We switched over to daylight savings time last night so please forgive any typos. Why? Because I'm exhibiting symptoms of at least four of the seven dwarves: Sneezey, Sleepy, Grumpy, and Dopey. At least I feel that way.
I'll attempt to give you lesson two of the pronoun war and, hopefully, I'll even get it right. Yesterday was the war between I/me. Today, we'll expand that skirmish into she/her, he/him, we/us and they/them. The short version is that what works for I/me, also works for these words. For instance:
John and she went to the movies. (She went to the movies.) You would not say: Her went to the movies. So 'her' does not belong.
But: John went to the movies with her. - This is correct.
Mary and him are watching TV. (Doesn't work - "Him is watching TV." sounds like a Neanderthal speaking.) Correct version: Mary and he are watching TV.
Correct: Mary is watching TV with him.
John, Mary and we are going out to dinner. (We are going out to dinner.) This is correct.
Also correct: John and Mary are going out to dinner with us.
Correct: They are going out to dinner.
Correct: John and Mary are going out to dinner with them.
Now, let me clue you into something other things about the above sentences. In the first cases (she, he, we, they), the pronoun is the subject of the sentence. It answers the question who is the sentence about? In the second set of pronouns (him, her, us, them), the pronoun is the object of the preposition 'with'.
Secondly, again looking at the ones using he, she, and we. They are awkward. As an editor I would ask the author to rewrite these using the characters names: John and Mary are going to the movies.
So, that's the lesson for today. Short, sweet, and, hopefully, understandable.
Thought for the day: "Write out of love, write out of instinct, write out of reason. But always for money." - Louis Untermeyer
Today's teaser: This is your main character's wedding day. What could possibly go wrong? Write from two different points of view - his and hers. You can give it a humorous spin or be tragic.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Grammar and the Seven Dwarves
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The guy sitting himself down at the end of the bar looked familiar to me. Not that I recognized the face, but the look: the bedraggled tux, the wilted boutonnière, and the ever-so-faint gleam of young love that had been taken around to the back of the barn and shot out of its misery. I poured him a shot of whiskey before his backside had resolutely settled into the barstool. "So, what was it?" I asked.
"Don't you mean, 'What'll it be?'" he replied as he threw back the shot.
"No, I mean, how'd it happen? Left you at the altar? Found your best man with her in the limo? ...What was it?"
The guy took a deep breath. I poured another shot. And, like a Viet Cong bridge of heartbreak shot to hell by a Chinook helicopter of confession, he started talking.
"Well, today would've been our wedding day, except I put the cufflinks on wrong, and I ended up in 1963. And it turns out the jerk that nearly ran me over with his Studebaker was really her father, and I wish I'd have known that before I kicked him in the nuts, 'cause the guy's, like, sterile now, so she was never born."
I blinked.
"Stupid time-traveling cufflinks," he finished.
"Yeah, um." I replied. "Helluva thing, ain't they?" Like I said, I knew the look, just not necessarily all of the details.
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