Lynch, Guide to Grammar and Style & A
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The English Language:
A User's Guide
A much-revised and expanded version of this on-line guide, with
hundreds of added examples.
Guide to Grammar and Style & A
by Jack Lynch.
are welcome.
an in place of a when it precedes a vowel
sound, not just a vowel. That means it's &an
honor& (the h is silent), but &a UFO& (because
it's pronounced yoo eff oh).
Most of the confusion with a or an arises
and other abbreviations:
some people think it's wrong to use an in front of an
abbreviation like &MRI& because &an& can only go before vowels.
Not so: the sound, not the letter, is what
matters. Because you pronounce it &em ar eye,& it's &an
One tricky case comes up from time to time: is it &a
historic occasion& or &an historic occasion&? Some
speakers favor the latter & more British than American
speakers, but you'll find them in both places & using
an on longish words (three or more syllables) beginning
with h, where the first syllable isn't accented. They'd
say, for instance, &a h&story textbook& (accent on the
first syllable) but &an hist&ric event.& (Likewise &a
h&bit& but &an hab&tual offender,& &a
h&pothetical question& but &an hyp&thesis.&) Still,
most guides prefer a before any h that's
sounded: &a historic occasion,& &a hysterical
joke,& &a habitual offender& & but &an
honor& and &an hour& because those h's aren't
sounded. [Entry revised 21 April 2006; revised again 10
December 2006.]
Many kinds of writing, especially in business and law, use
a lot of lists, and it's common to introduce those lists with
the following and to refer back to them by the
above. There's nothing wrong with that, but note that you
can often make a sentence clearer and punchier with simple : instead of the above
topics, try these topics & the context makes
your subject clear. [Entry revised 10 December
There's nothing
wrong with absent as an
(&He was absent three
days last week&; &Everyone recognized her comment as an insult
directed at her absent coworker&). And though it's not
very common these days, absent can also be a
meaning &to keep someone away,& as
in Hamlet's &Absent thee from felicity awhile.&
But absent as a
meaning &without& or
&in the absence of& is
the worlds of business and law: &Absent further information,
we'll proceed as planned.& Ick. It's been around for a while, but
do we really need another two-syllable way of saying
without? [Entry added 12 Jan.
One of the
most overused clich&s of our age: the pleasant little
monosyllable yes seems to be disappearing in favor of
the tetrasyllabic absolutely. Listen to any interview on
radio or television: almost every yes, yeah, or
uh-huh is fed through the speaker's pomposity amplifier,
and comes out as absolutely on the other side. And it's
not just in interviews. When I asked a waiter, &May I have some
more water?,& the answer was &Absolutely,& as if the question
admitted various degrees of assent. Now, there's nothing wrong
with the word itself, and when you really mean that something is
true without qualification, go nuts. Still, how 'bout some
variety? certainly, yep, aye, just
so, damn straight, sho' 'nuff, sans
doute, you bet your bippy & almost anything
else would be an improvement. [Entry added 14 Sept. 2004;
revised 21 April 2006.]
Some countries
have official organizations to issue rules on linguistic matters:
the Acad&mie Fran&aise in France and the Accademia
della Crusca in Italy are the most famous.
are among their biggest
concerns: they're charged with keeping their languages &pure,&
and that often takes the form of keeping non-native vocabulary
out of their dictionaries. Their largest job for the last hundred
years or so has been resisting the incursion of English words
into their languages.
They're mostly fighting losing battles. The Acad&mie
fought long and hard against le weekend, preferring the
native French fin de semaine. But most Frenchies simply
ignore the official ruling, and use the familiar English word.
Other common French words include le showbiz and les
bluejeans. The Accademia della Crusca has been a little more
tolerant on the whole: the most recent supplement to the official
Italian dictionary, for instance, includes &Millennium
bug,& derived &Dall'inglese millennium
&millennio& e bug
&insetto.&& Most of the academies, though, try
to minimize the incursion of &foreign& words into
their languages.
