Posts Tagged ‘The Birmingham News’
Friday, November 18th, 2011
It is good news that Honda has just announced an expansion of capacity at its Alabama auto plant. The plant, located in Lincoln (near the Talladega Superspeedway), is set to become the highest-volume automaker in the state, building more than 300,000 cars a year.
One sentence in the article about this (front page of the Business section in The Birmingham News on Sunday, November 13) has a subject/verb agreement problem:
Gov. Robert Bentley, along with other state and local leaders, are expected to attend a special ceremony Monday at the $1.5 billion, 4,000-worker Lincoln plant.
Whoops! The subject of this sentence is GOV. ROBERT BENTLEY, so the verb should be IS (singular). Reporter Dawn Kent inserted the phrase ALONG WITH OTHER STATE AND LOCAL LEADERS between BENTLEY and the verb, which is fine. However, that inserted phrase is not part of the subject and does not affect the relationship between BENTLEY and IS. It does not create a compound subject. The sentence should read as follows:
Gov. Robert Bentley, along with other state and local leaders, is expected to attend a special ceremony Monday at the $1.5 billion, 4,000-worker Lincoln plant.
Tags: agreement, The Birmingham News
Posted in Grammar, Subject/Verb Agreement | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 14th, 2011
The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, and it pops up in amusing places. A company called Gamer Food is now offering snacks to boost your energy for game playing. Who knew sitting at a console could burn enough calories to require an energy snack!
The announcement about these snacks in the Tech section of The Birmingham News this morning contained this sentence:
 Gamer Food has released snack bags they say boosts your energy for game playing.
Whoops! The word BAGS is plural, and the word BOOSTS, which refers back to the BAGS, is singular. That won't work because the subject and verb must agree. It should be: The BAGS BOOST. Putting THEY SAY in between does not change that relationship. The sentence should read as follows:
Gamer Food has released snack bags they say boost your energy for game playing.
Anyone out there have a study on how many calories a gamer burns per hour? I have no idea if these snacks (not the bags) boost energy in general, but they come in three flavors–Seeds of Victory, Nuts of Destruction, and Cashews for Chaos!
Tags: agreement, The Birmingham News
Posted in Grammar, Subject/Verb Agreement | 4 Comments »
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
Even if you use correct grammar and punctuation, you can still confuse readers if you don't put words and phrases in an order that makes sense. Take a look at this lead sentence from an article in this morning's The Birmingham News:
The Alabama Board of Education will select a new superintendent to lead the state during this morning's board meeting, following a nearly five-hour meeting Wednesday in which members interviewed three of the four finalists it selected last month.
First of all, the State School Superintendent does not LEAD THE STATE of Alabama. That's Governor Bentley's job. Second, whoever is leading the state is probably not going to do it just DURING THIS MORNING'S BOARD MEETING. I would suggest wording the sentence this way:
The Alabama Board of Education will select a new State School Superintendent during its meeting this morning, following a nearly five-hour meeting on Wednesday in which members interviewed three of the four finalists it selected last month.
Or,
During its meeting this morning, the Alabama Board of Education will select a new State School Superintendent. This action follows a nearly five-hour meeting on Wednesday in which members interviewed three of the four finalists it selected last month.
COMMENT: Best wishes to retiring Alabama State School Superintendent Joe Morton who topped off his 42-year career in education by serving as superintendent from 2004 to 2011.
Best
Tags: sentence structure, The Birmingham News
Posted in Grammar, wording | 3 Comments »
Friday, November 4th, 2011
I am happy to hear that Independent Living Resources of Greater Birmingham is getting a new 8,000 square foot facility next spring. Since 1980, this agency has offered a wide variety of vital services to disabled people in our community, and their new building on Sixth Avenue North is well deserved.
When Birmingham News reporter Roy L. Williams wrote about this, he created a redundancy in the following sentence:
The $2 million, 8,000 square foot facility should open in the 1500 block of Sixth Ave. North by April or May 2012, said Dan Kessler, executive director of the agency that assists 2,000 individuals annually a year.
I am certain this reporter knows that ANNUALLY and A YEAR mean the same thing, and I am certain he did not intentionally bop this point twice (as I refer to this crime in my business writing workshops). He probably tried one version (ANNUALLY), then considered the second version (A YEAR) and then forgot to delete one or the other.
 If he had proofread his copy, he would have spotted this redundancy error. Apparently, the copy editor missed it, too. That is my point. All of us create redundancies (bopping something twice when once will do), but the good writing trick is to proofread carefully and weed out the extras before going to print. I would have worded the sentence this way:
The $2 million, 8,000 square foot facility should open in the 1500 block of Sixth Ave. North by April or May 2012, said Dan Kessler, executive director of the agency that assists 2,000 individuals a year.
Are you wondering why I chose A YEAR and got rid of ANNUALLY? Two reasons: First, if two words or phrases mean exactly the same thing (no difference in shade of meaning), I always choose the simpler one, which is A YEAR. Second, I try to avoid placing multi-syllable words next to each other. INDIVIDUALS has five syllables, and ANNUALLY has four.
COOK'S RULE: Avoid redundancies. Do not bop things twice when once will do.
FUNNY FOOTNOTE: In the headline of a recent post, I referred to an ambiguous "it," meaning a pronoun that did not have a clear antecedent. As I often do in the body of a post, I used capital letters for the word I was referring to. The headline read this way:
Benefits only available on Monday? Plus an ambiguous “IT.”
My new webmaster, who is an expert in IT (Information Technology), saw that headline and wondered who the ambiguous Information Technologist was! Perhaps others did, too, so I have changed the headline to make it clearer that I am referring to the pronoun "it." It now reads this way:
Benefits only available on Monday? Plus an ambiguous “it.”
Welcome, Sam!
Wel MMymy M
Tags: The Birmingham News, wordiness
Posted in Grammar, wordiness | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 7th, 2011
My crusade to wipe out pronoun/antecedent disagreement continues. Meanwhile, the tough new Alabama immigration law is creating difficulties in unexpected areas, including education. Here is a sentence from an article about the provision of this law that requires schools to check the citizenship status of students:
 Craven in a press conference emphasized that no child will be blocked from enrolling in public school if they don't have documentation, and the names of those families will not be shared with anyone.
The primary problem in this sentence is pronoun/antecedent disagreement. The word CHILD is singular, but the Birmingham News reporter chooses the plural pronoun THEY to refer back to CHILD. That won't work. I suggest changing CHILD to CHILDREN to avoid having to decide if the child should be referred to as HE or SHE.
Second, the reading is much smoother if the phrase IN A PRESS CONFERENCE comes after EMPHASIZED instead of in front of it.
Third, THOSE FAMILIES doesn't really fit it. You are talking about their children, so the term really should be THEIR FAMILIES.
Fourth, Craven emphasized two things in the press conference, but the lack of parallel structure in the sentence makes it sound as if he emphasized only the first point in the press conference. A second THAT is needed to link the two things he emphasized. Here is how I think this sentence should be written:
Craven emphasized in a press conference that no children will be blocked from enrolling in public school if they don't have documentation and that the names of their families will not be shared with anyone.
Four paragraphs later, pronouns get tangled up again. Consider these two sentences:
School systems will ask parents and guardians to provide a copy of the child's birth certificate when they enroll in public school for the first time. If none is available, they will be asked for additional documentation and to sign a declaration that the student is a legal citizen or immigrant.
Oh my! There are several problems here, too. First, as written, it sounds as if the parents, not the child, are enrolling in school for the first time. THEY sounds as if it refers back to the PARENTS AND GUARDIANS. The word THEY cannot refer back to CHILD, and we know it is one child because it talks about THE CHILD'S (singular) BIRTH CERTIFICATE.
Second, by the time the reader gets to THEY WILL BE ASKED, it's totally unclear who THEY refers to, so the pronoun does not work.
