The Grammar Logs
#545

Ben Johnson has been quoted as saying, "With its new filbert line, Lindsey Valley Company has the potential to be a national health food 'nuthouse' ."

Could you please help me with the end of the above sentence? Should the period be within both the single and the double quotation marks? Should there be a space between any of those ending letters or quotation marks (be they single or double)?

In the United States, we would end that sentence with “… health food ‘nuthouse.’ ” The terminal single quote mark and the double quote mark are together. (In England, you'd be more logical about it and put the period between the single quote mark and the double quote mark.) Because running the two kinds of quote marks together can create something that looks like a triple quote mark — ’” — it is appropriate to put a space between the single quote mark and the double quote mark. In the composition of type, the space would be somewhat thinner than a normal space: ’ ”

I'm curious about the phrase "Aren't I?", as in "I'm pretty. Aren't I?" The subject and verb don't agree. Seems like it should be "Amn't I?" "I am not" sounds better than "I are not" Why is this acceptable?

"Am I not?" would be the correct form of the tag question, but "aren't I?" is accepted as the contracted form even in formal text (insofar as contractions are acceptable in formal text). "Ain't I?" would make more sense, logically, but "ain't" has a bad reputation.

Should we say:

• "He wants to shake their hands."
or

• "He wants to shake their hand."

Thanks for your help!

You can't win with a construction like this. Either it's going to sound as if he's shaking both the right and left hand of everyone out there (possible but unlikely) or all those people have just one hand among them (bizarre). The first option sounds better, but you might be better off, too, with something like "He wants to shake everyone's hand."

Is this sentence correct? Our crew are huge Seattle Mariner fans.

The sentence sounds odd because normally we use "crew" as a singular entity: "The crew is going out today." Here, though, the members of the crew are acting as individuals, and so we're tempted to use that plural "are." You can avoid the problem, in fact, by saying that "Every member of this crew is a huge Seattle Mariners fan."

The proper use of "myself," "yourself," etc. In the following sentence, should I use "you" or "yourself"?

• List the people in your household, including you and, if married, your spouse.
or

• List the people in your household, including yourself and, if married, your spouse.

See the section on reflexive pronouns. Because you have an understood "you" in this sentence (the subject of the directive "list"), the use of the reflexive "yourself" would be appropriate.

Could you please explain why it is incorrect to say, "I only saw two people in the room." Why should it be "I saw only two people in the room."

If the adverb "only" comes before the verb "saw," one might say that it tends to modify that verb — and what does it mean to "only see something." You didn't hear it, too? What you mean is that there were two people there and no more (at least that you could see), and so you put the adverb in front of the "two" and write "I saw only two people in the room." In casual speech, we can probably get away with the ambiguous construction, but in text, it costs nothing to be more precise in our placement of only.

I have a question regarding a phrase in the "sentence subjects" section in your website.

What he had already forgotten about computer repair could fill whole volumes,

Why is "could fill" the verb and not "forgotten" which is also a verb?

"Had forgotten" is, indeed, a verb, but it is a verb within a dependent clause. "What he had already forgotten about computer repair" cannot stand by itself as an independent clause because of the subordinating word "what." We're still looking for what it is that we're saying about "what he had forgotten," and we find it with the sentence verb, "could fill." It "could fill whole volumes." When a verb is contained within a dependent clause, it cannot serve as the verb of the sentence. In "I don't know what he did," as another example, "did" is a verb within a dependent clause that functions as the object of that sentence, the object of what I don't know.

Should there be commas in

"The second type of teacher is one with a dry personality, that never cracks a smile, and wants to get right down to business."

The punctuation in that sentence is the least of its problems; in fact, the punctuation is the one thing that's correct. We need to impose some parallel form on the three things that we're saying about this this second type of teacher. Let's say that he is characterized by "a dry personality, an unsmiling face, and a tendency to get right down to business."

My Comp I teacher and I are having a disagreement. Which form of this sentence is correct; or what is the correct way to phrase the sentence? "At work, I am the professional, little unnerves me." The "corrected" sentence is: "At work, I am the professional, little unnervous me." Please let me know; it is driving me crazy. Thank you very much

In the sentence "At work, I am the professional, little unnerves me," we have a comma splice. We can change the comma to a semicolon (or a period) and leave everything else the way it is, as two independent clauses. In your other version, "At work, I am the professional, little unnervous me," that final and peculiar bit of self-effacement, "little unnervous me," serves as an appositive phrase, redefining something earlier in the sentence ("I," I suppose). So as they stand, only the second version is correct (however odd it may be), and the first version requires just a little change in punctuation to be correct.

Is this proper:

Providing help to a patient and their family.

No, that doesn't work very well. We have the plural possessive, "their," trying to refer back to the singular noun, "patient," and that's a problem. Can we pluralize the whole thing? "Providing help to patients and their families"?

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