Some Possessive Apostrophes’ Problems!

Most writers are quite clear about how to use apostrophes with possessives:

Singular nouns— for most nouns, the possessive is simply made by adding an apostrophe followed by an s:

The mustachioed man’s chickens have laid their eggs.

Plural nouns — except for a few irregular plurals* that don’t end in s, the possessive is made by adding an apostrophe after the s:

Many of his chickens’ eggs are ready to hatch.

* For example: Many mustachioed men’s favorite egg-dish is the humble omelet.

But in my experience, there is a great deal of confusion when it comes to proper nouns, particularly names ending with s, and since many writers—particular those who write fantasy!—tend to choose names that end in s, x, or z, this issue arises frequently when I am editing.

The general rule** is that for (most) proper nouns, and this includes nouns that end in s, z, and x, the possessive still takes an apostrophe followed by an s.

Singular:                                        

Thomas’s toenails

Cortez’s gold fillings

Jimi Hendrix’s hairy knuckles

Karl Marx’s moustache

Robbie Burns’s sideburns

Plural:

The Williamses’ washboard abs (Everyone in that family is an exercise nut!)

The Higganbothams’ horrible halitosis (Mr and Mrs Higganbotham are, sadly, both sufferers. Probably just as well).

Of course with every rule in the English language, there are exceptions happy to confound the unsure. The Chicago Manual of Style (7.18 – 7.22 15^th Edition) gives lots of lovely examples including:

For Jesus’ sake but Jesus’s contemporaries

Also: Euripides’ tragedies (“a name of two or more syllables that ends in the eez sound”)

Decartes’ three dreams (“singular words and names ending in an unpronounced s”)

Confused? I suggest you follow the general rule… or you could just use of, such as the dandruff of Dickens and the sneezes of Strauss.

** According The Chicago Manual of Style, the fiction editing standard. 

Happy National Grammar Day!

To celebrate, I'm posting two letters* that celebrate the importance of proper punctuation.

Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours?

Jane

Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Jane

* Created by Gloria Rosenthal for Games Magazine, 1984

Bad Seeds: Common Word Misuse

I have discussed the distinction between the verbs lay and lie in an earlier post. But I thought it might be helpful to talk about some other common word misuse—the kind I see on a daily basis.

Toward, towards: In American English, toward, not towards is used. In British English, Australian English, and so forth, the s is preferred. It’s the same with other directional words such as forward, backward, upward, downward, and afterward.

Among, amongst. Among is correct, while The Chicago Manual of Style suggests we should avoid amongst. The same goes for amid and amidst. Avoid the latter.

Compliment and complement: A compliment is a remark designed to flatter or praise. A complement completes or perfects something else.

“You’re most beautiful when you’re flying,” said Hawk. It was a lovely compliment.

Hawk’s fine listening skill was a great complement to Wordy Bird’s need to tweet. 

The same goes for the verbs compliment and complement.

Affect and effect: Affect is a verb, and effect is a noun.*

Hawk’s departure for fall migration affected Wordy Bird profoundly. It had the peculiar effect of bringing the two birds closer. 

*There are exceptions to the use of affect and effect as verb and noun respectively, but they are rare and beyond the scope of most common use.

Farther and further. Farther is used for physical distance, further for figurative distance.

            “I’m lost and will fly no farther,” squealed Hawk, “until I examine my map further.”

Disburse and disperse: Disperse means to distribute, and while disburse also means to distribute it pertains to money. 

Of course there are many other examples of word misuse, some of which I'll cover in later posts. Can you think of any?

Happy National Punctuation Day!

Temper! your! use of exclamation marks!!!! 

And.... cast out your.... four dot ellipses....

Flash your em-dashes — and show your colons:

It's.... National! Punctuation! Day; Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

?

http://www.nationalpunctuationday.com/

Punctuation Matters: How to Denote a Character's Thoughts

This week, I was involved in an interesting discussion on our regional SCBWI listserv. One member asked a whether a character’s thoughts should be denoted by quotation marks, no quotation marks, or italics.

