Okay, I tried to start this thread a few days ago but then the entire board stopped working. So here I go again!

There have been a few times on the boards here where people have nitpicked each other's grammar (well, usually my grammer, but that's beside the point). There doesn't seem to be a place on NC for grammer-related issues, so I thought I'd start one here. Now I had two really great questions to raise to kick things off, but then I promptly forgot one of them. D'oh!

But the other one is still fresh in my memory banks, so here goes:

Which of the following sentences is grammatically correct?

"The car runs good."

"The car runs well."

I think most people would flock towards the second sentence, but they'd be wrong. Here's the problem: I've forgotten the rule that explains why. Two of my friends, both grammer-philes, managed to spend the better part of a weekend debating this topic, before finally coming to a conclusion involving a "subjuntive adjective clause" or something like that. I'd love to be able to remember the applicable rule here. Can anyone help?

Most people would flock to the second sentence because it is the correct one.

Good is an adjective. And is only used as an adverb in informal slang.

Well is usually an adverb, though it can function as an adjective when following a linking verb or denoting a state of health.


So what you have to determine is what good/well is intended to modify, car or runs. The only way that good would be applicable would be for it to modify car. But runs is not a linking verb. So the word is meant to modify runs, making it an adverb, making it well.

I know of no special rules that would allow you to use good in this case.

Funnily enough, under good in The American Heritage College Dictionary, 3rd Edition, is this usage note:

"Good is properly used as an adjective with linking verbs such as be, seem, or appear: The future looks good. It should not be used as an adverb with other verbs: The car runs well (not good)."

Oh NO! How will they make Frasier now??

I think most people would flock towards the second sentence, but they'd be wrong. Here's the problem: I've forgotten the rule that explains why. Sparrow

I think you actually faked yourself out here. It happens to the best of us. In a similar situation, there was a question on a test once, where I had to choose between the words "himself" and "hisself." Since I never used the word "hisself" nor had ever heard anyone else ever use it (I'd led a very sheltered life up to that point.), the question didn't make any sense to me, unless it was to show I'd been using the wrong word all along. So I faked myself out and selected the wrong answer even though I always, even in the most casual conversation used the correct word.

In this case, I think it was in the choice of the example sentence that you went wrong.

"Good" is an adjective; "well" is normally an adverb, but it can also be an adjective meaning "in good health." This can lead to ambiguity when "well" follows a verb which, depending on context can either be active or reflexive, such as "feel."

"I feel well" can mean, depending on context "My sense of touch is acute" or "I am healthy." It has become acceptable, though not entirely accepted to substitute "good" for "well" in this situation to attempt to avoid that ambiguity. This is probably the crux of your friends' argument. And the sentence they were debating was probably "I feel good," rather than "the car runs good."

Was Grammer drinking too much eggnog?

As for me and grandpa... we believe

Well, TomM, actually the sentence in question was the car runs good/well.

And I'm glad somebody got the joke.

Speling Got Run Over By a Raindear?



Shouldn't the title be "Grammar Was Run Over By A Reindeer"?

Sorry Speling,

The board title makes fun of the third most annoying song ever written which uses "got". Misspelling in puns and other bad jokes is not supposed to set of your alarms.

You mean "off," right?

And, yeah, was is grammatically sound, but the title is in reference to the song. Just like it's supposed to be grammar, but I assumed Sparrow did that on purpose, just like you purposely misspell speling in your handle.

We shall look into this, er, song, and update our records accordingly. We apologise for any misunderstanding.

Speling,

Just be glad there were no video cameras.

Okay, next question: are double words ever appropriate?

I can think of two examples of this...

1) "that that" as in, "She had said that that car was her favorite." Here, the double comes from combining the phrase "she had said that" with what she had said, namely, "that car was her favorite." I'm rather sure that the first "that" can be deleted, because it still makes sense to say "She had said that car was her favorite." Agree? Disagree?

2) "had had" Consider "She had had three drinks by the time we got there." First of all, this makes me glad she no longer has her car . This time the situation is different, because by removing one the "had"s slightly changes the sentence, making it "she had three drinks by the time we got there." Now, the original sentence seems to be in a slightly different tense- it's more like someone telling a story. The latter is more like someone writing a newspaper article. But... does that make it right?

Uh, apparently my clipart tag isn't working. It was supposed to be a grin.

That that is, is; that that is not, is not. Is that it? It is. - Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Yes, both of those cases are grammatically sound. But why limit it to just double instances? Try these on for size:

He said that that that that that man used was wrong.

John, while Jim had had had, had had had had. Had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

Thanks, Darth. I was trying to remember how many "had"s there were in that sentence. Seriously!

Or what about this one?

Teacher: "What is wrong with this sentence?"

*Writes* I live with my MotherandFather.

Pupil: "You have to put a space between Mother and and, and and and Father."

I remember a teacher at school telling us that one and I always thought it was cool. I never heard the had had one though! That's good too!

Taken from The Onion horoscopes

Capricorn: (Dec. 22—Jan. 19)
The ghost of E.B. White will appear to you and exact revenge for every extraneous comma you've ever used.

I saw a joke in a magazine that went something like this:*

A college English professor was lecturing his students about the use of negative and positive words in sentence structure. Like mathematics, where two negatives can make a positive, "not no," though grammatically unacceptable, would mean "yes." He went on to point out that in English, the reverse did not hold true; no two postives could be used to make a negative.
From the back of the lecture hall, a student quipped, "Yeah, right!"

*Or is that "I saw in a magazine a joke that went something like this:"?

Yeah, I know, I misspelled "positives."

CR, Is "I" you or are you quoting someone?

