A quick search on the Internet showed me that many companies have dropped the apostrophe altogether, but McDonald’s is not among these. It would have been easy to write Barclays’ marketing strategy, but unfortunately, that’s not the kind of change an editor is allowed to make.

I thought of using the old editor’s trick of rearranging the sentence, making “the marketing strategy of McDonald’s” but it seemed too awkward. Finally, I turned to my partner, who chides me from time to time on my obsession with correct grammar. She asked me “WWGGD?” (What would Grammar Girl do?) I told her that I was seriously considering leaving a question on Grammar Girl’s website.

But she also, slyly, asked me to explain the problem to her. I told her that since McDonald’s already had an apostrophe in the business name, but the business name was being used as a possessive noun, the dilemma was how to structure a possessive noun as a possessive noun when it’s already a possessive noun. If this doesn’t make sense to you, then you are on the right track to the solution.

I realized that the reason that McDonald’s has a possessive format is that the actual name of the restaurant chain is McDonald’s Restaurants. When we say McDonald’s we are dropping the noun that is the complement of the possessive noun. And there was the solution: the phrase should be McDonald’s Restaurants’ marketing strategy.

So thanks Grammar Girl, your help was channeled through my beautiful and inspiring partner.

The problem with this sentence is not really in the sentence itself, it’s in the English language. The subject “a professor” is singular; therefore the pronoun in the dependent clause must be singular as well. But English doesn’t tell us the gender of the professor. The traditional way to write this sentence is to use “he” for the dependent clause, and have the verb in the third person singular:

When a professor gives a quiz, he often catches his students by surprise.

However, many people object to this on grounds of sexism, so they write the sentence as you have, using “they” in place of a third person gender neutral term. But strictly speaking, that is not correct, according to accepted rules of English.

The alternative is to write in all possibilities:
When a professor gives a quiz, he or she often catches his or her students by surprise.

That’s a bit of a mouthful, and this solution, when used in an essay, could result in a paragraph chock full of “he or she” and “his or her” expressions. That can’t possibly be good writing.

I usually try to rearrange the sentence to remove the sexist bias, the gender ambiguity, and the awkwardness.

Students are often caught unawares by professors’ quizzes.

However, this sentence could be criticized for being in the passive voice.

You could simply change the number of the subject:
When professors give a quiz, they often catch their students by surprise.

This allows us to maintain the gender ambiguity without mixing plural and singular.

I think “were” reads better, but be prepared for opposition no matter which way you write it.

I refer you to this blog on English writing for a reference for the flexible option: http://www.englishrules.com/writing/2005/none-singular-or-plural/
The Grammar Book also gives us this flexible option: http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/subjectVerbAgree.asp

Another reader asks about graduation:

I occasionally become annoyed when I hear someone say that they are going to graduate college, instead of I am going to graduate from college. I hear this so often that I had to ask which is correct. My belief is that graduate from college is correct, but I am not always right. So, I am asking here.  Thank you.

You are absolutely correct, and you are not the only person to pose this question to me. The correct term is “to graduate from.” My favorite grammar podcast did a whole show on it. Here’s a link: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/graduated-from.aspx

Which and when?

I was asked:

Why do we sometimes use ‘WHICH’ for place in a relative clause, instead of WHERE
E.G. The town where i was born.
The town which is situated on….

“Which” and “where” answer two different questions. “Which” differentiates one from another. “Where” is specifically about location. Sometimes they overlap because we differentiate by location. For example “The town in which I was born” is the same as “The town where I was born.”

This is a good question to ask, because I see this error frequently in my editing work. When we see the plural “hearts” next to the verb “contain”, we think “Aha! A plural; therefore, I need to use a plural verb.” And we are wrong.

The phrase “of hearts” is an adjectival phrase. It tells us which type of “tiniest” we are talking about. We could write the sentence “Even the tiniest contain(s) secrets.” It would still be grammatically correct, but our readers would be left scratching their heads about what kind of tiny thing we are talking about. Is it treasure chests, houses, minds, or hearts?

