How to not write bad - Ben Yagoda 2013

Grammar - Sanitized
How to not write wrong

As I suggested in the introduction, grammatical mistakes are overrated—by which I mean they get a disproportionate amount of attention as a source of bad writing. By definition, native speakers of a language know its grammar. No American above the age of four would say, “Him gave the book to I.” However, we might say, “Peter and him went to the movie with Sarah and I,” which is nonstandard, or, to put it bluntly, wrong.

That, like virtually every other common grammatical “mistake,” is an instance of vernacular or colloquial expressions clashing with the standards of formal or public writing and usage. The mistakes fall into three categories: Sanitized, Skunked, and Still Wrong.

1. Sanitized

This refers to usages that at one time were verboten but, over the decades and sometimes centuries, have become acceptable to everybody, or just about everybody. In fact, in most of these cases, the formerly “correct” usage now sounds either too formal or just plain weird. However, you may have a supervisor, editor, or teacher who sticks to the old-fashioned dicta. If so, he or she, unfortunately, is the boss and nothing I say or write can change that. Still, you have my permission to wave this section in the air and protest that you read in a book that it’s perfectly acceptable to:

a. End a Sentence with a Preposition

Who are you going to the movies with? (But see III.C.7.)

b. Use Who Instead of Whom in the Objective Case

Who are you going to the movies with?

The exception is immediately following a preposition: To whom should I send the customer-satisfaction survey?

c. Use Objective Rather than Subjective Pronouns in Comparisons, Following the Verb to Be, and in First-Person Plural

They have a bigger house than us. (Alternatively: than we do.)

Hello, it’s me.

We are all at the mercy of Mother Nature. But especially us astronomers.

d. Judiciously Split Infinitives

To avoid damaging the wall, you carefully have to carefully hold the picture hook and hammer it in.

e. (And Similarly) Break up a Compound Verb with an Adverb

He has frequently woken up frequently in the morning with no idea where he spent the night.

f. Use Like (I)

This little word, depending on the way it’s used, can be alternately sanitized, skunked, and still wrong. (And that’s not even getting into the way young people famously use it in conversation, as a filler [“I’m, like, tired”] or indicator of attribution [“He was like, ’Why aren’t you going to the concert?’”]. Even young people know enough not to use it this way in formal writing.)

It wasn’t necessarily always the case, but it’s now okay to use like:

As a synonym for such as.

We read authors like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald.

To introduce a clause where a verb is omitted.

He takes to engineering like a duck [takes] to water.

He speaks French like a native [does].

It has never been wrong or even suspect to use like in a sentence like:

Like Paris, Rome has an almost unlimited number of world-class restaurants.

However, some people are gun-shy about like and engage in the hoity toity lingo that’s called “hypercorrection.”

[In common with Paris, Rome has an almost unlimited number of world-class restaurants.]

Actually, in common with is called for in only one situation: sentences like Bill and Paul have lot in common.

g. Use a Plural Verb with a Collective Noun

A number of objections comes come to mind.

In the above sentence, the plural come is better than the singular comes, even though (singular) number is ostensibly the subject of the sentence. That’s because the emphasis is on objections. By the same logic, if the emphasis is on the singular collective, the singular verb is preferable:

Just one battalion of soldiers were was sent to the front.

A bucket of worms were was on top of the bench.

He was one of the employees who was were given an award at the ceremony.

Often, it could go either way, as in this pair:

1. A scrum of applicants was hovering outside the office door by 7 a.m.

2. A scrum of applicants were hovering outside the office door by 7 a.m.

Which do you prefer? I would go with 2.