But here's something worth noting: no English-speaking
nation has an official academy. The upshot? There's no
&official& standard of what's right or wrong in the English
language. (And bear in mind that English, though it's by far
the most common language in America, isn't the &official&
language of the USA, just a de facto standard.)
That doesn't stop plenty of people
not above it myself, though I hope people take seriously my
repeated claims that I'm not trying to issue
but suggestions. In fact we're all
making suggestions, whether we recognize that fact or not. The
suggestions can be wise or foolish, the suggesters likewise
& but no one is more &authorized& than anyone else to make
People regularly write to me asking about some widespread
usage, wondering whether &the rules have changed& since they were
in school. I confess I don't understand what the question means.
English doesn't really have &rules& in the sense of &decrees
handed down by an official body.& Though the English language
changes, as all languages do, there's no committee to vote on
what's right or wrong.
Does that mean &anything goes&? Of course not. Some things are
(almost) universally re more to the point,
will make you
look stupid before some . And of
course personal
is always a
consideration. But there's no official rule-book, and that means
there's no agreement on many questions. Is it &right& to say &We
want to grow the economy&? Is disconnect a noun? Can you
to refer to
things that are merely coincidental? I hate 'em all, but &
until the revolution comes, and I become Tyrant & I get
only one vote. (Mind you, when that glorious day dawns, things
are gonna change: anyone who uses the word
will be sent to
the copper mines, and those who say
summarily shot. Meanwhile, though, I just get to grind my teeth
See , , and .
[Entry added 21 December 2004; entry revised 10 December
Among the less
pleasant by-products of the late, unlamented twentieth century
& up there with nuclear waste, thalidomide, and the
legislative agenda of Newt Gingrich & is the acronym. What
began as a harmless attempt to shorten long program names has
turned into a mania for reducing every committee, gizmo, or plan
to a would-be clever acronym. Resist the urge to create them by
the dozen, especially when they don't do any useful work. It's
disheartening to think about how many hours it took congressional
staffers to find a clumsy phrase that would produce the acronym
&USA PATRIOT Act.& (The full name for the curious: &Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.&)
By the by, some purists insist the word acronym
should apply only to pronounceable combinations of letters: by
this standard NASA and SCUBA are acronyms, but MRI and NFL aren't
(some use the word &initialism& for these latter abbreviations).
If you care to make the distinction, feel free, but the battle is
probably lost, and most people will have no idea what you're
talking about.
Note that acronyms are almost unheard of before the twentieth
century. If ever an etymology suggests an older word comes from
the initials of some phrase & posh from &port out,
starboard home,& for instance, or &for unlawful carnal knowledge&
& the story is more than likely bogus.
For tips on using a or an with acronyms, see
. See also . [Entry added 14 Sept.
Action , as the name reveals, express
actions; contrast them with verbs of being. Think
of the difference between &I study& (action verb, even if it's
not the most exciting action) and &I am a student& (verb of
being). It's often wise to cut down on verbs of being, replacing
them (whenever possible) that'll make your
writing punchier.
Whatever you do, though, don't confuse action verbs with the
active , which is the opposite of
the . Sentences with
verbs of being (such as am, is, are,
were) aren't necessarily passive sentences,
even if they're often weak ones.
See also .
Active Voice. See .
An adjective is a word that
or a : it answers which
one, how many, or what kind. Some
examples: &the big one&; &seven books&; &a
devoted student.& (Most adjectives can also go in the
position after the verb:
&This one is big; &That student is
devoted.&)
Adverbs, on the other hand, usually modify verbs, and
answer in what manner, to what degree,
when, how, how many times, and so
forth. Some examples: &He ran quickly&; &I'll do it
soon&; &We went twice.&
Sometimes adverbs modify not verbs but adjectives or other
adverbs: &She finished very quickly& (very
modifies the adverb quickly, which in turn modifies the
verb finished); &The work was clearly
inadequate& (clearly modifies the adjective
inadequate, which in turn modifies work).
The easiest way to spot adverbs is to look for the telltale
-ly suffix. Be careful, not all adverbs end in
-ly, and not all -ly words are adverbs.
