The Strange Conjugation of Irregular Verbs in the Past Perfect Tense

 Those of you who are bilingual, especially in French, Spanish, or Italian, will know that there are regular verbs and irregular verbs in almost all languages. Regular verbs are conjugated a certain way that is consistent. In Spanish, the verb to speak or to live is a regular verb, but to be or to go is irregular.

English has the same system. The verb to have is complicated for some people. In the simple past tense, it's a regular verb. For example, I have, you have, he or she has, we have, and they have. To have itself remains regular when we move into the past tense. For example, I had, you had, he or she had, we had, they had. Easy peasy. But wait a minute. Where we run into problems is when we use to have as an auxiliary verb, otherwise known as a helping verb, for the past present tense. Here’s what I mean:

Sometimes the conjugation is regular, e.g., I had lived, I had seen, I had been, I had served, I had gone. No problemo, señor! On those occasions, you are simply taking the past tense of your verb and adding some form of to have, which remains a regular verb. However, that won’t work for verbs like to see or to be. You can say I lived or I had lived, I walked or I had walked. You can say I had seen, but you can’t say I seen. You can say I went, but you can’t say I had went or I gone. You can say I ate, but you can’t say I had ate; you can only say I had eaten. This is not something you can figure out with any kind of formula. Just like Spanish or Italian, you have to memorize your irregular verbs.

Most people with English as a first language figure this out easily because they hear their parents, teachers, friends, and colleagues speaking correctly. Still, some people don't get it. If you’re a fan of reality TV like me—hey, come on! It’s my one guilty pleasure. I could do cocaine or pop Adderall, but instead I watch 90 Day Fiancé and Married at First Sight as my big guilty pleasures—I recommend watching Judge Judy for a great example of how not to talk and how not to write! Some participants on the show make really bizarre conjugations, particularly with the past perfect tense of to have. This drives Judy crazy, and often she will correct them in her signature rude fashion.

But, as I always say to my fiction writers, there is a place at the table for bad language. No, not THAT bad language, although that pertains as well. I’m talking about I seen or I been there. Where do you put that in your book? In dialogue because sometimes it’s super realistic. But you have to be careful because you don’t want to make fun of anyone or sound classist. You have to create a character who would actually talk that way. Conversely, you don’t want to sound pretentious with your characters; it’s not a good idea to have your characters talking too formally without ever using contractions or never making a grammatical mistake. I routinely advise many of my fiction writers not to use the word whom in dialogue because it just doesn’t sound natural for their character.

 To summarize, pay careful attention to the past perfect tense of to have.

Happy writing.

Sigrid

 

 

Regardless and Irregardless

What’s the difference between these two words? Easy. One is legit, and the other isn't a word at all, but you’d be surprised how often people use it in speech and writing.

Which is the real word? Regardless. It means no matter what. I think people get it mixed up with irrespective. Now, that’s a word, and it’s a synonym for regardless. You can use them interchangeably, although irrespective is more formal. Here’s an example: “Regardless of the price of gas, people keep driving.” Or “Irrespective of his father’s disapproval, Tom decided to go to the concert anyway.”

Irrespective and regardless are another way of saying despite. Irregardless is probably a mistaken way of saying irrespective; however, it’s not a word, so you don’t want to use it.

Happy writing.

Sigrid

 

Grammarly and PerfectIt

We all know about spell-check and why it matters to use it when writing documents, especially work correspondence and reports. But newer, more advanced programs go far beyond spell-check. Here are two of my favourites.  

Grammarly: This phenomenal program goes well beyond Microsoft’s basic spell-check for detecting spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage problems. It can also flag repetitive words, vague or weak language, and potentially inappropriate word choices.   

Sometimes it can even figure out what you meant when you used the wrong word. For example, one of my authors intended to write about reminiscing about the good old days but used remiss instead. Grammarly caught it and suggested a more appropriate word. It won’t catch every word-choice error, of course, but I’ve seen it catch some impressive ones.

Grammarly can also flag language that may sound too informal, dated, insensitive, or inappropriate for the intended audience. It may suggest alternatives for terms such as mankind or elderly, depending on the context and your settings.

It is also useful for catching punctuation errors, but keep in mind that Grammarly doesn't replace a professional style guide such as The Chicago Manual of Style. And Grammarly’s recommendations are just that—recommendations. You don’t have to accept every one. I take its suggestions cafeteria-style: I choose the ones I like and leave the rest behind.

