Grammar thread

[syzygy]

I'm done with that! How do you feel about "payed"? I am seeing that more often than paid.

I usually don't trust Grammarly, but this is what my English teacher always said: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/paid-payed/

 

[Prancer]

In addition to commas before verbs I'm also seeing a rash of commas after titles and before names, so:

A new cookbook by Chef, Jamie Oliver is now available.
President, Joe Smith addressed shareholders.

Sometimes there's an additional comma after the name too, which sometimes works (although is cumbersome IMO) as in:

X Corporation President, Joe Smith, addressed shareholders.

But other times doesn't work at all:

A new cookbook by Chef, Jamie Oliver, is now available.

I see this as well; it's confusion over appositives.

An appositive is a noun or pronoun — often with modifiers — set beside another noun or pronoun to explain or identify it.

In some cases, the noun being explained is too general without the appositive; the information is essential to the meaning of the sentence. When this is the case, do not place commas around the appositive; just leave it alone. If the sentence would be clear and complete without the appositive, then commas are necessary; place one before and one after the appositive.

I wouldn't use commas in either of your examples. But I would use commas like this:

X Corporation President Joe Smith, a graduate of the Harvard School of Business, addressed shareholders.

A new cookbook by Chef Jamie Oliver, a Food Network favorite, is now available.

I'm done with that! How do you feel about "payed"? I am seeing that more often than paid.

I haven't seen that yet.

 

[Susan1]

I see this as well; it's confusion over appositives.

An appositive is a noun or pronoun — often with modifiers — set beside another noun or pronoun to explain or identify it.

In some cases, the noun being explained is too general without the appositive; the information is essential to the meaning of the sentence. When this is the case, do not place commas around the appositive; just leave it alone. If the sentence would be clear and complete without the appositive, then commas are necessary; place one before and one after the appositive.

I wouldn't use commas in either of your examples. But I would use commas like this:

X Corporation President Joe Smith, a graduate of the Harvard School of Business, addressed shareholders.

A new cookbook by Chef Jamie Oliver, a Food Network favorite, is now available.

I haven't seen that yet.

We called those parenthetical phrases because the sentence makes sense without what was in between the commas, like if you put that part in parentheses.

 

[Prancer]

The Supreme Court has decided a case based on grammar.

So I was a little surprised to see this quote from the decision:

As an illustration, Sotomayor considered a teacher who announced that students “must not complete or check any homework to be turned in for a grade, using online homework-help websites.”

That's definitely a comma error .

 

[Susan1]

Remember when I complained about a local reporter saying whenever (whenever the storm hit) every time she meant when for different stories? I heard a guy on CNN or MSNBC say "whenever George Floyd was killed". "Whenever" is when you don't know specifically. "When" is WHEN it happened. What is wrong with people? More syllables don't make you sound smarter.