Grammatical Mistakes that Very Intelligent People Make, Pt 2

Still feel stymied by some of the trickier usage challenges? Well, don't feel bad; best-selling authors, legendary playwrights and even usage experts themselves don't always get it right, but for the sake of your readers and listeners, it's still worth trying to get your wording as polished as possible. Here are some more mistakes not to make...

Failure to use parallel construction. Consider the following sentence: Sarah likes to ride her bike, painting and playing ball. That's a hell of a lot to do while riding a bike! Obviously, the writer means that Sarah likes "riding her bike, painting, and playing ball", or "to ride her bike, to paint and to play ball". Make sure that all your sentence bits are constructed in the same fashion for clarity and flow.

Who vs. whom. 'Who' performs the action. The action is done 'to whom', 'for whom', etc. Basically, it's all about the way the sentence is constructed: "I wanted to know who rang the bell, but I was afraid to ask for whom the bell tolled." "Who the bell tolled for" is incorrect, and has a dangling preposition to boot (not that that's always a bad thing). 'Whom', by the way, is always the correct form to use after a preposition-that's an easy way to remember.

Between vs. among - This one's simple, but so frequently misused. If there are two entities, use 'between'. For more, use 'among'. A truce can be between two factions or among three or more. An exception: 'Between' may be used in a group of more than two when physical location, rather than just reciprocity, is being discussed. For example, you could say Italy is between England, Turkey and Libya, because it doesn't make sense to say it is among them. Frankly, I would avoid this type of exception by simply picking two countries to put Italy between (France and Greece, say). Even if you are speaking of physical location, use 'among' if you are referring to something that is indeed a part of the group ("I was among the crowd"), something that was lacking in the England-Turkey-Libya example.

That vs. which. 'That' starts a dependent (also called restrictive) clause; 'which', an independent (nonrestrictive) one. In the example, "The dog that chased me down the street was black and brown", the clause "chased me down the street" is an important part of the sentence. For something that is an additional piece of information, but incidental to the main idea, use 'which', as in: "The dog, which was black and brown, chased me down the street on my way to the bus." The independent clause starting with 'which' can be removed without hurting the most important information. The easiest way to remember this: If you need to use a comma, use which. If not, use that. And don't forget to add the second comma after the clause!

Direct object pronouns - 'he and I' instead of 'him and me'. Even though the "...and I" construction seems to sound better, if your pronouns are receiving the action rather than performing it, use the objective mood: "She spoke sharply to him and me". "I went to the movie with Tom and her." Sounds clunky, but it's right. The easiest way to remember the correct usage: Divide and Conquer! Sound it out with the direct object pronouns separately ("She spoke sharply to me"; "I went to the movie with her"), and you will see the correct choice clearly. "She spoke sharply to he and I" might sound okay, but "She spoke sharply to he" or "to I" just sounds illiterate. If you would like to avoid the potential clunkiness, you can always recast the sentence: "She and Tom went to the movie with me"; "She spoke sharply to us".

I hope that was helpful! If you have any particular usage quandaries, feel free to ask me, and I shall try to get an answer to your grammatical grapples. Until then: Write once; edit many, many times!

For Part 1, click here:Grammatical Mistakes that Very Intelligent People Make, Pt 1 - Associated Content