21st Century Grammar Handbook (19 page)

“Kind” is singular and is modified by singular
demonstrative
pronouns: “This kind of banana grows only here.” WRONG: “These kind of bananas are tasty.” RIGHT: “This kind of banana is green, but those kinds of oranges are yellow.” See
modifier
and
pronoun.

Do not use “a” after “kind of.” WRONG: “There is some kind of a banana growing here.” RIGHT: “Some kind of banana is growing here, but I don’t know its name.”

Knew.
See
know.

Know, knew, known.
An
irregular verb
in its main,
past tense,
and past
participle
forms.

Known.
See
know.

Laid.
This is the
past tense
and past
participle
form only of the
verb
“to
lay”
meaning to put or place: “The lecturer laid the notepad aside and spoke.” Don’t use “laid” as a form of
“lie”
which means being in a horizontal position and forms its past tense differently: “The child lay in bed asleep.”

Lain.
See
lie, lay, lain.

Languages.
Look under specific language names for guidance on
spelling, punctuation, accents,
and other matters related to major languages (e.g.,
Arabic).

Keep in mind that non-English words are usually marked by
italics
or underlining, but that many words from other languages are now used in English as native words and are unmarked in any way: “Pass the pasta and pesto, please.”

Overuse of other languages in English documents can be irritating to those who don’t know the language. Avoid this practice and use non-English words for occasional
emphasis
or when no genuine English equivalent will suffice: “We were discussing the Russian verb
perestroit
, which is the form from which
Perestroika
comes.”

Take care as well with the overly familiar use of non-English words or phrases, particularly when addressing those whose first language is not English. They might find quite offensive what strikes you as slangy or cute. Also, a
word that entered English at some point as acceptable usage in another language might now have become objectionable or inappropriate: “Howdy, Comrade (
Tovarishch
) Yeltsin. Welcome to America.” “Comrade” is an English word, but in Russian it has come to have connotations of a distasteful past and should not be used.
Señor
can have the same effect with some Spanish speakers, just as
señorita
might prove offensive for linguistic, political, or moral reasons. See entries for
Arabic, Asian languages, French, German, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Spanish,
and other languages.

Later, latter.
“Later” is an
adverb
that refers to time: “My friend called later than I expected.” “Latter” is an
adjective
that means second of two: “Of the two suits, I like the latter.”

Latin.
Many
abbreviations
used in scholarly and scientific writing come from Latin. Unless you are writing scholarly or scientific works, you probably shouldn’t use such abbreviations
(e.g., ibid.,
and
i.e.).
Similarly, unless your
audience
is made up of Latin scholars, the use of full Latin phrases is not helpful to most readers. See
languages.

Latter.
See
later.

Lay, lie.
These two
verbs
have different meanings and irregular forms that are often confused. “Lay” means to put or place something (usually specified) and has the forms
“laid” (past tense),
“laying” (present
participle
or
gerund),
and “laid” (past participle).
“Lie”
means to be
prone or not standing (and never has an
object
because it is
intransitive),
and it has the forms “lay” (past tense), “lying” (present participle or gerund), and “lain” (past participle). Note that “lie” has no “laid” form, which is often the root of confusion. See also
irregular verbs.

lb.
The common
abbreviation
for “pound” is “lb.” It is used mainly in recipes, technical presentations, and the like. In ordinary or formal writing not intended for technical or cooking
audiences,
spell out “pound.”

Lead, led, led.
An
irregular verb
in its main,
past tense,
and past
participle
forms.

Least.
See
little.

Leave, left, left.
An
irregular verb
in its main,
past tense,
and past
participle
forms.

Led.
See
lead.

Left.
See
leave.

Lend, lent, lent.
An
irregular verb
in its main,
past tense
and past
participle
forms. This verb usually does not refer to money lending. Use “loan, loaned, loaned” for financial transactions.

Lent.
See
lend.

Less.
See
fewer
and
little.

Let, let, let.
An
irregular verb
in its main,
past tense,
and past
participle
forms.

Let’s.
This
contraction
of “let us” is not normally used in
standard English
writing.

Lie, lay, lain.
An
irregular verb
meaning lie down, in its main,
past tense,
and past
participle
forms. The verb that means to speak falsely has a regular
conjugation:
lie, lied, lied. See
lay.

Like.
“Like” has several functions and is commonly misused in many of them. Besides having once been a common
interjection
in a
style
considered out of the mainstream (“Like, wow, man, that is awesome and groovy!”), “like” is still resorted to when thought fails and some sound must be made or letters put on paper: “This painting is, like, sensational!” In informal speech this use of “like” is probably unavoidable, just as one is forced to mumble “ya know” or “ummm” sometimes while the brain catches up with the mouth. But “like” in these
usages
should never appear in formal,
standard English
documents unless it is accurately quoted as such.

Proper uses of the
preposition
“like” involve
comparisons:
“That tree looks like a scarecrow.” Such a construction is called a “simile,” calling attention to similarity between things. “Like” is used when comparing two or more
nouns
or nouns and their
modifiers (adjectives
or adjective
phrases).
It can be replaced by “such as” in many cases, but it can never be substituted for
“as,”
which links
verbs
or verb and adjective complement or
adverb
(or
phrases): “I worked as a sailor.” This example means held a job as a sailor. “I worked like a stevedore” means my work was hard, like a stevedore’s work, not that I held the position of stevedore. WRONG: “I worked hard, like I should have.” RIGHT: I worked hard, as I should have. “As” is correct because it links verbs or verb phrases, not nouns.

