We will be away from the blogging world for a few days, since (as most of you know) Chad is graduating this weekend and we have a plethora of family coming in to town. We will post pictures next week.
Anybody want a grammar tip? Well, a few weeks ago I said I wanted to be Grammar Girl, especially when I found out someone was actually making their living being Grammar Girl. So unfair. Anyway, I've been trying to keep up with some of her podcasts, and they are really good. I mostly do this so I can give my students easy ways to remember things. Here are a couple good ones, if you care.
Who vs. whom: I used to try to explain this using direct and indirect object, but then you have to go back even further and explain direct and indirect object. Plus, that's hard for me to remember too. I've always had a problem with who vs. whom, until I heard this easy way to remember it. If you can answer the question with him, it should be whom. If you answer the question with he, it's who. See an example:
Who(m) is coming to the party?
He is coming to the party, so it should be who. Him is coming to the party doesn't make sense.
Who(m) should we send an invitation to?
We should send an invitation to him, so it's whom. Actually, it's "to whom should we send an invitation" if you are really a stickler about that ending the sentence in a preposition stuff, which I really don't care about.
My students are writing a paper right now about the causes and effects of change in family relationships. They wonder about affect and effect and when to use them, and I tell them this...
The arrow affected the aardvark. The affect that starts with an "a" is an action. So you would never say effected.
This stuff is interesting to me because it always helps to find easy ways to teach usage to high school sophomores. If you have any other tips on tricky words, let me know them so I can pass them along to my grateful students!
Ciao for now...
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5 comments:
I love this stuff. I looked grammer girls site up a few weeks ago and really learned a lot about lie/lay. she's very helpful and in a fun way a lot of times.
finally! somewhere other than my blog where people can talk about grammar and punctuation! great job lesley! i really appreciate you taking one for the team!
great link Lesley - and you'll always be "grammar girl" to me! Ginny
Thank goodness! I looked at "Who(m) should we send an invitation to?" and thought, "Shouldn't that be 'To whom should we send an invitation?'" After all these years of living with Grammar Girl, I'm starting to get it. They would be so proud of me at Texas Tech!
You know, I wanted to read up on this very subject! I'm glad I finally did – now I know! :)
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