We (Edith Hope Fine and Judith Josephson) are the Grammar Patrol. Both of us taught for years and are now writers, with thirty plus books between us, including our two popular grammar guides, Nitty-Gritty Grammar and More Nitty-Gritty Grammar. For close to twenty years, we taught writing and grammar basics and now we blog about grammar for writers.

We see collective nouns every day—nouns for persons, animals, or things  that act as a single unit.

A herd of cows–”herd” is a collective noun.

• As winter nears, flocks of birds fly south.

• A coven of witches roams on Halloween.

• Bipsy’s new litter of kittens mewls.

• The cast was stellar in tonight’s play.

• The jury is still out.

In a newspaper profile we wrote, we described our charismatic subject as “about as subtle as a fluorescent yellow Porsche in a bevy of beige Buicks.” She called, laughing when the article came out: “This is the Porsche speaking.”

Check out this bevy of collective nouns:

choir, assembly, tribe, audience, band, class, committee, corps, couple,crew, crowd, faculty, flock, group, jury, couple, majority, nation, pair, panel, press, series, set, company, family, team, crowd, school

Collective nouns used to describe a group of animals include covey, herd, pack, team, swarm, catch, and even murder! (a murder of crows.) Some of these describe  more than one type of animal—a herd of cattle or wild horses.

You’ll usually see a prepositional phrase with a plural object follow the collective noun.

• A pod of whales swam past.

• A gaggle of geese milled about the yard.

• A covey of partridges roosts for the night.

• A pride of lions rests on the hill.

So what do collective nouns have to do with grammar? They can be a bit tricky.  Will you pair them with a singular or a plural verb? 

Collective Nouns and Singular Verbs

Collective nouns usually take singular verbs. To check your verb form, substitute the singular pronoun “it” for the collective noun.

• The faculty votes tomorrow. (It votes . . .)

• The crew dances a jig. (It dances . . .)

• The Hughes family travels often. (It travels . . .)

• The panel has released its findings. (It has released . . . )

Tip: Corporations act like collective nouns, even if the company’s name is plural. While a specific company may have many employees, refer to it as a single entity:

• Pfizer manufactures Lipitor, a cholesterol drug.

• Brinkley Brothers sells lottery tickets.

Collective Nouns and Plural Verbs

If Here’s where things can get thorny. If members of a group act as individuals, not as a unit, use a plural verb.

• The panel of doctors were not of one mind. (Each doctor had a different opinion.)

• The class begin their science experiments today. (They separate experiments.)

Collective Nouns That Measure

With collective nouns such as majority, number, percent, and total, let the words that follow and the meanings of the sentences help you decide whether the verb is singular or plural.

When what follows is singular:

•  Your total number is fifty-two. (number is . . . )
  

• Twenty-one percent of the class fails the test. (class fails . . .)

When what follows is plural:

• Half of the tables are occupied. (tables are . . .)

• Fifty percent of the books are paperback. (books are . . .)

• The majority of new cars have GPS capability. (cars have . . .)

Grammar Questions?

Collectively speaking, that’s it from the Grammar Patrol. Keep an eye out for gaggles of honking Canadian geese or herds of cows that wander onto the highway! When you have grammar questions, consult our zany Nitty-Gritty Grammar and More Nitty-Gritty Grammar guides or write to us here. Next month, time for your annual year-end pop quiz. 

We (Edith Hope Fine and Judith Josephson) are the Grammar Patrol. Both of us taught for years and are now writers, with thirty plus books between us, including our two popular grammar guides, Nitty-Gritty Grammar and More Nitty-Gritty Grammar. For close to twenty years, we taught writing and grammar basics and now we blog about grammar for writers.

You know the term “ear worm,” right? It’s when a song gets lodged in your brain and plays over and over. We’ve been hearing “Conjunction Junction” while planning this month’s column.

Can you bring up the song “Conjunction junction—what’s your function?” in your mind? Good old Schoolhouse Rock. Those of us of a certain age learned all about conjunctions singing those jaunty lyrics.

If conjunctions puzzle you, get the inside story for their “link with” meaning:

con = with

junct (and join, jug) = join, meet, link

(Think of some words from this cool root! See sampling at end of post.)

Conjunctions are words that link groups of words or parts of sentences.

On April 26, National Pretzel Day, we can say this:

• Doughnuts and croissants are jealous of pretzels.

[conjunction]

That little “and” does the job of linking doughnuts with croissants.

Other common conjunctions:

as, because, but, if, or, since, so, than, though, unless, while

• Since it’s April 26, I’ll celebrate with homemade pretzels.

[conjunction]

• The Jolly Green Giant is taller than the Hulk.

[conjunction]

Tip: If the Hulk is speaking, he’d say, “The Jolly Green Giant is taller than I.”

