Hey, grammarians!

Factual Questions
1

I’m teaching an SAT II Writing class, and I’ve been nailed by the students on a couple things in our text.

Is there something technically wrong with “He was admired more for his humor than for what his poems had to say”? Is this a violation of parallelism?

Is there something wrong with, “It is way too early to make a decision about this”? Our text is arguing that you shouldn’t use the “way”, but I don’t see the problem.

Look at the previous paragraph. Should the question mark be inside or outside the quote marks, since this isn’t a real quote from a person and I’m only trying to set the phrase apart?

I told them that “She told him that the world was square” is correct because she was wrong. This situation has no hope of being correct in the present. Then is it correct to say “The teacher told Sally that she is a great student.” The kids said, “Well, is she still a good student, or was it only true then?”

Thanks for the help.

2
3

It looks perfectly parallel to me. What is the proposed rewrite?

**
“Way” is considered dialect or nonstandard in this usage, according to MW3 Unabridged. Use “much too early” or “far too early” instead.

**
It’s correct as is, but not for either of the reasons you give. It does not matter whether the quote is from a “real person” or that you’re “trying to set [it] apart.” The quoted material is not itself a question, so the question mark should go outside the quotation marks. You would, however, correctly write:

The question mark in this case does double duty.

Again, faulty reasoning. She made a statement of fact about an ongoing phenomenon. The world is either round or it is square (to simplify matters), and she stated one of these as a fact.
Here’s another example to distinguish the use of past and present in cases like this one:

I hope this helps. (Out of curiosity: How did you end up teaching this class?)

4

Doesn’t look like a violation to me; both parts of the sentence refer to nouns.

The use of “way” in that manner hasn’t quite made it into standard use, so I’m not surprised that the text doesn’t endorse it. It’s not terribly wrong, of course, but perhaps a more precise way to express the meaning would be “It is far too early…”

In American English, the question mark always goes outside the quote marks, with one exception: quotes that themselves end in question marks.

He said his favorite quote was, “O Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

But otherwise, the question mark goes outside the quote marks.In your example, you’re asking a question about text that you’ve enclosed in quote marks, so putting the question mark within the marks would make the sentence unclear.

It’s probably better to say “The teacher told Sally that she was a great student.” In either event, however, you run into a question of ambiguity. In my revision, is the teacher telling Sally that she was at that moment a great student or that she had been one in the past?

But if you keep it the way you have it, then you’re mixing up tenses, which only serves to muddle the situation further. If it were a direct quote, it would be different: “The teacher told Sally, ‘You are a good student.’”

5

The parallelism is off-balance and I wouldn’t let it go out over my name, but I don’t see anything unclear or ungrammatical with the sentence itself. I just see it as an example of sloppy writing.

It’s much too informal for schoolwork. When I was in school, it was “you know” that the teachers were trying to shake out of us. Now it’s probably the "way"s and the "like"s.

Outside in this case. See Scarlett67’s explanation.

I don’t see the problem here, except in your use of “because.” The first sentence is grammatically correct even though “she” was wrong, not because of it. Your students’ question about Sally being a good student is an excellent chance for you to teach them about good, clear, unambiguous writing. That’s exactly the kind of question that should be asked after such a badly-worded sentence. Is the author trying to imply that Sally was a great student and isn’t any more? How do you discover that fact? Is there any other evidence for this argument in the paragraph from which this sentence was taken?

At their level, it should all be about reading for comprehension.

Hope this helps. :slight_smile:

6

Most American grammer books will tell you to always put the question mark inside the closing quotation mark, regardless of whether the actual question is inside or outside the quote. I understand that the trend in British English now is to put the question mark on the side appropriate for the meaning: Inside if you’re quoting a question, outside if you’re asking about a quote. Among technical sorts (especially hackers) in both countries, there’s a tendancy to include all appropriate punctuation, both inside and out, even if this results in duplicate punctuation. For instance:

I don’t know if this last usage is an official standard of any sort, though.

