Category: grammar

Hey, remember when I used to write grammar tips? They’re back!

Today’s trick is how to keep capitol (“a building housing a legislative assembly”) and capital (we’ll go with “uppercase letters” here for this trick; it’s the most common usage*) straight, spelling-wise.

Just remember that if you mean uppercase letters, use capital with an -al. The trick? You can’t spell “capitAL” without “ALL caps.”

 

*Bonus tips: “Capital” can also mean “cash or assets” OR “the city that is the center of government.”  Just remember that you can’t spell “capitAL” without “cAsh and Assets”, and you need a mAp to find a capitAl city.

This one was another request (which makes me so happy): How can you tell when to use drink, drank, or drunk? Or sink, sank, or sunk?

Drink and sink are pretty easy, since they’re in the present tense. (I’m pretty sure nobody gets confused about saying “Drink up!”) But drank and drunk and sank and sunk are both past tense verbs, so how can you tell which one to use?

Drank and sank are simple past tense verbs: “The ship sank.” “I drank too much last night.” But drunk and sunk are a past participle, so they need a helping verb–no, don’t tune out yet, that just means drunk and sunk always appear with a form of “have”: “They have drunk my potion!” “The submarine has been sunk by the spies.”

So here’s my trick: Drunk and sunk have a U in them. Have has a V in it. U and V come right next to each other in the alphabet. S0 use that trick to remember that drunk and sunk should always appear with have.

(Today’s tip was a request from a friend, which made me feel absurdly gratified. Grammar matters to more than just me!)

Probably because of their visual similarity to “chose” and “choose,” people tend to confuse “lose” and “loose” as different tenses of the same word (the way “chose” is the past tense of “choose”).

My friends, they are NOT the same word. They are not related in any way. Lose is, of course, “to cease to have” something–a verb; something that is loose (an adjective) “is not firmly fixed in place.”

So how do you keep it straight? You can think of the adjective/verb difference, or you can use this tip: If you mean “to cease to have something,” use lose with one O. You can remember it by thinking that it has ceased to have the second O.

Are we ready for more grammar? This one is a pet peeve of mine, so hopefully my tip can spread throughout the world and end the egregious practice of using “everyday” when we really mean “every day.”

What’s the difference? “Everyday” is an adjective, i.e., it can describe things. “Every day” is a another way of saying “each day.” It’s a phrase. But because it’s one thing to know this and another thing to use them well, here are my tips:

Check to see if “everyday” is correct:
Try to substitute an adjective (such as “normal” or “blue”) for “everyday” and see if it works.
“It was an everyday occurrence” = “It was a normal [or blue] occurrence.”
“These are my everyday pants.” = “These are my normal [or blue] pants.”

Check to see if “every day” is correct:
Try to substitute a day of the week with “every day”.
“I come here every day.” = “I come here Tuesday.”
“Every day, I get the blues.” = “Tuesday, I get the blues.”

Now that we know this, we can apply it in any situation. Is the phrase “Lunch specials are available everyday” correct? Well, are lunch specials available blue? I hope not.

Today’s tip is courtesy of my lifelong friend Amber, and is dear to my heart after all the years I spent working in social stationery:

How do you remember which spelling of “stationery/stationary” is the correct one in a given situation?

• Stationery that means paper you write on and send in the mail has an E in it, for ENVELOPE. Envelopes go in the mail!
• Stationary that means standing still and not moving is the other one. (You can also remember it with an A for stAnding still.)

I have a few tricks I use to keep things straight mentally (and to help explain my copy edits at work), but I’ve never shared them with anyone. Are you interested? Shall we see if this makes sense and start a Wednesday grammar tip series? Let’s try.

Today’s tip is about getting the possessive version of “its”–that is, the one WITHOUT the apostrophe–right. My tip? See if you can substitute “his” for “its”.

So, for example, take this sentence:
“The chair was missing one of its legs.”
Using our trick, we can pretend we live in a cartoon universe and say,
“Mr. Chair was missing one of HIS legs.”
Yes, this makes sense! DO NOT add an apostrophe to that “its” in the original sentence.

Another example:
“Paris is famous for its lights, its food, and its wine.”
Let’s use our trick again and substitute “his”:
“Bob Paris is famous for HIS lights, HIS food, and HIS wine.”
Yes! Resist the urge to add an apostrophe to “its” as it is used here.

You can also reverse this if you see an “it’s” with an apostrophe and you’re not sure it is correct:
Does changing “It’s going to snow tonight.” to “HIS going to snow tonight” work?
No, that makes no sense. Therefore, this apostrophe is OK.

So remember: If you can substitute “his” for “its” in the sentence you’re worried about, that “its” does NOT need an apostrophe.