NCAA batting out of order?

[greymule]

Congratulations, GarthB.

From Harper's English Grammar: "There is a good grammatical rule to the effect that a pronoun cannot take as antecedent a noun in the possessive case." But the book also acknowledges that most writers give the rule little respect, if they are even aware it exists. In actual usage, there are times in which a good writer would observe the rule, and times when he could justifiably ignore it. It is also possible that the pronoun could be an obvious reference to something named in a previous sentence; not every sentence must be grammatically complete within itself.

"The umpire's handling of the game gained him respect from the coaches" is technically incorrect, though the meaning is obvious. "The way the umpire handled the game gained him respect from the coaches" would probably be better, though.

In my medical editing, I will change "our new drug's efficacy makes it the number one choice for patients with xxx" to "the efficacy of our new drug makes it the number one choice for patients with xxx."

Two famous examples, each from a poet very careful about grammar:

(1) . . . a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
In summer luxury . . .

(2) And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.

Dave has pointed out other flaws with the sentence, one being the ambiguity about exactly what genius does. Of course, the writer is trying to praise Toni Morrison and fit in the word genius, but does anything claimed for her genius—like writing about the experiences of black people—really require genius? We need to be told something about those novels for which the invocation of genius would make sense. You don't need genius to connect the experience of black people with a novel about the experience of black people.

The sentence itself is rather puffed-up writing. Create novels? Dickens wrote novels. Incidentally, it's not actually bad grammar, but using injustices as the object of both from (preposition) and express (verb) is weak style. Besides, why not delete "arise from" entirely and say simply, "TM writes ingenius novels that express the injustices African Americans have endured" or even just "about the injustices . . ."? Isn't it then obvious that the novels had arisen from those injustices? I suspect the writer of the sentence thought that complicated syntax would sound more "intelligent." To Dave, it understandably sounded more like "run-on sentence."

(Toni Morrison herself has been criticized for "stretching" grammar unnecessarily. In fact, she lives not too far from here, though I've never met her. I'll have to go give her a hard time about it at some point.)

I'd be interested to know what Carl has to say on this matter.

[greymule]

I have been reading a book, whose author makes liberal use of the colon: is this proper?

Not that use. And get rid of that comma after book, or you'll stay after school!

[Dave Hensley]

Originally Posted by D-Man

Could ensuring the correct proper batter comes to bat be construed as upholding the appeal? I've got a couple NCAA questions to "contest" but on this one aren't there 3 ways to uphold a BOO appeal?

1. If the IP is not out or on base, replace with PB and assume IP's count.

2. IP is out or on base. BOO is discovered BEFORE the next pitch by either team. PB is out (cancel advnaced caused by IP's actions as a batter). Next batter is the name following PB.

3. After a pitch is thrown by either team, IP becomes legalized. Next batter is the name that follows newly legalized IP.

Can each of these three options be considered accepting (or honoring) the BOO appeal?


just a thought...

D

What (or who) is "IP?"

[GarthB]

Originally Posted by RPatrino

Now I have a question. I have been reading a book, whose author makes liberal use of the colon: is this proper?

Not as you used it. I would have to see what "liberal use" means.

Your sentence would be better written in either of these two ways:

I have been reading a book whose author makes liberal use of the colon; is this proper? (weak)

or

I have been reading a book whose author makes liberal use of the colon. Is this proper? (preferred)

[Carl Childress]

Originally Posted by greymule

Congratulations, GarthB.

From Harper's English Grammar: "There is a good grammatical rule to the effect that a pronoun cannot take as antecedent a noun in the possessive case." ....
The sentence itself is rather puffed-up writing. Create novels? Dickens wrote novels. Incidentally, it's not actually bad grammar, but using injustices as the object of both from (preposition) and express (verb) is weak style. Besides, why not delete "arise from" entirely and say simply, "TM writes ingenius novels that express the injustices African Americans have endured" or even just "about the injustices . . ."? Isn't it then obvious that the novels had arisen from those injustices? I suspect the writer of the sentence thought that complicated syntax would sound more "intelligent." To Dave, it understandably sounded more like "run-on sentence."

I'd be interested to know what Carl has to say on this matter.