Linking verb.
Verbs
that join two or more
nouns
or nouns and
adjectives
more or less equally are called “linking verbs.” The commonest linking verbs are “appear,”
“be,” “become,” “feel,” “grow,”
“look,”
“make,” “prove,”
“remain,
“seem,”
“smell,” and “sound.”

Forms of “be” are probably used most often to link words: “He is a writer. He is good.” In the first sentence in the example, a
pronoun
is joined to a noun, which is called a
predicate noun.
In the second example,
“is”
links a pronoun and
adjective,
called a
predicate adjective.
The names of these forms are not so important as the point that both the noun and the adjective remain in the same
nominative
case that is used for the sentence
subject.
The words that are linked to the subject are not its
object
—since there is no action transmitted from subject to object—but its
subject complement.
Remember that a pronoun subject complement does not change form: “It is I.”

Note that many linking verbs can also function in different ways, as
transitive
verbs that do govern the
objective case
when their objects are expressed: “The musician sounded the trumpet.” In its linking form “sound” is usually followed by an adjective (not an
adverb):
“The trumpet sounded rough.” When a linking verb is followed by an adverb, the adverb does not express a quality of the subject but of the verb: “The child looked blankly at the television screen.” “The child looked blank” is a sentence with “look” as a linking verb joining a person and a quality or condition of the person—blankness.

It is tempting to make living verbs agree with their subject complements rather than their subjects, particularly when the
emphasis
is on the complement rather than the subject or when the sentence is inverted: “My favorite animal is bears.” This sounds somewhat awkward, but it is correct, since the subject is “animal” and the complement is “bears.” “Bears are my favorite animal” is also correct and less awkward. “Is your favorite animal bears?” is also correct, as would be “Are bears your favorite animal?” You can choose whichever of these constructions sounds best to you or will best suit your
audience.
Some rewriting might help, too: “Are your favorite animals bears?” See
agreement
and
inversion.

Lists.
More than three things put together grammatically constitute a “list.” Lists can be set off from the rest of a
sentence
by a
colon:
“Here are the parts: piston, ring, valve, spark plug, and hose.” If the elements in a list are numbered, put the
numbers
or letters for each item into
parentheses:
“There are four parts: (1) pistons, (2) rings, (3) valves, and (4) hoses.” The items can be divided by.
commas
or, if they are to be kept more distinct or are more complex,
semicolons
(especially if the items include other punctuation): “There are three important factors: (a) items
of value, including gold, silver, and platinum; (b) insurance….” Lists can also be distinguished by putting each item in them on a separate line and starting each line with a number, letter, or other marker:

• nouns
  

• adjectives
  

• verbs
  

Such typographically emphasized lists can include
punctuation
marks at the end of each item or appear, as in the example, with only their spacing to mark them (see
emphasis).
If the items in such a list are sentences or
clauses,
it is probably clearer to end them in
periods, semicolons,
or
commas.
Adding
“and”
before the last item in lists on separate lines can be helpful, or it can prove tricky, especially when the punctuation is not suitable or the spacing leaves “and” dangling somewhere.

Within lists it is important to maintain
parallelism,
or equivalency among the items. Thus the list set on separate lines would be incorrect or harder to follow if we added another item like “writing sentences too long.” The shift from simple nouns to a
gerund
phrase makes it hard to see the relationship among the parts of the list. If the list is made up of sentences or clauses, it is particularly important to keep similar structures so that your reader can follow what is being said.

Little.
The comparative forms of “little” in the sense of quantity are irregular: little, less, least. “Little” in the sense of small size is compared regularly: “little, littler, littlest.” See
comparison.

’II.
An
apostrophe
plus “11” is commonly used to form
contractions
of
future tense
verbs and
nouns
or, more often,
pronouns:
“The dog’ll eat the chicken bone, and it’ll die.” Neither contraction normally appears in
standard English
writing, but those with nouns are considered particularly substandard.

Loc. cit.
This
abbreviation
of the
Latin
words “
locus citatus
,” means “the place cited.” The abbreviation is used only in footnotes or endnotes to scholarly or scientific writing and is growing less common even there. Current practice is to use a shortened title or author’s name to repeat a citation.

Loose, lose.
Commonly confused, these words have different meanings and are different
parts of speech.
“Loose” is most commonly an
adjective
that means not tight or scattered: “The seal on the window was loose, letting lots of loose sand blow in.” (There is a
verb
“to loose,” which means to release something or to make it loose; but the word is a bit archaic and not commonly used.) “Lose” is a verb that means to fail to keep track of or misplace: “You will lose your place if you don’t pay attention.” Its
conjugation
is irregular: lose, lost, lost. See
irregular verbs.

Lose.
See
loose.

Lower case.
Letters that are not capitalized (large and in special form) are said to be “lower case.” Capitalized letters are called
“upper case.”
See
capitalization.