Grammar? Who Needs It?
I have problems with quite a few grammar problems. I don’t want to reveal all of my weaknesses to you so I will only talk about two. Hopefully that will give me a long enough post.
First, I do struggle with who/whom. I have an excuse. (Doesn’t everyone?) I had a linguistics professor who explained to us that the rule for the use of whom is Latin based. She told us that because our language is Germanic (among other things) that the rule does not actually apply. In her words there really is not a rule for who/whom and there isn’t really a right or wrong way to use it. Based upon this lecture by someone I regard as intelligent I decided to just move on from who/whom and not worry about the correct usage. I just try to avoid the use of who/whom in case someone who decides there should be a rule reads my paper and marks me down for it. So far it has worked well for me and I am just going to keep up with it. No one really understands the rule anyway, so does it matter?
The second rule that I always have a problem with is affect/effect. (Both of these rules are about confused words, but whatever) When I lived in Canada there was this little poster in the dorm about the correct usage of affect and effect. I memorized it, and decided it would help me use those words correctly. Of course I then forgot the rule. It had something to do with the idea that affect dealt with feelings and effect did not. Does that make sense to anyone else? It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Recently, after the lecture by Claire, I decided to revisit these words and now that I understand one is a verb and one is a noun (except for the million exceptions) I feel a little more confident in their use. But I know I still use them incorrectly. One day (before this class) I was editing and sending out an email for work. After I sent it out I got an email response back from another co-worker who would not be considered a great writer. Usually when he sends me things to edit or write up I have to write a few emails back because I don’t understand what he is trying to say. His sentences are always fragments, he cannot tie ideas together, and he doesn’t even include all the necessary words in his sentences. (I really do love this guy, he’s wonderful to work with, but his writing needed help.) So the company sent him to a writing class. After he came back from this class, and I sent that email, he sent a reply back correcting my use of affect and effect. I was pretty embarrassed, since I was supposed to be the writing expert.
Sigh. Guess I will just have to keep working on that rule.
First, I do struggle with who/whom. I have an excuse. (Doesn’t everyone?) I had a linguistics professor who explained to us that the rule for the use of whom is Latin based. She told us that because our language is Germanic (among other things) that the rule does not actually apply. In her words there really is not a rule for who/whom and there isn’t really a right or wrong way to use it. Based upon this lecture by someone I regard as intelligent I decided to just move on from who/whom and not worry about the correct usage. I just try to avoid the use of who/whom in case someone who decides there should be a rule reads my paper and marks me down for it. So far it has worked well for me and I am just going to keep up with it. No one really understands the rule anyway, so does it matter?
The second rule that I always have a problem with is affect/effect. (Both of these rules are about confused words, but whatever) When I lived in Canada there was this little poster in the dorm about the correct usage of affect and effect. I memorized it, and decided it would help me use those words correctly. Of course I then forgot the rule. It had something to do with the idea that affect dealt with feelings and effect did not. Does that make sense to anyone else? It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Recently, after the lecture by Claire, I decided to revisit these words and now that I understand one is a verb and one is a noun (except for the million exceptions) I feel a little more confident in their use. But I know I still use them incorrectly. One day (before this class) I was editing and sending out an email for work. After I sent it out I got an email response back from another co-worker who would not be considered a great writer. Usually when he sends me things to edit or write up I have to write a few emails back because I don’t understand what he is trying to say. His sentences are always fragments, he cannot tie ideas together, and he doesn’t even include all the necessary words in his sentences. (I really do love this guy, he’s wonderful to work with, but his writing needed help.) So the company sent him to a writing class. After he came back from this class, and I sent that email, he sent a reply back correcting my use of affect and effect. I was pretty embarrassed, since I was supposed to be the writing expert.
Sigh. Guess I will just have to keep working on that rule.
posted by Tamar at 10:42 AM
1 Comments:
One simple way to think about it is just "cause and EFFECT." Effects are things that happen after a cause. Unless you're effecting change, which is more like affect, unless you mean affect to mean facial expressions.
There! That should clear it all up!
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