PerfectIt: I could not live without this program! Whereas Grammarly focuses largely on correctness and improving individual sentences, PerfectIt excels at something different: consistency.

Did you hyphenate brand-new in two instances but not the third? Did you capitalize City of Chicago four times but leave it lowercase twice? PerfectIt to the rescue. This is particularly useful for long documents, novels, and nonfiction books, where you can’t trust yourself to remember every single hyphen, capital, abbreviation, or spelling choice you made 200 pages ago. PerfectIt makes you look like a real pro with a terrific memory and a great eye for detail. You don’t have to tell anyone that you had help!

PerfectIt can also flag many commonly confused words, unwanted phrases, spelling variations, and other potential problems, although, like Grammarly, it can't catch everything. It is particularly good at finding inconsistencies within the same document.

This is especially useful when working with different varieties of English. I grew up in the US school system, and I’ve had many American editing clients. Americans generally use spellings such as honor and neighbor, whereas Canadians use honour and neighbour. Canadian writing can be particularly tricky because it combines elements of American and British English, and writers sometimes mix spelling conventions without realizing it. PerfectIt can catch many of these inconsistencies and help you apply your chosen spelling style throughout a document.

Another terrific feature is the ability to create your own style sheet. You can tell PerfectIt which spellings, hyphenations, capitalization, abbreviations, punctuation conventions, and other preferences you want it to look for. You can also tell it which terms to ignore. This is especially helpful for a book or other long project where you want the same editorial decisions applied from beginning to end.

PerfectIt can also help you enforce preferences such as toward rather than towards or amid rather than amidst. These aren’t necessarily errors—the preferred form can depend on your style and variety of English—but once you’ve made a choice, PerfectIt can help you stick with it.

And PerfectIt sometimes catches embarrassing little things that the human eye sails right past, such as pubic when the author meant public. Trust me, that is one typo you would rather catch before publication!

The simplest way to remember the difference is this: Grammarly primarily checks whether your writing is correct and effective; PerfectIt primarily checks whether your editorial choices are consistent. They overlap in some areas, but they do different jobs, which is why I use both.

Grammarly and PerfectIt are terrific tools for writers who want polished, professional material. But don’t forget about Microsoft’s spell-check. It is still worth spell-checking everything that leaves your desk for business, starting with emails and moving on to reports, proposals, short stories, and full-length books.

You can use these programs for social correspondence, too, if you really want to step up your game, but I usually skip them when I’m writing to friends. After all, I need some time off duty!

So do you.

 

 

When to Use Its Versus It's

 This writing tip may seem very elementary, my friends. If you've got this down pat, good for you. Just skim this email or delete it and pat yourself on the back. For those who aren't 100% sure, don't beat yourself up. I've edited hundreds of books, and I see people making this mistake every day of the week.

Today we are talking about it's, its, and its’. I know, it seems very simplistic, but bear with me. It's is a contraction. We use an apostrophe to merge the word it with the verb is, and we get it’s. Here's how we use it: "It's raining out today." Or “Jean-Pierre wants to go to the movies, but it's too late." So we have it's as a stand-in for it is.

Its is a pronoun. It's gender-neutral. Here's how we use it: "The dog wagged its tail." Now, if that's your dog, or if you are close enough to the dog to see the gender, you could use his or her, but if we don't know the gender, or if the object is nonhuman, we say it and use its (e.g., "The cabin was appealing with its cozy exterior.")

Its' is not a word. Just trying to see if you're awake!

Be careful with spell check in Microsoft Word. Spell check will almost always pick up this common mistake when we misspell the contraction; however, it will often flag "its" as incorrect when it's used properly, so it’s a good thing to memorize this rule.

The Plural Versus the Possessive

I know. This topic sounds very basic. If you think it’s beneath you, just skip this tip, but I work with dozens of authors every year. You wouldn’t believe how many of them make mistakes in terms of distinguishing between the plural and the possessive.

Singular means one; plural means more than one. If you have three kids, that’s a plural. Notice the way I spelled kids. No apostrophes anywhere.

However, if I want to talk about the music the kids listen to, then we’re talking about a possessive. The music belongs to the kids. We want to insert an apostrophe. If we have one kid, let’s call her Sarah, and we’re talking about Sarah and her music, we say, Sarah’s music. The kid’s music. That’s because Sarah is just one person. But if we are talking about a group of kids and their music, the apostrophe goes after the plural version of the word kids to form this term: the kids’ music. I know, it looks wrong, but it’s not.