Clearly “tiniest” is the subject of the sentence, not “hearts.” But is “tiniest” a singular or plural noun? This takes a little logic. In a superlative comparison, we are looking for the most extreme example. In the words of the old TV show Highlander, “In the end. There can only be one!” There is only one tiniest. Therefore the noun is singular.

Now that we’ve figured this out, we should see that “Even the tiniest of hearts contains secrets.”

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A reader from England asks me if I agree with the Guardian newspaper’s account of the Queen visiting Ireland. She asks:

The Queen has visited 129 countries in the course of the second longest reign in British history, from Iceland to Indonesia, but never has she ever set foot in the 130th: Britain’s nearest neighbour, the Republic of Ireland.

But never has she ever !!! This appeared in the Guardian this week. Never ever – I realise the use of never ever is expressing never strongly – is it good English??

Far be it for me, a mere colonial, to criticize the Guardian on its use of English; however, I’d have to agree that this is not well-written English, as one might expect from such a venerable newspaper. I’d have written “…never has she set foot in…”

I checked this in two other sources, my WhiteSmoke grammar checker, and the grammar checker built into MS Word, and neither of them flagged the “never has she ever,” although WhiteSmoke found “in the course of” to be excessively wordy. So I guess we’d have to concede that while not grammatically incorrect, it is certainly unattractive writing by my human standards.

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This brings me to problems of agreement with grammar software. As above I see WhiteSmoke flagged excessive wordiness. This is very helpful. I often use WhiteSmoke to double check my work. But WhiteSmoke doesn’t like repeated expressions. While this is something I agree with, it is not always wrong to repeat something, especially when it is the topic of the essay.

I have a few clients who are nursing students. One wrote an essay on Roseacea which used the word Roseacea in almost every paragraph. WhiteSmoke flagged each use as a “repeated expression.” Now, I know enough to ignore the flags, but WhiteSmoke provides a score for writing out of 10. It’s almost impossible to get 10 out of 10 by WhiteSmoke’s standards, but with the flags, my post-editing sample is rated at 8 out of 10.

What else keeps me from a perfect score? I assure you it is not my writing skill. WhiteSmoke also calculates an average sentence length. According to its ideal, it is something like 23 words per sentence. My clients often write longer complex sentences to express complex thoughts. After all they are writing at a college level and above. I don’t edit their work to dumb them down to WhiteSmoke’s standards.

Nonetheless, I do find WhiteSmoke to be a useful tool. I advertise it on my site because for some writers, it could be a very cost-effective choice. Whether it is or not is up to each individual to decide.

As far as MS Word’s built-in grammar checker goes, it flags the passive voice. I appreciate this because I can often make sentences more dynamic and it has helped me improve my standards of editing; however, the passive voice is so often used in academic writing that I wish there was an option to tell MS Word what type of writing I am editing, so it can flag appropriately.

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Becky in Ohio has a voting question: “No one can tell you (who,whom) to vote for.”

I absolutely agree. Voting is something to take seriously and a decision should be made after carefully considering the facts and sifting through the lies and distortions that are often flying around during an election campaign. I may not be able to tell you which candidate to vote for, but I can tell you clearly which pronoun to use.

To decide whether to use “whom” or “who”, we need to look at the verb and see whether this pronoun is doing the action or is the object of the action. Since the action of voting is being done by “you,” then clearly the “who/whom” is the object of the voting. That means we need to use “whom”.

No one can tell you whom to vote for.

However, don’t make the mistake of using “whom” everytime you have a pronoun that is not the main pronoun in the sentence. Watch the verb.

I don’t know who took my bike. — Here the “who” is doing the action.

I don’t know whom the car hit. – here “whom” is the object of the action.

Check out the page on my website where I discuss pronouns.