7

l. Parallelism
“He was admired more for his humor than for what his poems had to say”
Adjectives should be paralleled by adjectives, nouns by nouns, subordinate clauses by subordinate clauses, and so on. This sentence tries to parallel a noun by a clause. Assuming his humor occurred in his poems, rewrite as “His poems were admired more for their humor than their content.”
Or “He was admired more for his poetry’s humor than its content.”
Or “His poems were admired more for how they were expressed than what they expressed.”
Or “His poems were admired less for what they had to say than how they said it.”

  1. Use of “way.”
    Per the American Heritage Dictionary:
    ADVERB :

  2. Informal By a great distance or to a great degree; far: “way off base; way too expensive.” 2. Slang Very; extremely: “Can they really make a car that’s way cool?” (Fortune) Fortune, June 21, 1997. 3. Informal From this place; away: “Go way.”
    Usage is correct in informal discourse.
    http://www.bartleby.com/61/43/W0064300.html

  3. Quotation marks with question mark.
    Scarlett67 has the correct answer.

  4. Sequence of tenses.
    When the verb in the main clause is in the past tense, the verb in a subordinate “that” clause should also express past time. Compare the tenses in the following pairs of examples:

She SAYS (present) that she IS now WORKING (present) for CBS.
She SAID (past) that she WAS now WORKING (past) for CBS.

He SAYS (present) that he HAS SEEN (present perfect) your resume.
He SAID (past) that he HAD SEEN (past perfect) your resume.

I THINK (present) that he WILL SEE (future) you tomorrow.
I THOUGHT (past) that he WOULD SEE (past form of WILL SEE) you tomorrow.

EXCEPTION: The verb in the subordinate clause should remain in the present tense if it expresses a general truth.

Our legal adviser POINTED OUT (past) that all persons under 18 ARE (present) legally considered minors. (General truth.)

Since the world’s being square is NOT a general truth, it should be past tense: “She told him that the world was square.”

Darlin’, just how are you teaching a writing class without reference books? All the above can be confirmed in The Gregg Reference Manual, and you can purchase it from many different book stores. Here’s one:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0028040465/qid%3D986535909/sr%3D1-16/ref%3Dsc_b_17/107-3250071-5362151
If the URL doesn’t come through properly, just go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any site of your choice and search for it. You can even type “gregg reference manual” into a browser window, and you’ll be able to find it. The first link Netscape will pop up is Amazon.

8

l. Parallelism
“He was admired more for his humor than for what his poems had to say”
Adjectives should be paralleled by adjectives, nouns by nouns, subordinate clauses by subordinate clauses, and so on. This sentence tries to parallel a noun by a clause. Assuming his humor occurred in his poems, rewrite as “His poems were admired more for their humor than their content.”
Or “He was admired more for his poetry’s humor than its content.”
Or “His poems were admired more for how they were expressed than what they expressed.”
Or “His poems were admired less for what they had to say than how they said it.”

  1. Use of “way.”
    Per the American Heritage Dictionary:
    ADVERB :

  2. Informal By a great distance or to a great degree; far: “way off base; way too expensive.” 2. Slang Very; extremely: “Can they really make a car that’s way cool?” (Fortune) Fortune, June 21, 1997. 3. Informal From this place; away: “Go way.”
    Usage is correct in informal discourse.
    http://www.bartleby.com/61/43/W0064300.html

  3. Quotation marks with question mark.
    Scarlett67 has the correct answer.

  4. Sequence of tenses.
    When the verb in the main clause is in the past tense, the verb in a subordinate “that” clause should also express past time. Compare the tenses in the following pairs of examples:

She SAYS (present) that she IS now WORKING (present) for CBS.
She SAID (past) that she WAS now WORKING (past) for CBS.

He SAYS (present) that he HAS SEEN (present perfect) your resume.
He SAID (past) that he HAD SEEN (past perfect) your resume.

I THINK (present) that he WILL SEE (future) you tomorrow.
I THOUGHT (past) that he WOULD SEE (past form of WILL SEE) you tomorrow.

EXCEPTION: The verb in the subordinate clause should remain in the present tense if it expresses a general truth.

Our legal adviser POINTED OUT (past) that all persons under 18 ARE (present) legally considered minors. (General truth.)

Since the world’s being square is NOT a general truth, it should be past tense: “She told him that the world was square.”