(Use I, not me. “Taller than I am” is implied.)

There used to be a hard and fast rule about some conjunctions, as in: Don’t start a sentence with “and” or “but.” This rule has relaxed. It’s fine to start occasionally with these conjunctions. Just do it sparingly. (Avoid this usage in formal writing, such as a legal contract or a thesis.)

• And Jeannie’s prank made the best April Fool’s joke ever.

• But who really ate all those pretzels?

Some conjunctions work in pairs:

both/and                    neither/nor               whether/or not

either/or                    not only/but also

• Neither Jim nor Molly won the March Madness NCAA pool.

[conjunction]       [conjunction]

• Whether there’s another huge snowstorm or not, it’s been a tough winter.

[conjunction]                                                                         [conjunction]

Let’s home in on the tricky word “as.”

When “as” is used as a conjunction, you’ll see that a verb follows.

• As Justin saw Elise streak across the finish line, he knew he’d lost the race.

[conjunction]  [verb]

You can pair “as” with “if” or “though” to create the conjunctions “as if” and “as though.”

• On April first, Tina felt as if she’d been tricked.

[conjunction]

• Amy felt as though she hadn’t.

[conjunction]

But what about that other “as”?  The proposition. “As” is a preposition if followed by a comparison and no verb.

• As a coulrophobe, Seeley Booth of Bones has an intense fear of clowns.

[conjunction]

While we’re at it, let’s visit “like.”

This word is a preposition, not a conjunction. (And a verb, of course: We like conjunctions.) Yet misuse of “like” is rampant and ubiquitous. A dean of a prestigious Eastern college counted 28 uses of the word “like” in a ten-minute conversation among students.

Right:

• Like Dumbo, Sally often dreamed she could fly.

[preposition]

This example makes a comparison and is not followed by a verb. Here, “like” is a preposition, not a conjunction.

Wrong:

• Like I said, that contract was due yesterday.

[preposition used as a conjunction]

In this example, “like” is followed by the verb “said” and does not make a comparison. This common blooper incorrectly turns “like” into a conjunction. Use the conjunction “as”: “As I said . . .”

If Schoolhouse Rock is new to you, hear “Conjunction Junction” on YouTube.

Did you come up with other words from junct, join, jug?

junction, juncture, adjoin, adjunct, joint, jugular . . .

Please Share

As (not “like”) we’ve mentioned, we love hearing from you. As (not “like”) we’ve said before, stay tuned for more grammar next month.

In Perfect Grammar Land, you’d hear, “Put out a BOLO for a blue station wagon, license ISPKGOOD.” We want you to put out a BOLO on agreement bloopers when prepositions pair with incorrect pronouns. Such errors abound, especially in speech and on TV and radio shows.

The Grammar Patrol winces when a best-selling writer says on NPR, “It was a big thing for my wife and I to take the plunge.” Would you say, “It was big for I?” or “Where are the Girl Scout cookies for I?”  (No way: for me . . . me . . . me!)

Can you spot the bloopers? Clues are in boldface.

1. Here’s a picture of Sam and I holding hands.

2. He said it to Alex and I many times.

3. The photocopier decision was made by he and she.

4. Between you and I, I’m not a Downton Abbey fan.

5. Our cow costume won for she and I.

All five examples have incorrect pronouns used with prepositions. This is an easy error, made by the most erudite among us.

To get this straight, you need to know three things:

• what a preposition is

• what a prepositional phrase is

• which form of a pronoun to use.

√ Step 1: Know Prepositions

Once at a Nitty-Gritty Grammar workshop for the Navy, a young ensign raised his hand. “I can recite all the prepositions,” he said. He rattled off a long alphabetical list of prepositions and earned a huge round of applause. His sixth grade teacher had done him a great favor. He had prepositions down cold.

In the five sentences above, the boldfaced words are all prepositions. A clue to prepositions is there in the word: position. Think of a puppy with a cardboard box. It can take lots of positions in and around that box. The pup can go on, around, through, from, beside that box. She can play by, above, below, beyond, past the box or between boxes. Note that at, with, and for also belong to the merry band of prepositions.

√ Step 2: Know Prepositional Phrases

A prepositional phrase combines a preposition with one or more nouns or pronouns:

past the planet         to the station            by the rocket                               around the island

from them                  beside her                  by us                                 to him

√ Step 3: Know Pronoun Forms

Subjective pronouns are used as subjects: I, he, she, we, and they.

Monty and I got hitched last weekend. (Not Me and Monty)

Objective pronouns are used as objects: me, him, her, us, them.

We invited them to tea. (“We” is the subject. “Them” is the object.)

Okay so far? Here’s the big news: Prepositions always take objective pronouns, not subjective pronouns. Always.

