Headline - woman talking about her sister says she ....

Woman talking about her sister says she ...   
    You can see the problem. Is the sister talking about herself or the sister?
 
     What the solution to this problem. I use names. 'Amanda, talking about her sister, (model/suicide) Julie, says Julie was dieting/self-harming...'
    'Suicide Julie's sister, Amanda, says, "I was dieting/self-harming ..." '
    I have taken this from a newspaper headline. To make it more cheerful for myself and you I'll make up another example:
   Woman talking about her sister says she made bride's wedding dresses for dolls
   Presumably the bride made her own wedding dress. Or was the dress made by the sister? Did they both make wedding dresses for dolls as children? Did the older sister, the bride, inspire the younger one? Or did the older sister inspire the younger bride?
   Bride's sister says she
   Same problem. We don't know who 'she' refers to, the bride or the sister.
   The reader expects she to refer to the most recent noun, the sister. That's what most grammar books would teach, that the clause modifies the preceding and nearest noun.
   But headline writers and others so often get the sentence structure wrong that the reader has to read back or on to check.

Angela Lansbury - author.
See books on lulu.com   

The fox using the phone! - Misplaced Clauses

Picture of the week in  Thursday March 13 2014 edition of the Observer
getwestlondonco.uk
to simplify and paraphrase it, 'Sophia ...snapped this (fox) using her mother...'s iPhone' .
On first reading I thought the fox was playing with an iPhone left in the garden. Seeing no phone in the photo, on second reading of the text I realise it's Sophia - using her mother's iPhone, snapped this fox.
The problem is the misplaced clause, which modifies the subject, has been added as an afterthought at the end of the sentence where the phrase seems to the reader to apply to the nearest noun which is the object of the sentence.
Subjects start sentences. 

 

Two foxes in the back garden in London. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Why Correct English Is Necessary

Why does correct English matter?
by Angela Lansbury

I am responding to a letter I saw on Teletext which said that another writer was wasting time nit-picking over grammar when we had major financial problems to solve.

1 In times of financial crisis we need better-paid jobs. Recruitment companies use correct spelling to help select shortlist candidates, for jobs in IT, maths, security, secretarial, solicitors’ and government offices. In times of crisis you may be made redundant and need a job of any kind.

2 It’s only five per cent of the marks in your A level, O level or GCSE, but that can make a difference between top grade for the university of your choice. Five marks for correct spelling makes the difference between pass or fail - getting into any course at all.

3 Correct spelling tells me whether I have an email from my online bank or a scam from somebody who is unemployable and will take my money. Recognizing a mis-spelled company name saves me from scams sending viruses which crash my computer.

4 An inaccurately worded will means the money goes to the wrong person or so much as spent on legal fees contesting the will that nothing is left. Correct wording can save me tax and time.

5 Incorrect or unclear, or ambiguous instructions mean customers can set fire to the microwave, injure themselves with a reversing needle on a sewing machine, or sue your company so you lose time, money and jobs. Correct wording means instead of leaving my mobile phone untouched, or taking it back for a refund, I use it and recommend it. So the shop makes more money.

6 Easy to understand language sells me an Apple MacBook laptop at twice the price I would have paid for yet another machine using only Microsoft Word.

7 Accurate wording saves lives in court. Bentley was hanged because the words, ‘Let him have it,’ were judged by the jury to have instructed him to kill the policeman, not to hand over the gun.

8 A Japanese man approaching a house to ask the way was shot dead in the USA because he did not understand the householder’s instruction ‘Freeze!’ A life would have been saved if the householder had used the less slangy and ambiguous word, ‘Stop!’

9 Hospitals regularly kill people normal patients and those on experimental programmes who are given overdoses. This could be prevented if doctors and nurses double-checked the seemingly less important little things, handwriting which is readable, and the correct, safe maximum dose.

10 Lives are lost on motorways because people parking broken down cars on the hard shoulder are ploughed into. The drivers’ minds are on the major problem - getting the broken car started, and they forget minor details like setting up the warning triangle. If parents insist on children taking care of all the details, in a crisis children and later adults will continue to do so.

11 Regarding losing money, a dress shop can order ten times the number of dresses needed by specifying the numbers of each colour and style, but not specifying the total number of dresses. Ten times the number of ships - not checking the number of zeros. In the army you lose lives if you send ten times the number of troops, or one tenth, not tallying the boots, bullet-proof vests, weapons and vehicles to the number of troops. A British cheque requires the number of pounds paid to be written in numbers and letters.

12 Battles are lost and wars are started because of inaccurate telegrams. It is said that countless lives were lost, that WWII was started, because the Japanese misunderstood a ambiguously worded telegram which appeared to say Japan could go ahead with an invasion of another country and America would not intervene.

13 Sentences should always be positive. Especially in a crisis. For example, climbers are taught that when they see a falling boulder, they should not shout, 'Don't look up!' The other climber would instinctively look up, not hearing the negative. Instead use the positive and focus on what should be done. 'Look down!'

14 Similarly teachers should use positive instructions. I spent an hour in an Apple MacBook one to one lesson and lost all my work. As I went to save it the teacher started to say, 'Don't  ...' I immediately moved my fingers from the 'save' icon to 'don't save' and lost everything. She should have said, 'Save it!'

(Citation needed.  Can you help make this more accurate?)

