There are many myths about grammar. I have selected top ten myths from them
and tried to explain them. Hope they will be useful to everyone.
Myth 1:You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition.
Wrong! You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition when the sentence would mean the same thing if you remove the preposition. That means "Where are you at?" is wrong because "Where are you?" means the same thing. But there are many sentences where the final preposition is part of a phrasal verb. Can you say “What are you waiting?” No. You need to say, “What are you waiting for?” to make a grammatical sentence. Other examples are: “I'm going to throw up,” “Let's kiss and make up,” “What did you step on?” etc. (The bottom line is that many people think it's wrong, so I wouldn't advise ending sentences with prepositions in critical situations, for example, you shouldn't do it in a cover letter for a job you really want.)
Myth 1:You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition.
Wrong! You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition when the sentence would mean the same thing if you remove the preposition. That means "Where are you at?" is wrong because "Where are you?" means the same thing. But there are many sentences where the final preposition is part of a phrasal verb. Can you say “What are you waiting?” No. You need to say, “What are you waiting for?” to make a grammatical sentence. Other examples are: “I'm going to throw up,” “Let's kiss and make up,” “What did you step on?” etc. (The bottom line is that many people think it's wrong, so I wouldn't advise ending sentences with prepositions in critical situations, for example, you shouldn't do it in a cover letter for a job you really want.)
You shouldn't split infinitives.
Wrong! Nearly all grammarians want to boldly tell you it's OK to split infinitives. An infinitive is a two-word form of a verb. An example is "to tell." In a split infinitive, another word separates the two parts of the verb. "To boldly tell" is a split infinitive because “boldly” separates “to” from “tell.” (The bottom line is that you can usually avoid splitting infinitives if you want to, but there's no reason to go out of your way to avoid it, and certainly don't let anyone tell you that it's forbidden.) If you want to remember what a split infinitive is, just remember what might be the most famous example: Star Trek's “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” To boldly go, is a split infinitive.
Myth 3.It's incorrect to answer the question "How are you?" with the statement "I'm good."
Wrong! “Am” is a linking verb and linking verbs should be modified by adjectives such as “good.” Because “well” can also act as an adjective, it's also fine to answer "I'm well," but some grammarians believe "I'm well" should be used to talk about your health and not your general disposition. People seem to forget that it's standard to use adjectives — such as 'good' — after linking verbs. When you do it, they are called predicate adjectives, and they refer back to the noun before the linking verb. That's why, even though good is primarily an adjective, it is OK to say, "I am good": am is a linking verb, and you use adjectives after linking verbs. Finally, it's very important to remember that it's wrong to use good as an adverb after an action verb. For example, it's wrong to say, “He swam good.” The proper sentence is "He swam well," because swam is an action verb and it needs an adverb to describe it. Remember, you can only use adjectives such as good and bad after linking verbs, you can't use them after action verbs.
Myth 4. You use “a” before words that start with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels.
Wrong! You use “a” before words that start with consonant sounds and “an” before words that start with vowel sounds. So, you'd write that someone has an MBA instead of a MBA, because even though “MBA” starts with “m,” which is a consonant, it starts with the sound of the vowel “e”--MBA. Again "an hour" is correct, because "hour" starts with a vowel sound "a". Other examples are: "It is a historic monument" but "it is an honorable fellow" because "honorable" starts with an "o" sound. Similarly, "it is a Utopian idea", but "an unfair world". Just remember it is the sound that governs whether you use a or an, not the actual first letter of the word.
Myth 5. “I.e.” and “e.g.” mean the same thing.
Wrong! I.e. and e.g. are both abbreviations for Latin terms. I.e. stands for id est and means roughly "that is." E.g. stands for exempli gratia, which means “for example/in other words.” You use “e.g.” to provide a list of incomplete examples, and you use “i.e.” to provide a complete clarifying list or statement. Let's make it more clear. Ex 1. "Ronny loves watching old cartoons (e.g., Duck Tales and Mickey Mouse)." The words following e.g. are examples, so you know that these are just some of the old cartoons that Ronny enjoys. Ex 2. "Ronny loves playing with his nephews (i.e., Riya, Pinky, and Tareq)." The words following i.e. provide clarification: they tell you the names of Ronny's three nephews.