Darlin’, just how are you teaching a writing class without reference books? All the above can be confirmed in The Gregg Reference Manual, and you can purchase it from many different book stores. Here’s one:

If the URL doesn’t come through properly, just go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any site of your choice and search for it. You can even type “gregg reference manual” into a browser window, and you’ll be able to find it. The first link Netscape will pop up is Amazon.

9

l. Parallelism
“He was admired more for his humor than for what his poems had to say”
Adjectives should be paralleled by adjectives, nouns by nouns, subordinate clauses by subordinate clauses, and so on. This sentence tries to parallel a noun by a clause. Assuming his humor occurred in his poems, rewrite as “His poems were admired more for their humor than their content.”
Or “He was admired more for his poetry’s humor than its content.”
Or “His poems were admired more for how they were expressed than what they expressed.”
Or “His poems were admired less for what they had to say than how they said it.”

  1. Use of “way.”
    Per the American Heritage Dictionary:
    ADVERB :

  2. Informal By a great distance or to a great degree; far: “way off base; way too expensive.” 2. Slang Very; extremely: “Can they really make a car that’s way cool?” (Fortune) Fortune, June 21, 1997. 3. Informal From this place; away: “Go way.”
    Usage is correct in informal discourse.
    http://www.bartleby.com/61/43/W0064300.html

  3. Quotation marks with question mark.
    Scarlett67 has the correct answer.

  4. Sequence of tenses.
    When the verb in the main clause is in the past tense, the verb in a subordinate “that” clause should also express past time. Compare the tenses in the following pairs of examples:

She SAYS (present) that she IS now WORKING (present) for CBS.
She SAID (past) that she WAS now WORKING (past) for CBS.

He SAYS (present) that he HAS SEEN (present perfect) your resume.
He SAID (past) that he HAD SEEN (past perfect) your resume.

I THINK (present) that he WILL SEE (future) you tomorrow.
I THOUGHT (past) that he WOULD SEE (past form of WILL SEE) you tomorrow.

EXCEPTION: The verb in the subordinate clause should remain in the present tense if it expresses a general truth.

Our legal adviser POINTED OUT (past) that all persons under 18 ARE (present) legally considered minors. (General truth.)

Since the world’s being square is NOT a general truth, it should be past tense: “She told him that the world was square.”

Darlin’, just how are you teaching a writing class without reference books? All the above can be confirmed in The Gregg Reference Manual, and you can purchase it from many different book stores. Here’s one:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0028040465/qid%3D986535909/sr%3D1-16/ref%3Dsc_b_17/107-3250071-5362151
If the URL doesn’t come through properly, just go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any site of your choice and search for it. You can even type “gregg reference manual” into a browser window, and you’ll be able to find it. The first link Netscape will pop up is Amazon.

10

l. Parallelism
“He was admired more for his humor than for what his poems had to say”
Adjectives should be paralleled by adjectives, nouns by nouns, subordinate clauses by subordinate clauses, and so on. This sentence tries to parallel a noun by a clause. Assuming his humor occurred in his poems, rewrite as “His poems were admired more for their humor than their content.”
Or “He was admired more for his poetry’s humor than its content.”
Or “His poems were admired more for how they were expressed than what they expressed.”
Or “His poems were admired less for what they had to say than how they said it.”

  1. Use of “way.”
    Per the American Heritage Dictionary:
    ADVERB :

  2. Informal By a great distance or to a great degree; far: “way off base; way too expensive.” 2. Slang Very; extremely: “Can they really make a car that’s way cool?” (Fortune) Fortune, June 21, 1997. 3. Informal From this place; away: “Go way.”
    Usage is correct in informal discourse.
    http://www.bartleby.com/61/43/W0064300.html

  3. Quotation marks with question mark.
    Scarlett67 has the correct answer.

  4. Sequence of tenses.
    When the verb in the main clause is in the past tense, the verb in a subordinate “that” clause should also express past time. Compare the tenses in the following pairs of examples:

She SAYS (present) that she IS now WORKING (present) for CBS.
She SAID (past) that she WAS now WORKING (past) for CBS.

He SAYS (present) that he HAS SEEN (present perfect) your resume.
He SAID (past) that he HAD SEEN (past perfect) your resume.

I THINK (present) that he WILL SEE (future) you tomorrow.
I THOUGHT (past) that he WOULD SEE (past form of WILL SEE) you tomorrow.