Soon, twice, and never, for instance,
are adverbs (they tell when or how often); friendly,
ugly, and northerly are adjectives (they modify
Some stylistic advice: go easy on the adjectives and adverbs.
It would be foolish to cut them out altogether, but many people
overuse them. Too many adjectives and adverbs tend to make your
writing sound stilted or faux-poetic, and they rarely add much
precision. The nouns and verbs are the words that should be doing
the hard work, with adjectives and adverbs playing only a
supporting role. As
put it, &The adjective hasn't been built that can pull
a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.& [Revised
10 December 2006.]
&Please advise&
& on its own, without, say, &Please advise me about the new
rules& & is a verbal tic common among memo-writers. I find
it ugly and inelegant, but I promise not to make too great a fuss
as long as it's confined to business writing. [Entry added
12 January 2005; revised 10 January 2006.]
An easily .
Affect with an a effect with an e
is (usually) a . When you
affect something, you have an effect on it. The
effective, which means &having the right
effect,& or &getting the job done& & an
effective medicine, for instance. (It can also mean &in
effect,& as in &the new policy is effective immediately.&)
If the usuals leave you curious, here's the rest of
the story: affective as an adjective means &relating to
or arousing an emotional reaction&; effect as a verb
means &to bring about& or &to accomplish,& as in &to effect a
change.& There's also the noun affect, usually used in
psychology, meaning &an emotion& or &feeling.& [Entry
revised 10 July 2005, and then re-revised 16 July 2005, and then
re-re-revised 10 December 2006.]
Affix is a
technical term to describe bits stuck to (affixed to)
root words. In English, we use mostly prefixes
(fore-, un-, pre-, anti-) and
suffixes (-less, -ish, -ness,
-ful). Some languages have infixes, where parts
are added to the middle of a root word, but they're very rare in
English outside of language games. [Entry added 10
December 2006.]
aggravate traditionally means &to make worse.& You can,
for instance, aggravate a problem, situation,
or condition: &The new medicine only aggravated my
indigestion.& (It comes from Latin, and originally means &make
heavier&: the -grav- in the middle is from the same root
as gravity.) The more controversial question is whether
you can aggravate a person. It's common to use the word
in colloquial speech as a synonym for irritate,
exasperate, or annoy: &The salesman's attitude
really aggravated me,& for instance. It's probably wise, though,
to tread carefully in more
settings, where some people find it inappropriate. [Entry
added 21 Dec. 2004.]
One of the
fundamental
is that the parts of a sentence
should agree with each other. It's easier to demonstrate
than to define agreement.
Agreement is usually instinctive in native English speakers.
In &I has a minute,& the verb has doesn't agree with the
subject I. We would say &I have.& In &John got
their briefcase,& assuming John got his own briefcase,
their should be his. It's obvious.
Only rarely does it get messy. A
noun right in front of the
singular verb can throw you off. Consider &Any one of the
articles are available&: the verb are shouldn't agree
with articles, but with the subject, one: the
sentence should read, &Any one of the articles is
available.&
or a verb that
governs two
can also cause
problems. In &He wanted you and I for the team,& the word
I should be me: he wanted you and he
wanted me, so he wanted you and me. ( is always a
danger in cases like this. Pay special attention to phrases like
you and I, you and she, and so forth.)
See also , , ,
The paradigmatic example
of &incorrect& usage. It provides a good opportunity to talk
about what &incorrect& means.
A venerable bit of schoolyard wisdom advises us that
&Ain't ain't in the dictionary, so ain't ain't
a word.& There's only one problem with this pithy apothegm: it
ain't true. Any
worth its salt should contain ain't & though it
will probably also include some usage note pointing out that it's
&nonstandard,& &slang,& &colloquial,& or &informal.&
Is ain't &a word&? Of course it is. The question is
whether it's a good word, which always means an
appropriate word. So how do you decide whether it's
appropriate?
Ain't & like an earlier form, an't
& is a contraction of are not, and is often used
for am not or is not. It's been around since
the eighteenth century (the OED records the first
example of an't in 1706, and of ain't in 1778).
