Grammar Hotline

Re: Grammar Crisis

I certainly can not remember all the rules, though I try. But I can keep a stylebook by my home and office computers.

 

"grey" is the same as "colours" except for greyhound.

I have to look up lay/lie pretty much every time I deal with it, 21, and often, I do what Wonderlic did...

Online style book: Great deal. Even if you have to $25 a year for it yourself...

 

It gets hairy when you get into laid/lain.

I don't think I've seen lain in a sentence since grammar school.

 

As a rule I try to avoid 'hairy' and 'laid' in the same sentence. Or in the same day.

 

Adding 'on the game' to the end of scoring totals has never made sense to me. "...56 points on the game." How is that right?

 

That is worse than 'on the day.'

Both are dopey.

 

How about Earl Grey tea?

 

Exactly. No one wants gray tea. Except AP, apparently.

 

on the game? That would be for the game, at least to me. And I hate myself for working my way into that phrase as much as I do.

I'm also guilty of using "on the day/evening." I don't know why I keep using phrases that bother me so much and I'm trying to get out of the habit of that.

 

Hope this is the latest grammar thread. Working on editing a friend's doctoral paper.

Can/may. My thought - "can" is ability; "may" is permission.

How it came to me:
"Church leaders are often unaware of the vital role that they may play in times of tragic need."

I feel like it should be "can."

 

Tricky, because they essentially have been given permission to play that role. I still feel it should be "can."

 

That's a big theme of the paper. It's the project I worked with while doing my AmeriCorps gig in Minot.