This is a commonly asked question, and this was part of my short answer:

When I edit, I let the context and target audience dictate quotation marks or no quotation marks. If it's a dialogue heavy text, I use no quotation marks for thoughts. If it's a work for younger kids, then I suggest quotation marks for thoughts. If it's MG or YA, I'd generally go with no quote marks. 

The Chicago Manual of Style*, the industry standard for fiction editing, states:

Thought, imagined dialogue, and other interior discourse may be enclosed in quotation marks or not, according to the context or the writer’s preference.

For example:

“My dear friend must fly south for winter,” thought Wordy Bird, “or else he will surely die.”

Or

We must say goodbye, thought Wordy Bird, but perhaps we will meet again.

Both usages are clear and easily comprehended, are they not?

You’ll note that the Chicago Manual of Style is silent on the use of italics to denote thoughts. But, many people do use italics when they are writing to denote thoughts, and I’m sure we all know published books in which italics are used in this manner. 

From Michael Sussman’s fabulous picture book Otto Grows Down (Illus. Scott Magoon, Sterling 2009):

             I love this rattle, Otto thought. Why does Anna get to have it?

But then in this book, as in so many picture books, typography is used in exciting ways throughout (which my daughter loves as she gets to read the ‘big words’).  

But—and this is the main reason for this post—I think there’s really more to discuss here.

Often, there may be a more seamless way to convey what a character is thinking, without resorting to what may at times be a rather clunky use of internal dialogue and dialogue tags which may tend to toward verbosity such as pondered, considered, speculated, conjectured, and so forth. (Dialogue tags are, of course, a subject for another blog post!)

Let's look at some randomly chosen examples from my bookshelf. From Judy Moody #1 by Megan McDonald, Candlewick Press 2000:

“ROAR!” said Judy.

She would have to get used to a new desk and a new classroom. Her new desk would not have an armadillo sticker with her name on it, like her old one last year. Her new classroom would not have a porcupine named Roger.

From Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Simon & Schuster 1999

Jessie didn’t think it was fair that she still had to wear Hannah’s old clothes. Jesse was an inch taller. It wasn’t her fault Hannah was fatter. But people in Clifton didn’t care about a girl’s ankle showing a little. She’d heard Ma and the other women say it was a scandalous thing back east, but on the frontier people had other things to worry about.

In each of these examples, it is clear these are the protagonist’s thoughts. When writing in first person and limited third person there’s really no necessity to present thoughts as dialogue.

But, there are times that using unspoken discourse will certainly add weight to the thought and to the moment. Here’s an (italicized!) example from The Maze Runner by James Dashner (Delacorte Press, 2009) which comes at a pivotal moment.

Thomas looked back at his captors, feeling awkward but desperate to ask questions. Captors, he thought. Then, Why did that word pop into my head?

When conveying a character’s thoughts, do consider saving actual interior discourse for those pivotal moments. And whatever you choose—quotation marks, no quotation marks, italics—be consistent throughout the text. If your manuscript is acquired, the publisher will adjust according to what best suits the book and their house style.

* Chicago Manual of Style, 16^th Edition, Point 13.41, The University of Chicago Press 2010

Bad Seeds: Lay and Lie

One of the Wordy Bird’s biggest pet peeves is misuse of the words lay and lie, and it's also probably the most common grammar mistake I see. 

Nestmate pointed at Baxtor. “Lay down,” he said. Baxtor laid down. Nestmate laid down beside the dog. Chickling laid on top of them.

What’s wrong with this?

“It’s lie down!” puffed Wordy Bird. “Not lay down. Unless you are actually laying the dog down, which you’re not.”

Lay is a transitive verb, so Baxtor cannot lay down—

Ok, let’s back up a bit. What’s a transitive verb? A transitive verb takes an object. For example: put. You wouldn’t say:

The dog put.

