Hi, FFers! In these hot, lazy, hazy days of summer, the Grammar Cop admittedly didn’t work too hard to find this week’s boo-boos. Without further ado:

1. “…a proud Canadian at heart, Katherine Ryan sprung out of her London office job and into the comedy spotlight…”
2. “The best liquid for hydration is water… It doesn’t make a significant difference whether or not you chose room temperature or cold water.”
3. “It is recommended that people ages 19 and older to drink 3.7 litres of liquids for men and 2.7 liters for women.”

The corrections:

1. Did you know that the past tense of the verb, “spring,” is not “sprung”? Well actually it can be, but only if you use it with has, have, or had, as in: it has sprung up, they have sprung up, it/they had sprung up. However – in sentence #1 above, it should be the simple past tense, since there’s no has, have or had. So the form of the verb to be used here is sprang, as in: she sprang out of her London office job... (The past-tense formation of spring is the same as for sing: She sang a song. She has sung that song many times. We’re getting sick of it now.)
2. The present tense of the word intended here is choose with a double-o: …whether or not you choose room temperature or cold water. (Chose with only one “o” is the past tense: He chose that yesterday.) Many people – hordes of people, as evident on social media – are confused about that, probably because the word lose is present tense but has only one o. Look: the past tense of lose is lost, and it’s a completely different word, so it shouldn’t be compared to anything else. It just happens to have the same ooze sound in it. Here’s one way to remember the spelling of both words. Choose has two. Lose lost one. Case closed. 😜
3. This sentence has a grammatical construction in it that is incorrect and terribly awkward. In English, we do not recommend that someone to do something. Instead, we recommend that you bring a towel; we recommend that you drink a lot. The word to doesn’t enter the picture. On another note, it seems that the writer is half Canadian (or British) and half American. In one place she has “litres,” and later it becomes “liters.” She should pick one and stick with it. Usually our newspapers go with the Canadian spellings of words like metre, colour, etc. – but not realise and organise, we use the z in those: realize, organize.

This Canadian now chooses to have a nice litre of water. It’s aboot time, eh? Sorry… 😬