Grammar-ThePuzzleMuseum.docVIP

ON GRAMMAR Copyright ?2003 Professor David Singmaster contact via This is a collection of various articles and emails on grammar.  EDITORIAL GRAMMAR From: Physical Review Letters 42:12 (19 Mar 1979) 747-748. It is said that back in the 1940s, the following message was prominently displayed at the front of the main chemistry lecture hall at a major university: The English language is your most versatile scientific instrument. Learn to use it with precision. In the intervening years, the teaching of proper grammar in the public elementary and high schools fell into disfavor. The inevitable result is that manuscripts submitted to us are often full of grammatical errors, which their authors probably do not even recognize (and often would not care about if they did). We regard this state of affairs as deplorable, and we want to do something about it. For many years we have tried to correct the grammar of papers that we publish. This is toilsome at best, and sometimes entails rather substantial rephrasing. It would obviously be preferable to have authors use correct grammar in the first place. The problem is how to get them to do it. One fairly effective way is to provide examples of what not to do; it is particularly helpful if the examples are humorous. We have recently seen several lists of grammatical examples of this type. A few weeks ago we found taped to a colleagues office door the most complete one we have seen. (He tells us it was passed out in a class at Dartmouth – not in English – at the time a term paper was assigned). We reproduce it here in the hope that it will have some effect. 1. Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent. 2. Just between you and I, the case of pronouns is important. 3. Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into English. 4. Verbs has to agree in number with their subjects. 5. Dont use no double negatives. 6. Being bad grammar, a writer should not use dangling modifiers. 7. Join clauses good lik