That's the period that saw the birth of several of our common
contractions, including don't, won't, and
can't. So ain't has a long pedigree, it's a
perfectly logical and consistent construction, and it's
widespread.
Does that mean it's an appropriate word? & Well, yes and
no. Yes in the sense that you can use anything if it's
no in the sense that, since the nineteenth
century, many people have campaigned against it as vulgar and
illiterate, and many continue to believe that. You have to bear
that in mind when you write and speak, and adjust your language
to your audience.
In many formal contexts, ain't will mark you as
poorly educated: it's unwise, for instance, to use it in a job
application. On the other hand, there are times when
ain't gives exactly the sort of colloquial tone you're
looking for. There's all the difference in the world between &You
ain't seen nothin' yet& and &You've not yet seen anything.&
The moral of this story: usages aren't &correct& or
&incorrect& i there's no logical way to
puzzle out whether something is legitimate or not. You can't
simply look in &the dictionary& to figure out whether something
is a word. Every word carries its history with it. As always,
it's entirely a matter of writing for your
& but if you've spent any
time reading this guide, you know that already. [Entry
added 12 July 2005; revised 10 December 2006.]
&All of the
&&& can usually be
as &All the
&&,& &All &&,& or &Every
Nope: a lot,
two words. (That's a lot meaning much,
many, often, and so on. There's another word,
the verb allot, which means &to distribute or
apportion&; but the adjectival or adverbial phrase a lot
is always two words.) [Entry added 21 December
Two words &
all right & is preferred. [Entry added 21
December 2004.]
Avoid beginning
sentences with also. There's nothing illegal
about it, but it tends to be inelegant. The suggestion is that
your writing is just a list, and this next item is merely an
afterthought. Much better is to find a logical
from one sentence to the
next. [Entry revised 1 December 2006.]
Alternate (as an ) traditionally means going
back and forth between two things, as in alternate
Mondays (i.e., every other Monday).
Alternative means other. Traditionalists prefer
an alternative to an alternate plan.
(Real traditionalists insist that alternative
can be used only in cases where there are two options.)
simple rule will rarely fail you: use between for two
things, among for more than two.
amount refers only to mass nouns, not to
count nouns: it's an amount of stuff but a
number of things. In other words, it's wrong to refer to
&the amount of students in the class& or &the amount of songs on
my iPod&: you mean &the number of students in the class&
or &the number of songs on my iPod.&
and . [Entry added 21 December 2006.]
And at the Beginning. See .
And/or is sometimes
necessary in legal documents, but just clutters other writing.
One word or the other will almost always do just as well. See Slashes.
A technical term in
for the word or phrase to
which a relative
refers. In
a sentence like &She couldn't stand opera, which always sounded
like shrieking,& the relative pronoun which stands in for
the word opera, so opera is the antecedent. In a
sentence like &He couldn't say the word titillate without
giggling, which always got him in trouble,& the word which
refers back not to any individual word, but to the whole
preceding clause (&He couldn't say the word titillate
without giggling&) & the whole thing is the antecedent.
By the way, it's pronounced ant-uh-SEE-dent.
[Entry added 11 July 1999]
traditionalists, to anticipate something is to get ready
for it, or to do
this isn't the same as
expect. If you expect changes, you think
they' if you anticipate changes,
you're preparing to deal with them. William Blake certainly
didn't expect Modernist poetry, but in some ways he
anticipated it by doing similar things a century
The use of anticipate for expect is now so
widespread that it's pointless to rail against it. Still,
expect has the advantage of being shorter and more to
the point. Don't give in to the business writer's love affair
with the . [Entry
revised 10 December 2006.]
