Grammarly Speaking
(no affiliation with the grammarly writing tool)
I am a nit-picker about grammar and spelling, though not one who hectors writers about it. Since I won’t nit-pick your writing, other than in my own head, I thought I would do a quick post on my top grammerly nits. Is it okay to do a listicle highest-priority first?
- More than / over. If you can count it, please use “more than”. When you cannot count it, use over. So:
It has been more than 15 years since… [I can count years.]
I am over the age of consent. [I cannot count the age of consent.]
Rule of thumb: You usually want “more than” when you use “over” to express an amount!
I have a technical writing certificate and this rule was drilled into me by my tech writing instructor. Seeing its misuse is a good indication that the writer has no professional training in grammar or editing. (I’m looking at you, Rachel Maddow!)
By the way, it also applies to “less than” / “under”, but that seems to come up less often.
2. Period inside the parentheses. This grammar “rule” is that the period always goes inside the parentheses. (I guess this is an American thing, and isn’t the rule in Britain.) There, see now that period went inside the parentheses? That makes sense to me. But it doesn’t make sense to me when I want to tell you, for example, a specific word (or prhase). Period inside just looks wrong: a specific word (or phrase.) I don’t know, maybe the inside-the-parentheses rule doesn’t apply to dependent clauses, if that’s what you call it.
3. Lower case web. I came up with the rule that it is a Web browser, not a web browser. There is only one World Wide Web, and that is its name, so we capitalize it. But I understand that now, by common usage, web browser is preferred. That’s okay, it is just taking some getting-used-to. I guess the internet is lower case now also, though I don’t run into that one as often.
4. E-mail vs email. Similar to the previous nit, I came up writing e-mail, but now apparently email is preferred. Old dog (me), new tricks!
5. “I wouldn’t use it even if it was free.” Should be: “I wouldn’t use it even if it were free.” This is an example of a weird grammatical syntax called “subjunctive mood” where a plural verb is used with a singular noun.It bugs me because I’m never quite sure about it, but I believes it applies to this example. Her is a link to read about it, but it left me equally confused.
I realize that grammar rules are not written in stone, and violations are sometimes justifiable artistically or otherwise. But you should violate them deliberately and with purpose, not out of ignorance. My favorite story of deliberate violation is this: Apparently James Thurber would go the mat fighting his editor over missing commas when he would intentionally write, for example, “The flag is red white and blue.” (The story is told better and only slightly longer at this link.) In homage, I myself even sometimes use this construction for short lists of short words. (“I myself even sometimes…”? That sentence construction can probably be improved!)
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