There are certain grammar errors that are like chalk screeching on a blackboard to me. I cringe when I hear them, and it’s all thanks to Peggy Riley Hughes. Mrs. Hughes was my seventh and eighth grade English teacher, a veritable martinet who literally beat grammar into us by smacking a yardstick on her blackboard to drive home every point. Her blackboards were covered in dings and chips. Rumor had it she actually broke a few blackboards over the years, but I can’t confirm that since I never personally experienced any slate crashing to the floor while sitting in her classroom.
Today Mrs. Hughes would probably be hauled up in front of the school board for some of her less-than-PC teaching tactics. However, we did leave her classroom with a knowledge of grammar that far surpasses anything being taught in most schools today—if it’s being taught at all.
My biggest pet grammar peeve, thanks to Mrs. Hughes, is whenever I hear someone say, “for (insert name of person) and I.” I hear this misuse of grammar everywhere, and I read it constantly in novels. Ivy League educated doctors, lawyers, and high-ranking politicians (including our president) are guilty of this grammatical error.
For some reason people think they sound more educated when they use “I” instead of “me.” However, prepositional phrases are objective case, and “I” is a nominative pronoun. You can’t mix the two. A prepositional phrase must use an objective pronoun. It’s never correct to use “I” in a prepositional phrase. The correct form is, “for (insert name of person) and me.” Think about it, you wouldn’t say, “The cake is for I,” would you? No, you’d say, “The cake is for me.” So why would you say, “The cake is for Jenny and I?”
However, authors do have license to take certain liberties with their writing. When I write dialogue, I don’t necessarily write in perfectly formed sentences. People don’t always speak in perfectly formed sentences. We often speak in sentence fragments. Style sometimes dictates that sentence fragments also be used in narrative. In addition, our characters, depending on who they are, might not speak using perfect grammar. They, too, never took an English class taught by Peggy Riley Hughes. And that’s okay. We want our characters to sound real, not stilted.
However, grammar rules should only be broken for a good reason. Therefore, if English class is a distant memory, or you never had your own Peggy Riley Hughes, a grammar book should be part of your writer’s toolbox.
And with apologies to Mrs. Hughes, who would launch into a rant at a sentence ending in a preposition, my latest Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery is A Stitch to Die For. In my defense, though, I don’t remember being taught that I couldn’t have a title end with a preposition.
Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. ;-D
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USA Today bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Visit Lois/Emma at their website and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog. Follow everyone on Tsu, on Pinterest, and on Twitter @anasleuth. Sign up for her newsletter here.
A Stitch to Die For
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 5
The adventures of reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack continue in A Stitch to Die For, the 5th book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Lois Winston.
Ever since her husband died and left her in debt equal to the gross national product of Uzbekistan, magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack has stumbled across one dead body after another—but always in work-related settings. When a killer targets the elderly nasty neighbor who lives across the street from her, murder strikes too close to home. Couple that with a series of unsettling events days before Halloween, and Anastasia begins to wonder if someone is sending her a deadly message.
(Other books in the series include Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, Death by Killer Mop Doll, Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, and three mini-mysteries: Crewel Intentions, Mosaic Mayhem, and Patchwork Peril.)
I never know the correct terms for English grammar rules, but I learned them through learning French. Our junior high system kept adding new “advanced” courses and changed our schedules so many times that i ended up in the English lit section and never got the English grammar section in two years running! I grew to hate Pearl Buck because I had to read and analyze “The Good Earth” four times in two years. If it were not for French class, i wouldn’t know English grammar at all.
I eventually made up a whole bunch of mnemonics and different sayings to remember certain rules of English. This helped my college business students many years later, as they went through the school system without learning English grammar and sentence construction. We’d always end up with at least one entire class devoted to learning some tricks for knowing when to use…
Enough said – great post. Now if someone would find a way to let us write the comments without suffering through this pale gray, tiny font on a white background, I’d be delighted.
Claire, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment for Lois. You also zeroed in on one of my aggravations with the site. I haven’t figured out the pale gray, tiny font thing yet (still learning WordPress), but I’m working on it.
I think a lot of people don’t really reflect on the impact of their word choice. That includes use of case, tense and the like. But it does make a difference. Thanks for an interesting post.
Thanks for stopping by, Margot!
Lois, what a coincidence. Dorothy Hughes was a powerful English teacher my sophomore and junior years in high school. She was known to throw things across the room and had us all terrified the first week. My sophomore year, I was included in a class which included so many troublemakers that two teachers resigned the first six weeks of school. Mrs. Hughes arrived and terrorized us. I was shy and quiet, but even the rowdies were awed. Once she had her bluff in, she was the best English teacher I knew. I’m sorry that most of today’s students don’t receive grounding in the basics.
Caroline, I wonder if Peggy and Dorothy were related. They certainly sound like they must have shared some genes.
I admit to being guilty of saying “Mike and I” vs. “Mike and me.” But the cake example is a good way to show me the error of my ways…
Judy, have a made a convert to proper grammar? My work is now done. 😉
Oops! Typo! That should have read, “Have I made a convert…”
LOL! Thank you for posting this! My pet peeve is people who use “that” when they mean “who.” I too cringe at ending a sentence with a preposition, although I have to confess to doing so in office emails to avoid the inevitable comments from co-workers. I do it with a guilty conscience though and with the ghost of the formidable Miss Evelyn Hood whispering in my ear “this is something up with which I will not put!”
Wow, Elizabeth! Did you English teacher really utter that sentence? Amazing!
Unfortunately, emails and texting are killing the English language, but I have to admit I’m guilty of texting shorthand and will type UR instead of spelling out “your” and RU for “are you.”
Totally agree. I think that is why I can’t stand texting and only do it under duress! And yes, she did utter those words but I think she was quoting Winston Churchill
Like you, Lois, I remember teachers who insisted we learn correct grammar, although I don’t recall the blackboard bashing, thank God. But just in case Mrs. Hughes is reading this, hadn’t you better change your title to “A Stitch for which to Die?” 🙂
Allan, I’m going to claim artistic license and keep the title whether Peggy sees this or not. I have no idea if she’s even still alive. Maybe I should try Googling her.
Follow up to my comment yesterday–I did Google Peggy and sadly learned that she died last year after a prolonged illness.
All of my favorite teachers from grade school are gone now. I wish their teaching methods had survived so we didn’t have so many children today who can’t read or use proper grammar. Back then, in a small town school that taught grades 1-8, two classes per teacher, I learned to diagram sentences, follow rules of grammar, and love reading with all my heart.
Patricia, I entered first grade knowing how to read. The teacher called my mother into school one day and told her she shouldn’t allow me to go to the library any more because I was too far ahead of the rest of the class who were just learning to read Dick and Jane!
Thanks for being here today, Lois. I’m off to spread the word at all my usual stops.
Thanks for inviting me, Patricia!
Definitely, Alex, but times were a lot different then. Thanks for stopping by!
That teacher would be in big trouble today. Which is actually sad.
I think she’d let you get away with the preposition at the end in the title though.