Third, the second sentence is not parallel in structure. FOR DOCUMENTATION is not in the same format as TO SIGN, and these two items should be parallel in format because they are both things the parents will be asked to provide if the birth certificate is not available. I would reword the sentence this way:
School systems will ask parents and guardians to provide a copy of the child's birth certificate when the child enrolls in public school for the first time. If none is available, the parents or guardians will be asked to provide additional documentation and a signed declaration that the student is a legal citizen or immigrant.
Notice that I simply replaced the pronouns in the second example with the words they refer to (CHILD and PARENTS OR GUARDIANS). Sometimes this is the best way to keep things clear. COOK'S RULE: Use a pronoun only when its antecedent is perfectly clear.
Tags: agreement, Parallel Structure, pronoun/antecedent agreement, The Birmingham News
Posted in Grammar, Parallel Structure, pronoun/antecedent agreement, sentence structure | No Comments »
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
In my Grammar Glitch workshops, I refer to parallel structure as "upper level" good writing. If you create a series of phrases within a sentence, it is important to structure each item in the series in the SAME format so the reader's brain does not have to keep switching gears.
Take a look at this sentence that appeared in yesterday's The Birmingham News:
The Birmingham Education Foundation has raised $2.6 million as part of a $4.4 million campaign to increase parental involvement, academic rigor and prepare students for life outside of high school.
The fundraising campaign is for three things:
- increase parental involvement
- academic rigor
- prepare students for life outside of high school
The first and third items are in parallel structure. Each begins with a verb (INCREASE, PREPARE). However, the second item contains only an adjective and a noun and does not, like the first and third, begin with a verb. It is not in the same format. I would suggest adding the verb ENCOURAGE to the beginning of the second item in the series. Then the sentence would read this way, without any shift in gears.
The Birmingham Education Foundation has raised $2.6 million as part of a $4.4 million campaign to increase parental involvement, encourage academic rigor and prepare students for life outside of high school.
The
Tags: Parallel Structure, The Birmingham News
Posted in Parallel Structure | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
First off, congratulations to the Highland Park neighborhood of Birmingham for being named one of 10 Great Neighborhoods for 2011 by the American Planning Association. I used to live in that area and still love to walk there and visit the theaters and restaurants.
Unfortunately, the caption under one of the photographs with the article in The Birmingham News is not as great as the neighborhood. Take a look:
Easy access to public open spaces are among the benefits of living in Highland Park, named today as one of 10 Great Neighborhoods for 2011.
Whoops #1: The subject of this sentence is the word ACCESS, which is singular. Therefore, the verb should be IS not ARE. (Easy access is one benefit among many.) It should read this way:
Easy access to public open spaces is among the benefits of living in Highland Park, named today as one of 10 Great Neighborhoods for 2011.
More good news for Birmingham followed a few pages later with an article about the newly redesigned Red Mountain Cabaret Theater space. However, the grammar in this caption is not any better than in the Highland Park caption. Take a look at this sentence:
The newly redesigned Red Mountain Cabaret theater space now includes new theater seats that increases the venue's capacity to 260.
Whoops #2: The SEATS (plural) are what INCREASES (singular) the seating capacity of the theater. INCREASES should be changed to INCREASE (plural) to go with SEATS. The sentence should read this way:
The newly redesigned Red Mountain Cabaret theater space now includes new theater seats that increase the venue's capacity to 260.
Tags: agreement, American Planning Association, Highland Park neighborhood, Red Mountain Cabaret Theater, The Birmingham News, verb form
Posted in Grammar, Subject/Verb Agreement | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
Here is a Glitch I haven't seen before: Using QUE when it should be CUE. The sentence appeared in a column called "Ask a Landscaper" in Sunday's The Birmingham News. Brian Bell was writing about how a tree or shrub spends its life:
It (the tree or shrub) takes its hints and ques from nature, as the seasons roll through.