It doesn’t make sense, does it? A transitive verb must take an object for the sentence to make sense.

The dog put the bone down.

The opposite of a transitive verb is an intransitive verb, for example: run.

The dog runs.

An intransitive verb doesn’t take an object.

Lie is an intransitive verb, so it doesn’t take an object. Some of the confusion between the two verbs comes from similarities when they are inflected:

Lie, lay, lain

Baxtor lies down.

Baxtor lay down.

Baxtor has lain down.

But the transitive verb lay is inflected like this: lay, laid, laid

Baxtor lays the bone down.

Baxtor laid the bone down.

Baxtor has laid the bone down.

So when Nestmate wants the dog to be on the floor, he should say:

“Lie down, Baxtor. Good boy.”

Then he can lie beside the dog and Chickling will lay herself over both of them and everyone will be happy. Especially Wordy Bird. 

Bad Seeds: Wow, It Can Really Do That?

I’d like you to take a look at the following paragraph:

As Wordy Bird perched there watching the sun rise beyond the nest, her belly rumbled, thinking of the worm she’d catch for breakfast. Her wings flapped faster, just knowing how good it would taste. When she landed, her head tilted, listening for that telltale rustle of worm flesh beneath the earth.

What is wrong with these sentences—grammatically? (Don’t worry, I’m not going to weigh you down with too much grammar-junkie jargon today.)

Let’s look at the first:

As Wordy sat there watching the sun rise beyond the nest, her belly rumbled, thinking of the worm she’d catch for breakfast.

This is a sentence of a kind that I see in writers’ manuscripts on an almost daily basis, so that means a lot of writers are making this error. Let’s break it into parts:

As Wordy sat there watching the sun rise beyond the nest,

her belly rumbled,

thinking of the worm she’d catch for breakfast.

The first two work together, right?

As Wordy sat there watching the sun rise beyond the nest, her belly rumbled…

What about this part:

…her belly rumbled, thinking of the worm she’d catch for breakfast.

Do you see the problem yet?

If you don’t see it yet, ask yourself this: who or what is thinking of the worm? In this sentence construction, it’s her belly. And apart from giving us a gnarly case of butterflies when we’re about to do something scary, bellies are not known for their capacity for intelligent thought.  

Now, if you go back to the second and third sentences, perhaps you'll see why I have a problem with those, too. 

Some of you, including those of you who have worked with me before or taken one of my classes, may pick up on at least one other (potential) problem when the three sentences are put together. Can work out what it* is?

* Hint: try reading them aloud. 

The moral of story is: Don't dangle your modifiers.

You're Word Misuse Has Alot of Bad Affects

Couldn't have said it better:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

Bad Seeds: Quick, Quicker, Quickly

Quickly is an adverb. An adverb modifies a verb. E.g.:

Wordy Bird flew quickly.

Quicker is not an adverb. It should not modify a verb. Quicker is an adjective, hence the following is wrong:

Nestmate flew quicker than Wordy.

It should be:

Nestmate (thought he) flew more quickly than Wordy.

Quicker can be used like this:

But Wordy knew she was quicker.

Quick is the positive adjective. Quicker is the comparative degree of quick. Quickest is the superlative degree of quick. They are all adjectives. And adjectives modify nouns, not verbs.

Put it together and what have you got?

Nestmate was not very quick. He could not fly quickly at all, and his strides were about as quick as a worm in dried mud. In fact, among the quicker members of the nest, he had quickly earned the affectionate yet dubious nickname Slow-walkin'-Jones-slow-talkin'-Jones. It was a nickname none could say quickly. (In truth, Chickling was the quickest of the three.)

But of course there are always exceptions to the rule. Quicker and quick are sometimes used as adverbs in idiomatic speech. So in dialogue, Chickling might say:

"Mummy, come quick!"

To which Wordy Bird would, of course, reply:

"I'm coming as quickly as I can."