Posts Tagged ‘adjectives and adverbs’
Friday, January 20th, 2012
Here is a good example of where proofreading could improve a sentence:
Ikea has received eight reports of the buckles opening worldwide, with three reports of injuries.
What was that again? Ikea has (to their credit) voluntarily recalled high chairs sold between 2006 and the beginning of 2010 because of a problem with restraint buckles. However, the sentence above makes it sound as if these buckles OPEN WORLDWIDE. What the reporter means is that, worldwide, there have been eight reports of the buckles opening unexpectedly, but that is not what the sentence says. It should read this way:
Worldwide, Ikea has received eight reports of the buckles opening unexpectedly, with three reports of injuries.
It is important to be sure that a modifier like WORLDWIDE is inserted where it will describe the correct thing.
Tags: adjectives and adverbs, Ikea, sentence structure, The Birmingham News
Posted in adjectives and adverbs, Grammar, wording | 10 Comments »
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
As promised, here is Part II of the Corporate Writing Pro's Guest Post for Grammar Glitch Central. Michelle Baker is a teacher, scholar, and business professional from West Virginia whose mission is to help people communicate more clearly. You will find a link to her blog site, Keys to Easy Writing, on the Home Page for Grammar Glitch Central. Here is her post:
 Everyone trips over commas, especially the little one that sits between adjectives. That's because there's a difference between coordinate and cumulative adjectives. And most of us don't know how to test our adjectives to find that difference.
Remember, adjectives are words that give more information about nouns–words like pretty, blue, light, nice, fabulous. Sometimes we use more than one in front of the same noun, like in this sentence:
The dark red dress was her favorite.
DARK and RED are both adjectives. Should we separate them with a comma? Here's the test:
1) Can you separate the adjectives with the word AND?
2) Can you reverse their order?
In this case, you cannot. It is not a DARK and RED DRESS, nor is it a RED DARK DRESS. It's a DARK RED DRESS.
The word DARK is describing the kind of red–it's not light red, or brick red, or rose red; it's dark red. The two adjectives build on one another, and that's why we call them cumulative.
But what about this sentence?
Did you read about Macomber's short, happy life?
You could say SHORT AND HAPPY LIFE; HAPPY AND SHORT LIFE; or HAPPY, SHORT LIFE. The order of the words does not matter, and so the two adjectives are coordinate and need a comma between them.
Remember to test your adjectives. (Or, just stick to one at a time!)
Tags: adjectives and adverbs, commas
Posted in adjectives and adverbs, comma, Grammar | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011
The heated debate about the importance of good spelling continues on LinkedIn (see previous blog post). When I opened my local newspaper yesterday morning, page 8A carried a perfect example of the kind of poor advertisement that can detract from a company's professional image. Today's ad for Patillo Balance and Hearing Center, a respected business in Birmingham, contains not one but SEVEN spelling and usage errors in ONE ad! I believe that is a record in my collection, and I cannot imagine how it got past proofreaders at Patillo and at The Birmingham News. Yoo-hoo, anybody in that capacity on duty?
 Whoops #1–Although PREFORM is a word, it is not the one needed here. It should be PERFORM, which is what you would want your hearing aid to do when you want to hear. PREFORM means to shape something ahead of time.
Whoops #2–THROUGH is a word, but it is not the one needed here. You don't want a THROUGH computerized hearing test, you want one that is comprehensive (THOROUGH).
Whoops #3 and #4–POWERFULL is simply misspelled. It should have only one L at the end (POWERFUL), and a quick spell check (if someone had bothered) would have caught that one. The same is true with DESCREET, which is not a word at all. You want your hearing aid to be DISCREET (not standing out like a sore thumb).
Whoops #5–MANUFACTURERS refers to the producers of the hearing aids, so possession should be indicated with an apostrophe. This coupon entry should read: FREE CLEANING AND INSPECTION OF ANY MANUFACTURER'S HEARING AIDS.
Whoops #6 and #7–The word CLEARER is a comparative adjective, as in CLEARER hearing or CLEARER sound. CLEARER describes a noun. In this sentence, the writer is referring to the word HEAR, which is a verb. Therefore, the comparative adverb MORE CLEARLY is needed. This is followed by the phrase ON THE PHOTO. I read that three or four times before I figured out that it should have been PHONE, not PHOTO. That sentence should read as follows:
- Hear more clearly on the phone, in the car, even outside.
Tags: adjectives and adverbs, apostrophe, spelling, The Birmingham News, word usage
Posted in apostrophe, Grammar, spelling, word usage | 4 Comments »
Monday, July 11th, 2011
 I've decided to offer a contest today–with 1st and 2nd place prizes. The following 54-word sentence appeared in my newspaper this weekend, in an article about soil contamination around a brand new school in Birmingham. Here is the sentence:
While saying there has been nothing to show where the contaminants came from its plant, Walter Coke, the largest company still operating in the area that has had many heavy industrial operations, is voluntarily paying for some soil testing in the area, as well as soil replacement at Hudson K-8 and 23 surrounding properties.
You have until Wednesday, July 13, 2011, at 5:00 Central time to come up with the best possible rewrite of this sentence and submit it as a comment to this blog. I'll announce the best and second best rewrites on Thursday and award the following prizes:
1) A personal critique of up to five pages of your own writing, with comments on usage, grammar, and style. (a $40 value)
2) A personal critique of up to two pages of your own writing, with comments on usage, grammar, and style. (a $20 value)
Hope to hear from many of you! Meanwhile, take a look at the Grammar Glitch follow-up below:
My blog post for July 7 dealt with LY endings on adverbs, and I didn't expect to see this Glitch again so soon, but there it was in Mary Sanchez's "Other Views" column in this morning's The Birmingham News. It is an excellent column about Operation Fast and Furious, which involved tracking the sales of weapons to buyers procuring them for criminals in Mexico. Here is the sentence:
The initial sales of both guns from a Phoenix-area gun shop, along with serial numbers, had been careful tracked by ATF agents.
Whoops! HAD BEEN TRACKED is a verb phrase, and CAREFUL is supposed to describe how the guns were tracked. A word that describes a verb (TRACKED) should be an adverb (CAREFULLY), not an adjective (CAREFUL). The sentence should read this way:
The initial sales of both guns from a Phoenix-area gun shop, along with serial numbers, had been carefully tracked by ATF agents.
Tags: adjectives and adverbs, The Birmingham News
Posted in adjectives and adverbs, Grammar, verbs | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
Here is a coupon I came across recently:
 The word REGULAR is describing the word PRICED, which is an adjective that describes ITEM. It would be correct to write A REGULAR (adjective) ITEM, with REGULAR describing the noun ITEM.
Here, though, REGULAR refers to PRICED, which is an adjective itself. The word needs to be an adverb (REGULARLY). Adverbs describe verbs (The snake slithered SLOWLY.) or adjectives (REGULARLY PRICED or COMPLETELY mistaken) or other adverbs (The snake slithered VERY SLOWLY. or Traffic is moving TOO SLOWLY.)
On this coupon the wording should be as follows:
25% off any one regularly priced item of $150 or more…
Tags: adjectives and adverbs
Posted in adjectives and adverbs, Grammar | 2 Comments »
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