I'm one of those summa cum laude graduates (master's degree), so I appreciate the chance to post in this thread. I would start by saying that I generally spell "ingenius" this way: "ingenious." Darn, those pesky typos.

The thread has some interesting points. About the colons. (fragment used for effect) The difference between the colon and the semi-colon is huge; even so, we often use them wrongly." Gag me! But my sentence is grammatical, even balanced.

A colon would be wrong. Colons connect independent clauses (so do semi-colons but....) in locutions where the second clause "explains" the first.

Here's an example from 51 Ways to Ruin a Baseball Game:

"Do yourself and the players a favor: When the second baseman is near the bag and takes a good throw as part of a double-play attempt, ...."

Even here, authorities disagree on, of all things, the spelling.

The New York Times style book (Should that be "Times' style book"? Maybe the "style book of the New York Times....) requires a lowercase letter to start the explanatory clause. Thus: "Do yourself a favor: when the second baseman...."

APA style uses an uppercase letter when the material following the colon is an independent clause; a lowercase letter, when it's a phrase or a dependent clause.

Thus: "He seemed guilty: shifty eyes, slouched posture, clammy hands - all classic symptoms of the man with something to hide."

But: "He seemed guilty: The shifty eyes, slouched posture, and clammy hands gave him away."

Officiating.com endorses APA in this instance.

About the possessive:

I was taught that one shouldn't use the possessive except with animate things. Thus: "It was Benham's dog that bit me." But not "The bank's policy stiffled growth." Preferred by Mrs. Lois Smith Douglas Murray, a Baylor prof: "The policy of the bank stiffled...."

Moving on....

It's nonsense to argue that a pronoun can't have a possessive as its antecedent. Nobody pays any attention to that anymore. A more common error is failure to use the possessive before gerunds.

We get thrown off because of gender: (Explanatory material follows.)

We recognize this sentence is wrong: (Talk about embedding colons, and don't give me any Brokeback Mountain sneers) "We listened to him singing" should be "... his singing." But if it's a female, "We listened to her singing" is fine 'cause "her" is both an objective and a possessive pronoun.

Concerning the grasshopper and the demon: I don't think it fair to Keats to say he was a stickler about grammar. Which poets give a damn about grammar? How abut Supreme Court Justices? "Three generations of idions is enough." But I can't find anything wrong with the material you quoted, which was: (Oops, another colon!)

"a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead."

Keat's lines are poetic, grammatical, and, punctuation-wise (grin), ahead of their time. Clearly implied is the noun [that is] "possessed" by the grasshopper. It's (Do you get people who mix up "its" and "it's"?) his "voice." Then comes the semi-colon — except Keats uses a dash.

Poe, poor lad that he was, loved internal rime. (Look up that spelling! At Officiating.com, we don't separate a verb from its particle: We looked up the spelling. We didn't look the spelling up.) But Poe wasn't that fond of subject-verb agreement. What he should have written was: "And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's [eyes] that are dreaming." But I doubt anybody would have ever quoted the line if he had written it that way.

By the way, explain this sentence: Whistler painted his mother sitting down.
How about the editor to the writer: I shall waste no time in reading your manuscript.

By the way, if you're watching football, you'll hear my favorite bugaboo, which is the dangling gerund. (Everybody's heard of the dangling participle.) Troy Aikman: "In talking with Coach Parcells, he said...."

Back to the subject, which is rambling. (Predicate nominative or predicate adjective? Who cares?)

Educational Testing Service. Lah, me.

Garth put his finger on what irritated the grammarians, a possessive noun as antecedent for a pronoun. On the other hand, you played "gotcha" with the lack of parallelism. When we find a verb-particle paired with another verb, our minds expect the second verb also to have a particle. For example: "Her genius arises from and speaks to...." Leave off the expected particle and the careful reader will always look back in the sentence. "Arise from." a compound verb, has no right to precede "expresses," a stand-alone verb.

But like you say.... (Ah, the trouble I have with writers who want to use "like" as a relative conjunction." As you say, it's not ungrammatical, simply crummy construction.