Let’s revisit those five bloopers:

1. The Fix: Here’s a picture of Sam and me holding hands.

Think it through. “Of” is a preposition. Prepositions take objective pronouns. “I” is subjective. Use “me.”

2. The Fix: He said it to Alex and me many times.

“To” is a preposition. It needs the objective pronoun me.

3. The Fix: The decision was made by him and her.

Use objective pronouns with the preposition “by.”

4. The Fix: Between you and me, I’m not a Downton Abbey fan.

Remember this me/thee rhyme: “Between me, thee, and the gatepost . . .” “Between” needs “me,” not “I.”

5. The Fix: Our cow costume won for her and me.

By jove, you’ve got it. “For” needs the objective pronouns “her” and “me.”

Please share

No wonder there’s a BOLO on ISPKGOOD. The license for you and us should be ISPKWELL! Are we in agreement on these common pronoun bloopers? Send us bloopers like these from everyday life.

Thanks to computers, we can now italicize with a keystroke. But that doesn’t solve this dilemma: When to italicize words and when to use quotation marks?

Is it “Harry Potter” or Harry Potter? “Sixty Minutes”or Sixty Minutes? “Madame Butterfly” or Madame Butterfly?

Let’s face it. Sometimes you just have to memorize the rules. If memorization isn’t your forte (and yes, we still say “fort,” but dink around on the Internet: the two-syllable “for-tay” is on the rise and no longer considered incorrect), we suggest consulting your favorite grammar book. Might we suggest our Nitty-Gritty Grammar  or More Nitty-Gritty Grammar. (True confession: We both keep these grammar guides handy, especially for rules surrounding today’s topic.)

One friend, now a retired middle school English teacher, used this trick to help her students. She told them to think about this in terms of big pieces or little pieces. Big = italics. Small = quotation marks.

Check out these specifics:

Italics

First, some of the easier-to-remember uses of italics. Use italics:

• for scientific names: Tyrannosaurus rex

• for emphasis: “The will, as only Maxwell knew, made him the sole heir to their parents’ fortune.”

• for screen play directions, to show how a character should speak a line: Kermit (innocently): “It’s not that easy being green”

• for words from other languages: bon ami, piéce de la resistance, c’est magnifique, mea culpa, c’est fini, feng shui, E pluribus unum, Hasta mañana, baby!

Tip: Some foreign words (shish kebab, en masse, cafe latte, and maven) have been used so often that they are no longer italicized.

More Italics Tips

Titles

Titles are trickier. Use italics when writing these titles:

Magazines: Vanity Fair

Journals:  The California Reader

Newspapers:  The New York Times

Books: Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese)

Long poems:  Evangeline (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Movies:  The Help (Kathryn Stockett)

Plays:  Two Pianos, Four Hands  (Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt)

Radio shows/Series    Downton Abbey

TV shows/series :  The Big Bang Theory

Cartoon strips:  Zits (Jef Mallet)

Cartoon shows: Cyberchase

Musical works:  1812 Overture (Tchaikovsky)

Artistic works:  Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci)

CDs and DVDs:  Red (Taylor Swift)

Names of ships:  Grand Princess, Air Force One

Spacecraft: Curiosity

QUOTATION MARKS

Quotation marks (“  ”) aren’t just for enclosing spoken words (more on that in a future column). Use quotation marks for titles such as these, and don’t let the combination of quotation marks and italics throw you:

Short poems:    “On the Pulse of Morning” (Maya Angelou)

Songs:    “Bring Him Home” (Les Miserables)

Stories:   “Three Billy Goats Gruff”

Short stories:  “Teaching Luther to Cook”

(Mama Makes Up Her Mind, Bailey White)

Articles:     “FDA Probing Energy Drink Deaths”

(Los Angeles Times)

Chapters of books:  “The House of Fear”

(Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson)

Short musical compositions: “Adagio for Strings” (Samuel Barber)

Individual radio/TV show episodes: “The Portwen Effect” (Doc Martin)

• To set off individual words or phrases.

George Herman “Babe” Ruth was the Sultan of Swat.

Tip: Ruth’s nickname is in quotes, but his title as Sultan of Swat is capitalized and not in quotation marks.

• To enclose direct quotations and dialogue.

Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” begins “Twas brillig and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe . . .”

There you have it. We hope we’ve refreshed some of the rules on this sometimes confusing topic. We’d love to know if you have a cool mnemonic for remembering all of this. Send it and we’ll share . . .

For more on quotation marks, watch for a future column on the “Inside-Outside Rules.”

À bientôt from the Grammar Patrol!

 Please Share

There you have it. We hope we’ve refreshed some of the rules on this sometimes confusing topic. We’d love to know if you have a cool mnemonic for remembering all of this. Just post below.