Month: February 2008

“Whether you think youre wrong, …”

Apostrophes, Contractions

This appeared on a motivational poster for teenagers.

Problem:
An apostrophe is required when contracting two words into one word.

Explanation:
“Whether you think you are wrong, …” would be the formal equivalent of what the poster writer wanted to say.

As I’ve written (Did you see the contraction that I just wrote?!), many people often confuse “your” and the contraction of “you are” to the point of writing “your” instead of the contraction.

A contraction requires an apostrophe to signify the removal of one or more letters in the formation of the contraction. For example, the apostrophe in “I’ve” signifies the removal of “ha” in the formation of the contraction from “I” and “have”.

In other words, an apostrophe must appear where one has removed the letter(s) to form the contraction.

Solution:
“Whether you think you’re wrong, …”

“Each of us has our own style.”

Possessives, Pronouns

I heard someone say this recently.

Problem:
The number of the possessive pronoun does not match the number of the subject.

Explanation:
“Each of us” is singular (the speaker is considering “us” one at a time), so the possessive pronoun in front of “own style” should be singular.

The possessive pronoun “our” is plural and therefore does not match the number of the subject (“Each of us”).

I believe that the speaker of the statement, in ignoring the number of “Each of us” (singular) in favor of the number of “us” (plural), was distracted by the fact that “us” and “our” usually go together (are both first-person plural pronouns) and the proximity of “us” to the possessive pronoun in the statement.

“Each of us has their own style.” would be incorrect, too, because “their” is plural and also is inconsistent with the singularity of “Each of us” (the subject of the sentence).

Given that the statement refers to a group of people, the correct possessive pronouns would be the singular ones “his” and/or “her”. The mental impediment of combining “us” with “his” or “her” in a statement seems to be that “us” is in the first person whereas “his” and “her” are in the third person. One must appreciate that “Each of” in front of “us” forces the listener to consider the third-person individuals in the group.

Solutions:
“Each of us has his own style.” — for an all-male group
“Each of us has her own style.” — for an all-female group
“Each of us has his or her own style.” — for a mixed group

“CLINTON LOOSES SUPPORT”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders, Verbs

I saw this on Fox News Channel this morning.

Problem:
One cannot “loose” support.

Explanation:
The headline writer wanted to say Hillary Clinton stops having support for her presidential campaign. with just three words.

It’s true that “loose” can be used as a verb as well as an adjective.

“Loose screws” is a common expression containing “loose” as an adjective.

According to Dictionary.com, “loose” was first recorded as a verb around 1225.

When used as a verb, however, “loose” does not mean “stops having”; this definition belongs to the verb “lose” instead, which gives us the solution.

Solution:
“CLINTON LOSES SUPPORT”