February 2006:
Number 502
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A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin County Community College District. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.758.3849. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: Feb. 7. All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be emailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Sydney Portilla-Diggs, student correspondent; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Jennifer Baker, student correspondent; Nick Young, photographer; Layout by Publications
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The Write Way
This month’s column continues emphasizing correct usage, for, as students soon learn from their professors' remarks, the most efficiently organized essay is worthless if its diction leaves readers scratching their heads. As we have noted before, hundreds of words appearing similar in meaning are actually dissimilar. To follow up on the last column's promise, the column concludes with a fourth rule of standard comma placement. Underlined words in the following sentences below may or may not be correct.
If incorrect, do you know the correct parenthetical replacement?
1. "While visiting London, we stayed at the city's most (luxuriant / luxurious) spa."
2. "What course of study would be a more (apropos / appropriate) addition to the courses I took last semester?"
3. “Do you happen to know (who’s / whose) lunch is on my desk?”
4. ("In regards to / In regard to) your recent inquiry, we regret to inform you that we no longer carry that item."
5. "His parents were never (jealous / envious) of their neighbors' newer cars."
• Corrected, the first sentence should read this way: "While visiting London, we stayed at the city's most luxurious spa." To be luxuriant is to have thick or abundant growth ("The uncharacteristically harsh winter produced a luxuriant growth in our beaver population") whereas "luxurious," also an adjective, indicates wealth and comfort.
• Sentence #2 reveals a common misunderstanding between "apropos," meaning relevant to the past, and "appropriate," meaning suitable for an occasion or circumstance. Acceptance of "apropos" (for readers unfamiliar with the word, the letter "s" is silent) as an appropriate synonym for "appropriate" is admittedly (sigh) gaining ground in everyday usage.
• Sentence #3 should read this way: “Do you happen to know whose lunch is on my desk?” Like the misuse of the contraction “it’s” (meaning “it is” or “it has”) for the possessive case “its,” the misuse of the contraction “who’s” (meaning “who is” or “who has”) is a failure to recall that possessive pronouns NEVER take apostrophes. (Possessive pronouns by their very nature already denote possession without the use of an apostrophe.)
• Sentence #4 may be especially helpful to those engaged in writing letters and memos. The sentence should start with "In regard to," not "In regards to." Although stuffy, the phrase "as regards to" is also acceptable (contributing, no doubt, to the confusion of the other phrases).
• The final sentence should read this way: "His parents were never envious of their neighbors' newer cars." To be envious is to envy what others have; to be jealous is to want to keep what one already has. Typically, jealousy involves relationships: "His jealousy of her attraction to other friends destroyed the relationship."
A fourth standard rule of commas: Use commas to join introductory elements to the rest of the sentence.
Introductory clauses: Please note in particular the use of the comma in a complex sentence when the dependent (subordinate) clause comes first:
"Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me."
When the independent clause comes first, however, and the dependent clause comes last in the sentence, OMIT the comma: "Death kindly stopped for me because I could not stop for him."
Unfortunately, many writers—journalists in particular—undermine correct instruction by misplacing the comma before a subordinating conjunction like the word "because" ("Death kindly stopped for me, because I could not stop for him").
Introductory phrases: "After eating, the male lion rested in the nearby shade." Without the comma following "eating," a reader would make an errant assumption about the real subject of the sentence. The use of a comma after introductory words, no matter how few, is always correct: "Thus, we applauded their progress."
Space permitting, the next column will include additional rules of comma placement.
As always, I welcome suggestions from students, staff, and faculty for these monthly columns and shall try to use their contributions in future columns. Should you have a topic you’d like discussed here, please write me at jmiller@ccccd.edu . You may also telephone me at 972.881.5981. Students wishing improved writing skills will find useful links to a dozen or so English grammar sites at http://iws.ccccd.edu/jmiller/jmiller.htm .
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