The Grammar Cop has a feast for Friday Follies followers today. (Say that 10 times fast.)

1. A lot of wildlife loses their lives every day to vehicles in our city/cities.
2. Another question, the judge wrote, is whether “the measure [a night-time curfew] has a discriminatory and disproportionate affect on people in a homeless situation…”
3. No matter how amazing of an author you are, you can’t publish a book alone.

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And the corrections:

1. Did “loses” jump out at you? Apparently the writer figured that “a lot” is singular, so it should take the third-person singular form of the verb, “lose,” which is “loses.” But not here. In this sentence, the subject is “wildlife.” The adjectival phrase “a lot of” is similar to “a great number of,” “a whole bunch of,” etc. The sentence is telling us that many species of animals lose their lives every day etc. The verb must be plural, and in this case the third-person plural is lose.
2. Recently the Grammar Cop talked about the difference between affect and effect. Perhaps you recall what she said: “affect” usually is a verb, while “effect” is usually a noun. In this sentence, a noun is called for, since it speaks of an effect on people. Here’s a link to see the latest summary of this: https://crossedeyesanddottedtees.wordpress.com/2021/01/08/friday-follies-254-making-grammar-great-again-one-hyphen-at-a-time/
3. The Grammar Cop hates the use of “of” in this sentence and others like it! There is absolutely no need for the “of” here, or in “how great of a cook she is,” or “how cool of an outfit that is”! It serves no purpose. It takes no more effort to write: Even though you’re an amazing author, you can’t publish a book alone.

Let us close by promising to drive carefully so that wildlife can continue to live. Let the government not make rules that can have a disastrous effect on people who are already suffering. Let’s remember that you can publish a book alone. Okay, you may need to tap your son-in-law for help with Amazon’s arcane formatting requirements, but… I’ve done it four times, so how hard can it be? 😄