to José Ferrer, the actor” and “Erica Jong, the novelist, essayist, and poet” and then in this week’s issue “by the novelist and short-story writer Mark Poirier.” What’s wrong with “married to actor José Ferrer” or “by novelist and short-story writer Mark Poirier”?

I don’t want you to think I’m beating up on the New Yorker unfairly; it just happens to be what I’ve been reading in the past day or so. I can assure you this construction is used in virtually all publications today, even in National Geographic, although I’ll continue to delete extraneous the’'s if I can.

In addition to being annoyed by this particular word usage, I’m also intrigued with how quickly and universally writers can adopt and advance a new construction. I’m probably one of the few left behind grumbling about abused definite articles.

By the way, I’m rooting for Jason Taylor to win Dancing With the Stars, even though Kristi Yamaguchi let her hair down and danced an amazingly sensuous rumba in this week’s show.

As I was decompressing in front of my TV Saturday night—a long way from my weekday copyediting mode—I never expected to be exposed to grammar. But I was—twice. The first time, I was watching Jeopardy!  One of the game categories was Grammar, and amazingly all five questions were easily and quickly answered, including one on the proper form of a noun or pronoun to use in front of a gerund and another asking contestants to complete the correlative conjunction not only/but _____.

Considering how often I find myself correcting these very same constructions in texts we are about to publish, I was amazed at the contestants’ knowledge (at least two of them participated in answering the category of five questions). So for those of you not up on this topic, a noun or pronoun in front of a gerund should be possessive. Most of us have no question about the correct form when using pronouns; it’s the nouns that trip us up. So if in doubt, a good test is to substitute a pronoun for a noun to see what sounds right to your ear.            

            We appreciate your taking the time to write.
            James’s running off at the mouth was not appreciated by his mother.
            The cat’s pouncing on the bed awakened her.
            He disliked Susan’s ruffling his hair whenever she passed by.

As for the correlative conjunction not only/but also, I suspect that I insert also, or its equivalent, more times than not while copyediting text. Here are some examples from recent articles in National Geographic, though I don't remember which ones were right to begin with:   

            . . . shapes not only Indonesia’s landscape but also its beliefs
            . . . head-to-head not only with the authorities but also with his boss
            . . . not only for waterfowl but also for woodcock, snipe, and doves
            . . . ensures not only ecosystem integrity but also social viability

After Jeopardy! I flipped around the channels for a while, resting briefly on a PBS channel showing Bob Dylan performing in the 1960s. No grammar there, but it was, nostalgic, and powerful, to see Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary on stage with Dylan, singing “Blowing in the Wind” and to remember all the angst and emotions of those Vietnam years. I can take Dylan only in small doses and soon flipped to another station and watched the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

That’s where the second grammar lesson of the evening happened, as Mrs. Muir, a young widow played by Gene Tierney, corrects the ghost of swashbuckling Captain Daniel Gregg (a young Rex Harrison): “different from, not different than,” she tells him. I wondered, would anyone today, in 2008, know what she was talking about? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Just lean back and enjoy the movie, I told myself.

In my previous blog about the subjunctive, I spoke about those situations in which the writer or speaker must decide whether a statement is an outright presentation of fact (requiring the indicative mood) or a hypothetical statement or one contrary to fact (requiring subjunctive). And, for you die-hard grammarians, I promised a future column about this esoteric subject.

So, here it is.

Other uses for the subjunctive occur in set, idiomatic expressions and with verbs of wishing and demanding. Fortunately these two categories usually take little analysis and are spoken correctly with no thought at all by native speakers.

Idioms displaying the subjunctive include “God forbid,” “heaven help him,” “wish she were here,” “lest I be considered,” “be that as it may.” The verb form in these phrases is subjunctive, formed by using the base word from the infinitive form of the verb. So, for the verb to be, the present subjunctive is be, in contrast to the indicative forms am, are, and is. (The past tense subjunctive for the verb to be is were, although it is past tense not in a temporal sense, but only a modal sense. See how complex this subject can be.)  In regular verbs the subjunctive can be discerned only in the third person singular because the normal “s” ending is dropped: God forbid (subjunctive); God forbids (indicative).

Wishes and demands also take the subjunctive, although the indicative seems to be gaining favor with wishes. “I wish I were more flexible on the dance floor [subjunctive]”; “I wish I was more flexible on the dance floor [indicative].” “The teacher demanded that Lynn close her book immediately and insisted she do the rest of the drawing from memory [both verbs are subjunctive].”

Enough of this tiring explanation. Most of you will use the subjunctive correctly without even thinking. For those debatable instances in which the most formal of writers would instinctively use the subjunctive and less formal writers would just as instinctively opt for a more conversational indicative, you will have good company no matter which style you follow.