Correction: Honey, I Shrank the Kids

Belinda writes:

This movie title has always bothered me. Shouldn't it be 'Honey, I Shrank the Kids?'

That's one of two easy fixes. Shrink is an irregular verb. In the past tense, its participles are shrank and shrunk.

Quick rules:

• Shrink is the verb in the present tense. If you leave your jeans in a hot dryer for too long, they shrink. 
• Shrank is the participle in the simple past tense. When I left my jeans in a hot dryer for too long, they shrank.
• Shrunk is used in the present perfect and past perfect tenses, to emphasize that an event has either recently been completed (present perfect) or completed in the distant past (past perfect). It is always preceded by a form of 'have' (e.g., has, have, had). I pulled my jeans out of the dryer but they had already shrunk.

Corrections:

• Honey, I Shrank the Kids
• Honey, I've Shrunk the Kids

Punctuation Saves Lives: Please Use Caution When Hunting Pedestrians

Punctuation saves lives, people. From @wrdinc on Instagram.

Apocalypto: Pronoun-Antecedent Disagreement

Samantha writes:

Snarky, my ELA assignment is to find the error on this poster. Help!

The mistake is in the tagline running along the bottom of the poster just above the credits.

No one can outrun their destiny.

 

Where does this movie poster go wrong? The possessive pronoun, their, does not agree with its antecedent, no one. 'No one' is singular so it needs a singular possessive pronoun (e.g., his, her, its). In this case, it seems that 'his' would have been the best choice.

Quick rule:

• A pronoun must agree in number with the noun it replaces (the antecedent).

Correction:

• No one can outrun his destiny.

Dispose vs. Dispose Of: Grammar Police Protect an IKEA Bathroom

On Instagram, grammar hound @jenni_bea shared a goof she apparently spied inside the ladies' room at IKEA.

@snarkygrammar Someone corrected it!

 

Look carefully and you'll see that, lo and behold, it's true. Some grammatically savvy gal after my own heart has inserted the word 'of' after 'dispose.'

Where does this IKEA notice go wrong? It fails to use the correct idiom. An idiom is a group of words with a meaning not deducible from the meanings of the individual words. In other words, you can't figure out the meaning of an idiom by dissecting its parts.

The idiom in question is dispose of. It is a phrasal verb, also known as a two-word verb. The second word is a preposition, and that preposition changes the meaning of the verb.

Definitions:

• dispose (v.) - (a) to arrange in order; (b) to lean toward or incline (typically used as a past participle). The general is getting ready to dispose the troops. I am disposed to root for my school's team.
• dispose of (phrasal v.) - (a) to throw away or discard; (b) to settle or attend to. As soon as the final exam is over, I'm going to dispose of my math binder. The union leader disposed of the controversy. 

 

Correction:

•  Please use the bin provided to dispose of sanitary towels.

If you spy a real-world grammar goof, please share it with me.

Comma Splice: As Seen in Bamshaft Ad

Declan writes:

Snarky, my teacher has been teaching us about comma splices and I think I found one in this ad in Lacrosse magazine. Am I right?
 

Absolutely!

Where does this ad go wrong? The headline uses a comma to join two independent clauses. That's an error known as a comma splice. Remember, commas are used for separating, not connecting.

In this ad, we have two independent clauses. Each contains both a subject and predicate and could stand as a sentence on its own.

How to fix a comma splice:

• You can simply write two separate sentences. They have been nice all year. Let them be naughty!
• You can replace the comma with a semicolon (whose job really is to connect) to show that the two clauses are closely related. They have been nice all year; let them be naughty!
• You can join independent clauses with a comma if one clause begins with a conjunction, which is a word that connects words, phrases or clauses.  Since they have been nice all year, let them be naughty! They have been nice all year, so let them be naughty!
• You can join independent clauses with a comma if one clause begins with a gerund, meaning a verb ending in '-ing'. Having been nice all year, they can be naughty now.

Possible corrections:

• They have been nice all year. Let them be naughty!
• They have been nice all year; let them be naughty!
• Since they have been nice all year, let them be naughty!

Hold the Hyphen: Daydreaming

Ethan writes:

Hi Snarky. It's the end of the first quarter and I need to bump up my English grade. My teacher says he'll give extra credit for finding examples of grammar and punctuation errors in magazines and newspapers. I think the hyphen in this headline is a mistake. Yes?
 

Yes, Ethan. Go ahead and hand it in.

Where does this ad go wrong? It puts an unnecessary hyphen in 'daydreaming', which is a compound word.

Quick rule:

• Compound words combine two or more words but function as a single unit. While some compounds are not hyphenated (e.g., daydream, flowerpot, keyboard), others are (e.g., merry-go-round, mother-in-law).

Correction:

• Daydreaming About Ski Season?

Desert vs. Dessert: Easy Way to Remember the Difference

A lot of people mix up desert and dessert. This is an easy way to remember how to spell dessert.