My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

By Caroline Taggart and J. A. Wines

A runaway hit and Sunday Times bestseller, My Grammar and I has continued to grow in popularity, becoming the go-to guide for grammar. My Grammar and I offers amusing examples of awful grammar, while steering you in the direction of grammatical greatness. Taking you on a tour of the English language through the minefield of rules and conditions that can catch you out, from dangling modifiers to split infinitives, it highlights the common pitfalls that every English language user faces on a day to day basis. Refreshing everything you should have learnt at school and more, My Grammar and I is informative yet entertaining - an ideal buy for any English language enthusiast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael O'Mara
• Release date: May 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9781843176268

Caroline Taggart

Caroline Taggart worked in publishing as an editor of popular non-fiction for thirty years before being asked by Michael O'Mara Books to write I Used to Know That, which became a Sunday Times bestseller. Following that she was co-author of My Grammar and I (or should that be 'Me'?), and wrote a number of other books about words and English usage. She has appeared frequently on television and on national and regional radio, talking about language, grammar and whether or not Druids Cross should have an apostrophe. Her website is carolinetaggart.co.uk and you can follow her on Twitter @citaggart.

Book preview

plague.

1.

SPELLING

AND CONFUSABLES

ABC:

EASY AS 123 (OR, SPELLING)

‘My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.’

A. A. MILNE, Winnie the Pooh

In the late 1500s, the state of English spelling and the ‘invasion’ of foreign words was troubling scholars and schoolteachers to the extent that some of them took it upon themselves to harness the language by compiling dictionaries. But even with the help of education and dictionaries, spelling can still be an uphill climb.

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Smart Alec: More than one-tenth of English words are not spelled the way they sound.

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We have an overwhelming tendency to leave letters in words even though they are no longer pronounced (think of the g in weight or daughter, for example, or the b in subtle, or the p in pneumonia). And we are surely the only language to have nine ways to pronounce a single four-letter combination:

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.

Then we have things called eye rhymes, which are words that look alike and perhaps used to rhyme but which, due to shifts in pronunciation, no longer do. In Shakespeare’s day,

Blow, blow thou winter wind

Thou art not so unkind

would probably have rhymed, as would

I am monarch of all I survey…

From the centre all round to the sea

when Cowper wrote those lines nearly two hundred years later.

Then there is another problem. Many words that sound the same are spelled differently.

which makes English a wonderful language for puns but a nightmare for non-native speakers and for those who aren’t confident in their spelling (or who rely on their spellcheckers).

‘They went and told the sexton, and The sexton toll’d the bell.’

THOMAS HOOD

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Smart Alec: A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same or differently.

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It’s my bizness to be definate

Here are the correct spellings of a random selection of commonly misspelled*6 words:

Take my advice

In these commonly confused noun/verb pairs, the noun has a c and the verb has an s.†7

Useful mnemonic: I’d advise you not to give advice. Advice/advise is the only pair in the list whose verb and noun are pronounced differently, but the rule of c = noun, s = verb applies to all the others, too.

That’s if you’re British, by the way. If you are American, it is often, but not always, the other way round. Did we mention that spelling was an uphill climb?

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Swot’s Corner: Until the eighteenth century, English spelling was not standardized on either side of the Atlantic. Then, in 1755, Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language, and in 1828, Noah Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language.

Webster was an orderly-minded man who disapproved of a lot of the spelling that Johnson had recorded (indeed, he disapproved of a lot about Johnson, saying that he was ‘naturally indolent and seldom wrote until he was urged by want. Hence… he was compelled to prepare his manuscripts in haste.’).

Webster’s dislike of words that weren’t pronounced the way they looked led him to decree that words such as centre and theatre should be spelled center and theater; he also dropped the silent u from words such as colour, favour and honour. In fact, Webster was single-handedly responsible for most of the differences between British and American spelling that survive to this day.

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Seize the sieve: a spelling rule

The most famous spelling rule is ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’, although this does not work for ancient, foreign, neither, protein, science, seize, species, vein or lots of other words. It really applies only to certain words in which the ie or ei makes an ee sound: achieve, receive, deceive.

So even the most famous spelling rule works only in a very limited set of circumstances. Hey ho. There is really no way round this other than reading a lot, taking note of unfamiliar words and investing in a good dictionary.

One word or two?

As a general rule, one word tends to be an adjective, while two words form the noun. Here are some common confusions:

alot/a lot

There is no such word as alot. A lot of people know that a lot should be two words. If you mean to write the verb allot, however, you should allot it two ls.

alright/all right

Chambers Dictionary describes alright as an alternative, less acceptable spelling of all right.

Useful mnemonic: It’s either all right or all wrong.

altogether/all together

Altogether, it’s sixty miles.

All together now: ‘Sixty miles to go…’

anyone/any one

Does this bag belong to anyone?