Myth 6. Passive voice is always wrong.
Wrong! Passive voice is when you don't name the person who's responsible for the action. An example is the sentence "Mistakes were made," because it doesn't say who made the mistakes. If you don't know who is responsible for an action, passive voice can be the best choice. A lot of people think that all sentences that contain a form of the verb "to be" are in passive voice, but that isn't true. For example, the sentence "I am holding a pen" is in active voice, but it uses the verb "am," which is a form of "to be". The passive form of that sentence is "The pen is being held by me." When you put sentences in passive voice, it's easy to leave out the agent doing the action. For example, "Amy is loved" is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don't know who loves Amy. In fact, politicians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. For example “Bombs were dropped” and “Shots were fired.”
So, these are some of the reasons to avoid passive voice: the form can lead to awkward sentences and obscured meaning. Also, passive voice is wordy. You can tighten up your writing a lot if you use active voice more often than passive. So passive voice is often a good choice when the actor isn't known or doesn't matter, or if you want to create some mystery around your sentence. Passive voice is not grammatically incorrect; it's just not often the best choice. If you know who did what, it’s better to use an active sentence in most cases.
Myth 7. There is only one way to write the possessive form of a word that ends in “s.”
Wrong! It's a style choice. For example, in the phrase “Kansas's statute,” you can put just an apostrophe at the end of “Kansas” or you can put an apostrophe “s” at the end of “Kansas.” Both ways are acceptable. Here's an easier situation that has a firm rule: if the word ending with s is plural, such as aardvarks, then you just add an apostrophe at the end to make it possessive. For example, you could write, "The aardvarks' escape route [s apostrophe] was blocked" to indicate that a family of aardvarks needed to find another way out of danger.
Plural words that don't end with s, such as children, do take an apostrophe s at the end for possession. For example, you could write, "Fortunately, the children's room [children apostrophe s] had a hidden doorway."
Here's a tricky issue with a definite answer: how do you make the plural of a single letter, as in Mind your p's and q's? It's shocking, but you actually use the apostrophe before the s! It looks possessive, but it isn't. The apostrophe is just there to make it clear that you're writing about multiple p's and q's. The apostrophe is especially important when you are writing about a's, i's, and u's because without the apostrophe readers could easily think you are writing the words as, is, and us.
Myth 8. “Irregardless” is not a word.
Wrong! “Irregardless” is a bad word and a word you shouldn't use, but it is a word. “Floogetyflop” isn't a word — I just made it up and you have no idea what it means. “Irregardless,” on the other hand, is in almost every dictionary labeled as nonstandard. You shouldn't use it if you want to be taken seriously, but it has gained wide enough use to qualify as a word. Language experts speculate that irregardless comes from a combination of the words regardless and irrespective and that another reason people might say "irregardless" is that they are following the pattern of words like irregular and irreplaceable. But regardless already has the -less suffix on the end, so it's not like those other words. Although it's true that the American Heritage Dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary all list the word irregardless, they also note that it's considered nonstandard. Listing a word as nonstandard is a way that dictionaries concede that a word is in common use, but isn't really a proper word. Standard language is defined as the language spoken by educated native speakers, but comprehensive dictionaries also include nonstandard words, dialect, colloquialisms, and jargon--words like ain't, conversate, and irregardless. It seems pretty common for people to look up a word in a dictionary, and if it's there, they think it's fine to use that word every circumstance. But you have to look a little further to see what kind of word it is, and if it's nonstandard in some way, then use it with caution. You'll sound uneducated if you go around saying things like "I ain't gonna conversate with him irregardless of the consequences."
Myth 9. You shouldn't start a sentence with the word “however.”