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A correspondent in Korea asks a series of questions:

1) He refuses to give up the rigors and promises of theology for a more amenable, even amiable,ethical Judaism.
Q. what does ” promises” in this sentence?
Promises means the benefits, or good results from. Perhaps it means, in this context, the promises of theology are the rewards from God for practicing strictly.
2.You had better have a chorus of exuberant male voices sing the lyrics in unison.

Q. what does ” exuberant” in this sentence?

“Exuberant” means “enthusiastic” or “having great emotion”.

3. The biological body and its given heterosexual proclivities are normalized as a justification for the cultural meanings of men and women

Q. what does ” normalized” and ” justification” respectively in this sentence?

This sentence seems to be saying that heterosexuality is assumed to be normal in order to justify the different treatment of men and women in culture. What the writer is saying is that the culture has different roles for men and women, and the cultural beliefs are that these different roles are proper because heterosexuality defines men and women differently.

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A school principal writing a request for funding from a community group asks:

Do I sign the note “With warm regard,” or “With warm regards”?

Answer: I think in this case the term “regard” means  more than “here’s looking at you”; it expresses emotions. So I would interpret it as a plural. So be generous; give them more than one regard. Use “regards.”

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Maryam in Syria is looking for her sandwich.

Q: In this sentence where is the object? Anna ate her cold chicken sandwich for lunch.

A: Clearly the sandwich is now inside Anna!

Seriously, the object is “sandwich.” Most of the rest of the sentence just describes the sandwich. The sentence would still be correct if it was “Anna ate her sandwich.” What did Anna eat? Clearly, “sandwich” is the object of “ate.”

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An English teacher (and I mean a real one, in England) asks:

I’m writing up an English assessment for my class and I’ve copied the following question from a text book: “Write a story in which a group of animals is dealing with conflict” I looked at it and then changed the ‘is’ to ‘are’, then changed it back again, thinking hmmm, it’s ‘A’ group, so it has to be singular. A colleague came by and said, “Hey, that should be ‘a group of animals ARE’ What do you think?

Always glad to help out a colleague, especially when it means showing up another colleague, I answered:

Your colleague is wrong.

The subject of the sentence is “group.” This is a singular concept. Therefore the verb should be in the singular form. Look at it this way: the phrase “of animals” is only an adjectival phrase describing which group you are talking about. The sentence would be perfectly acceptable if it was written: “A group is dealing with conflict.” The only problem is not grammatical; it is that we don’t know which group. We could say “An animal group is dealing with conflict,” putting the adjective before the noun instead of afterwards as an adjectival phrase. So, I hope you see that “is” is the correct verb to agree with “a group.”

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From Alaska comes the question:

How would you explain to a non-native speaker of English that the following sentence is not correct.
“I have gone home at 3:00pm yesterday”

The tense of “have been” is the present perfect. It is called the present perfect because it is something that began in the past, but is still true in the present. We use it in sentences like “I have been to Hawaii.” So if we said “I have gone home” it would mean we were still at home. Since the obvious meaning of the sentence is that we are talking about something that happened in the past and has no relationship to the present (I could be still at home, or I could be somewhere else now) we use the simple past. “I went home…” states an action (going) that occurred and was completed in the past.

Anyone can become a good cook if they tries?

My answer:

Your question exposes one of the basic flaws of the English language: we don’t have a third person singular gender neutral pronoun.

What does that mean? If the cook in the question is male, then we can write: Anyone can become a good cook if he tries.

If the cook in the question is female, then we can write: Anyone can become a good cook if she tries.

But we don’t know the gender of the cook in question!

The old-fashioned solution in the English language is to simply use the male pronoun when we don’t know the gender of the person. There are plenty of rule books supporting this.

But in these modern, politically correct, gender sensitive days, it seems insensitive.

Some people try to get around the lack of a third person singular pronoun by using the third person plural pronoun: Anyone can become a good cook if they try. But you see the problem in this sentence is that we have shifted from a single person at the beginning of the sentence to more than one person (they) at the end of the sentence.

