And then I wrote...
by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"
... that I was one of those students who really enjoyed diagramming sentences and showing off my skill at the blackboard. Remember blackboards?
But it has been 70 years or so since I really knew the terminology, so a couple years ago, when one of the booksellers whose catalogs I get offered a book on diagramming, I ordered it. I was informed it was not available and was out of print. I wondered at the time if that was because it is not being taught anymore, or maybe the rules have changed.
Radio and television almost have me convinced that the language skills I learned no longer apply.
The day of that shooting at the baseball practice, one network ran a crawl on screen that read “capitol police were on sight” when it happened. I kept waiting for someone to correct that to “on site” but it never happened. Doesn’t anybody at the network read those things? Or don’t they know any better.
I’m afraid I suspect the latter.
Without really intending to, I heard in short order radio talk which might confirm that.
One was an example of putting the accent on the wrong “sylLAble.” Citing talk of tax REform, rather than reform.
Two others are more familiar, that is, agreement of verb and noun.
“A wide variety of plans are available.” Variety is the subject noun. So it takes a singular verb, a wide variety IS available.
“Here’s Pat and Ron.” That’s two people. Here’s is short for “here is” when here are is correct for two people.
Also after that baseball shooting, I cringed when Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe suggested guns were at fault, and that “93 million” Americans are killed by guns. That figure went unchallenged for several questions until one reporter timidly suggested it “sounded a little high.” The governor repeated the figure again, then corrected it to 93 people.
Once again, something I heard on an old time radio program on public radio caught my attention. Between songs, Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, broke a ring of folks who had been illegally smuggling aliens from Mexico ... in 1953! I was a high school graduate and a university student that year, and I have no memory of that being a problem.
By the time this gets into print, we will have experienced the day with the most daylight of the year.
Some birds apparently can’t even wait until sunrise to start that day. I heard a robin start singing at 3:45 a.m. this morning! Bird songs at that hour are not uncommon and are only slightly annoying. Sort of like babies crying in church, maybe.