Wrong! It's fine to start a sentence with “however” so long as you use a comma after it when it means "nevertheless." The comma is important because however is a conjunctive adverb that can be used in two different ways: it can be a conjunction that joins main clauses, or it can be an adverb that modifies a clause. Some writers have even gone so far as to say it is preferable to start sentences with however instead of burying the word in the middle of a sentence, because putting it at the beginning makes the connection between sentences more clear and therefore makes the text easier to scan. If you use however at the beginning of a sentence and don't insert a comma, however means “in whatever manner” or “to whatever extent.” For example, in the sentence “However big the fool, there is always a bigger fool to admire him,” however isn't playing a role as a conjunction. It's not joining anything to anything else. As an aside, it's also acceptable to start a sentence with coordinating conjunctions like and, but, and so. It's a somewhat informal style, and it's a good idea not to overdo it in business writing, but it's not wrong. Despite the fact that it's not wrong to start a sentence with however, a lot of people think it's wrong; so I wouldn't advise doing it in a really important situation where you don't know the people you are writing for and you won't get a chance to defend yourself. For example, I wouldn't start a sentence with however in a cover letter for a job. I'd rather be hired than be right. Again, put a comma before and after however when you use it in the middle of a sentence. Don't use any punctuation after however when you use it to mean “in whatever manner” or “to whatever extent.”
Myth 10. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence.
Wrong! They can actually be quite short. In a run-on sentence, independent clauses are squished together without the help of punctuation or a conjunction. If you write “I am short he is tall,” as one sentence without a semicolon, colon, or dash between the two independent clauses, it's a run-on sentence even though it only has six words.
How you fix the sentence depends on how the different parts are related to each other and what tone and rhythm you are trying to achieve.
For example, if you want to completely separate the two fused sentences, then you'd use a period: I am a woman. I am a truck driver.
If you want to keep more of a connection between the two thoughts, you could use a semicolon and write, I am a woman; I am a truck driver.
If you want to make more of a comment on the connection between the two sentences, then you could use a conjunction with a comma. For example, you could write, I am a woman, and I am a truck driver, or you could write, I am a woman, yet I am a truck driver.
If you wanted to get fancy, you could use a conjunctive adverb with a semicolon and a comma: I am a woman; nevertheless, I am a truck driver.
There are even more ways to fix run-on sentences, depending on the relationship between the different clauses; for example, you could use a colon if the first clause introduces the second clause, but my main point is that you have to use something to connect two clauses that could be complete sentences on their own. You can't just fuse them together. If you do, that's an error called a run-on sentence. You have to determine what kind of tone you want to set. For example, I am a woman. "I am a truck driver" has a very hard and strong tone, whereas "I am a woman; nevertheless, I am a truck driver" has more of a conversational tone.
Finally, I hope these tips would clear some of your confusions. Keep studying and you will learn a lot of things like the above ones.
Wrong! Nearly all grammarians want to boldly tell you it's OK to split infinitives. An infinitive is a two-word form of a verb. An example is "to tell." In a split infinitive, another word separates the two parts of the verb. "To boldly tell" is a split infinitive because “boldly” separates “to” from “tell.” (The bottom line is that you can usually avoid splitting infinitives if you want to, but there's no reason to go out of your way to avoid it, and certainly don't let anyone tell you that it's forbidden.) If you want to remember what a split infinitive is, just remember what might be the most famous example: Star Trek's “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” To boldly go, is a split infinitive.
Myth 3.It's incorrect to answer the question "How are you?" with the statement "I'm good."
Wrong! “Am” is a linking verb and linking verbs should be modified by adjectives such as “good.” Because “well” can also act as an adjective, it's also fine to answer "I'm well," but some grammarians believe "I'm well" should be used to talk about your health and not your general disposition. People seem to forget that it's standard to use adjectives — such as 'good' — after linking verbs. When you do it, they are called predicate adjectives, and they refer back to the noun before the linking verb. That's why, even though good is primarily an adjective, it is OK to say, "I am good": am is a linking verb, and you use adjectives after linking verbs. Finally, it's very important to remember that it's wrong to use good as an adverb after an action verb. For example, it's wrong to say, “He swam good.” The proper sentence is "He swam well," because swam is an action verb and it needs an adverb to describe it. Remember, you can only use adjectives such as good and bad after linking verbs, you can't use them after action verbs.
