Wish me luck!

* Dashes are occasionally spaced, depending on a particular style, but hyphens never are.

Examples of dashes*:

• What were you expecting? A nice ladder and a sign saying, “Here’s the safe bridge—for goblins only”?
• The bracelet couldn’t stop all magic—the stinging burns on Jig’s face told him that much.
• And what could have convinced an elf to throw away the virtual immortality of their race for such a futile—no, such a stupid—quest?
• He perked his ears—even his ears hurt—and listened as Darnak joined Barius.

* Examples of dashes taken from GoblinQuest, by Jim C. Hines (Waterville, Maine: Five Star, 2004). If you like fantasy quest-adventures with a sense of humor, I highly recommend it!

Examples of hyphens:

• I sometimes find it difficult to choose between being well-read and well-rested.
• It can be odd to think of your parents as five-year-old children.
• Some people are finding it difficult in this economy to easily meet their day-to-day expenses.
• It’s rather unfair that you can vote and join the military at the age of eighteen, but can’t drink until the age of twenty-one.

If for whatever reason you can’t type a proper dash, it’s acceptable to substitute two hyphens--like this.

What do I mean by “aside”? It’s not quite a technical term and I am using it somewhat broadly. Anything that gets inserted in the middle of what you’re saying that adds clarifying information but that can be grammatically omitted is an aside.

A few examples to illustrate*:

• What you don’t know, Miss Manners suspects, is how to leave it at that.
• It is strange, but nevertheless generally recognized, that some inevitable natural phenomena, such as coughing, are socially acceptable, and others, such as burping, are not.
• An individual who has marketed normally private aspects of his or her life for financial or psychological profit is not, in Miss Manners’ opinion, entitled to run around grousing about how rude people are for being curious to know more.
• Miss Manners adores flowers and believes that they are an important, symbolic part of a funeral, but too many of them, sent to the bereaved family’s house, can be oppressive.
• What you should avoid, in your table setting, is the suggestion that the guests have missed the first three courses.
• Miss Manners once enjoyed quite a winning streak in an office canteen similar to the one you describe, and was crestfallen when her luck changed an coffee, as the machine claimed it to be, was produced instead of quarters.
• We use many forms of addressing married and unmarried women these days, but there is not now, and never has been in the history of etiquette, a distinction between a wife and a widow.

Please note how each bolded phrase begins and ends with a comma. This is the correct way to do this.

* All examples taken gloriously out of context from Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, by Judith Martin (New York: Warner Books, 1982). Emphasis added for the purpose of the lesson.

Regular plural nouns, which is to say plural nouns that are formed by taking the singular and tacking “s” onto the end, become possessive by tacking “’” onto the end of that.

• one dog’s house
• two dogs’ house
• one cat’s scratching post
• two cats’ scratching post
• one parent’s nightmare
• two parents’ nightmare

Irregular plural nouns, which is to say plural nouns that are formed by changing the word, still get the “’s.”

• one woman’s story
• two women’s story
• one child’s toy chest
• two children’s toy chest
• one mouse’s tale
• two mice’s tale

• Correcting grammar is just something I do.
• What was that crazy little dance she just did?
• I fear I have done something wrong!
• They did not know what they had done.

If you have done something, it’s a fact. If you could have done something, then it was an option you declined. If you would have done something, then something else prevented you. If you should have done something, then somebody is probably mad at you.

In speech, the “could,” “would,” and “should” often fuse together with the “have” to create the contractions “could’ve,” “would’ve,” and “should’ve.” Despite what it superficially sounds like, it is most definitely “’ve” and not “of.”

“Of” is a preposition:

• One of these things is not like the others.
• The enemy of my friend is my enemy.
• This is a matter of great importance.

“Have” is a verb:

• I do, in fact, have a sense of humor.
• Do you have the time?
• I sometimes have computer trouble.

Verbs can only be conjugated with other verbs, even if they’re just limited auxiliary verbs that can’t stand on their own, like “will” or “would.” “Of” is not a verb, and in fact doesn’t like hanging out with verbs. (It prefers the company of nouns.)

In conclusion, then:

• could have
• would have
• should have

and never

• could of
• would of
• should of

Pronouns, as it turns out, march to the beat of an entirely different drummer. Some of them cause no problem: “That spatula belongs to me. It is mine. Please give me my spatula.”

The humble it, on the other hand, loves to stir up trouble. In fact, it seems to be the leader of a whole gang that includes who and you, among others. They are in fact the poster children of the rebellious pronouns, militantly denouncing punctuation. “Apostrophes?” they sneer. “We don’t need no steenkin’ apostrophes!” As a result, they gleefully possess things apostrophe-free:

• Every dog has its day.
• Whose Line Is It, Anyway?
• I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.

Contractions are the result of contracting (the opposite of expanding) words into smaller bits than they normally are by chopping away some letters (or even just one). One way this happens is by smooshing words together into a single word. That’s where the apostrophe comes in to yoke them together, announcing to all the world, “We’ve got some missing letters here!”

It is not common in everyday speech to carefully enunciate every syllable of every word. On the contrary, it’s quite common to run things together. It’s a shame, though (it really is), when “its” and “it’s” get mixed up in writing. To quote one of my favorite cartoon characters, Strong Bad, on the subject, “Oh, if you want it to be possessive, it’s just ‘I-T-S,’ but if it’s supposed to be a contraction then it’s ‘I-T-apostrophe-S,’ scalawag!“

As for its’, I really can’t stress this enough: Its’ is not a word! There are no multiple its possessing anything (besides which, wouldn’t that be theirs?) and it’s certainly not a contraction. It’s really nothing more than a strange, mutated typo. So repeat after me: “Its’ is not a word! Its’ is not a word! Its’ is not a word!”