One proposed solution is the hybrid word s/he. Anyone can become a good cook if s/he tries. It looks ugly to me and I don’t think many teachers are liberal enough with the language to accept that.

So, really the best solution is to revise the sentence to avoid the dilemma: One can become a good cook if one tries. (Seems a little upper class English to me; I bet you don’t hear that sentence often in Kansas.) With effort, anyone can become a good cook (or writer).

Here’s another question; this time it’s from New York.

Hi, Can you please explain which statements below are correct?

3 cupcakes is the limit per student.
3 cupcakes are the limit per student.

3 crayons is the most you may have.
3 crayons are the most you may have.

Think of it this way: The limit is three cupcakes; The most you may have is 3 crayons.

The subject of the first sentence is “limit” and of the second sentence is “most.” This is true in the way I’ve re-arranged the sentence, but also in the original form.

The verb has to agree with the subject. These subjects are singular, therefore the verb has to be “is”.

And finally, a question from way down under in Brisbane, Australia:

If using an abbreviation derived from a plural term, is a singular or plural verb used. Eg: the abbreviation for communication and information systems is CIS. Should I use: CIS is or CIS are? Is there a reference for this? (My boss will want one!!)

My gut told be to treat it as a whatever it is, so I would treat a singular abbreviation as singular and a plural abbreviation as a plural.

However, I did look for a reference for you and I learned: “As subjects, acronyms should be treated as singulars, even when they stand for plurals; therefore, they require a singular verb (“NIOSH is committed to . . .”).” This is from Pennsylvania State University in a technical writing resource.

Thanks for your enquiry, I learned something new.

I love getting these grammar questions. Your questions keep me on my toes and I often learn something new. Keep them coming!

Do I need a comma in this sentence?
Therefore not wanting to purchase it and have to battele with the assembly process.

Normally you would put a comma before ”therefore,”–however, this is not a sentence–it is a sentence fragment. Even if you had something before “therefore”, you would need a subect to make it a complete sentence. I’m making up some parts to fix the sentence, I hope you can see where it changes:

The instructions are too complicated for this product, therefore I don’t want to purchase it and have to battle with the assembly process.

And thanks for asking for grammar help with this letter. An effective complaint letter should be grammatically correct. You will get a better response from any company if they think you are an effective communicator. They may imagine you are capable of mounting a campaign against them, and in these days of social media, it doesn’t take much to spread the word about shoddy business practices.

How many assembly instructions have we battled with this past Christmas season. I was given a new office chair, for which I am immensely grateful. However, it did require assembly. The assembly instructions were in English and French, as per Canadian law. However, some parts of the instructions were in French only! Fortunately I do speak enough French to work my way through them, but that’s a pretty poor quality control process.

The chair was made in China, of course, and I’m guessing that most of the people making it didn’t speak either English or French. But I’d hope that someone from the company selling the chair in Canada would at least visit the factory at some point and examine the manufacturing process from beginning to end, including the assembly instructions.

As Shakespeare said: “All’s well that ends well.” And now I’m resting comfortably in my new chair, after doing battle with the assembly instructions.

Suggested changes are below in red. My comments are in italics.

The first error I see is the quotation marks. People often put quotation marks in for material they consider important. However, this is wrong. Quotation marks are used for a specific purpose: to show words taken from somewhere else. I eliminated quotation marks in the first sentence as there did not seem to be any grammatical need for them. If words are quoted for a particular reason, then the source of the quotation should be included for reference. Unfortunately scientific symbols do not transmit properly in this text mode, so I’ve had to make a few guesses.

The experiments were carried out on the 18th, 19th, and 20th of June 2005, using two receivers: Ashtech Z12 at the base station and Ashtech X-TREME at the rover station. The orientation of the base line with its length of 49.0 m is approximately north east with an azimuth of 41o.

