Haldeman Grammar

Grammar: High Crimes and Misdemeanors

I can't give you a low grade because of poor grammar -- but the world can. Most of the real world will regard you as undereducated if you misuse your language, no matter where your degrees are from or how many of them you have.

"We're all ignorant," Mark Twain said; "only in different subjects." It's not your fault if you grew up in a school system that shortchanged you on basic skills. But the time to correct those deficiencies is now. Next year or ten years from now, you're going to have a job application or a grant proposal buried in a stack of twenty, all of approximately equal merit. The person evaluating them might be a scoundrel like me, who grinds his teeth at "alright" and growls audibly when "which" is misused. Wouldn't it be pleasant if yours could be the only application or proposal that didn't make him or her mad?

Consider this a guide to not shooting yourself in the foot. Over the past 18 years I've been noting the most common errors in usage that trip up MIT students. I've divided them into thingst hat might be all right (TWO WORDS!) technically, but are inelegant enough to bother me a lot (also TWO WORDS!) anyhow.

(I know you may have had, and may yet have in the future, teachers who feel that "rules" such as these are, like, retro, you know what I mean? When those god damned New Age anarchist disciplines of progressive education have control of the grade book, hey. Do your thing. Here, do my thing.)

High Crimes

1. "All right" and "a lot" are pairs of words. Writing "alright" and "alot" does not affect the logic of a sentence, but it's the verbal equivalent of snapping gum audibly.

2. "It's" is only used as a contraction for "it is." The possessive of "it" is "its." Example: It's too bad that robot lost its bits.

3. Eschew neologisms and jargon. You don't "prioritize" things; you order them in terms of importance. When listing things, don't say "Firstly ... secondly ... ." First and second will do. ("Primarily" and "secondarily" are proper, but stuffy.) (I'll grit my teeth and admit that dialogue is dialogue: you could have a character saying "Firstly, we prioritize the papers; secondly, we critique them." But he'd better die a horrible death by the end of the story.)