Also, if it reflects back upon the subject, then it must agree with the subject. Consider: “If you have any questions, talk to Darryl or myself.” The subject of “talk to Darryl or myself” is the unspoken but understood “you.” “Myself” has nothing to point back to. It ought to be “If you have any questions, talk to Darryl or me.”

So those are examples of when to not use “myself.” But when do you use it? Whenever the action is being performed on the subject by the subject, that’s the job for “self.” Feeling miserable this morning because you partied too hearty last night? Well, you did it to yourself. What about the guy who bad-mouthed his boss in front of her husband? He really shot himself in the foot there.

Reflexive pronouns can also be used in conjunction with a subject or object for (1) emphasis, (2) to indicate a bit of surprise, or (3) to proudly proclaim a lone venture:

1. I myself am shocked to learn that there is gambling going on in this establishment!
2. I turned around there, standing right behind me, was the mayor himself.
3. (“Gir, why is there bacon in the soap!?”) “I made it myself!”

Finally, I frequently come across sentences like “He self-medicated himself with alcohol.” Really, now, who else would be drinking here? Using two “self”s like this is really redundant and ridiculously repetitive. Either “He medicated himself with alcohol” or “He self-medicated with alcohol” are perfectly fine. Well, grammatically they’re fine. Drowning one’s sorrows in alcohol can lead to problems far more serious than bad grammar.

While it’s perfectly acceptable in informal, casual conversation to say, “Me and Sam are going to the movies tonight,” (heck, I do this a lot myself) this would be very wrong in more formal speech or writing. The correct way would be, for example, “Tom and I thought the third quarter reports were inaccurate.”

The other way around, which is even worse, is “Just between you and I, Janie has the worst taste in clothing ever.” You see, “between” is a preposition, and prepositions always take objects. It’s pretty much a guarantee: If there’s a preposition, what follows is an object. Thus it’s always “between you and me,” or “talk to Rick or me,” or “that’s for John and me.”

It’s the same thing with “we” and “us.” While no one would ever dream of saying, “Us have to stick together,” I frequently hear “Us chickens have to stick together.” But if we have to stick together, then we chickens have to stick together. And so you know what I’m going to say next: No one would ever dream of saying, “It’s a problem for we,” but how often have I heard, “It’s a problem for we chickens“? If it’s a problem for us, then it’s a problem for us chickens.

Screen shot of possible virus at work. Click for full size.

The first thing that roused my suspicions was the odd range of dates and the strange little story up at the top (“You were not asked to send these error reports at the time they occurred.” WHY?), but what absolutely confirmed for me that this was in fact not your friendly neighborhood Microsoft Error Reporting were the two blatant spelling errors. “Mal” with one “l” (rhymes with “pal”) is a prefix that means “bad.” “Mall” with two “l”s (rhymes with “hall”) is the place with the Hot Topic and the food court. As for the other one, it goes against nature to spell “signature” as “signeture.”

I didn’t touch any of the buttons. I didn’t even use the “X” to close it. I opened up Task Manager and killed it from there before running a virus scan. I really don’t know what could have happened if I’d accepted that little window as what it claimed to be. I’m just glad I was paying attention.

The accusative case has nothing to do with accusing anybody of anything. A noun is accusative if it’s the direct object of the verb. If I were to say “Yogi Berra caught the ball,” “Yogi Berra” is in the nominative case (subject) because he did the catching, and “ball” is in the accusative case (direct object) because it’s what got caught.

Similarly, the dative case has nothing to do with dating, whether carbon or romantic. A noun is dative if it’s the indirect object of the verb. If I were to say “Yogi Bear gave Boo Boo the picnic basket,” “Yogi Bear” is in the nominative case (subject) because he’s the one who did the giving, “picnic basket” is in the accusative case (direct object) because it’s what was given, and “Boo Boo” is in the dative case (indirect object) because he was the recipient of the giving. Note that if I were to say “Yogi Bear gave the picnic basket to Boo Boo,” this changes nothing grammatically, although it puts a slightly different focus on Boo Boo and the basket (and hopefully this isn’t making you a basket case).

Although the genitive case is etymologically related to “genesis” and that other word I know you’re thinking of, it really just means “possessive.” Not in a clingy, territorial way, but in a straightforward, factual way. If I were to say “John’s iPod is broken,” “John’s” is in the genitive case (possessive) because it tells us whose iPod it is, and iPod is in the nominative case (subject) because it’s the thing that’s broken.

A noun is in the vocative case (sorry, no alternate name or clever witticism here) when it is the one being addressed. If I were to say “Mario, Bowser kidnapped the princess again,” “Mario” is in the vocative case because he’s the one being told about the princess situation, “Bowser” is in the nominative case (subject) because he’s the one doing the kidnapping, and “princess” is in the accusative case (direct object) because she’s the one who got kidnapped, again. The girl needs a better security system!

So, to recap: Officer, Paul’s sister sold her boyfriend my stereo. Who’s being told the tale? The officer: vocative. Who did the selling? The sister: nominative/subject. Whose sister? Paul’s: genitive/possessive. What got sold? The stereo: accusative/direct object. Whose stereo was it? Mine: genitive/possessive. Who got the goods? The boyfriend: dative/indirect object. Whose boyfriend? Hers: genitive/possessive. (If she had sold her boyfriend, that would be an entirely different matter!)

There are other cases, but English doesn’t concern itself too much with them, and they mostly depend on what particular preposition the noun follows. Happily for you, this means that we don’t need to worry about them!