Another problem with this first sentence is the use of a semi-colon. Use a semicolon for sentences with parallel structure; each side of the semi-colon is grammatically equivalent. Use a colon for to introduce a list or to emphasize a point.

Figure (1) demonstrates the location of both base and rover stations, and the harsh environment around the antennas, which are possible sources of background multi-path. For whole days, the base antenna remained centered and kept fixed, while the rover antenna kept fixed during the first two days. A sudden small movement was applied to it by amount of 2.7 cm ± 0.5 mm in the southeast direction on the third day after 40 minutes from first observation. The induced movement magnitude and direction are defined by terrestrial measurements using total station equipment. The data was collected for approximately 1.45 hours with an observation rate of 0.5 Hz for all data sessions (Faried, 2007).

The square brackets were changed to normal parentheses. We use square brackets to indicate where material might be changed slightly to fix grammar. An example might be to add a word [the] to a sentence to clarify. It acknowledges to the reader that a small change has been made to quoted material. The reader can go and find the original if he is concerned that the meaning has been changed. For citations, use parentheses with the name of the author and the date separated by a comma. (This may vary depending on the reference style.)

In this paper, the direction of movement is defined precisely by terrestrial measurement as mentioned above, as it is the key factor to assess the movement magnitude correctly. In the real environment, the direction of deformation could be guessed, based on the structural behavior (for example: a dam deformed in a lateral direction due the water load and so on).

The passive voice is used in scientific writing, as it is in much other academic writing. I have yet to find a software solution that takes into account the use of passive voice in academic writing. When I edit material, I often run it through MS Word’s grammar checker as a last check before I return the work and it consistently flags passive voice constructions as incorrect. However, these are absolutely correct in most cases. It is especially true in scientific writing that the writing should be done to eliminate the personal. I am aware that there is a shift and that some writing is being accepted into scientific journals that is more active, as long as it sticks to the principle that all steps in the process are described so they can be reproduced. I’ve also used WhiteSmoke’s grammar checker, and it also flags passive voice constructions. In the end, I think there is no substitution for a real live editor.

Answer: Since you live there you should be able to find out what the common practice is pretty easily. But seriously, it’s perfectly acceptable to use the abbreviation “St.” for the name of a city or even to refer to a saint in your writing. Most cities named after saints use the abbreviation in their names. Some examples are: St. Paul, St. Bruno, St. Moritz.

The abbreviation for a female saint is “Ste.” which gives us the name “Sault Ste. Marie”, known as “The Soo” because that’s how you pronounce “Sault.” I wonder if that word, meaning “jump” in French, relates to the portage, which would have been necessary during the days that voyageurs paddled their way into the interior of the continent past this connection between Lake Huron and Lake Superior.

But who can tell me why there’s a city named “St. Cloud?” Is there a saint named Cloud? I do have a bee in my bonnet about place names. I live in Gibsons, which is named after a fellow named Gibson. It was originally Gibson’s Landing, which makes sense because it was a place to land owned by Mr. Gibson. But somehow in the ages we dropped the “Landing” which would have left “Gibson’s” (I see many a sign with this on it) but of course the grammarians like me couldn’t live a possessive noun without a possessive complement, so the apostrophe was dropped and we have simply “Gibsons.”

Now for the explanation. The word “Americans” is an adjective describing the pronoun “us.” It defines which group of people “us” refers to. You might not wonder about the grammar of the sentence “Iran should show more respect to us,” but you might wonder about which group of people “us” refers to. Should they show respect to Americans? Or just people from New York? Or self-proclaimed grammar gurus? The adjective clarifies.

As always, we use “we” as a subject, and “us” as an object. The phrase “us Americans” is an object complement to the verb “respect.”

Now, as a Canadian, I can’t use the phrase “us Americans” under any circumstances.  And I think the entire world should give more respect to us Canadians. I wouldn’t venture to comment on who in the world you Americans should give more respect to.