EXCEPTION: The verb in the subordinate clause should remain in the present tense if it expresses a general truth.

Our legal adviser POINTED OUT (past) that all persons under 18 ARE (present) legally considered minors. (General truth.)

Since the world’s being square is NOT a general truth, it should be past tense: “She told him that the world was square.”

Darlin’, just how are you teaching a writing class without reference books? All the above can be confirmed in The Gregg Reference Manual, and you can purchase it from many different book stores. Here’s one:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0028040465/qid%3D986535909/sr%3D1-16/ref%3Dsc_b_17/107-3250071-5362151
If the URL doesn’t come through properly, just go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any site of your choice and search for it. You can even type “gregg reference manual” into a browser window, and you’ll be able to find it. The first link Netscape will pop up is Amazon.

11

Yikes. How did my reply get in there four times? I hope admin deletes the first three. Please? Apologies if my multiple clicks did it. This site is slower than molasses, and I can’t always tell if it’s thinking about going to the next page or ignoring my entreaties.

12

ziji:
I’ve had the same problem when things are slowed down or the board is really busy. I keep waiting for the blue bar to fill up at the bottom of the page and it doesn’t, so I mistakenly assume that the post didn’t make it. Then I go back later and find out that it did–twice, because I tried to make it go through again when it wasn’t necessary to do so.

13

From Harbrace College Handbook, Eleventh Edition:

From Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition:

If that’s what you meant, then sorry for restating it.

This isn’t correct, since the parallelism is lost. If you’re going to have a prepositional phrase on one side (“for their humor”), then you need to have a prepositional phrase on the other side (“for their content”). You could also, were you so inclined, phrase it like this: “His poems were admired more for their humor than they were for their content.” This is a bit clumsy, but it’s accurate. (It’s possible that the reader may take the meaning as “his poems were admired more for their humor than their content was admired for their humor”. Ok, silly and pedantic. :slight_smile:

[Having problems posting this; sorry if it’s a repeat. :frowning: )

14

Thanks for the notes on the quote marks and the parallelism.

I have been using reference books. I have Hacker’s “A Writer’s Reference”, 4th ed. It says on page 183, “The folowing sentence is acceptable: Ptolemy taught that the sun revolved around the earth.”

Here the logic is that this statement of his has been discredited, and is not true in the present time. That’s why I told those kids what I did: because I was looking at my reference book.

So, from what I understand, we put “I told my teacher that Sacramento is the capital of California.” This is still true, so it gets the present tense.

So, for “She SAID (past) that she WAS now WORKING (past) for CBS,” we should use “was” even if she still is working there. Do I have that right?

Ah, I see here in AWR that it is a “special use of the present tense” to let “to be” be in the present when referring to the past.

What exactly counts as a “general truth”? “I told the teacher that I am a genius.” This doesn’t count, right?

Oh, I have one more question:
Who/Whom is the who was hit with the baseball?

I’ve been telling them that you can usually tell by answering the question and seeing if you used a subject or an object, but in this case they pointed out that you can answer, “It was him”, or “He was hit.” I think this is where my method breaks down. Looking at the sentence, I think it could be re-phrased, “The baseball hit who/whom?” In this structure, the answer is clearly “whom.” Any comments?

I’m teaching this because I’m the only person who even comes close to being qualified. I work with math types who often can’t even write sentences that are understandable. I did get a 770 on the SAT II Writing when I took it about 1.5 years ago, and that was with only getting a 10 on the essay, I assume because I didn’t write long enough. I can explain any of the problems on the two real tests we have, and in language that kids can understand, without a lot of technical jargon.

15

Looks ok to me, because she’s telling someone (in our past) that she was working for CBS (at the time of the telling). At least I think she is. Awkward, but accurate.

“Whom” is correct, and so is your reasoning. The person getting hit is the object of the sentence, even though it comes in the beginning. Now, if you were asking who was the person who HIT the baseball (not WAS HIT), then it would be “who”.

16

Response to the who/whom question.

The correct question is, “Who was hit with the baseball.”

“Who” in this case is the subject of the sentence–thus the nominative case is needed(“who” as opposed to “whom” - “whom” would be the objective case).