Let’s look at some other examples of plurals: moms, dads, brothers, sisters,  fathers-in-law, yeses and nos, parents, teachers, Macdonalds (if I’m sitting with my sister and brother, we are the Macdonalds, no apostrophe anywhere).

And other possessives? The parents’ income, the dad’s golf game, the children’s homework, the Macdonalds’ close relationships. It’s easy to form a possessive if your noun doesn’t end in S because you simply put an apostrophe at the end of the word and then add S. But when the word already ends in S, writers often get confused and will put the apostrophe in the wrong place.

Let’s re-examine the dad’s golf game. I was talking about one dad. Singular. If I had been talking about a group of dads, I would’ve said the dads’ golf game. Sounds the same (it’s a homonym), but be careful about the placement of that apostrophe. And if you make a mistake, it’s always a good idea to spellcheck your document because spellcheck will probably pick this up. Not all the time, but often enough; however, my spellcheck tells me that my spelling of Macdonalds as a plural is wrong, so I just ignored it. Spellcheck is not always right.

Happy writing.

SM

 

Word Usage — Cultured and Cultural, Historic and Historical

Today’s writing tip is on word usage. We’re going to look at four different words that people tend to use incorrectly.

Let’s start with cultured and cultural. Cultured means sophisticated. Someone might speak French, take ballet lessons, or visit fine art museums in an effort to become more cultured. Cultural is completely different. It relates to aspects of culture, such as customs, beliefs, or traditions. I remember being very embarrassed once when I wrote a condolence letter to a high-powered lawyer I had been working with during my days of advocating on behalf of wrongly convicted men. This lawyer’s mother had passed away, and in my email, I said, among other things, that his mother had been very cultural. Wrong, Sig! She had been cultured, but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. I had already sent the email when I realized my error, and it was out there in the world. I felt foolish.

Historic and historical are similar. They don’t mean the same thing. You don’t want to use one when you mean the other. Historic means something significant, something that may only happen once every decade or every 70 years, like Haley’s Comet. It’s unusual, unprecedented, and important. Historical relates to history or something that happened in the past. For example, Columbus discovered America in 1492, although this is debatable as to whether someone can “discover” a country that had been inhabited for thousands of years! Nonetheless, this is considered an historical fact. It can be mundane, boring, or unimportant.

My point here is that these terms are not interchangeable. You don’t want to use "cultured" when you mean "cultural," and you don’t want to use "historic" when you mean "historical," and vice versa. But don’t beat yourself up if you make a mistake. I am still berating myself 15 years later for misusing the word 'cultured,' and I need to let it go. My hotshot lawyer, David Asper, probably forgot about it 10 minutes after he read the email, but I’m still thinking of it years later.

 

 

Today's Writing Tip Is about Clichés and Origin Stories

 Clichés and Origin Stories

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

It’s raining cats and dogs.

Only time will tell.

She treated him like a dog.

The cat is out of the bag.

I slept like a baby (have you ever known a baby who slept through the night? Where did this saying come from?)

It’s interesting to look at the history of some of these clichés, particularly those about animals. Let’s start with “raining cats and dogs.” Its exact origin is uncertain, but one of the first writers to use it was Jonathan Swift in 1782. It is thought the expression originated because London, England, was very rainy, and in many old European cities, animals often washed up dead in the streets during heavy rain.

What about he treated me like a dog? Everybody I know treats their dog at least as well as they treat their children, and maybe better.  Again, this comes from Britain during the days when dogs were dirty, roamed the streets and were considered low-status. So sad and infuriating to those of us who love our animals so much!

Lastly, what about who let the cat out of the bag? Whoever put the cat in the bag in the first place? It means revealing a secret, and it dates back to Britain in the 1700s, when animals were put in bags to be transported or taunted. There is also a rumor that dishonest merchants sold cats instead of piglets. I shudder to think about it. As Steven Pinker says in all of his fabulous books, despite what people think about our current society in terms of its imperfections, there has never been a better time to be alive in all of history. This is certainly true for animals—not all but many.

As much as you possibly can, avoid clichés in your writing. Writing always involves rewriting, and when you go back to reread or rewrite your article or manuscript, be conscious of using clichés. It’s better to come up with your own lame original idea than to recycle something that’s been around for hundreds of years.

One of the few areas where I almost always make exceptions is in dialogue. If you have a particular character, and you want to give him or her a flaw or an eccentricity, talking in clichés is a good way to go.