The Grammar Logs
#553

How do I punctuate a sentence with a series in the beginning such as this one:

The people, their clothes, the buildings, the food, the natural landscape; everything there is vibrant and different from things in the West.

I would ask a pair of dashes to rescue me from this mess:

The people, their clothes, the buildings, the food, the natural landscape—everything there—is vibrant and different from things in the West.

Why do we use "the" for Buddha? The Buddha did this or that in … Why do we not say simply Buddha, without an article?

I asked an acquaintance of mine who has studied eastern religions extensively and got this response:
It's standard to use "the" for Buddha. Which is strange, because in most forms of Buddhism there are many Buddhas. There's only one "historical" Buddha (Siddhartha), and that's who we assume you're talking about when you say "the Buddha," but there are many others who play different roles in Buddhist cosmology. I have heard Buddhists refer to Siddhartha simply as "Buddha," sometimes even in the same passage as they refer to him as "the Buddha." The only way I can answer the question is to compare Siddhartha with Jesus. Siddhartha became the Buddha—in a sense, he assumed a station, like becoming President or Prime Minister or something. "Buddha" is like a title that one acquires. Jesus (according to Christian doctrine) was always Christ; there's no Christ without Jesus and vice versa. It's extraordinarily rare to hear Christians refer to "the Christ"; in fact, when they do (as theologian Paul Tillich did), they're usually making a point about how the Christ is separable from the historical figure of Jesus. The standard Christian view is that Christ isn't just a title associated with an office. Maybe there's a research program here: the hypothesis would predict that Buddhist traditions that are prone to deify the Buddha would be more likely to refer to him simply as "Buddha." Of course, it's always possible that the translations are displaying a missionary bias (a lot of them are very old) and using the article is a way to demote the Buddha from the status reserved for someone like Christ. Same thing happens with "the Prophet" Mohammed, maybe?

I'm searching for the grammar rules that describe the confision in this sentence:

"Use the Block Sender list to keep someone from mailing you".

The sentence means to imply "… to keep someone from sending mail to you," but that doesn't really come across. Thanks.

The "rule" is simply a matter of usage: we just don't use the word "mail" that way. We don't say, for instance, "I'm mailing you today." The verb "to mail" is transitive; it seems to need an object: "I'm mailing you a check tomorrrow morning." Without the object, it sounds like someone is trying, literally, to MAIL YOU (stick a stamp on your head and stuff you in the mailbox). For some reason, though, "e-mailing" doesn't follow this same pattern, and we can say something like "to keep someone from e-mailing you."

In school we were told that if you use a collective noun in a certain way it should be treated as a plural. What we were told was if you are referring to people who are in disagreement this is the case because they are thinking separately. An example is this:

• "The jury disagree."
or

• "The class do disagree."

That sentence we were told is correct because they do not have one opinion but rather their own and so it is not singular. This sounds very awkward to me and I was wondering if it is correct.

That's nonsense. The writer could say that "The members of the jury disagree," and it is in fact, possible for a collective noun to be treated as a plural when its members behave as individuals: "the staff have put on their jackets." But how can someone claim that the jury cannot disagree as a collective entity (or that the class cannot hold one opinion, as a collective unit)? "The jury disagrees" and "the class does disagree." (But "the students in the class do disagree.")

In using the word "invoke", is it correct to use it in the following form:

Your spirit is invoked in others

What is the proper way to use this word?

It's probably best not to use this verb in a passive sense. Something or someone might invoke your spirit — but that would mean that your spirit has been conjured up somehow, and that's probably not what you mean. A better word is probably evoked. "To evoke" is to call to mind or produce memories or emotions (I'm quoting now from Garner's manual [see below] ), and that's undoubtely what you have in mind here. Thus we might say, for instance, that your spirit continues to evoke in others pleasant memories or good actions.

From The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Styleby Bryan Garner. Copyright 1995 by Bryan A. Garner. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., www.oup-usa.org, and used with the gracious consent of Oxford University Press.

What do we say?

• Ann is John`s and Rita`s mother
or

• Ann is John and Rita`s mother

Since John and Rita are siblings and they "own" their mother jointly (not separately), we write "Ann is John and Rita's mother."

Is this sentence correct?

Look who is working towards their goals!

No. There is a pretty obvious conflict between the singular "is working" and the plural possessive "their." You can write "Look who is working toward his goals" or "… her goals." I find the plural verb clumsy here: "Look who are working toward their goals," and you'll have to find some other construction if you're dealing with more than one person here: "We are proud of all the students working toward their goals"?

The noun consort, in days gone by, used to mean colleague or companion. In its past, it has also meant spouse (especially of royalty) or "a partner in sexual relations." Frankly, it's a word you can't trust in normal usage. The connotations of the verb consort (emphasis on the second syllable) include the notion of playing around sexually, as in "consorting with another man's wife." I can tell you that in perusing the headstones in an ancient burial ground in Hartford, Connecticut, I have seen several epitaphs that mark the resting spots of women referred to as the "consort" of a man. I assume it means "wife" there, because if there's some wicked connotation to be made, why would they engrave it on a respectful gravestone? On the other hand, why wouldn't they just say "wife" or "spouse"? (I've never seen a man referred to as a consort on an old grave marker.) I wonder if the word wasn't used at some point to refer to some position like "housekeeper" of long standing? In short, if you mean "spouse" or "wife" or "husband," use those words and avoid consort (unless you're referring to royalty, where it has a more clearly defined use).

They teach that in the first grade? According to the Gregg Reference Manual, we can write 3 o'clock or three o'clock or half past three o'clock or half after three o'clock, but 7:00 o'clock would not be appropriate. Using "o'clock" is a rather formal way of expressing rounded off time.

I don't find a lot of material on this phrasing, and I wouldn't be surprised if your teacher could come up with a resource that said 7:00 o'clock is OK. But I'd go with the Gregg Reference Manual, myself.

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

The gray car is between the red and the brown one or the gray car is between the red and the brown ones? My doubt is about the use of the plural for one or not in the two ways of the writing above.

The singular "one" will suffice. It's as if there is an understood "one" after the word "red." If you pluralize "ones," people will be looking for more than one brown car.

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