Oh, conjunctions

Remember conjunctions, those cute little words that we use along with a comma to bond two separate sentences? Aren't they neat? Here's that list again, in case you'd forgotten:

For
And
Not
But
Or
Yet
So

Gorilla warfare

From an exchange on Facebook:


Me: Wisconsin could form its own little cheese-and-beer-loving dictatorship.
Friend I've Never Actually Met: Yeah, but then you could overthrow him and install yourself as Generalissima

Me: I will further consider your proposal once I have assembled my gorilla army and planned my coup.

Person Who Doesn't Know Me: ‎^guerilla (just sayin')

Friend I've Never Actually Met: I think she wants to use actual gorillas.

Well, there was that one time...

I really enjoy this first line from a sales letter:


Have you ever wanted to create your own online empire?


It's like asking, "Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?" or "Have you ever shot a man in Reno just to watch him die?" These are one-time events. That's usually what "ever" indicates in these sorts of questions. I imagine a conversation like this:

Axes of Evil

Did you know the plural of "axis" is "axes"? Isn't that funny?

Me personally

Don't say this. It's redundant and irritating.

For me personally, guacamole burns like poison in my mouth.

Right. As opposed to "for me impersonally"? You already said "me." How much more personal can it get? Here's another:

I personally feel that caracals are the most underrated of the big cats.

Again, I'm talking about something I feel. It just doesn't get much more personal than that.

It sounds dumb now that you're thinking about it, doesn't it?

Good information

From the label on the generic brand Benadryl cream: 


Diphenhydramine Cream has diphenhydramine in it. 


Well, shit. That isn't what I wanted at all when I picked up the tube labeled "diphenhydramine cream."

Which/That

This one is super easy, guys. This is one of those ones that people do wrong all the time because they think it makes them sound smarter. The joke is on them. It makes them sound dumb because it's wrong. 

If you're describing something, the word "which" will always follow a comma. 

Let's demonstrate.

The hawk is trying to catch the nuthatch which lives in that tree.

Dashes

I know you're all sitting up at night and thinking, "How do I know the appropriate length of dash to use in a given situation?" Good news, everyone! I'm going to explain it!

There are two types of dashes: en dashes and em dashes. An en dash is about the length of an "n." An em dash is about the length of an "m." See how they got their names? Very inventive. 

An en dash is pretty much a hyphen. We're not going to differentiate between the two because it's pointless. The one you need to know about--the one people screw up all the time--is the em dash. See how I did that there? It's an em dash in action!

I'll chalk it up to a bad day

Check out this headline:


3 Egypt ex-ministers oredered arrested. 

This was on CNN's front page before the fold. I can't type "oredered" without it being underlined in red, and it's automatically corrected in any Microsoft program. So if you're working for CNN, perhaps this is one you should catch before it goes to print. I'm just saying.

Here's some advice:

First rule of writing: always run spellcheck.

Second rule of writing: if you screw something up, someone will notice. My spies are everywhere.

Thanks to the spy who pointed this one out to me!

Is your mom a proper noun?

It has become apparent to me lately that people don't know when to capitalize the words "mom" and "dad." This is pretty easy, so it's going to be a short post.

There are basically two ways you can refer to your parents:

My mom likes cookies.
Mom likes cookies.

Brain dump

I'm choreographing a fight using two stuffed cats. That's totally normal, right? Too bad I killed off all my Barbies when I was about 6.

My iPod gets Valentine's Day: "Just the Way You Are" immediately followed by "Fuck You."

Pitchers and catchers report for spring training today!

An actual headline: Flaming Chicken Nuggets to Blame for Apartment Kitchen Fire.

"Will you still like me if I'm not a zombie?"

I'm feeling a little autistic today. Definitely, definitely autistic.

Sometimes I wish I were a high maintenance girl. I'm high maintenance because I'm crazy. But I'm talking about stereotypical girl high maintenance.

Sometimes I wish I were really dumb because then I wouldn't notice when people think I'm really dumb.

Paper is the enemy of nail polish.

Getting all dolled up for Valentine's Day. That means I'm wearing my nice sweats and putting on some mascara.

There's a Grace Potter song that uses the word "beguiled." How awesome is that?

Whoever does Hayley Williams' hair and makeup should be shot.

Awesome news reporting

This is an example of an actual article printed on our local NBC news website. You would think journalists would be able to write at least remotely well, given the fact that they're journalists, but NBC does a nice job of proving that wrong. Some of their journalists have absolutely no grasp on the English language, let alone how to write well. Here's the article (with my notes).


Protestors Speak Out Against Gov. Walker's Proposal
We're off to a great start with a word misspelled in the title.

Stars > moon

There's a saying, "Shoot for the stars. If you fall short, you'll hit the moon."

The problem with this saying is that this is not the saying. Just think about that for a second. There are an uncountable number of stars that exist. So if I shoot for any star anywhere and miss, I'll hit Earth's moon? This is stupid logic.

Here's the real saying. "Shoot for the moon. If you fall short, you may land on a star." See how that makes more sense? You're trying to go to Earth's one moon, but if you miss, you realize that because of the number of stars out there, there's a decent probability that you will hit one of them.

So if you're going to try to be inspirational, don't be stupid about it. Thank you.

Odd little kid story

My best friend growing up lived right by this marshy swamp-type area, and her back yard flooded almost every year. Of course, this meant we would get sticks and pretend to go fishing. For whatever reason, this turned into us being Shrimp Boat Captains. I'm pretty sure we started this before "Forrest Gump," so I'm not entirely sure where the idea of Shrimp Boat Captains came from. At any rate, we clearly didn't know much about fishing because despite being Shrimp Boat Captains, the only fish we ever caught were trout. 

As we got a little older, this became a wildly funny joke to us because even as small children we realized the absurdity of the situation. We continued the Shrimp Boat Captain charade for several years, even creating a magazine, Shrimp Boat Captain Life. Among the highlights in Shrimp Boat Captain Life: you could donate money to help disadvantaged trout get proper schooling. There was also a section of the magazine called "Meat the Trout" so you could decide which disadvantaged trout to help.

I have no idea what the hell made me think of that, but the "Meat the Trout" thing just cracks me up every time. I'm convinced I was an extremely irritating little kid.

You're/Your

Today's grammar lesson is from another example I came across while editing. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

When Katie had finished, she called me by name and said, "Sami, you're Peppermint Mocha."

If your immediate response to this was, "No, YOU'RE Peppermint Mocha," please have a lovely day. If not, read on.

I'm going to try and explain this to you

Did you get it from the title? Okay, this seriously bugs me. So fix it. Right now.

Brooks Conrad is going to try and make the team this year.

If you know who Brooks Conrad is, you know this sentence is improbable anyway. But aside from meaning, what's the deal with saying "try and make"? What you're effectively saying is:

Said

This is a super fun game. Remember when you were, like, 8 and your teacher taught you the importance of using words other than "said"? Well, your teacher was a fucking liar. Sure, once in a while you can throw in a "replied" or "yelled" for flavor, but really, if your readers are paying more attention to your word choice than what's actually happening in your story, you're doing it wrong. When in doubt, just use "said." I'm so serious here.

Then is not a conjunction

We all know our conjunctions, right? I'm going to go ahead and skip over what a conjunction actually does (the function of the conjunction, if you will) for today, but here's a list of acceptable conjunctions:

For
And
Not
But
Or
Yet
So