The Grammar Logs
#564

Can one "protect confidentiality?" Or can one only protect the confidentiality of the person's responses to the survey? I know that I can protect someone from harm. I know that I can ensure confidentiality. But that I can "protect confidentiality" seems wrong to me.

I had never thought of this before, and I have to admit I see the sense of your argument. You're not really protecting the confidentiality, you're protecting or safeguarding the confidentiality of [whatever] from — what? people's snooping, etc. However, the phrase is now so commonly used — and people do seem to know what folks mean by it — that even though the phrase is odd, it's undoubtedly here to stay.

Is this usage correct?

He did use to be a musician. Time magazine used it as a question (about Michael Jackson): "Didn't he use to be a musician?" I am so used to reminding students to add the final d before to that I first thought this use incorrect. With the past form did, does one omit the final d?

You'll find a difference of opinion about this usage in the writing manuals. Most writing manuals will say that in a question or negative construction (that uses "did"), the "used" (with the "d" ending) is like doubling up the past tense, so "Didn't he use to be a musician" would be correct. And that position is taken by people like Theodore Bernstein and Bill Walsh and Paul Lovinger. I agree with them. Bryan Garner, however, argues that the "-ed" ending of "used" is still necessary in that construction. And Burchfield says "didn't use to" is acceptable only in informal contexts. I'm afraid this doesn't really answer your question — except to say it's a matter of legitimate debate. I'd go with "did use to," myself.

Authority: The Careful Writer by Theodore Bernstein. The Free Press: New York. 1998.

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.

Authority: Lapsing into a Comma by Bill Walsh. Contemporary Books: New York. 2000.

I have a question about using an apostrophe in a possessive situation. Here is what I am writing:

Little Red Riding Hood is presented by Mrs. Doyle, Mrs. Frazer, and Mrs. Gonzalez's third grade classes.

Mrs. Doyle and Mrs. Frazer share the same class and Mrs. Gonzalez has her own class, however they are all presenting the same production of the play-together. How do I show the possessive?

If they all shared the same class, you could build the possessive the way you show it in your example (but you'd change "classes" to "class"). Because different classes are involved, you need to make each of the names possessive:

Little Red Riding Hood is presented by Mrs. Doyle's, Mrs. Frazer's, and Mrs. Gonzalez's third grade classes.

The fact that two of the teachers share a class confuses the issue somewhat, but it's probably not worth worrying about. If it is, you would have to write something to the effect that Mrs. Gonzalez's third grade class will join Mrs. Doyle and Mrs. Frazer's third grade class in a presentation of Little Red Riding Hood. The only way to avoid this is use the other form of the possessive:

Little Red Riding Hood is presented by the third grade classes of Mrs. Doyle, Mrs. Frazer, and Mrs. Gonzalez.

Is "anyways" a word?

Only in the most casual of circumstances … or when you're trying to reproduce the speech patterns of careless people.

Is it correct to say "He cries over spilled milk" or "He cries over spilt milk."

For some reason, "spilt milk" seems sacrosanct as an idiomatic expression, immune to the tendency of "spilt" to lose ground to "spilled" through the entire 20th century. In other circumstances, hardly anyone uses "spilt" anymore, but we can also say it is used more often in England than it is in the U.S.

Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press.

The following sentence is in an essay:

Based upon her husband's comment she decides to have her brain back.

Does the word back become a preposition?

Should there be a comma between the word comment and the word she?

Thank you for your assistance.

The word "back" is not a preposition; it's either a noun, an adverb, or an adjective. In this case, it's part of what is called a phrasal verb, "have back," similar in construction to "get back," "give back," "go back," etc. The adverb back becomes, in a sense, part of the verb itself. It means, in a sense, "returned," as in "Can we have that back?"

A comma after "comment" would be a good idea. However, we might ask how "she" is "based upon her husband's comment." It seems doubtful. When the initial modifier doesn't seem to modify what it ought to modify, it is sometimes a good idea to start with the main idea: "She decided to have her brain back when her husband made a comment about her brainlessness"??

Is this a correct and complete sentence?

"Be careful what you say."

Shouldn't it be:

"Be careful of what you say."

Thank you!

I cannot find anything in my usage manuals about this idiom. I thought at first that this common construction, "Be careful what you say," might have something to do with the wh- clause, but now I think it has something to do with the verb care and its various forms. Some kind of ellipsis or shorthand is taking place here, with all these constructions. We would say "Be aware of the dog," but we'd also say "Beware the dog." We could say, also, "Take care the door is locked when you leave," omitting the "that" after "care." In the examples you give, I would suggest there is a difference in meaning. In "Be careful what you say," the speaker is urging caution in speech, as in "Beware your language"; in "Be careful of what you say," there is a slight difference: it's as if the said thing is already out there — and dangerous. In short, I think that "Be careful what you say" is idiomatically acceptable. I will leave an e-mail icon here in case someone else cares to send us a comment.

It certainly doesn't prove anything, but "Be careful what you say" is nearly 12 times more common than "Be careful of what you say," based on the returns of a Google search.

My son is being taught by his tenth grade English teacher that a paragraph must contain at least five sentences. She takes points off when her students don't follow this rule. Should she be teaching this way? Do her students have a leg to stand on?

We can hope that your son has misunderstood his instructor — or that the instructor has in mind some kind of rigorous exercise in which all paragraphs must be of a certain sort and be completely developed models of thought (and that this condition she is imposing on paragraphs is temporary). A paragraph has to be as long as a paragraph has to be. Sometimes that means five sentences; sometimes it means ten and sometimes it means one. The five-sentence paragraph allows for the statement of a central idea and adequate development or support, so it is often used as a model for how a paragraph ought to look and feel. We certainly can't say, however, that a paragraph has to have five sentences.

What you might do, while you're online, is to go to the Web site of a journal you trust — like Atlantic or the New York Times Book Review — and do a sentence count of paragraphs. (You can do a search for a period + space.) I think you'll find a lot of five-sentence paragraphs, but you'll also find a great number that have fewer than five and some that have more. (Don't use a newspaper Web site for this because newspaper articles generally have much smaller paragraphs, for a variety of journalistic and typesetting reasons — like the fact that it's hard to read a long paragraph in a narrow column.)

It's not like the search will actually prove anything, and what you and your son have to do is try to discover why your son's teacher has this interesting requirement — and hope that there's a worthy pedagogical reason for it.

Would you use a comma with mild diffuse tenderness? I believe mild to be the adjective for diffuse tenderness.

I'm hoping this phrase is being used in a medical context; otherwise, I think I would try hard never to say or write "mild diffuse tenderness." In a medical context, however, you want to check the phrase by inserting an "and" between "mild" and "diffuse." If you can insert the "and" — or if you can reverse the order of the adjectives without changing the essential meaning of the phrase (diffuse, mild tenderness) — then you have coordinate adjectives and you want a comma between them. "Mild and diffuse tenderness" seems to work, so I would use a comma here — but I would certainly defer to people in a medical field who have to use the phrase.

Which phrase is correct... (?)

• Memories are life's greatest gift.
or

• Memories are life's greatest gifts.

The word "memories" here really means "the ability to remember things," which feels like a gift, something singular to me. To put it another way, "memories" feels like the singular collection of recollections we carry around between our ears and in our heart — another reason for using the singular gift. We could, however, avoid the problem and write "Memories are among life's greatest gifts."

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