The Grammar Logs
#573

How do we alphabetize Roman numerals (ex. IV) and numbers (21st centrury).

The numbers would come first, in ascending order, followed by the Roman numerals (in ascending numerical, not alphabetical, order — so LX comes before CCII), followed by your regular words. Ignore ordinal endings such as "st," "nd" and "th." If you're doing a lot of work in which you alphabetize, you ought to purchase or borrow a copy of the Gregg Reference Manual or the Chicago Manual of Style and keep a copy of the relevant chapters close at hand.

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

How is the phrase "as it were" correctly used?

It means "as if it were so" or "if one might so put it." Garner describes the phrase as a self-conscious device used in "highly self-conscious writing" and suggests that the examples he gives would be improved by its deletion. Here is part of one such example: "… listeners engage the harmonic and structural radicalism of Schubert's work, typically neglected as we listen to well-known pieces with, as it were, half an ear."

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.

The prices at chain stores are as reasonable, if not more reasonable, as those at discount stores.

There are two things going on in this sentence, and those two things have to put in some kind of parallel form. You're saying the prices are as reasonable as [something], and you're also adding (thus the commas) that they might be more reasonable than [something]. If we leave out either the "as" or the "than," our comparison will be neither complete nor parallel. We could write, instead, the following:

The prices at chain stores are as reasonable as, if not more reasonable than, those at discount stores.

What is a "partitive noun"? My Cantonese-English dictionary uses this term as a part-of-speech, but doesn't define it. As an example, "partitive noun" is assigned to a Chinese character whose definition is "pocketful".

Shall I confess, at the outset, that I had never heard of partitive nouns before you asked this question? Naah. The concept of partitive nouns has to do with the expression of quantity of certain kinds of things. I'm not sure what "pocketful" has to do with this, but there are three basic categories of partitives: measure of precise quantiies, typical partitives, and general partitives. Measure partitives are like a yard of cloth, a mile of cable, an acre of land, a gallon of gas, a quart of milk, a pound of butter. Typical participatives apply to concrete mass nouns: a piece of bacon, a slice of cake, a stick of chalk, a lump of coal, etc. and to abstract mass nouns: an item of business, a word of advice, a bit of work, a piece of evidence. Finally, general partitives can apply to most anything — especially a piece and a bit …

Authority: A University Grammar of English by Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaum. Longman Group: Essex, England. 1993. Used with permission. p. 131.

Some authorities refer to "a pair of twins" as a "forgiveable expression" (i.e., we generally know that the person who uses the phrase is referring to two siblings). It is certainly acceptable in speech. Nonetheless, enough people will wonder if the phrase doesn't actually refer to four siblings that it's probably a good idea to avoid the phrase altogether and talk about a set of twins or two sets of twins, etc. When you're referring to one set of twins, two people, the word twins will often suffice.

I am using the word "all" as an indefinite pronoun. Which of the following sentences is correct? 1) All she saw was speckles. OR 2) All she saw were speckles.

When the indefinite pronoun all is linked to a plural predicate with a linking verb, the verb is nonetheless singular. Burchfield gives the example of "All I saw was fields."

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.

I am placing an order for business cards. I am wondering how I should title myself—I have a J.D. and an M.A. in East Asian Studies. What do you suggest?

Generally, we write the degrees in ascending order, from bachelor's to master's to terminal academic degrees. (And then on to professional designations such as CLU, CPA, etc.) Thus, your name, with degrees, might be written, Heather McCloskey, M.A., J.D. There is no reason to include the nature of the discipline of your master's; you'd have to do that on a separate line if you really thought it was necessary. But a business card is not a resumé.

In my fiction writing, I prefer to use "ing" verbs. I like the way such verbs promote a certain "voice" for the piece. However, I do not want sloppy sentence structure to override the "voice." Here is a sentence, written in two ways, from a recent story I wrote:

1. She tore up swaths of old sheets, wrapped them around her torso, pulling them taut and securing them with safety pins.
2. She tore up swaths of old sheets, wrapped them around her torso, pulled them taut, and secured them with safety pins.

Is the sentence with the "ing" verbs grammatically correct? I know it does not follow the parallel series structure needed for textbook grammar, but that is not always necessary, is it?

You can probably get away with the two "-ing" verbs at the end of this sentence if you don't set up an expectation of a series by combining the first two verbs with only a comma. If, for instance, you wrote,

She tore up swaths of old sheets and wrapped them around her torso, pulling them taut and securing them with safety pins.

That seems permissible to me, because your first two verb forms are parallel and then you move into the participial forms, "pulling and securing." You probably need to be alert to this tendency to drift from more active verb forms into the "-ing" endings, which connote process nicely but are not as vigorous as simpler forms.

I would like to know the correct way to use aka or AKA. Example: Coralee Greek (aka) Lish

James Earnstworthy (aka Jimmy the Couch Potato) — that's one way, and it's used consistently that way on the Atlantic Web site, and that's good enough for me.

In a grammar argument with a friend on a message board (I decried him for improper use of, "begging the question"), I said, "Since you chose to bring up a subject of lingering malcontent between us, I was more than happy to address it."

He immediately laughed and told me that the sentence was incorrect, and that I should have used, "discontent." Sure that I was right, I wanted to consult an authority before making a fool of myself, and could not discern which rule of grammar this would fall under; I thought that either word could be used as an adjective describing the state of being of the object of the phrase ("subject" in this case).

What do you think? I've asked a few friends and relatives who are English majors and professionals, but no one could give me a straight answer one way or the other (most tended to agree with him, but were unsure, and thought that I may be on to something). Have I possibly even coined a valid new phrase?

Thanks for your time!

You're either ahead of the time or behind the time. The Shorter OED lists an obsolete definition of "malcontent" (in addition to its familiar and modern adjectival meanings and its noun meaning as someone who is chronically discontent) as "the condition of being discontent." That would seem to fit your sentence — although it would leave us wondering why you didn't just use "discontent." So it depends on how you feel about using words in their obsolete meaning.

Incidentally, did you really decry your friend, or did you decry his use of a phrase? I don't think I've ever seen the verb "decry" used with a person as direct object before (although one will, from time to time, read a passive construction such as "Lott was decried for his statements … ").

Authority for this note: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Fifth Edition. Oxford University Press, New York. 2002.

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