I prefer to avoid using anxious when I mean
eager. Anxious is related to the word
anxiety; it traditionally means &worried, uneasy.& It's
often used, though, where eager or keen would
be more appropriate. You can be anxious about an upcoming exam,
but you probably shouldn't tell friends you're anxious to see
them this weekend. It's not that it's wrong, but it runs
the risk of confusion. [Entry added 12 Jan. 2005; revised
2 Oct. 2005.]
Blech. Not only a , and
therefore bad enough in its own right, but an uncommonly
dumb clich&. It's usually inappropriate and much
wordier than necessary. Will someone please tell me what's wrong
with &in any way&? [Entry added 3 November
The most common
way to form a
English is with apostrophe and s: &a hard day's night.&
noun ending in
s, put just an apostrophe: &two hours' work& (i.e., &the
work of two hours&). If a plural doesn't end in s
& children, men, people &
plain old apostrophe-s: &children's,& &men's,& &people's.& It's
never &mens'& or &childrens'.&
There's also the opposite case: when a singular noun ends in
s. That's a little trickier. Most style guides prefer
s's: James's house. Plain old s-apostrophe (as
in James' house) is common in journalism, but most other
publishers prefer James's. It's a matter of .
Note that, with the exception of the little-used one,
the possessives of
never get apostrophes: theirs, not
their's; hers, not her's;
its, not it's. See .
Apostrophes are sometimes used to make acronyms or other
abbreviations
(another matter
of a local ). My
preference: don't use apostrophes to make abbreviations plural
& not &They took their SAT's,& but &They took their SATs.&
The only exception is when having no apostrophe might be
confusing: &Two As& is ambiguous (it might be read as the word
as); make it &Two A's.& Never use apostrophes
to set off
words or phrases (unless you need a quotation within a
quotation).
Using an apostrophe to refer to a decade & the
1960's versus the 1960s & is another
m again, journalists tend to use the
apostrophe, and most other publishers don't. I prefer to omit it:
refer to the 1960s or the '60s (the apostrophe
indicates that &19& has been omitted), not the 1960's or
(worse) the '60's.
on distinguishing apostrophes from single quotation
marks. [Entry revised 14 Sept. 2004, with a tiny
correction on 21 Oct. 2004; revised again 12 Jan.
Two phrases
are in apposition when they're logically equivalent and
in the same grammatical relation to the rest of the sentence:
it's a way of explaining a word or phrase, or giving additional
information about it. It's easier to see in examples than in
definitions.
Consider the sentence &I spent the year in my favorite city,
Detroit.& It puts two phrases & &my favorite city& and
&Detroit& & the second phrase explains the
first. Or &I just finished a novel by D. H. Lawrence, the least
talented novelist in English& & the phrase &the least
talented novelist in English& is in apposition to &D. H.
Lawrence,& and gives the writer's opinion of Lawrence. (It
happens to be correct, by the way & you heard it here
Apposition usually requires
around the appositional phrase: &The winter of '24, the coldest
on record, was followed by a warm summer.& They're sometimes
omitted when a proper name follows some sort of relation: &My
brother Bill works in electronics,& for instance. In most such
cases you can safely go either way, though many writers prefer to
use the commas when they're describing a unique relationship: &My
husband Phil came from Pittsburgh,& for example, may suggest to
some readers that the writer has multiple husbands, and this is
just clearing up which one, whereas &My husband, Phil, came from
Pittsburgh& leaves no doubt.
Oh, yeah & don't confuse apposition with
opposition. They come from the same Latin root
(pono &put&), but have nothing else to do
with one another. [Entry added 11 July 1999; revised 10
December 2006.]
English has two
sorts of articles: the definite article
(the), and indefinite articles (a and
an). They function more or less as . The
of definite and indefinite articles
is one of the hardest things for speakers of other languages to
master, because it's often entirely arbitrary & why are you
in town but in the village or in the
and American
usa wounded Brits end up in
hospital, while Yanks are in the hospital. Alas, I
don't have any easy rules that are even a little helpful &
all I can suggest is that non-native speakers pay close attention
to the actual usage of articles. Sorry.
In , avoid using
like as a .
