WRT333

Miscellaneous Errors
Week 4

Links this page:split infinitives | dangling modifiers | misused words and illiteracies
disagreement in number between subject and verb | gender blunders | other common grammatical errors

Split Infinitives

The infinitive uses to with a plain verb: to go, to create. It is widely accepted that the two words are not to be disrupted by any other words.

Between its 1960s origin and its reincarnation 30 years later, the popular television series Startrek has been distinguished by one of modern grammarian's worst nightmares. The opening of the original series began with Captain Kirk's famous

The imposition of boldly between to and go is, of course, to unacceptably split the infinitive. Even the gender-proper Second Generation Startrek began with the Captain proclaiming "....to boldly go where no one has gone before." Gender sensitivity has progressed; grammatical has not.

Although grammarians will be bothered (and bothered grammarians can not restrain themselves from pointing out split infinitives), if the effort to remove the offending splitter results in a less economical or more awkward revision, go wtih what seems more natural and preferable.

Dangling Modifiers

A dangling modifier, usually found in a short introductory clause, contains some form of verb and implies, but does not name a related subject; this leads readers to assume, logically, that the implied subject is the same as the subject of the sentence that follows. Careful reading may reveal that it does not, in which case the modifier phrase "dangles" without reference to anything in the sentence. Often, they are funny.

Driving down the street, the house is the one on the right with the white fence. Here, the phrase gets linked to "the house," but houses do not drive down streets.

When detected, the remedy is to identify and incorporate a real subject in the modifying phrase. If you drive down the street, ... or change the subject of the main clause, "Driving down the street, you will see the house..."

Dangling modifiers may appear elsewhere. My favorite example is from Day (1998), referring to a line from Michael Gilbert's Death Has Deep Roots, "He placed at Nap's disposal the marriage bed of his eldest daughter, a knobbed engine of brass and iron."

Misused Words and Illiteracies

Writers need to check particular words, and to understand their meaning. Some that I see too often as errors on student papers (from wikipedia):

• affect | effect. The verb affect means "to influence something", and the noun effect means "the result of". Effect can also be a verb that means "to cause [something] to be", while affect as a noun has technical meanings in psychology, music, and aesthetic theory: an emotion or subjectively experienced feeling.
• comprise. According to the OED, comprise is a transitive verb meaning 'to include' or 'to consist of', as in "the book comprises thirteen chapters". Commonly (and incorrectly), the word is used in a 'backwards formulation', as in "thirteen chapters comprise the book", or even "the book is comprised of thirteen chapters", a usage not sanctioned by any dictionary.
• disinterested | uninterested. To be disinterested in something means to not be biased about something (i.e. to have no personal stake in a particular side of an issue). To be uninterested means to not be interested in or intrigued by something. I was recently criticised for being disrespectful when I referred to a "disinterested Board of Governors." Was I?
• # e.g. and i.e. The abbreviation e.g. stands for the Latin exempli gratia "for example", and should be used when the example(s) given are just one or a few of many. The abbreviation i.e. stands for the Latin id est "that is", and is used to give the only example(s) or to otherwise qualify the statement just made.
• imply | infer. Something is implied if it is a suggestion intended by the person speaking, whereas a conclusion is inferred if it is reached by the person listening.
• lose | loose. Lose can mean "fail to win", "misplace", or "cease to be in possession". Loose can mean the opposite of tight, or the opposite of tighten. Lose is often misspelled loose, likely because lose has an irregular rhyme for the way it is spelled: it is more common for words ending -ose to rhyme, like nose, or rose, but lose rhymes, like news or confuse. This may cause poor spellers to guess the correct spelling should match another rhyming word like choose, although choose is itself also an exception to the regular rhyme for words ending -oose (typically such words, including loose, rhymes, like goose or caboose).
• sight | site | cite. A site is a place; a sight is something seen. To cite is to quote or list as a source.

A malapropism is the substitution of an incorrect word for a word with a similar sound, in which the resulting phrase makes no sense but often creates a comic effect. It is derived from the French phrase mal à propos (literally "ill-suited"). The use is usually unintentional. President Bush was famous for malapropisms.

(Reference: Wikipedia—malapropism)

I'd reserve the term illiteracy for misuse of common words, also too frequent on student papers. Learn these and check them always:

• yours, your's
• it, it's
• there, their, they're
• to, too, two
• whose, who's

Disagreement in Number Between Subject and Verb
or Between Pronoun and Antecedent

The number of a subject, meaning whether it is a singular or a plural noun, determines the number of the verb. This may be particularly confusing in scientific writing when a word with a plural ending (e.g., data) is not recognized as such, and is incorrectly used with a singular verb: The data show... is correct; The data shows... is not.

Pronouns must refer to another noun, usually one that comes before. Because they derive meaning from their antecedents, the pronoun must agree in person, number, and gender.

• Antecedents joined by and usually take plural pronouns: You and I cannot balance our accounts
• When parts of an antecedent are joined by or or nor, the pronoun agrees with its nearer part: The coach or the players must arrange their own transporation.

Gender Blunders

While society has made great strides in gender equality, make certain that any references to gender-specific terms are correct. For example, reference to "the Senators and their wives" would be really offensive to Senators from Missouri, Maine, and several other states. You shouldn't be referring to doctors as though they were all male; nor should you assume that the nurse is also a miss (a former student became a Navy Seal on his way toward a career path of becoming a professional nurse.

I find that many students, now accustomed to "flight attendant," "sales associate," and "linesperson," tend to feel that this is a problem left from a previous generation. Nevertheless, check gender-laden words for subtle inferrences that you may not intend.

For more, see Miller and Swift (1988)

References

• Casey Miller and Kate Swift. 1988. The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. Harper and Row. 180p.