To my knowledge, the word QUE, which means WHAT in Spanish, does not exist in English. There is the very British QUEUE, which refers to a group of people waiting in what Americans call "a line," and there is CUE, which means a signal, as in someone whispering a hint to an actor who has forgotten his lines. The word CUE can also refer to the stick used in playing the game of pool, but I believe the columnist wanted the first meaning, which is similar to HINT. The sentence should have been written this way:
It (the tree or shrub) takes its hints and cues from nature, as the seasons roll through.
Brian Bell had some good advice for gardeners: Opposite to what we would suppose, the best time to plant trees and shrubs is in the fall (not the spring) so they can grow strong roots underground during the colder months before they have to put out the showy leaves and blooms in the warmer months. Now that he has explained it, that makes sense to me!
Tags: The Birmingham News, word usage
Posted in Grammar, word usage | No Comments »
Monday, August 22nd, 2011
The Hot and Hot Fish Club is a great Birmingham restaurant, and the bar manager there recently won the local round of a contest for inventing an original cocktail. Feizal Valli, who was born in Nairobi, does not name his wonderful cocktail in the local newspaper article, BUT the Birmingham News staff writer who wrote the article gives it an odd name by using the pronoun IT'S in the wrong place. Take a look at these two sentences:
Last month, Valli won the Birmingham round of a contest sponsored by Bombay Sapphire Gin and GQ for inventing an original cocktail. It's called the Nationwide Most Inspired Bartender Search, and the winner last year got a cover on the sponsoring magazine. 
A major rule of good pronoun usage is that the pronoun must refer to the previous noun closest to it. Here, IT is the pronoun, so it should refer to COCKTAIL. However, NATIONWIDE MOST INSPIRED BARTENDER SEARCH is the name of the contest, not the name of the cocktail. The way to correct this is to replace the pronoun with THE CONTEST.
Last month, Valli won the Birmingham round of a contest sponsored by Bombay Sapphire Gin and GQ for inventing an original cocktail. The contest is called the Nationwide Most Inspired Bartender Search, and the winner last year got a cover on the sponsoring magazine.
In case any of you are interested, this original cocktail contains two ounces of Bombay Sapphire Gin, a half ounce of lime juice, three muddled blackberries, and a half ounce of sumac simple syrup. (Sumac is an herb common in the Middle East.)
Tags: pronoun, The Birmingham News
Posted in Grammar, pronoun/antecedent agreement | 2 Comments »
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
In the ongoing LinkedIn debate about whether spelling and usage errors matter, a number of people have commented that being correct isn't so important these days. I disagree with that attitude, especially when an error in usage totally distorts the meaning of a sentence, as it does here:
Employers need to have a solid understanding of Alabama's tough new immigration law because lawsuits challenging it aren't likely to strike down the portions that will most directly effect business, a panel of lawyers told concerned business owners and managers Wednesday.
Whoops! When the word EFFECT is used as a verb, as it is in this sentence, it means TO BRING ABOUT. When EFFECT is used as a noun (as it usually is), it means the RESULT or CONSEQUENCE (noun) that is brought about. I doubt seriously that News staff writer Stan Diel intended to suggest that Alabama's tough new immigration law would bring about business in the state. On the contrary, as the rest of the sentence suggests, business owners are concerned that the exact opposite will happen!
The writer should have used the verb AFFECT (have an influence on OR bring about change in). His other choice would have been to use the verb HAVE with the noun EFFECT. The two options for a correct statement are given below:
Employers need to have a solid understanding of Alabama's tough new immigration law because lawsuits challenging it aren't likely to strike down the portions that will most directly affect business, a panel of lawyers told concerned business owners and managers Wednesday.
Employers need to have a solid understanding of Alabama's tough new immigration law because lawsuits challenging it aren't likely to strike down the portions that will have the most direct effect on business, a panel of lawyers told concerned business owners and managers Wednesday.
Tags: The Birmingham News, word usage
Posted in Grammar, word usage | 2 Comments »
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