Laura’s Competitive Edge Grammar Rules (page 3) – Stewart, #

1. e.g., “Last week she admitted that she is really a brunette” (not “was”).

Pairs of verbs that go together logically have to be kept in the same tense.

1. e.g., “Patricia described her trip to China and writes that the Great Wall really impressed her.”
2. Since “described” is in the past tense, and the writing contains her descriptions, “writes” should be “wrote.”

Lots of people get into trouble with sentences that describe a hypothetical situation in the past:

1. e.g., “If he would have packed his own suitcase, he would have noticed that the cat was in it.”
2. That first “would have” should be a simple “had.” “If he had packed his own suitcase he would have noticed that the cat was in it.”

Another situation that creates confusion is the use of interjections like “along with,” “as well as,” and “together with,” where they are often treated improperly as if they meant simply “and.”

1. e.g., “Aunt Hilda, as well as her pet dachshund, is coming to the party” (not “are coming”).

Phrases in a series separated by commas or conjunctions must all have the same grammatical form.

1. e.g., “They loved mountain-climbing, to gather wild mushrooms, and first aid practice” should be corrected to something like this: “They loved to climb mountains, gather wild mushrooms, and practice first aid.” (All three verbs are dependent on that initial “to”.)

Number of Verb: In long, complicated sentences, people often lose track of whether the subject is singular or plural and use the wrong sort of verb.

1. e.g., “The ultimate effect of all of these phone calls to the detectives were to make them suspicious of the callers” is an error because “effect,” which is singular, is the subject.
2. If you are uncertain about whether to go with singular or plural condense the sentence down to its skeleton: “The effect . . . was make them suspicious.”

Do Use: To indicate omitted letters in real contractions: “do not” becomes “don’t.”

House Style: When a singular noun ends in s, most style guides prefer s’s as in James’s house. However, journalism usually uses “James’ house”.

1. e.g., “He provided all the ingredients: sugar, flour, butter, and vanilla.”

In bibliographic citation a colon separates the city from the publisher.

Colon also separates minutes from hours in times of day when given in figures:

1. e.g., “8:35.”

A sentence made up of two distinct parts whose separation needs to be emphasized may do so with a semicolon:

1. e.g., “Mary moved to Seattle; she was sick of getting sunburned in Los Angeles.”

When a compound sentence contains commas within one or more of its clauses, escalate to a semicolon to separate the clauses:

1. e.g., “It was a mild, deliciously warm spring day; and Mary decided to walk to the fair.”

Use semicolons to separate one series of items from another–a series within a series:

1. e.g., “The issues discussed by the board of directors were many: the loud, acrimonious complaints of the stockholders; the abrupt, devastating departure of the director; and the startling, humiliating discovery that he had absconded with half the company’s assets.”

1. e.g., “I plan to see Shirley and Fred will go shopping while we visit” vs. “I plan to see Shirley, and Fred will go shopping while we visit.”

Commas: Separating a series. Authorities differ as to whether that final comma before the “and” is required. Follow the style recommended or defer to use the final comma and remove ambiguity.

Series with a string of adjectives modifying a single noun. Use a comma.

1. e.g., “He was a tall, strong, handsome, but stupid man.”

Series with a string of adjectives that modify each other instead of a noun. Do not use a comma.

1. e.g., “He was wearing a garish bright green tie.”
2. Tip: if you could logically insert “and” between the adjectives in a series like this, you need commas.

Comma Splice: When two unrelated phrases are strung together with a comma instead of a semicolon.

1. e.g., “He brought her a dozen roses, he had forgotten she was allergic to them.”