Myth 4. You use “a” before words that start with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels.
Wrong! You use “a” before words that start with consonant sounds and “an” before words that start with vowel sounds. So, you'd write that someone has an MBA instead of a MBA, because even though “MBA” starts with “m,” which is a consonant, it starts with the sound of the vowel “e”--MBA. Again "an hour" is correct, because "hour" starts with a vowel sound "a". Other examples are: "It is a historic monument" but "it is an honorable fellow" because "honorable" starts with an "o" sound. Similarly, "it is a Utopian idea", but "an unfair world". Just remember it is the sound that governs whether you use a or an, not the actual first letter of the word.
Myth 5. “I.e.” and “e.g.” mean the same thing.
Wrong! I.e. and e.g. are both abbreviations for Latin terms. I.e. stands for id est and means roughly "that is." E.g. stands for exempli gratia, which means “for example/in other words.” You use “e.g.” to provide a list of incomplete examples, and you use “i.e.” to provide a complete clarifying list or statement. Let's make it more clear. Ex 1. "Ronny loves watching old cartoons (e.g., Duck Tales and Mickey Mouse)." The words following e.g. are examples, so you know that these are just some of the old cartoons that Ronny enjoys. Ex 2. "Ronny loves playing with his nephews (i.e., Riya, Pinky, and Tareq)." The words following i.e. provide clarification: they tell you the names of Ronny's three nephews.
Myth 6. Passive voice is always wrong.
Wrong! Passive voice is when you don't name the person who's responsible for the action. An example is the sentence "Mistakes were made," because it doesn't say who made the mistakes. If you don't know who is responsible for an action, passive voice can be the best choice. A lot of people think that all sentences that contain a form of the verb "to be" are in passive voice, but that isn't true. For example, the sentence "I am holding a pen" is in active voice, but it uses the verb "am," which is a form of "to be". The passive form of that sentence is "The pen is being held by me." When you put sentences in passive voice, it's easy to leave out the agent doing the action. For example, "Amy is loved" is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don't know who loves Amy. In fact, politicians often use passive voice to intentionally obscure the idea of who is taking the action. For example “Bombs were dropped” and “Shots were fired.”
So, these are some of the reasons to avoid passive voice: the form can lead to awkward sentences and obscured meaning. Also, passive voice is wordy. You can tighten up your writing a lot if you use active voice more often than passive. So passive voice is often a good choice when the actor isn't known or doesn't matter, or if you want to create some mystery around your sentence. Passive voice is not grammatically incorrect; it's just not often the best choice. If you know who did what, it’s better to use an active sentence in most cases.
Myth 7. There is only one way to write the possessive form of a word that ends in “s.”
Wrong! It's a style choice. For example, in the phrase “Kansas's statute,” you can put just an apostrophe at the end of “Kansas” or you can put an apostrophe “s” at the end of “Kansas.” Both ways are acceptable. Here's an easier situation that has a firm rule: if the word ending with s is plural, such as aardvarks, then you just add an apostrophe at the end to make it possessive. For example, you could write, "The aardvarks' escape route [s apostrophe] was blocked" to indicate that a family of aardvarks needed to find another way out of danger.
Plural words that don't end with s, such as children, do take an apostrophe s at the end for possession. For example, you could write, "Fortunately, the children's room [children apostrophe s] had a hidden doorway."
Here's a tricky issue with a definite answer: how do you make the plural of a single letter, as in Mind your p's and q's? It's shocking, but you actually use the apostrophe before the s! It looks possessive, but it isn't. The apostrophe is just there to make it clear that you're writing about multiple p's and q's. The apostrophe is especially important when you are writing about a's, i's, and u's because without the apostrophe readers could easily think you are writing the words as, is, and us.
Myth 8. “Irregardless” is not a word.
