Express Editing Writing and Research

Julie and me walked in the park today.

This is very common usage, but ‘me’ is the wrong personal pronoun.  Remove ‘Julie and’ from the sentence above and you’re left with:

Me walked in the park today.

Which is (if you’re a native English speaker other than Ralph from The Simpsons) clearly incorrect! The correct phrase is:

Julie and I walked in the park today.

‘Julie and I’ is the subject of the sentence; remove ‘Julie and’, making ‘I’ the subject, and it still makes sense. Removing the other nouns from the sentence is a useful way to check whether you’re using the right pronoun.

It’s common for people to get the reverse usage wrong too, as in the following example (adapted from the Oxford English Dictionary):

Rose spent the day with Jake and I.

This should be:

Rose spent the day with Jake and me.

Here ‘Jake and me’ is the object of the sentence. Remove ‘Jake and’ and it still makes sense.

A comma can alter the meaning of a sentence substantially. For example, I noticed the following in the Age recently:

 … a married woman Kieran had been her partner since Helensvale High (article by Michael Gleeson about 100m hurdler Sally Pearson in The Age, 5 Sept 2011)

Presumably Sally Pearson’s partner wasn’t a married woman rather oddly named Kieran – the author meant that Sally Pearson is now married to Kieran, who has been her partner since school; a comma after ‘woman’ would have made this clear.

Similarly,  in a response to a grant application review, a colleague of mine wrote:

 …regression techniques that cater explicitly for missing data such as Generalised Estimating Equations …

without a comma after ‘data’, the implication is that GEE are missing data instead of a regression technique that caters for missing data.

 Kids, please stop fighting – your desserts are both the same!

All parents of multiple children have uttered the sentence above or some variant of it. I’m no stranger to it myself, but I try very hard not to add the redundant ‘both’; if the desserts are the same then no more needs to be said.  Instead, you might say (or write):

 Kids, stop your fighting – your desserts are identical!

 or …

 Kids, stop your fighting – both desserts weigh 150 grams!

 Yes, I once had to weigh two croissants so my younger daughter could have the biggest one – but the joke was on her, because they turned out to be identical to the nearest gram.

I’ve been meaning to write something about recent developments in the use of the word ‘literally’, and was finally prompted to do so by an article on the subject by Christopher Muther on boston.com (via the Society of Editors newsletter). It’s interesting to note that the phenomenon of using ‘literally’ to add emphasis to a statement exists elsewhere than Australia – presumably it’s common across the English-speaking world; this, however, does not excuse its loathsomeness.

In Australia, sporting commentators are literally the worst offenders.  Footballers are ‘literally on fire’, horses ‘literally fly’, an athlete is ‘literally jumping out of his skin’, teams ‘crush the opposition … literally!’  The logical reaction to hearing that a footballer is literally on fire would be to call the fire brigade; seeing a flying horse should prompt a call to David Attenborough; sportspeople shedding their epidermis and reducing their opponents to a pulp should result in a lot of very painful hospital visits.  But perhaps the best example I’ve noticed of late is political – it’s portly former federal immigration minister Amanda Vanstone’s statement (ABC ONLINE, 2006, cited in the Macquarie Dictionary entry for ‘literally’): “ … I can assure you we are literally bending over backwards to take into account the concerns raised by colleagues”.  The mind literally boggles.

It seems a very strange linguistic convolution to use a word that means ‘actually’ or ‘in a literal sense’ to mean the reverse, i.e. metaphorically or figuratively.  The upshot?  Don’t use a word if you don’t know its meaning.

2. A person who steals clothes from a clothesline; Australian usage.

‘It’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is’ or ‘it has’ – a less formal version of those expressions.  As an example, the following sentences have identical meanings:

It is expected that visitors to France try to speak French.

It’s expected that visitors to France try to speak French.

‘Its’, on the other hand, is the possessive form of ‘it’.

Like its people, France is French.

Note that this differs from the way you would show possession for a person or known entity (e.g., France’s language,  Campbell’s bike).

For practical purposes, it usually doesn’t matter too much whether you use ‘that’ or ‘which’ – sometimes one or the other will simply sound better in a sentence. Nevertheless, in some situations the choice of ‘that’ and ‘which’ leads to subtly different outcomes. For example:

(1)      Brian asked Gloria to pass the book that was on the chair.

(2)      Brian asked Gloria to pass the book which was on the chair.

If you add a comma to the sentence above (in the only feasible spot), it becomes:

(3)      Brian asked Gloria to pass the book, which was on the chair.

In (1) and (2), the meaning is effectively the same – Brian wants a specific book, the one that was on the chair (but possibly isn’t any more). In (3) the book is not identified specifically as the book that was on the chair; Brian asked Gloria for the book and she found it on the chair. But try replacing ‘which’ in (3) with ‘that’; it doesn’t work (why is, at least for me, one of those visceral grammar rules).

In general, choose ‘that’ when the idea you’re trying to convey is crucial to the meaning of the sentence. In (3) above, if the words following the comma were deleted the sentence would still make sense (Brian asked Gloria to pass the book). Choose ‘which’ to add extra, non-essential information to a sentence.

Campbell Aitken

• It’s vague.
  As an academic writer and editor I’m interested in clarity and accuracy, and ‘a number of’ doesn’t cut it.  I’ve heard and read ‘a number of’ used in conjunction with known quantities as small as two and as large as 10,000; hence, it’s not a very useful descriptor!  Think of the word ‘several’, which is generally accepted to mean quantities greater than two but not more than five; the Macquarie Dictionary defines it as ‘being more than two or three, but not many’.  ‘Several’ has a generally-understood meaning; ‘a number of’, in contrast, does not, so is vague and unhelpful.

• It’s lazy.
  The actual quantity (or at least an approximate range) of concepts or occasions or people involved in something or other is usually easily ascertained, but many writers limply trot out ‘a number of’ instead.  For example, the Herald Sun’s report of the 10th of February 2011 on a proposed flood reconstruction levy contains the sentence “A number of programs aimed at reducing carbon emissions would be cut …”  Two? Four?  20?  Several?  Dozens?

• It allows for deliberate obfuscation.
  Politicians and public servants are particularly fond of ‘a number of’, because it allows them to misrepresent a quantity which is actually quite small as quite large and vice versa.  For example: ‘a number of people were arrested’ … Note that the emphasis is also important, especially when spoken: ‘A number of protesters’ sounds like a lot more than a few, even though it may actually be three.  Beware ‘a large number of’!

• It’s wordy.
  As an academic editor, I often have to trim down a section of a grant application from 2.5 pages to two, cut 600 words to get a paper under 2,500, or reduce a paragraph to 200 characters.  ‘A number of’ is three words and 11 characters (including spaces), whereas ‘several’, ‘some’ and ‘many’ are one word each and four to seven characters long. I frequently find I can save a couple of lines per page by removing or replacing ‘a number of’.

• It’s usually completely unnecessary.
  There are a number of ways to improve your English expression … Remove the deadly phrase from the preceding sentence, and the sense isn’t changed in any meaningful way.  Even worse: “Police say a number of women and children were among the wounded” (ABC News Radio, 6.05am, 13/2/2011) – ‘women and children’ is already plural, so ‘a number of’ is utterly pointless.  This redundancy is extremely common.