I saw this today in a Vonage commercial.
Problem:
The adverb does not match the tense of the verb.
Explanation:
The adverb “yet” means at the present time.
The expression “didn’t leave” is in the past tense, so “yet” does not go with “didn’t leave” (or any other expression in the past tense).
In other words, it makes no sense to say, “Hope you didn’t leave at the present time.”
To fix this, one must change the expression to the present tense.
Solution:
“Hope you have not left yet.”
I heard this expression last evening on a Travel Channel television program.
Problems:
1. The verbs are incorrect.
2. A preposition is missing.
Explanation:
The TV program was reviewing night life in Las Vegas.
One of the featured locations was a night club in which performers sit and stand on swings hung from the ceiling.
The narrator claimed that an exciting feature was that the club had “swings that raise and lower from the ceiling”.
The first problem is that the verbs “raise” and “lower” are transitive verbs — that is, verbs that require both a direct subject and one or more objects — whereas intransitive verbs — that is, verbs that do not take an object — are required here.
Examples of transitive verbs include “cut” and “hit” and “put”.
Examples of intransitive verbs include “die” and “rot” and “sit”.
“Swings that raise and lower from the ceiling” requires intransitive verbs, and “rise” and “fall” are the appropriate corrections to “raise” and “lower”, respectively.
These corrections give us “swings that rise and fall from the ceiling”.
I believe that this use of “raise” and “lower” as intransitive verbs is connected to the use of “lay” as an intransitive verb — as in “Please lay down now!” — through a popular but incorrect assumption that transitive verbs are interchangeable with intransitive verbs.
The second problem is a lack of parallelism. It makes no sense to say “rise from the ceiling”, so the first and second verbs may not share the preposition “from”.
Instead, the verb “rise” requires its own preposition in relation to “the ceiling”. That required preposition is “to”.
I believe that the omission of “to” after the first verb is related to the common English blunder of omitting all prepositions but the final one in a list of verbs in a sentence. My impression is that this blunder comes from speakers and writers not thinking ahead, perhaps because they were not taught about the importance of parallelism in sentences.
Solution:
“swings that rise to and fall from the ceiling”
I often see these two words used interchangeably.
Problem:
These two nouns are not synonyms.
Explanation:
Identical pronunciation of these two nouns makes them homophones, as noted at Wikipedia.
The word “calorie” — with a lowercase “c” — means an amount of heat equal to 4.184 joules.
In case you do not remember your basic physics, one “joule” refers to the work done by a force of one newton acts through a distance of one meter or to the current of one ampere passed for one second through a resistance of one ohm.
The word “Calorie” — with a capital “C” — means 1000 calories (with a lowercase “c”), also known as a “kilocalorie” (also with a lowercase “c”).
The common English blunder is to write “Calorie” — with a capital “C” — as “calorie” — with a lowercase “c” — when referring to the energy value of a food item.
For example, a “2000-calories-per-day diet” — with a lowercase “c” — would provide almost no energy and might have been suitable for Mahatma Gandhi when he was on a hunger strike.
Aside: I recently saw a beautifully shot movie titled “Water” that weaves Gandhi into a story set in India. The story was fascinating and touching, and the acting was excellent. I highly recommend it!
In contrast, a “2000-Calories-per-day diet” — with a capital “C” — would be on the order of magnitude of what many adults require to maintain their body weights.
Solution:
Remember that capital “C” is larger than lowercase “c”, just as “Calorie” with a capital “C” is larger — in fact, one thousand times larger — than “calorie” with a lowercase or small “c”. When referring to the energy value of food, use “Calorie” with a capital “C”.