Let's Get Verb-al

So yesterday I wrote about subject and object--today I will talk about verbs. Pretty elementary, but bear with me. No good grammar discussion can occur without going over the basics. Besides, there are so MANY different kinds of verbs that it makes ones head spin! Add that to the fact that in order to be a complete sentence, every sentence needs a verb, and you can see why this needs covering.
Today we will talk about the basic, simple, garden variety action verbs. Easy peasy, right?
Well, kind of.
You have your basic, straightforward action verbs: jumped, kicked, hit, (wow these are all violent! Think I live with small kids or what?). Action verbs are easy work. They are easily distinguishable. They stand out. They breath life into a sentence. They make it move. They MAKE the sentence.
Verbs also have another important aspect to them--they have to fit the subject, as well as the time frame, and this is where the trouble begins.

Simple Tenses

• Maude jumps out of the tree. (Present tense.)
• Maude jumped out of the tree. (That wasn't so bad, right? Maude exited the tree in the past.)
• Maude will jump out of the tree to get a cookie. (Future. She will be jumping, but right now she is lounging.)

So those forms are pretty straight forward. Subject (Maude) performing an action (jumping) with the verb giving a sense of time of when the action happens (now, yesterday, tomorrow). Seems pretty straight forward...especially with action verbs.
Then we start getting fancy with the tenses.

Progressive Tenses

• Maude is jumping out of the tree. (Right now! She is moving right now! Present Progressive. This tense is formed by using am/is/are with the verb form ending in -ing.)
• Maude was jumping out of the tree when she spotted the cat. (Past progressive. Action was occurring when something else happened. She was jumping when she saw the cat. This tense is formed by using was/were with the verb form ending in -ing.)
• Maude will be jumping out of the tree as soon as the bee comes close. (Future progressive. She will be doing something. This tense is formed by using will be or shall be with the verb form ending in -ing.)

Perfect Tenses

• Maude has climbed the tree since they moved in. (Present Perfect. Her behavior began in the past and continues into the present. This tense is formed by using has/have with the past participle of the verb.)
• By the time Maude arrived at the house, Grandma Rose had disappeared. (Past perfect. The tense describes an action that took place in the past (Maude arrived) before another past action(Grandma Rose disappeared). This tense is formed by using had with the past participle of the verb.)
• By the time Maude makes it to seventh grade, she will have solved a mystery. (Future perfect tense. It describes an action (Maude making it it to seventh grade) that will occur in the future before some other action(solving a mystery). This tense is formed by using will have with the past participle of the verb.

Still with me? My eyes are glazing over too. Let's leave it there for now and we will rejoin verbs tomorrow. This one kind of snuck up on me. I thought--ah, verbs. Actions verbs--what could be easier? Apparently I was wrong!
I am generously borrowing information from this site today. They explain everything pretty straightforwardly.

Also, I am really excited to mention that I checked out four more books on grammar from the library, so Mignon and Strunk might not be my only gurus. So far I am LOVING "Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies" by June Casagrande. She is FUNNY!

So, watch a movie or something to unglaze your eyes. This post was a doozy!

Bonus post for today--and grammar is optional!

Kidding about the grammar part. But this is not going to be a grammar post. What it IS going to be is a post about following your bliss, following said bliss and what is going to happen if you achieve this bliss. In order to bring success into my blogging life, I hope to win tickets to the 2010 Blissdom Conference, in a giveaway brought to us by SteaZ.
Well, I have three blogs at the moment--a craft blog, this blog, and THE blog.
This blog, Grammar with Mignon, is about improving my writing. I need to hone my skills if I am going to achieve my ultimate goal--and that is to have THE blog published. That blog, Maude's Mysteries, is my brain-child. Maude is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure in the 21st century type deal. My goal is to engage kids in reading--to really get them involved in the story, to have them own the tale--by letting THEM help write the story. Yes, that is what I said--the READERS get to help choose the course of the plot. I publish a chapter segment Sunday through Thursday. Voting opens Thursday and closes Sunday when the next chapter starts. And I am having a BALL with it. THIS is my bliss, my dream, my baby.
However, no matter what an interesting idea it is, no matter how engaging it is, no matter how involved the readers get, it does not succeed if there are no voters. And that is where I am now. People vote, but not many. Traffic is slow. And as a blogger, I value traffic. I treasure readers. I covet them. I want them! (Who doesn't?) Success, for me, would be having (dare I dream) 500 voters!
So, I want to discover tips and tricks about how to expand my audience base, how to reach out and touch that tween over there (but not in a creepy-old-guy way--in a good way, an inspiring way) that is desperate for some non-vampire related book to read. This is what I believe Blissdom: The Conference can do for me. It can help me find new ways to reach out. It can grant me knowledge of the blogosphere that I currently lack, and yet so desperately need. It will fill me with tips, tricks and tactics that I can use to get the attention of the readers I want.
And as a bonus, an extra special bonus, there is a session on Getting Published that I would love to attend.

I object! Or is that object?