A good rule of thumb is, can you substitute “he” in for “who” (both are nominatives)? If you can, “who” is the correct interrogative or relative pronoun. In the same vein, can you substitute “him” in for “whom”(both are in the objective case)? Also works for “his” and “whose”.

This generally works (although remember that subordinate clauses are dominant in the use of “who”, “whom” and “whose” rather than the sentences as a whole).

I can give you the long-winded grammarian rule if you like but the above usually works and is a great deal more understandable, and the rule is more confusing than helpful to most non-grammarians.

One thing I noticed—you said “It was him”…that was wrong, I’m afraid. Anytime you use a linking verb like “was,” you are going to follow with either a predicate adjective or, as in this case, a predicate nominative. A predicate nominative by definition has to be nominative (he, she, we, they, who, whoever). You should have said “It was he.”

Most people feel this sounds yucky, but it is correct. Thus you should say things like, “Hey, that’s he,” rather than “him” or “This is he,” when asked for on the telephone, rather than “This is him” (or “her” as the case might be).

By the way, your, “The baseball hit whom?” is completely correct. The way you structured that sentence has “whom” as the direct object. An object must be in the objective case (with a couple of rhetorical exceptions, of course).

I haven’t yet looked at your original post but it has been my experience that ziji usually does a good job on this sort of thing.

TV

17

OK, I think I generally understand (and as I said, I know enough to miss basically none on this test).

I do admit that “It was him” is wrong. What’s even worse is that I’ve taught that. I wasn’t thinking slowly enough. I tell them, “You wouldn’t say ‘Him did it’, would you? So it’s not ‘It was him (who did it)’.”

However, this jargon is throwing me. I don’t know it, and I can’t use it in class. I refuse to sound like the long-winded, officious school teacher. Now I always can noodle out when to use who and whom, but this “nominative”, “objective case”, etc. are losing me. I’m afraid that I’ve missed about half of TV’s point.

Any more lunkhead-oriented explanations?

18

I’m not sure “It was him” is incorrect. “It is me” has come to be accepted, so why not “It was him”?

Also, according to Bergen Evans, the use of “who” when “whom” is technically correct has also been acceptable.

TV Time says [q]The correct question is “Who was hit with the baseball.” [/q]I think has two errors. The obvious error is that a question mark should replace the period. The second error is that the wrong preposition was used. Shouldn’t it be: “Who was hit by the baseball?” To use “with” implies that one swung a baseball and hit the person; whereas, one swung a bat at a ball which hit the person or one threw a pitch which hit the person.

19

Sorry Dave, let me try again.

Who = he, Whom = him, Whose = his.

Who/whom ate the pie? = He ate the pie. So “who” is correct. You would never say, “Him ate the pie” unless you were auditioning for Beverly Hillbillies II.

Who/Whom do you like? = Do you like him? So “whom” is correct.

To test a who/whom question, you shouldn’t have to bring in any other words than he and him. Bringing in such words as “did” can cause problems.

Regarding, “It is I,” or “That was he”: Basically it comes down to, if you are following a word like: “is”, “was”, “will be”, “were” or their ilk with a pronoun, you need to keep it: “he”, “she”, “they”, “I”, or “we.”

But you said you knew that. So OK.

As to barbitu8’s belief that “acceptable” equals “correct”, I’m afraid that isn’t quite valid in most academic (nor testing) circles. In some circles “ain’t got no” has become acceptable, it is far from correct.

Evans used to call the use of “who” in place of a correct “whom” as “lazy English”. It would be interesting to find out if that opinion still stands.

Dave, sorry about the “long-winded, officious school teacher” language, I work with writers all day and often I have to resort to jargon to get my points across about correct usage.

TV

20

TV -

That really wasn’t meant to imply that you were being long-winded and officious, but that kids will think that of me if I go into that kind of detail. I also simply didn’t understand it, through lack of education on the subject. I now have a pretty battle-tested sense of grammar, but the (extra) fine points and technical jargon slip past me sometimes.

I’m doing pretty well at being the defacto proofer around here. It’s certainly a sight better when I get through with it. Math majors, I’m telling you…

If you want to go and define those terms, I’ll try to pay attention.