The basics of English grammar
Yes, a quick grammar lesson today, the start of a new series of occasional posts about the usage and abusage of the English language. Well, this is a writer’s blog as much as a blog about living on Symi, and you may find it interesting and useful. (And there are some nice photos of Symi.)
I recently bought myself a copy of ‘The Elements of Style’ by Strunk and White. You may know if it, it’s an English grammar and usage book that every writer should have a copy of. Even if you are not a writer, it is interesting and goes a long way to helping folk like me know where to put a comma or a semicolon, and all that stuff. Here are a few examples, ‘translated’ by me and interspersed with some local photos apropos nothing other than keeping you in the image-loop with Symi. By the way, I don’t say that just because I have this book means I have yet stashed all the rules under my belt. I am still working on it. (Maybe that should have been a semicolon there not a full stop…?) And of course, most of the folk reading this will know these things, but you might like to pass this post on to others who you feel could do with a bit of a brush-up.
Lesson one – and a lot of Facebook and forum readers could do with paying attention here.
Possessive: adding the apostrophe to make something belong to someone. Here’s a simple example:
The book belongs to Ben; therefore, it is Ben’s book. (See what I did there? Ben’s = belongs to.) Not, The book belongs to Bens as that would be plural, many Bens, and you would need to add ‘the’ before Bens to make any sense of it at all.
So what if the name or noun (thing) ends in an s, as in Collins? Well, according to my new book we should all write Collins’s, though there are exceptions with names ending in -is and -es. So I could write, James’ book but should write Collins’s book. I must admit it, I usually don’t bother with that and would write. Collins’ without the extras s, that’s either laziness or a more modern exception than when the book was first written (1950s I think, though mine is the 4th Edition, 2000).
However, if the word simply doesn’t sound right, the book examples “Moses’ laws”, the book suggests that you restructure the sentence and write, the laws of Moses, which does sound a lot better on the ear. And there are other exceptions, such as, For conscience’ sake – again it would not sound correct to write or say, ‘For conscience’s sake.’ But as many people on Facebook at al don’t seem to have a grammar conscience it’s unlikely they will bother with that one.
A quick look at pronoun rules. (Pronouns replace nouns (things/names etc.) such as I, you, she, it, his. Pronominal possessives have no apostrophe even though they are possessive. Say what? Well, that simply means that Hers, Its, Theirs, Yours, are not written Her’s, It‘s, Their’s and Your’s; how silly would that be? Not very silly according to millions of people who should know the difference between its and it’s, another very common error when digging around your contractions and pronominals.
And what that means, basically, is that when you write Its, the thing you are talking about, though possessive, has no apostrophe: “Symi is warm in the summer, its summer months are hot.”
As opposed to it’s which is a contraction (shortened version) of the verb it is.
This is clearly wrong: “Symi is warm in the summer, it is summer months are hot.” Which makes no sense when you read it like that. So, if you are unsure if it’s its or it’s, simply say the sentence out loud in full (uncontracted) and you should hear which is correct. “It is summer in July.” Yup, can’t fault that. “Its summer in July.” Suggests that there is more to come as we are talking about something’s summer: “Symi is warm, its summer in July is hot.” Correct, ten out of ten!
“When visiting Symi, it’s a clever man who takes advantage of its summer.”
That’s page one of the book, and now you know all about possessives. In days to come I’ll knock out some other simple grammar rules so you no longer have to suffer the indignity of being pulled over by the grammar police on social media and other places. (I just hope I’ve not made any typos here. I am sure if I have, someone will let me know.)