Wrong! “Irregardless” is a bad word and a word you shouldn't use, but it is a word. “Floogetyflop” isn't a word — I just made it up and you have no idea what it means. “Irregardless,” on the other hand, is in almost every dictionary labeled as nonstandard. You shouldn't use it if you want to be taken seriously, but it has gained wide enough use to qualify as a word. Language experts speculate that irregardless comes from a combination of the words regardless and irrespective and that another reason people might say "irregardless" is that they are following the pattern of words like irregular and irreplaceable. But regardless already has the -less suffix on the end, so it's not like those other words. Although it's true that the American Heritage Dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary all list the word irregardless, they also note that it's considered nonstandard. Listing a word as nonstandard is a way that dictionaries concede that a word is in common use, but isn't really a proper word. Standard language is defined as the language spoken by educated native speakers, but comprehensive dictionaries also include nonstandard words, dialect, colloquialisms, and jargon--words like ain't, conversate, and irregardless. It seems pretty common for people to look up a word in a dictionary, and if it's there, they think it's fine to use that word every circumstance. But you have to look a little further to see what kind of word it is, and if it's nonstandard in some way, then use it with caution. You'll sound uneducated if you go around saying things like "I ain't gonna conversate with him irregardless of the consequences."
Myth 9. You shouldn't start a sentence with the word “however.”
Wrong! It's fine to start a sentence with “however” so long as you use a comma after it when it means "nevertheless." The comma is important because however is a conjunctive adverb that can be used in two different ways: it can be a conjunction that joins main clauses, or it can be an adverb that modifies a clause. Some writers have even gone so far as to say it is preferable to start sentences with however instead of burying the word in the middle of a sentence, because putting it at the beginning makes the connection between sentences more clear and therefore makes the text easier to scan. If you use however at the beginning of a sentence and don't insert a comma, however means “in whatever manner” or “to whatever extent.” For example, in the sentence “However big the fool, there is always a bigger fool to admire him,” however isn't playing a role as a conjunction. It's not joining anything to anything else. As an aside, it's also acceptable to start a sentence with coordinating conjunctions like and, but, and so. It's a somewhat informal style, and it's a good idea not to overdo it in business writing, but it's not wrong. Despite the fact that it's not wrong to start a sentence with however, a lot of people think it's wrong; so I wouldn't advise doing it in a really important situation where you don't know the people you are writing for and you won't get a chance to defend yourself. For example, I wouldn't start a sentence with however in a cover letter for a job. I'd rather be hired than be right. Again, put a comma before and after however when you use it in the middle of a sentence. Don't use any punctuation after however when you use it to mean “in whatever manner” or “to whatever extent.”
Myth 10. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence.
Wrong! They can actually be quite short. In a run-on sentence, independent clauses are squished together without the help of punctuation or a conjunction. If you write “I am short he is tall,” as one sentence without a semicolon, colon, or dash between the two independent clauses, it's a run-on sentence even though it only has six words.
How you fix the sentence depends on how the different parts are related to each other and what tone and rhythm you are trying to achieve.
For example, if you want to completely separate the two fused sentences, then you'd use a period: I am a woman. I am a truck driver.
If you want to keep more of a connection between the two thoughts, you could use a semicolon and write, I am a woman; I am a truck driver.
If you want to make more of a comment on the connection between the two sentences, then you could use a conjunction with a comma. For example, you could write, I am a woman, and I am a truck driver, or you could write, I am a woman, yet I am a truck driver.
If you wanted to get fancy, you could use a conjunctive adverb with a semicolon and a comma: I am a woman; nevertheless, I am a truck driver.
There are even more ways to fix run-on sentences, depending on the relationship between the different clauses; for example, you could use a colon if the first clause introduces the second clause, but my main point is that you have to use something to connect two clauses that could be complete sentences on their own. You can't just fuse them together. If you do, that's an error called a run-on sentence. You have to determine what kind of tone you want to set. For example, I am a woman. "I am a truck driver" has a very hard and strong tone, whereas "I am a woman; nevertheless, I am a truck driver" has more of a conversational tone.
Finally, I hope these tips would clear some of your confusions. Keep studying and you will learn a lot of things like the above ones.
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