Let's go back to grammar school for a minute and revisit the Subject and Object. Don't worry--this is a quick and easy lesson!
The subject is the main player in the sentence. The leading actor. The person (or thing) without whom the sentence would not be able to function. For instance, check out the following sentence:
Maude picked up the books.
Maude IS the subject. Without Maude, there would be no books being picked up. They would stay on the table, or wherever they were.

The object of the sentence is having something done to it. Without the object, the subject would just be standing there, mid-stage, an actor without a prop. In the previous sentence the books would be the object, since they are having something done to them (they are being picked up).

Simple, right? In theory, yes. But when the sentences get long and convoluted, sometimes it is more difficult to parse out the noun and the subject. And, quite frankly, unless you are an editor or an elementary school teacher, generally you don't NEED to. Even then, the need is sketchy. When this becomes important is when you are writing. You should always know where your subject and object are.
It's nine o'clock. Do you know where your subject is? (Why yes, I am operating on little sleep today--why do you ask?)

So, there was my brief covering of subject and object. They are important to know when constructing sentences--they the foundation upon which the sentence is built. Well, the subject, object and verb, but we'll talk about verbs tomorrow.

In spite of myself...despite myself...uh what?

In spite of my best efforts, this blog is late today.
Despite the other blog entries I wrote today, I still have the desire to write here too.
Writing in this blog has been very enjoyable for me, despite what you might think. I enjoy learning about the ins and outs of this funky language of ours, in spite of the fact that it can be confusing.

Uh, okay.

So, which is the correct usage? In spite of or despite? They are both correct, actually. The only incorrect usage would be "in despite of" which is a marriage of the two, but incorrect.

Some people prefer to use despite, since it is shorter, but there really is no correct way. They mean the same, so they are interchangeable.

In spite of this repetitious post, I hope that you come back for more!

Why a Grammar Blog, exactly?

Recently I found myself in need of brushing up on my grammar for a test. I had only two days--and I failed. It was humbling, quite frankly, since English is kind of my thing. Writing...apparently NOT editing. So, I decided to jump in with both feet and go hog wild (mixing metaphors for two hundred, Alex). I added two books by Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, to my collection and a brand new (hardback!) edition of Strunk & White. And since I am apparently addicted to blogging (who could have guessed?)--well, I thought I would take you along on the journey.
Mignon has a book called The Grammar Devotional which has daily tips for improving writing. So, I am reading that, and blogging here about what she suggests. Because you know, to learn, you need to read, and write, the material. At least I do.
So, today's topic, which I am actually taking from Strunk & White, is rule one of the Elementary rules--possessives.
I am afflicted with a relatively good education. I say afflicted because, see, this education makes me think I know things that, really, I am 'misremembering'. (Thanks for that addition to the lexicon, Dubya!) So, I was (mistakenly) appalled when Bridget Jones's Diary made its appearance in 2001.
"No, no, no!! If you are making a possessive of a name ending in an "s" you just add the apostrophe--no extra "s" is needed!" I cried indignantly.
And, I was wrong. Maybe.
Strunk says to add an 's no matter what the final consonant.
Except when you don't. (See, it's NOT all that easy!)
Mignon says BOTH forms are correct. It is a personal choice. Or the choice of whatever style you choose to use. Strunk says it is always apostrophe s. AP Stylebook (Associated Press) disagrees.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court has gotten into the debate (Kansas's or Kansas'). There is still no resolution. So I was wrong, in that the title was right. But I was also right. (See now why writing this all out is helpful?)
Sometimes, people choose which form to use by whether or not the extra "s" is pronounced. In Jones's, the extra "s" is pronounced, so 's it is.
When the second "s" is not pronounced, such as in King Ramses' Tomb, there is no extra "s."
Whether you make it an apostrophe s or not, really, is up to you.
Of course, you could always just say "The Diary of Bridget Jones" and avoid the issue altogether.

Sending out the Former and Welcoming the Latter; Good-Bye 2009!

Nope, not ladder--latter! And I don't know about you, but I always get a trifle confused when reading this phraseology and often, okay--always, have to return to the previous sentence (the former one) to figure out what they are referring to.
Say someone writes something along the lines of, "Sam ate eggs and bacon for breakfast. The former made him ill, the latter raised his cholesterol."
Which is which? Which raised his cholesterol and which made him ill? The Former--or the First item in the list, eggs, made him ill. The Latter, or the Last item, bacon, raised his cholesterol.

According to Mignon Fogarty, though, in The Grammar Devotional the terminology in general should be used rarely, if at all, in writing and never in speaking. You cannot refer back to the previous sentence with speech, so it makes it really hard to follow what you mean.

Making your readers work for the entertainment can lose the interest of the reader, especially if done frequently...so skip former and latter and use other methods of distinguishing between choices.

So, what is a preferable? Finding a way to avoid the need to use them altogether. Rewriting the sentence above could be done like this: "Sam ate eggs and bacon for breakfast. The eggs made him ill, the bacon raised his cholesterol."

Rephrasing it means less work for the reader, or listener, and therefore a more easily understood passage or speech.