The Grammar Logs
#521

Thanks for helping me many times. What is the difference between loudly and noisily in usage? Can I write " We shouldn't shut the door noisily." or " We shouldn't shut the door loudly." Which one is correct or are both correct?

Your favorite symphony orchestra, playing your favorite symphony, can be loud, but one hopes they wouldn't be noisy. When you walk past a playground of children, that's noisy. Standing too close to an airport runway, that's noisy (it's also very loud). "Noise" usually refers to prolonged or continuous loud and obnoxious sounds. If you're walking around your apartment slamming doors loudly, you're being noisy.

I am having trouble with the proper use of the hyphen as in pan-seared or troll-caught. Is the hyphen correct in either, or both, of these examples? Thank you.

When I come across a compound like these that I can't find in the dictionary, I do a quick search on Google.com to see how people are using the word on the WWW. A search for "pan seared" indicates that people are using the hyphens and not using the hyphens with the non-hyphen usage seeming to dominate. (You can tell how scientific I'm being about this. I do tend to give a bit more weight to usage in commercial and educational Web sites.) With "troll-caught," though, it seems that the hyphen users are winning out — but not by much. The best way to find an authoritative answer for your question is to find a published magazine article — in a magazine you like and trust — and see how they're using the words in question.

I am having the hardest time trying to rewrite this sentence, could you help?

Although not yet adults, teens are pressured to reach adulthood much quicker than if they were not given the privilege to drive

That's a tough sentence, partly because of the two negatives — "not yet adults" and "not given" — and partly because of that construction, "much quicker than if," which is hard to follow. I'm not sure of the logic of "although not yet adults," either. Adults, after all, should not be pressured to become adults, so doesn't that part go without saying? What if we wrote something like

Teens with driver's licenses are pressured to reach adulthood [act like adults?] more quickly than teens who do not have driver's licenses.

It might also be helpful to say who's doing the pressuring.

Topic 1: Can you help me in stating when to use "await" and "wait"?

If the sentence is,
"The parents were anxiously awaiting/waiting to see their baby."
Which word is correct to use?

Topic 2: In a sentence accented with punctuation, what is the correct form to use. For example:

"The teacher shouted, 'Please be quiet!,' to the students." Is using the exclamation point followed by a comma (then a single quote) correct? Or should the exclamation point stand on its own without the comma following it (or vice versa, just put in the comma without the exclamation point)?

"Await" always takes an object: you await your destiny, etc. But "wait" doesn't: you wait for or on something/someone. In your sentence, the parents wait to see their baby.

We can't have both the exclamation mark and the comma at that one point in the sentence. Since the whole thing is in quotation marks, the 'Please be quiet!' begins and starts with a single quotation mark and the exclamation mark goes inside the single quotation mark (no comma).

When alphabetizing a list, where do you place number? For example, 12 Angry Men — Do you place at the beginning of a list of titles because the number is not written out, at the end of the list, or under "tw" because, if 12 were spelled out, it would be placed there? Thanks

Names beginning with numbers appear before names beginning with letters of the alphabet, generally in numerical order. Ordinal numbers like 1st and 3rd are treated as if they were 1 and 3. Arabic numerals precede units expressed as roman numerals, but treat the roman numerals in numeric order also (VII comes before IX). If it is reasonable that the person using your document might think that the number would be spelled out — Twelve Angry Men, say — it is wise, of course, to cross reference.

If you do a lot of this kind of thing, it would be a good idea to pick up a copy of the Gregg Reference Manual or the Chicago Manual of Style!

Authority: The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin. 9th Edition. McGraw-Hill: New York. 2001. Used with the consent of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. p. 334.

Hi Grammar, I have a question regarding the following sentence:

'A relatively new company based in Coomera, Classic Motor Yachts Australia produced this modern rendition of a period motorboat after a big team effort and lots of round-table discussion.'

My first instinct was to put a second comma after 'Australia', so that 'Classic Motor Yachts Australia' was an appositional enclosed in commas.