In other words, something can be like something else
(there it's a ), but
avoid &It tastes good like a cigarette should& &
it should be &as a cigarette should.& Quickie test:
there should be no
in the phrase
right after like. Even in phrases such as &It looks like
it's going to rain& or &It sounds like the motor's broken,&
as if is usually more appropriate than like
& again, at least in . [Entry revised 12 April 2001; moved 10
December 2006.]
ensure and insure aren't quite so clear cut,
assure is very different from both. You assure a
person that things will go right by making him confident. Never use assure in the sense of
&Assure that the wording is correct&; you can only assure
somebody that it's correct.
Ensure and insure are sometimes used
interchangeably, but it may be better to keep them separate.
Insuring is the business of an insurance company, i.e.,
setting aside resources in case of a loss. Ensure means
make sure, as in &Ensure that this is done by
, by the way & and for
all I know, other Commonwealthers & sometimes use
assurance where we Yanks use insurance (it's
life assurance, but auto insurance, in the UK).
But it's not for me to pass laws with Transatlantic
jurisdictions. [Entry revised 6 September
whether often does all you need to do. See .
You need a verb: &As
far as such-and-such goes,& &As far as such-and-such is
concerned.& Plain old &As far as such-and-such,& widespread
though it may be, should be frowned upon. [Entry added
8 April 2001.]
Aspect is a
property of
that's a little
tricky to describe. Here's how the American Heritage
Dictionary defines it:
A category of the verb denoting primarily the relation of the
action to the passage of time, especially in reference to
completion, duration, or repetition.
Okay & what does that mean? Whereas
describes whether an
action happened in the past, present, or future, aspect
indicates whether it happened once, happens all the time without
stopping, happens intermittently, or is happening now. Some
languages (especially Slavic ones) indicate aspect in their verb
in English, we do most of it with auxiliary verbs or
adverbs. Consider the differences between these:
I go to class.
I'm going to class.
I went to class.
I was going to class.
I have gone to class.
I had gone to class.
I have been going to class.
I had been going to class.
I will go to class.
I will have gone to class.
And so on. Linguists tend to use the word perfect to
describe a completed action and imperfect to describe
one that is (or was) they also use
progressive or continuous to indicate whether
an action is ongoing. Some also have a category for whether
action is habitual. And different languages handle these
things differently. English doesn't have many different verb
forms for these things, but we can indicate all sorts of
differences with when that's not clear
enough, an adverb can resolve ambiguities.
Think that's a mess? & just wait until time-travel is
perfected, and then you'll have to worry about having been about
to have already been going to class. [Entry added 21 Dec.
Consider using yet.
Never, never, never, never, never. See Currently and Wasted Words.
The key to all good
writing is understanding your audience. Every time you
use language, you engage in a rhetorical activity, and
your attention should always be on the effect it will have on
your audience.
as analogous to, say, table
manners. Grammatical && have no
absolute, i there is no Grammar Corps to
track you down for using &whose& when &of which& is more proper,
just as Miss Manners employs no shock troops to massacre people
who eat their salads with fish forks. You can argue, of course,
that the other fork works just as well (or even better), but both
the fork and the usage are entirely arbitrary and conventional.
Your job as a writer is to have certain effects on your readers,
readers who are continuously judging you, consciously or
unconsciously. If you want to have the greatest effect, you'll
adjust your style to suit the audience, however arbitrary its
expectations.
A better analogue might be clothing. A college English paper
calls for the rough equivalent of the jacket and tie (ladies,
you're on your own here). However useless or ridiculous the tie
may be, however outdated its practical value as a garment,
certain social situations demand it, and if you go into a job
interview wearing a T-shirt and jeans, you only hurt yourself by
arguing that the necktie has no sartorial validity. Your job is
to figure out what your audience expects. Likewise, if your
audience wants you to avoid ending your sentences with , no amount of argument
over historical validity will help.
But just as you shouldn't go under-dressed to a job interview,
you shouldn't over-dress either. A white tie and tails will make
you look ridiculous at a barbecue, and a pedantic insistence on
grammatical
lessen your audience's respect for you. There are occasions when
ain't is more suitable than is not, and the
careful writer will take the time to discover which is the more
appropriate.
See , , , , and
by Jack Lynch.
are welcome.