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10/1/2014 0 Comments

Common Mistakes: When the Past and Present Are the Same

We've run in to this one a lot, lately, in the form of "inputed" and "casted"/"forecasted."

Most of the time, when the past and present versions of a verb are the same, it presents no difficulties:
"hit" and "put" and "shed" seem to do just fine in the hands of nearly everyone. But there's something "input" and variously prefixed forms of "cast" that are causing people grief.

So, for example:
"He put his keys in his pocket and turned away." (past tense)
"I usually put my keys in my right pocket." (present tense)

and

"The players shed their warm-ups and hit the field, while Coach looked over her notes." (past tense)
"It's time to shed the winter colors and get ready for spring -- let's hit the mall!" (present tense)

equally:

"He forecast a rain/snow mix, but in the end, we got all rain." (past tense)
"I forecast mostly sunny for the next several days." (present tense)

and

"The research assistant input the data last week, so we can run the analyses now." (past tense)
"The system is waiting for me to input instructions so the next routine can start." (present tense)

No different.

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4/23/2012 1 Comment

Observing #TalkLikeShakespeare Day

We recalled this morning, upon perusing our Twitter feed, that today is the day we remember William Shakespeare's influence on our language -- Shakespeare having been born, and died, on or about April 23rd.

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Manual of Style ‏ @ChicagoManual
'Tis #TalkLikeShakespeare Day! Partake in the celebration with Gary Logan's The Eloquent Shakespeare: http://bit.ly/J4Qijz
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So, for your enjoyment and edification:

To participate in #TalkLikeShakespeare Day, the easiest thing you can do is add -eth or -est to your verbs. Avoid, at all costs, the temptation to add them willy-nilly to other words. They represent a difference in verb forms between the 16th century and today. Like so:

         I talk                                                                        We talk
         Thou talkest (modern: you talk)                             You talk
         He/She/It talketh (modern: he/she/it talks)     They talk

         Note how few changes have been wrought in our pronouns and verb forms by four hundred years'
         evolution!

Words and phrases coined by William Shakespeare (that is, his work represents their first appearance in the written record) include: a sorry sight, addiction, all's well that ends well, bag and baggage, bedazzled, cold-blooded, come what may, distasteful, enrapt, fancy free, foul play, good riddance, to gossip, green-eyed monster, wear my heart upon my sleeve, lie low, luggage, milk of human kindness, mimic, new-fangled, quarrelsome, rhyme nor reason, schoolboy, short shrift, the game is afoot, truth will out, unearthly, vanish into thin air, and woe is me! Find more here and here.
Spelling in the 16th century was far more flexible than it is today (less work for us in our proofreading guise!). No single arbiter had yet to standardize spellings, though we can see where printers would sometimes do so, altering a spelling from the manuscript from which they were setting the type. That being the case, The Bard's name appears, at various times and places, as Shakespere, Shakspere, Shaxpere, Shake-speare and Shagspere, along with the more common, modern adoption, Shakespeare.
Go here for a brief biography of Shakespeare. For a longer, well-researched and entirely enjoyable one, get Bill Bryson's Shakespeare.
Enjoy Animaniacs' Hamlet here!
For those in the upper Midwest who would like to have William Shakespeare visit their school, local library, or literary-themed/social event, contact Optimist Theatre for their wonderful To Be! Shakespeare Here and Now program. [Full disclosure: we are fortunate to count several of the Optimist Theatre principals as friends, including Ron Scot Fry, who portrays Will Shakespeare!]
We fall firmly on the Shakespeare-wrote-Shakespeare side of the "debate," for what it's worth. Though there has never been a point at which we were in any doubt, had we needed persuasion, Bryson's book amply points out the origins of the question (in the 1840s, when American Delia Bacon felt it in her spirit that her namesake, Francis Bacon, must have written Shakespeare's works), and how reasonable it is to presume that a cigar is just a cigar. Sir Ian McKellen, in his wonderful Acting Shakespeare, points out that it's plain within the text that the man who wrote the words is also an actor. If you've any fondness for Shakespeare or McKellen, by the way, this is well worth your time. As to authorship, if you desire a more immediate, though far less conversational, rehearsal of why we should just take on face value that Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of the plays, visit here.
The illustration shown above is one of only two representations clearly identified as William Shakespeare. One is the bust on his funeral monument, and this illustration, known as the
Droeshout portrait. Engraved by Martin Droeshout, it appeared as the frontispiece to "the collected works of Shakespeare (the First Folio), printed in 1622 and published in 1623. An introductory poem in the First Folio, by Ben Jonson, implies that it is a very good likeness."

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1/1/1990 2 Comments

Best Grammar Instruction EVER: Schoolhouse Rock!

This post is dated as old as the system will go -- we had intended to back-date it all the way to the debut of the grammar series of Schoolhouse Rock!, back in 1973. Alas, the blog app does not recognize the legitimacy of this idea. Too bad!

Nonetheless, travel back with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when we lounged around the living room of a Saturday morning, consuming cartoons and ads for impossibly sugar-laden cereals -- and sang along to Schoolhouse Rock!

Through the magic of YouTube, you can sing along again, all about our friends, the Noun, Verb, Adjective and (sing it with us, "lolly, lolly, lolly, get your Adverbs here!")

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Common Mistakes: When the Past and Present Are the Same

Observing #TalkLikeShakespeare Day

Best Grammar Instruction EVER: Schoolhouse Rock!

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