I found a very helpful section on grammar at "Ask Dr. Dictionary". Also helpful is the Chicago Manual of Style FAQ.

Both sites will not answer everything, but they have been a help at work at times, because the office where I work has NOTHING in the way of grammar support. You think people at Johns Hopkins with post-graduate degrees would know how to write properly, but nooooooooo...

Blue: "I" was me; I was retroactively quoting myself, had I gotten the statement correct in the first place. Confused? So am I.

Brain...hurts...must...eat...chocolate...

I saw the grammar board, but I was on the abortion board (and I'm usually somewhere else when I run into it [not always the abortion board, but one of the many other boards {the boards here at nitcentral}]).

Should I have aborted the above? If abortion is murder and non-abortion leads to murdering the English language, is there a difference?


Oh, the original question was where do I put the punctuation in a sentence that ends with parenthesis (which end with a different sort of punctuation and can go on for such a long time that you can forget you are in a parenthetical expression.)? (Maybe I should just use footnotes and be done with it

If the parenthetical is a part of the sentence (such as in this instance), then the punctuation goes after the parenthetical.

However, that doesn't apply when the parenthetical is its own spearate sentence. (Then you put it inside the parentheses.)

Thanks Darth Sarcasm. (Now I just got to decide if "" is punctuation.)

I actually like when you're typing the emoitons out and thus can use a smiley as the closing parentheses (of course, maybe I'm too much of a nerd ;-)

If we agree with the 'nerd' label, does that constitute an ad hominim attack?

I was wondering about a post I made. I was complimenting someone (Darth?) on a post, saying

"Well said. And pleasantly succinctly, I might add."

Should that have been "pleasingly succinctly"? Meaning that I was pleased that he made a succinct post, rather than he said it in a pleasing way (not that he didn't ).

Not when one wears the title of Nerd with pride.

GEEK REPRESENT!

Thanks, guys. I was having an argument with a co-worker over some wording - he didn't think it sounded right. So I printed out a couple of those sentences - had had and and and - and showed it to him. (Oh, look, there's one right there. ;-) I think he got the message.
Of course, I like the chocolate message. I'm tempted to use that as a screen saver or on my desktop.

This is not a music board because it is a common saying.

I want wish you a Merry Christmas, from the bottom of my heart.

Is that like the bottom of the barrel where the sediment lies? (When I say I love you, baby, I mean that with all the dregs of my love!)(Ladies do not go into palpitations about that.)

Blue Berry, when I was in college, my friends told me about a culture where the liver is the organ that holds love. Therefore, they said, the biggest compliment there would be, You make my liver quiver.
And you think a heart is strange.

Not exactly a grammar, but a language question:

when referring to somebody who communicates with signs or the like, instead of using voice, which would fit better: to speak or to talk? Or neither? I've looked in my Hornby and Collins, but they seem to contradict each other somewhat: Hornby says that "speak" can also mean to convey ideas not necessarily in words, and "talk" is to express in words, have the power of speech.
Collins says that "speak" is to make verbal utterances, utter words, while "talk" is also to communicate by other means than words.
So how would a native speaker use these words? Or neither - just "communicate"? (sounds a bit too formal for me.)

Usually the first two or three references we usually just make a verb out of the word "sign." After that, the message takes precedent over the medium and many people just start using the word "say" (properly declined) just as they do for informal written messages.

Thanks for your help.

Another language questions for the natives:

What is a kneebiter?

I couldn't find it in my Collins or Mirriam-Webster, and from the content I'm a bit unsure if it's complimentary as sb. who rushes at others and bites them in the knee (like Pratchett's dwarves) or derogatory as sb. who bites himself in the knee with whining/humbling. Or another explanation.

I don't know the term "knee-biter," but assuming that it is related to "ankle-biter" it would be a friendly-but-derogatory, or insulting-but-cutesy way to designate a child (Ankle-biters are usually infants still crawling around on all fours, so Knee-biters would then be small toddlers who are assumed to be about knee-high on the average adult.)

Ask Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged

Seriously, I expect it's a British turn of phrase, based on its use in the Hitchhiker's trilogy (see "Life, the Universe and Everything").

Well I have not got the foggiest, and it's not in the Oxford English Dictionary (so by definition it does not exist. ;)) Probably Adams made it up...in what context did you see it, Constanze?

I don't remember it from the "Life, Universe ..." book, but then I don't know if I read the original or only the translation.

I saw it on the zompist page review of the Hitchhiker's movie.

---

Quote:

The characters try hard to be likeable and to relate to each other and don't quite succeed. This too may be Adams's fault. Having just re-read the books, I gotta say: Arthur really is a kneebiter, Zaphod is an ass-hole, and Trillian has very little role besides "somewhat more sensible person than the rest except when it comes to Zaphod".

---

In LTU&E, Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged insults Arthur by telling him, "You're a jerk. A complete kneebiter".

In that case I think it's just the reviewer showing how he's a Hitchhiker fanatic by throwing in Adamsisms. I have no idea what Adams was thinking for the derivation of that insult.

The last word in this sentence is mispeled.

Let's hear it for Danvers High School in Boston, Mass.! Meep.

Meep.

What happened to Freedom of Speech?

We haven't joined the New World Order yet and our freedoms are being raped already

I don't think our freedoms are endangered by one principal at one school. Chill out.

If students were harassing a teacher by saying 'meep' all the time, the school should have made a rule about harassment or disrespect, not banning a meaningless word. That just makes the principal look like a meep.

The principal said 'meep' in his e-mail. Uh-oh...I think he needs to be suspended until he learns his lesson.

Agreed. I didn't post this as an example of our rights being eroded. I posted it as an example of bureaucratic stupidity.