Angela Lansbury's 100 rules of Grammar and Spelling - the first ten

SPELLING

The first ten spelling rules

1 Your and you're.

2 Add s for plurals (sometimes es) but apostrophe then s i.e. 's  means belonging to.

3 There and their.

4 Discreet and discrete.

5 I before E except after C.

6 His hers and its are possessives. It's = it is (contracted).

7 Use a spellchecker.

8 Use a dictionary.

9 Find out your top ten errors and correct them.

10 When you copy out a word, look back at the original to check you've copied it correctly.

The first ten grammar rules.

1 If I were you. (Was is past.)

2 Many and few, or few - things or people you can count. 

I see Tesco supermarkets are changing their checkout signs. Hurray!

3 Clauses should sit next to the noun they describe. Don't put a descriptive clause about the subject of a sentence at the end of the sentence as an afterthought. You end up with nonsense and impossible events such as the team of policeman who shot a dead man firing machine guns. Clearly he wasn't. They were.

4 Start a sentence with the subject, not a pronoun such as he, her, it, they. I know that newsreaders start with pronouns nowadays. Somebody told me the programme editors are trying to compete with quiz programmes. I don't watch quiz programmes. I turn off the news if I don't hear a subject, just a guessing game.

I'll be updating this until I reach 100.

The next 10

1 Grammar

The letter a appears twice. GRAMMAR. (Not grammer!) GRAMMAR. All the letters appear twice except the initial g.  G RAM MAR. Good grammar.

PRONUNCIATION

1 CE is pronounced S

2 GE is pronounced J

3 Holy - not holly. The holy land. Oh! O as in home. (not as in hot). 

Holey - having holes.

Second ten spelling rules

1 Check surnames

Check the spelling of surnames. Keep consistent.

Einstein (No EInsteint)

Tony (Not Tonny)

Buckingham Palace

2 Check for typos and auto correct. Words which are correct may be inappropriate. 

A girl wrote to my husband> If you are interested, please message me.

Unfortunately, she changed the e to a. Her message read. If you are interested, please massage me.

The Way The English Ask Questions

I asked my Tamil pupil to bring a dictionary and she brought Danish-English because she lived in Denmark. Most disconcerting. Like the Japanese living in Wales speaking with Welsh accents.

Yesterday had an interesting conversation about language with other friends.
The Tamil language pre-dates Sanskrit and Tamils say it is the oldest language (at least in India). The Tamils speaking in English say, What I can do for you?

QUESTIONS
In English, we reverse the subject and verb to indicate a question. My Tamil speaker thought that was superfluous and asked why it was necessary if you already have a question word at the start of the sentence.

I admit it is easier in any language, for children and foreigners, just to stick the question word in front of a sentence. I think the Malaysian language does the same.

I tried to justify English. I maintained, "Using two ways of expressing the negative makes the sentence clearer, especially if you only switch on and start listening mid-sentence and miss the first word."

The extra way of showing the sentence is a question is also helpful to listeners when the speaker is on radio or TV with a large audience or when you have an audience of one speaking to foreigners or those hard of hearing.

Why English Teachers Are Important

A friend sent me this, copied from the Internet.

I read a longer version of something similar, if I remember rightly, in a New Zealand newspaper, which took the letters, originally written in the previous century, from a recently published book.

The New Zealand version showed two letters from a girl whose parents had told her to write a letter breaking off with her sweatheart. Before she posted the letter she added a last comment - Read every other line - which reversed the meaning. The young women eloped with her sweetheart and they settled in Australia.


Why English Teachers Are Important:

The Words are the same. Only the punctuation changes...

Dear Thomas, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men.I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours? Maria <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Dear
Thomas,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men,I  yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours,

Maria

An amusing letter, illustrating the use of commas, paragraphs, spacing, changes the meaning. Apparently it was a real letter. 

Start with a capital letter

   I teach English. I receive a lot of emails from strangers. Many are sales letters. I live with an invisible hat on my head labelled 'English teacher'.

   If I can't see any other way of identifying one sex-mad writer from another, I have a marginal preference for people who start a sentence with a capital letter.

   Most people grasp this around the age of nine. At least the ones I teach do.

   Obviously some of the people on the Internet have different skills and talents. I looked at some profiles on the Internet earlier. Many of them admit: 'Don't know what to write.' 'Can't be bothered to write.'

   In recent years the UK education system went for the philosophy that spelling and grammar are not important. Now teachers, employers and government policy-makers find that there is a rocketing percentage of people who cannot read or write at all.

When I employ a plumber or electrician, I want a quotation (money, not words) in writing. 

A sentence starts with a capital letter. Sentences were not born with capital letters. Capital letters to start and full stops to end were for the benefit of printers and readers. In the early days of literacy, when not everybody could read, before universal free education,storytellers would read aloud. Even Dickens was reading aloud to audiences. 

Nowadays reading aloud is a novelty. 

Early writing, still in Arabic and Hebrew, starts on the right. Your right hand would naturally start on the writer. If you are writing in slate or wax that is fine. But if you are writing in pen and ink your hand smudges what you have just written. So the direction of writing was changed.

   Universities are complaining that graduates are turning in theses which are not fit to print. You have to start with the basics. Construct a sentence well and you can focus on your meaning and aim in life and convey it to the reader.

   In my opinion if you want to convey that you are a reliable person, then a sentence starting with a capital letter is a good start.


Angela Lansbury, author and English tutor