Wow: test your knowledge of grammar

StephenW

http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/disagreeable/
January 11, 2011, 8:57 amDisagreeableBy PHILIP B. CORBETTNotes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style. (Some frequently asked questions are here.)



I said I was moving on, and I’m moving on. This week, I am not going to discuss the error of using a singular verb in a relative clause like this: “He is one of the people who [make/makes] my life miserable.”
But variations on that problem are still fair game. And here are several (courtesy of colleagues and a careful reader):
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Mary Hamilton, 74, who is one of the few Hallmark greeting card artists whose work bears her name, is known as “Hallmark’s Cher.’’ Her watercolor portraits, mostly of animals and angels, are signed simply, “Mary.’’
No problem with the verb “bears” in the second relative clause, which is singular to agree with the subject “work.” But we should say “their names,” because the reference is to the plural “whose,” agreeing with the plural “artists.”
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[Blog post] You [Tim Gunn] recently were among the first celebrities to lend your name to the It Gets Better Project.
Here, too, make it “their names.” Think about it: would any other celebrity lend Tim Gunn’s name to this project?
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[Blog post] Mr. DiUbaldo is one of six seniors at Cherry Creek High School in Denver who will be blogging about his college search for The Choice between now and May.
Make it “their college search [or searches].” Remember: in these constructions, the main clause states that so-and-so is a member of a group; the relative clause describes the group and what the members have in common.

In a Word
This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.
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Maybe, but there has already been some exuberance baked into the share price of the company, which also has significant stakes in Groupon and Zynga.
This voguish colloquialism has been popping up more often in both financial and other contexts. Let’s be wary. (It was later changed here.)
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On a Web-enabled, back-lit device, the difference between the BBC, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and ABC News are tough to discern.
Subject, meet verb. Make it “difference … is.”
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The best way to force people to look beyond short-term rewards is through what Mr. Akst calls “precommitment.” Referencing the work of the economists Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler, Mr. Akst argues for greater use of voluntary and involuntary incentives and constraints …
Even in an academic context we should be wary of this jargon. “Citing” would work.
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People seem to love the tilting grass roof that covers Lincoln Ristorante, the new two-story dining place that recently opened by the reflecting pool. My colleague Sam Sifton, the Times restaurant critic, reports that Lincoln has some fine dishes at very expensive prices. …
But what matters most to someone like me who spends a lot of time at Lincoln Center hearing concerts and going to operas, is the quality of the halls and houses.
As several readers pointed out, the dishes are “expensive”; the prices are high. And in the later sentence, the subordinate clause needed a comma before as well as after.
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Once known as Pinchgut, it was synonymous with abject hunger to the convicts because those who committed minor offenses could be deposited there in chains and on pitiful rations. Its reputation worsened in 1796, when a convict named Francis Morgan was hung there.
In referring to the method of execution, make it “hanged.”
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A man whom the Dallas police say intended to rob a bank killed himself Monday in a parking lot after a short chase.
Make it “who,” the subject of “intended.”
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But watching the eclipse with a couple hundred strangers proved it’s not that simple.
As The Times’s stylebook reminds us, even in a conversational context, make it “couple of hundred.”
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[TV listing] *Up in the Air (2009). George Clooney, Vera Farmiga. Frequent flyer specializes in firing employees. Laugh-infused stealth tragedy. (R) (HD)
This, too, is in the stylebook: our preference is “flier.”
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By most estimates, the Canadian Imperial Bank of commerce has fared poorest in the United States. …
Whether that plan will succeed remains to be seen, but Canada’s banks are not the only Canadian companies that have found that their success at home do not necessarily translate to the large and more competitive environment of the United States.
As a reader noted, “poor” and “poorest” are adjectives; make it “most poorly” (or “worst”). In the later sentence, make it “does” to agree with the subject, “success.”
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But the command center reflects how Disney is deepening its reliance on technology as it thinks about adapting decades-old parks, which are primarily built around nostalgia for an America gone by, for 21st century expectations.
In references to centuries, the adjectival form should take a hyphen.
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It is one of the fascinating quirks of Mexico City — the way Chilangos, as the city’s residents are known — deal with the weather. …
Mr. Aridjis, the poet, agreed. During a tour of his book-filled, ice-box of a home, he recalled growing up in the state of Michoacán, near where the butterflies gather.
Two punctuation problems. There should be a comma, not a second dash, after “known.” And omit the comma after “book-filled.” What follows is the noun, not another modifier.
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Mr. Izmestiev, 44, was business partners with Ural Rakhimov, whose father for two decades headed the resource-rich region of Bashkortostan.
No call for this colloquial formulation; make it “was a business partner of …”
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Arts, 12/27:
“Men of a Certain Age,” TNT’s funny, elegant meditation on midlife, which resumed on Monday nights for a second season this month, was created by Ray Romano and Mike Royce (both of “Everybody Loves Raymond”), but it is easy to imagine that these are pseudonyms for two other people entirely — let’s call them Ramona and Michele. The suspicion festers because the sensibility of the show is so genetically female, so catered to how women think men ought to live.
“Fester” means “ulcerate” or “rot” — or by extension, “grow embittered, rankle.” It has a decided negative connotation and does not simply mean “linger” or “grow.”
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After Deadline examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times. It is adapted from a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual.