More typos are on the menu, and there’s pecan pie for dessert

Whatever 'plump' is, I want some.
A record player
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Clothes don’t make the man, and the apostrophe doesn’t make a plural.

“Cobblestone’s” has given me heartburn for years, and I’m partially to blame. I was a business reporter for the York Daily Record in the 1990s and wrote about Cobblestone’s when it was in the planning stages.

I should have beseeched the owners to remove the apostrophe. Grammar can be such a bumpy ride.

Screen shot 2014-02-22 at 6.15.33 PMSpeaking of which, potholes aren’t the only scourge of this headline. There’s also the matter of subject-verb agreement, on which the Boston Globe bottoms out.

“Potholes” is not the subject; rather, it is the object of the preposition “of.” The subject is “scourge,” which requires the plural “plagues.”

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Verb tense gives the Weather Channel a devil of a time in the interrogatory headline above.

“Swam” is the past tense of swim, but implied in this headline is the helping verb “have,” which requires the verb form “swum,” as in: “Have you ever swum in the devil’s swimming pool?”

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Trouble with the curve? More like with the spelling.

Someone whiffed on the second spelling of “training” on this chalkboard at Carmen Fusco Pro Baseball & Softball Academy in Etters, York County. Looks like someone needs a little more time in the minors.

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Whatever “plump” is, I want some. And lots of it.

This menu from Brownstone Cafe in Middletown has a comma where one is not needed. One use of a comma is to separate two adjectives when “and” can be inserted between them. However, one would not say “plump and Carolina pecans.”

I believe it is the difference between coordinate adjectives and cumulative adjectives as described here.

Dig in.

 

About the Author

Neal Goulet

Neal Goulet, Owner
Having been a journalist, Neal knows writing, grammar and style, as well as the language and movements of a newsroom.
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