Grammar and Blogging Oppress Me

I have—or have had—a healthy variety of issues with different points of grammar over the years. Way too many to list here. (I love fragments, incidentally). Like Alex, I adored semicolons during my high school years; now I use them only sparingly. Still love them, though. When students come to the WC with semicolon-splashed papers, I feel a certain sense of kinship. I really do hate to take away their fun.

Contractions give me fits from time to time. I have to remind myself of the audience and tone. Academic papers = no contractions; newspaper = more is better. I remember being confused about its and it’s, but an editor cleared that up for me. He also helped me with that/which confusion. He didn’t explain it in terms of essential and nonessential clauses per se, but he did tell me that “which” clauses are surrounded by commas where “that” clauses are not. He said that the “which” clause can be removed from the sentence without causing a catastrophic loss of meaning (his words). For example, “I remember the day that I learned the grammar rule” versus “The grammar rules, which can sometimes be oppressive, are still necessary. I found his advice very helpful.

Who and whom drive me crazy, and like Tamar, I usually avoid using whom. I started out as one of those students Dr. Rogers talks about—the one that thought whom was a more formal form of who. Who can even say the word without sounding snooty? Eh? However, the way the rule was explained to me was this: Use who in a subject setting and whom in an object setting. Or avoid it altogether.

Now I’ll move on to my current grammar “issues.” The first involves punctuation use within quotations. I struggle with this one constantly, and seem to find conflicting information about what is deemed proper. Just when I think I have it figured, I’ll find an example of just the opposite in a textbook or novel. It’s making me insane… Provide insight, if you have it. I was taught that periods and commas always go inside quotation marks (MLA citations excepted). Dashes, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points go outside the quotations unless they only apply directly to the quoted matter.

Here’s another issue that I’d love to settle once and for all: academic degrees listed in writing. Do we capitalize or not? Whitby, Greg, and I tried to work this out the other day in the WC. Whitby was tutoring an FYE student who was trying to list some academic degrees in his paper. Greg and I offered conflicting advice. I was taught that degrees are NOT capitalized, as in “Jane has a master’s degree” or “He has a doctorate in psychology.” Degree abbreviations, though, are capitalized—“John Grammarman, PhD. But what about this: “I am working on a Bachelor of Arts degree”? Capitalize? No?

Incidentally, we also struggled to figure out if the terminology is “associate degree” or “associate’s degree” or, for that matter, “Associates Degree” or “Associate’s Degree.” Help. Please. I’m hoping to win some money from Greg.