I'm sure many people will know this old joke:
Teacher (to class): You must never start a sentence with the conjunction "because".
Johnny: Why?
Teacher: Because...
(This is actually a silly rule; the important thing is to make sure such a beginning is part of a clause that is subordinate to an independent clause.)
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Anyway, my good friend Nick offered me this gem below after reading my dangling-participle tirade (Sept 20 blog entry). He claims it's all about the grammar thing but I suspect he also knows I'll hit 65 in a few years' time.
Why you shouldn't end your sentences with a preposition
On his 65th birthday, a man got a gift certificate from his wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a native medicine man living on a nearby reservation who was rumoured to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction.
After being persuaded, he drove to the reservation, handed his ticket to the medicine man, and wondered what he was in for.
The old man handed a potion to him, and with a grip on his shoulder, warned, "This is a powerful medicine. You take only a teaspoonful, and then say ’1-2-3.’ When you do, you will become more manly than you have ever been in your life, and you can perform as long as you want.”
The man was encouraged. As he walked away, he realised he needed to ask a very important follow-up question. So, he turned and asked, “How do I stop the medicine from working?”
“Your partner must say '1-2-3-4,’ ” the old man responded, “but note also that when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon.”
The man was very eager to see if the medicine worked. He went home, showered, shaved, took a spoonful of the medicine, and then invited his wife to join him in the bedroom.
When she came in, he took off his clothes and said, “1-2-3!” Immediately, he was the manliest of men.
His wife was very excited and began throwing off her clothes... and then she had to ask him, “What was the 1-2-3 for?”
Moral of this story: We should never end our sentences with a preposition, because we could end up with a dangling participle!
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Speaking of dangling participles, I found one more in my collection (opening sentence below):
But the writer above redeemed himself later with the correct phrasing: "
As an American, I am proud of my country and fly my flag..."
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Here are some other "language malfunction" examples that could have been better crafted, that is, with grammatical correctness and/or clarity in mind:
I've blogged on this example above before. You "double up" in laughter; or in pain, say, from a stomach ache.
Different
to the rest of us? Different
from! Word Anti-Doping Agency? Truly, a Freudian slip.
Staying on sports news, what is a straight jacket? The correct term is "straitjacket". (Isn't it ironic that the header above says "Watch the words"!
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/straight.html
I suspect many people will not be able to spot the error above. A strategically-placed comma is needed to make sense of the sentence "... by 2030, Indonesia will surpass Germany and Britain to be the world's seventh-largest economy after China, the United States...". ie:
"... by 2030, Indonesia will surpass Germany and Britain to be the world's seventh-largest
economy, after China, the United States...".
Otherwise, the sentence should be recast -- correctly if apparently oddly -- as:
"... by 2030, Indonesia will surpass Germany and Britain to be the world's largest economy after China, the United States...".
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Remember the Oxford comma? It's really useful. In the text below, PM Lee is quoted as listing out four things that Singapore needs to do. But without the missing Oxford comma (as is the case here), I found it hard to figure out all the four items he listed:
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I think many people will, by now, be wondering why English is such a minefield. But, really, one can have fun with wordplay. So, I'll end here with this mischievous headline below:
