Friday Follies #243 – Making Grammar Great Again, One Hyphen at a Time

Hi, FF buddies! Time to peruse a plethora of sordid sentences, collected for you by your intrepid Grammar Cop.

  1. Even the friendliest cats are competitive with each-other and may guard resources or bully each other.
  2. Its landmarks and scenes of daily life has provided a living heritage for the artist to draw upon. 
  3. As cases mounts, some regions could soon be on red alert, Quebec warns.

And the corrections:

  1. In spite of the fact that the Grammar Cop is driven crazy by cases of absent hyphens, she can also go crazy in the presence of hyphens, as is the case here with this unwanted one. There is no need to place one between “each” and “other.” It’s especially strange and inconsistent, since the writer said it perfectly when repeating the phrase at the end of the sentence! Sigh. There’s no logic here, move along now.
  2. Here we have a lack of subject-verb agreement. The subject of the sentence is plural, as it consists of more than one thing: “landmarks” and “scenes of daily life.” Therefore the verb has to be in plural form as well: have, not “has”: Its landmarks and scenes of daily life have provided a living heritage for the artist to draw upon. (Kudos to this writer, however, for at least getting the possessive its correct! Yay! 😅)
  3. Boom! This mistake should’ve jumped up and bopped you on the noggin! (Not too hard I hope!) Again, subject and verb are in disagreement! The plural subject, “cases,” must take a plural verb, mount: As cases mount, some regions could soon be on red alert, Quebec warns.

It seems that bad grammar and a bad virus are both running rampant – and not only in Quebec! May we be protected from both, especially SARS-CoV-2. Stay safe, my friends.

 

4 thoughts on “Friday Follies #243 – Making Grammar Great Again, One Hyphen at a Time

  1. 1-Even the friendliest cats would know that the writer suffers from hyphenitis.
    2-Hopefully the artist draws better than the writer writes.
    3-Quebec warns subject-verb disagreement is grounds for being locked up in Grammar Jail.
    😀

    Liked by 1 person

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