Then there's this: "I ain't happy, (grammatical) and she ain't happy (ungrammatical). Mrs. LSDM didn't like "ain't," however I wanted to use it. She once failed a profile I wrote because of a comma fault. So I got a B in English 101 (exposition). I fooled her. I took English 102 (argument) from her — and made an A. The profile of Paul Baker, the head of the drama department, was later published, unchanged, comma fault and all.

As Holly Hunter said in The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom: "Ah, the things you do for your kids."

[greymule]

I generally spell "ingenius" this way: "ingenious." Darn, those pesky typos.

Thanks for the opportunity to save face, Carl, but I must confess that it was not a typo. I knew it, but I still blew it. And for me, that is harder to say than, "Coach, I blew the call."

I am now writing ingenious 500 times.

But I can't find anything wrong with the material you quoted,

"a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead."

What's wrong is that the pronoun he refers to Grasshopper, but all we have preceding the pronoun is the possessive Grasshopper's [voice]. I do think it's a bit of an overstatement to say, "Nobody pays attention to that [rule] anymore." It's easy to make up examples in which breaking that rule would be an obvious mistake.

And yes, only people, or objects that can be anthropomorphized (e.g., the sun), should take an apostrophe for their possessive form.

I appreciate the mention of APA. In my work, I often have to take an article or research paper and change it from one style (AMA, Chicago, MLA, APA, etc.) to another. "Translating" from American to British English (and spelling) and vice versa is also a common task.

By the way, explain this sentence: Whistler painted his mother sitting down.
How about the editor to the writer: I shall waste no time in reading your manuscript.

I'd call the first an example of a squinting modifier and the second simply ambiguous syntax.

Thanks for the interesting and informative post.

[Carl Childress]

[QUOTE=greymule]But I can't find anything wrong with the material you quoted,

"a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead."

What's wrong is that the pronoun he refers to Grasshopper, but all we have preceding the pronoun is the possessive Grasshopper's [voice]. I do think it's a bit of an overstatement to say, "Nobody pays attention to that [rule] anymore." It's easy to make up examples in which breaking that rule would be an obvious mistake.

Sad to say for my ego, you are right. Hope springs eternal: Perhaps "grasshopper" had been mentioned earlier in the sonnet, thought I. Unfortunately for me, there is NO antecedent for "he," even though everybody knows he is the grasshopper.

The Whistler participial phrase is not exactly squinting. Generally, squinting modifiers are in the middle of the sentence. Here's one I picked up from the internet: "Students who pay attention in class most of the time get higher grades."

I'd call the Whistler sentence "ambivaletly blind."

Moses Hadas is alleged to have written the second sentence. But pre-google, a professor of mine in grad school got away with attributing it to Samuel Johnson.

Oh, the NCAA question that started this is simply silly. A better question (to see if the student knew it was a pitch to the batter of either team that cancelled the appeal) would have been something like this:

Bases loaded, two outs, B2 should bat but B3 bats instead and doubles. Three runs score, but B3 is thrown out, trying for third. The teams change sides, and the pitcher completes his warm-up tosses. After the throw-down and obligatory throws around the infield, the batter steps in and the umpire makes the ball alive. "Wait!" says the coach who had been on defense in the previous half inning. "B3 batted out of order." True or False: It's too late for him to appeal.

"Flase," as some of my students used to write.

[DG]

I'm an engineer, and none of this grammar stuff makes any sense to me. When I write technical stuff I write it technically correct then send to someone to fix the grammar.

[JJ]

The answer posted for the original question in this thread is wrong, so if you had it marked wrong, you got it right. Right?

What does all of the discussion on grammar have to do with anything in this rather straightforeward baseball question thread? I hate to wade through all of that nonsense to find relevant comments. And leave my colon out of this!


JJ

[greymule]

I'm an engineer, and none of this grammar stuff makes any sense to me. When I write technical stuff I write it technically correct then send to someone to fix the grammar.

So do many other engineers, as well as physicians, economists, statisticians, researchers, scientists, and others smart enough to know their limitations. That creates a useful niche for people like me!

[DG]

I don't remember the exact quote but Dirty Harry said "a man's got to know his limitations" or something like that. I know mine and grammar ain't it. Yes, I know ain't ain't a good word and it don't belong at the end of a sentence but I already admitted that grammar ain't my forte.

V = RI is useful to know.