Verbs

“He has ran five miles.”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I frequently hear sentences constructed in this way.

Problem:
A past-tense verb appears where the verb’s past participle is required.

Explanation:
The auxiliary verb “has” must be combined with a past participle to form a perfect tense.

Here are some examples:

  • He has eaten the piece of pie.
  • He has shaved five minutes off his marathon time.
  • He has cut his finger.

The first example uses “eaten” — the past participle of “eat”.

The second example uses “shaved” — the past participle of “shave”.

The third example uses “cut” — the past participle of “cut”.

The past participle of “run” is “run”, not “ran”, which is the past tense of “run”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following combinations (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “has run” — 6,780,000 matches
  • “has ran” — 203,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors favor “has run” over “has ran” by a 33.4:1, which is good but not great.

Solution:
“He has run five miles.”

“If I would have known, …”

Verbs

This construction bothers my wife, so I decided to investigate.

The problem with people using “If he would have” where they mean “If he had” instead is that the two expressions have different meanings.

  • The expression “If he would have” assumes that he would not.
  • The expression “If he had” assumes only that he did not.

Look at these two constructions:

  1. If John would have gone to the golf course at 8 a.m., then we would not have had to call Jim.
  2. If John had gone to the golf course at 8 a.m., then we could have started on time.

Here are the explanations for the above two constructions:

  1. John would not go to the golf course, so we had to call Jim.
  2. John did not go to the golf course, so we did not start on time.

“Entitled” vs. “Titled”

Common English Blunders, Verbs, Versus

I often hear people use one of these words as a substitute for the other word.

Problem:
The words “entitled” and “titled” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
One definition of the transitive verb “title” is to call by a name.

An example of proper use of this verb is “He titled his autobiography ‘Jim’.”

One definition of the verb “entitle” is to give (a thing or person) a claim to something.

An example of proper use of this first definition of “entitle” is “American children are entitled to a tax-funded education.”

Another definition of the verb “entitle” is to confer an honorary title on (someone).

An example of proper use of this second definition of “entitle” is “The king entitled him Sir Muckety-Muck at the polo match.”

A third definition of the verb “entitle” is to give a title to something, but it does not refer to the title itself.

So it is incorrect to say or write “He entitled the book ‘Babe Ruth’.”, but it is correct to say or write “He entitled the book before he wrote it. It is titled ‘Babe Ruth’.”

In other words, one should not use “entitled” before the name of a movie, rock concert, book, athletic competition, painting, etc., but one may use “titled” before the name of any of these.

Solution:
Use “titled” but never “entitled” before the name of an event or creation.