Writing Tips
for clarity and concisenessArchive for October, 2008
Voter Caging (word study)
After hearing reports of widespread voter caging (voter suppression) across the United States, I grew curious about the derivation of the term and looked up “caging” in Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Here is the salient part of the definition:
caging (1556). 1 : to confine or keep in or as if in a cage 2 : to drive (as a puck) into a cage and score a goal
The point of voter caging is to prevent certain groups of qualified registered voters from casting their ballots by essentially “putting them in a cage.” The usual targets are voters who are unfamiliar with their rights under the law, soldiers deployed overseas, and people who lack the time and other resources to prove that their registration is valid.
In this 2008 election, voters who have lost their homes due to foreclosure are especially vulnerable to caging; when they arrive at their polling places, challengers may charge that their registrations are no longer valid because their addresses aren’t current.
For more details, take a look at Wikipedia’s writeup on caging. Also take a look at NOW’s recent program on caging.
If you believe that you are at risk of being challenged at your polling place, take action:
- Vote early, if possible. This will give you time to resolve any issues that may arise
- Call the Election Protection Hotline at 1 866 OUR VOTE
- Call your county registrar of voters, or county elections office
- Avoid using a provisional ballot, which may not be counted.
This is a particular important and exciting election year. Happy voting!
Cheers,
Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio
Compound Possessive (noun + pronoun)
This morning, I received the following question about compound possessives from William Tate:
What about when yourself and someone else are in possession. Do you say “me and Sarah’s house” or “Mine and Sarah’s house” or “Sarah’s and my house”?
In this case, I would choose “Sarah’s and my house.”
To review, the rule for indicating joint possession for compound nouns is to make only the second noun possessive by adding ’s to the end. But when one of the possessors is a personal pronoun, it doesn’t make sense to follow that rule. Here’s how the online Guide to Grammar and Writing puts it:
When one of the possessors in a compound possessive is a personal pronoun, we have to put both possessors in the possessive form or we end up with something silly: “Bill and my car had to be towed last night.”
* Bill’s and my car had to be towed last night.
* Giorgio’s and her father was not around much during their childhood.
If this second sentence seems unsatisfactory, you might have to do some rewriting so you end up talking about their father, instead, or revert to using both names: “Giorgio and Isabel’s father wasn’t around much . . . . ” (and then “Giorgio” will lose the apostrophe +s).
Also keep in mind that “me” is the objective form, not the possessive form, of “I.”
Finally, according to the Chicago Manual of Style, “mine” is the absolute, or independent, form:
[Mine] can stand alone without a noun . . . The independent form does not require an explicit object: the thing possessed may be either an antecedent or something understood {this dictionary is mine} {this cabin of yours} {Where is hers?}.
Cheers,
Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio
Grammar Contest Winner
Tim Dougherty, an English teacher at a Catholic school in Delaware, is the third winner of a March 2008 grammar contest on this blog. Here is the sentence that I invited readers to correct:
Dr. Gonstead was a pioneer in the chiropractic profession, developing equipment and a method of analysis that used more than one criteria to verify the precise location of vertebral subluxation.
Tim wrote that the plural form, “criteria,” is not correct. It should be the singular form, “criterion,” as below:
Dr. Gonstead was a pioneer in the chiropractic profession, developing equipment and a method of analysis that used more than one criterion to verify the precise location of vertebral subluxation.
Tip: There can be two, three, or more criteria, but there is only one criterion.
Tim also noticed an error in one of my September 2008 posts, in which I offered the following as an example of a sentence with a nonrestrictive dependent clause:
People whose thoughts are mostly positive are happier than people whose thoughts are mostly negative, in my opinion.
In fact, as Tim wrote, “in my opinion” is a prepositional phrase. Here’s a correct example of a nonrestricitve dependent clause. Notice that the clause begins with a subordinate conjunction (if) and has both a subject (you) and a verb (want):
People whose thoughts are mostly positive are happier than people whose thoughts are mostly negative, if you want my opinion.
Cheers,
Tara Treasurefield
Tara’s Writing Studio