It could belong to any one of those tourists over there.*8

always/all ways

I always get lost in Rome.

All ways lead to Rome.

cannot/can not

Either is acceptable, but cannot is more common. Sometimes can not may be the better choice if you want to be emphatic: No, you can not speak Swahili.†9

everyday/every day

His everyday life is very dull, but at night he’s in a cabaret act.

Every day I dream of becoming a showgirl.

everyone/every one

Everyone has a guilty secret.

Every one of you pretends not to like Barry Manilow.

into/in to

I can’t seem to get into the office.

I was hoping to go in to use the free internet.

maybe/may be

Maybe you’ll remember what I tell you in future.

Although it may be that I forgot to tell you in the first place.

nobody/no body, somebody/some body, anybody/any body

Nobody was at the crime scene, so I assumed they’d all gone home.

There was a lot of blood at the crime scene, but no body.

I think somebody is trying to break in.

Gosh, that burglar has quite some body.

Will any body do for the bikini advert, or does anybody here happen to have Pamela Anderson’s contact details?

sometimes/some times

Sometimes trains arrive on time.

Some times on that train timetable I gave you are wrong.

I’ll give you a ring sometime.

Perhaps we can arrange some time for ourselves.

And one instance of ‘one word or three?’

insofar/in so far

Your choice: We agree insofar (or in so far) as your design looked wonderful; it’s just that mohair tights aren’t in high demand. Both versions are perfectly acceptable.

I’ll get my cloak

When two words are combined to form a single word, the new word is called a portmanteau word. As Humpty Dumpty tells Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, ‘There are two meanings packed into one word.’ For example:

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Smart Alec: Portmanteau is itself made up of two words, the French porter (to carry) and manteau (cloak or mantle).

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What’s the word I’m after?

abuse/misuse/disabuse

To abuse something means to treat it so badly that you damage it.

To misuse something means to use it wrongly.

To disabuse someone of something means to show them that their thinking is wrong.

acute/chronic

An acute illness is one that is sudden and severe but short-lived.

A chronic illness persists for a long time.

Useful mnemonics:

acute: children are short, a pain, and not cute for long.

chrOnic = Old (lasting a lOng time).

affect/effect

Affect is a verb and effect is a noun. So you affect something by having an effect on it. (The exception is if you effect a change; that is, cause a change to happen.)

Useful mnemonic:

RAVEN, that is: Remember Affect Verb Effect Noun.

aggravate/annoy

Aggravate means ‘to make worse’. Therefore, while you can aggravate a situation, a problem or a condition, you irritate or annoy people.

alternate/alternative

An alternate plan would be wrong. The verb alternate means going back and forth between two things, and thus you have alternate letters of the alphabet (a, c, e, g, etc.). If you mean ‘another plan’, it should be alternative.

among/between

Use between for two things; among for more than two.

Between you and me, there’s no way we can divide these five loaves and two fishes among our five thousand guests.

Useful mnemonic:

beTween = Two

aMong = Many

amount/number

A rhyming mnemonic: use amount for things we cannot count.

That’s a large amount of sugar for one cup of tea.

What is an acceptable number of sugars for one cup of tea?

as/like

Something looks like something else – they physically resemble one another.

He looks like his mother and she looks like Margaret Thatcher.

However:

It looks as if a storm is coming.

Teenagers use words such as ‘like’ far too often.

As with all homework, pupils can now research geography topics online.*10

‘He rose like a trout to the fly of any phrase.’

VIOLET ASQUITH ON WINSTON CHURCHILL

complement/compliment

May I compliment you on your new hairstyle? The colour complements your dress beautifully.

Useful mnemonic:

A complEment adds something to make it Enough.

A compLIMEnt puts you in the LIMElight.

continual/continuous

Continual means ‘happening over and over and over again’; continuous means ‘happening constantly without stopping’. You may continually receive unwanted telephone calls from telesales people. However, if this were happening continuously, you would never be able to put the phone down.

Useful mnemonic:

continuAL = Able to Leave off

continuouS = never Stopping

defuse/diffuse

You defuse a situation, by (metaphorically) taking the fuse out of it before it catches fire.

Diffuse means ‘to spread out’ if it is a verb, or ‘already spread out’ if it is an adjective.

due to/owing to

This is another of those ‘strictly speaking’ problems. Chambers Dictionary says that due to means ‘caused by’ with a second definition of ‘owing to, because of’, which, it adds, is ‘a use still

Reviews for My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?)

[engpunk77 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not sure that this is easy or good reading for someone who is just learning grammar, but it was a refreshing, enjoyable review of what I already know with lots of little things I never really knew before. I especially like the introduction and how the example sentences are humorous. It's not a dry grammar book, and maybe you'll find something new as well?

I read it front to back over summer vacation (voluntarily), so I think that says it all.

[elmyra_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kind of average. Lynne Truss's effort on punctuation was both more entertaining and more informative.