I made this edit one night last week:
The company adopted new accounting standards after the acquisition that significantly impacted affected its results, so comparisons with year-ago results are skewed.
I admit that it was an almost automatic action on my part.
Here is a new Grammar Guide quiz. Almost all of the 10 sentences involve word usage challenges. I have one timely sentence at the end that is more of a copy editing or proofreading challenge.
Click here or on the question mark icon to begin.
Click here to find other Grammar Guide quizzes.
Columnist Barry Saunders finds fault with the word ginormous and wishes editors would not allow such coinages into the pages of dictionaries. John McIntyre, who writes You Don't Say at baltimoresun.com, explains that lexicographers are not legislators. They describe what is going on with language; they do not put a stamp of approval on coinages merely by adding them to the dictionary.
Of course, I don't recommend using "ginormous" in a news story or in an academic paper. The New Oxford American Dictionary's entry for "ginormous" notes that it is "informal, humorous." That's guidance that writers can heed. And if you are on a job interview, it might be best to describe your capacity for hard work with a more formal word -- enormous or boundless, perhaps.
The latest Grammar Guide quiz involves commonly confused words -- as you might have guessed, one of my favorite copy editing challenges. Some of the sentences on the quiz lend themselves to varied interpretation, so if you happen to choose the "incorrect" answer, you could argue that you read the writer's meaning differently. This quiz has 10 sentences, rather than the standard five. I've been saving up examples. As an enticement, I promise a little humor in some explanations.
Click here to begin the quiz. As always, I welcome comments and e-mail messages. Tell your friends and spread the word. I could use some hits.
I've run across two sentences recently that confused affect and effect in a similar way:
Both of the underlined words should have been affected, as in "to have an effect on." The writers could have puzzled this out by turning the sentences around, perhaps. The budget cuts will affect schools, programs and departments. Closing down the production line will affect employees. That's how I would figure out the right spelling.
Some people like to use the mnemonic RAVEN: Remember Affect Verb Effect Noun. Of course, effect can be a verb also, meaning "to bring about." But most of the time, if the word you want is a verb (or a verb form used as a modifier, as in the second sentence), use affect.
This sentence from a blog post illustrates a pair of commonly confused words. Read the sentence and see whether you can figure out what I am referring to. Then hit the Read More button.
Although Rep. Renee Ellmers campaigned last fall as an ardent opponent of the new health care law passed by Congress, she was not reticent about taking advantage the health plan offered to members of Congress.
Two colleagues came to me with a question: Is it incorrect to begin a sentence with and or but? I told them that beginning sentences with and or but is neither a grammatical violation nor a usage breach.
A little piece of an advertising circular caught my eye this morning. I wondered whether the word use was correct.
My week at the copy editing factory was long and busy, but I hit the jackpot on some real-life examples of mixed-up word choices. I recognize that my joy is rather perverse, but I was happy to find material for a Grammar Guide quiz on word choice.
I hope you have fun taking the quiz. Click here or on the question mark icon to begin. Leave a comment below if you would like.
Even though most of us don't use horses or buggies as our main transportation these days, our language still has horse-related idioms, which writers sometimes mix up.
