Greetings once again, FF friends and fiends! Come and join the Grammar Cop in her examination of this week’s crop of communication criminals. 😄

1. “He really shined in track and field and his coaches saw great potential in him.”
2. “…to achieve your goals, live according to your values and affect positive change in the world.”
3. “…a 90-minute show where all proceeds went to RAINN (an anti-sexual violence organization), followed by a 90-minute after-party sponsored by various sex and body positive brands.”

The corrections:

1. Here’s something many of you probably don’t know. (Okay, neither did I, not so long ago!) I realized there was a shined/shone problem, but had to look up the rule. It’s this: “The verb shine has two past-tense forms: shined and shone. It’s recommended that we use shined when the verb has an object, and shone when it does not: (i) He shined his shoes. (object)   (ii) The sun shone. (no object) So the sentence in our example should be He really shone in track and field and his coaches saw great potential in him. Questions? See me after this interrogation. 😃
2. The Grammar Cop must insist on this law: AFFECT is the verb most of the time; EFFECT is the noun most of the time. Sample: The effect of the storm was that it caused chaos in the town and affected everyone’s lives. Yes, it’s a terrible example, but whatareyagonnado?!  Now listen carefully: sometimes there is an exception to the rule, and it’s this: EFFECT can sometimes be a verb! Yes! I know! Such aberrations make me tear my hair out too, but I have lots to spare, so it’s okay! When is it a verb, you may ask? Usually when we talk about effecting change, i.e., making change happen. So: our sentence excerpt above should be: to achieve your goals, live according to your values and effect positive change. Also, my boyfriend John would insist, a comma after values would be very nice. 😃
3. We have here a bit of hyphen-o-phobia hiding in a pile of perfect hyphens! All the ones the writer inserted are correct, but three are missing. We need anti-sexual-violence organization, and sex- and body-positive brands. I can see you scratching your heads over the lonely hyphen after sex, so I’ll refer you to a fellow WordPress blogger’s post about hyphens: “Use a hyphen after a series of words having a common base that you’re not repeating. Example: first-, second-, third-, and fourth-year students.”

Our examination has concluded. I’ll leave you with the note that my surgery has been rescheduled for next week, so the Grammar Cop will be taking off next Friday until her faculties are once again up to par, i.e., she can walk, talk and think straight! 😃 Ciao for now, lovelies!