But does the introductory phrase 'A relatively...' simply modify 'Classic Motor Yachts Australia'? In which case, a comma after Australia wouldn't be required, it seems to me.

I'll try to be clearer...

How can I distinguish between 'Classic Motor Yachts Australia' being a restatement of the sentence's subject, 'a new company based in Coomera', and the reverse proposition that 'a new company based in Coomera is merely modifying the sentence's real subject 'Classic Motor Yachts Australia'?

(I hope my question isn't too garbled. Sorry.)

If your first phrase were something that could actually stand on its own — let's say "The newest aquamarine company in Coomera — the name of that company would definitely be an appositive, and it would be set off by a pair of commas. The initial phrase in the sentence as you've given it to us, however, can be interpreted as a modifying phrase (as you have pointed out), and that's why it feels OK to leave out the comma after the name of the company. You've described the situation exactly: the lack of a comma means that you regard that initial phrase as a modifier and the second phrase (here, the title) is not an appositive that you can set off with a pair of commas. As long as the sentence actually works that way (and it does in this case), you're fine. It seems to me that the punctuation of this sentence might depend on how it is read. If your stress falls on the title of the company, no second comma; if it falls on the initial phrase, you'll treat the title as an appositive and use commas.

My question has to do with verb tenses when used with a conjunction. For example, when you use the emphatic verb "does" and you use a conjunction like "and", do the verbs all assume the same tense, regardless of how many successive verbs there are, or does the conjunction affect only the tense of the verb closest it (i.e., immediately preceding or immediately following)?

Sample without conjunction:
She does take care of her mother, clean/cleans her house, throw/throws out the trash.

Sample with conjunction:
She does take care of her mother, clean/cleans her house, throw/throws out the trash.

Yes, the auxiliary "covers" the other verbs in the sentence as well, which means you want the base form of the other verbs: "clean" and "throw." The entire sentence becomes emphatic, as it were. It works the same with other auxiliaries, like "has": "He has written his grandmother and [has] taken out the trash."

I have a query regarding a sentence I've been told is correct punctuation but I believe it to be wrong. It is:

Fabric condistioner reduces creasing, which means less ironing (and that must be good news!).

I am debating the use of a full stop after the bracket when an exclamation mark has already been used to end the sentence. I know that full stops are placed within the bracket if the complete sentence is within the bracket and must be outside if only part of a sentence is within the bracket, but I would have thought that if an exclamation mark has been used to end the sentence within the bracket, it is incorrect to effectively use two punctuation marks to end the sentence.

Please let me know how this sentence should be written correctly!

Although we never put a period inside parentheses when the bracketed sentence is enclosed within another sentence, it might sometimes be necessary to use either a question mark or exclamation mark. If those three marks in a row — the exclamation mark, the closing parenthesis, and the period — look odd to you, you might consider setting off that end phrase with a dash, instead: ". . . which means less ironing — and that must be good news!"

Authority: New York Public Library Writer's Guide to Style and Usage HarperCollins: New York. 1994. Cited with permission. p. 281.

n the sentence " Your paper is totally and completely unacceptable." What is totally, completely , and unacceptable? Adj. or adv.?

"Unacceptable" is a predicate adjective and "totally" and "completely" are adverbs modifying that adjective (they're also unacceptably redundant).

We are unsure if 'maximally' in the following sentence is correct since it describes the '41' that modifies the noun. Should it be maximal instead as it describes lenghts only? The question is, do numbers act as adjectives in this case?

e.g.: These studies were performed using short fragments of maximally 41 nucleotides in lengths.

Thank you.

I take it "nucleotide" is a measurement of length (at least in this case). I don't know what "maximal" or "maximally" means in this sentence. It must mean either "no more than" or "at least," and I would judge either phrase an improvement over "maximally": ". . . using short fragments at least [or 'not more than'] 41 nucleotides in length (not lengths)."

Previous Grammar Log

Next Grammar Log

Index of Grammar Logs

Guide to Grammar and Writing