Free How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoidthem by Ben Yagoda Page B

this material will be covered on the exam.
]
    As the professor said, this material will be covered on the exam.
    c. Possessive Before a Gerund
    This one is on the cusp and may get a clean bill of health before the decade is out. But for now it’s a skunker.
    [
I don’t like you talking about the senator in that tone.
]
    I don’t like your talking about the senator in that tone.
    d. Past Tense
    The word
snuck
did not appear in print before 1887, at least according to
The Oxford English Dictionary.
Traditionally, the past tense of
to sneak
had always been
sneaked.
Then
snuck
sneaked in, presumably because
sneaked
is hard to speak. By now,
The Random House Dictionary
deems it “a standard variant past tense and past participle” of
sneak
. In Google Fight,
snuck
beats
sneaked
by a nearly two-to-one margin.
    That means, for all intents and purposes, that it’s okay. The same goes for
hung
and
dove,
which have respectively joined
hanged
and
dived
as accepted. Not so with these other relatively recent verb forms, in which the traditional participle is more and more commonly used as the past tense. They are all still skunked.
    He drunk
drank
the water.
    The fish layed laid
lay
on the counter, filleted and ready to broil.
    (That is past tense of the verb
lie,
which is often confused with the verb
lay. Lie
is intransitive—you, or fish, do it all by yourself.
Lay
is transitive, meaning that you do it to something, like carpet or your burdens; it’s often followed by
down. I
lay
laid the files on my desk.
)
    Honey, I shrunk
shrank
the kids.
    In a fit of pique, he sunk
sank
the toy boat.
    The Basie Band really swung
swang.
    e.
Ly-
Less Adverbs
    A common move in spoken English is streamlining adverbs.
    [
This was a real nice clambake.
]
    [
Think different.
]
    [
He didn’t do so bad.
]
    [
That car sure drives smooth.
]
    I bracketed those sentences with a heavy heart because they have such a nice, casual sound to them. Hey: I even called this book
How to Not Write Bad
! Unfortunately, this sort of thing is still skunked in writing meant for anything more formal than a blog post. The first, second, and third examples are easily changed:
    This was a really nice clambake.
(Apologies to Oscar Hammerstein.)
    Think differently.
(Apologies to Steve Jobs.)
    He didn’t do so badly.
    However, the third runs into a problem that’s illuminated by a famous bit of dialogue from the movie
Airplane:
    RUMACK:
Can you fly this plane, and land it?
    STRIKER:
Surely you can’t be serious.
    RUMACK:
I am serious…and don’t call me Shirley.
    Surely
is a hard word to pull off. Moreover, as in the bracketed example, the adverbial
sure
is sometimes used to mean something slightly different from
surely
. Here, the best tack might be seeking out another word altogether.
    That car certainly [
or
definitely,
or
really] drives smoothly.
    There are some exceptions. When a verb indicates a state of being—that is, if it could theoretically be replaced by the verb
to be
—it should be followed by the non -
ly,
or adjective, form.
    You look beautiful. I feel good. I feel great. I feel bad. I feel fine. I feel pretty. The dinner tasted wonderful.
    [
I feel badly
] and [
the dinner tasted wonderfully
] are hypercorrection.
    An apparent exception to
this
is the word
well,
especially in negative sentences. (It’s only an apparent exception because in this context,
well
is an adjective, as in
well-baby clinic.
) So we say,
He didn’t feel well, so he stayed home from work.
    f. Only, the Lonely
    For a little word,
only
creates a heap of difficulties. For a century or more, it was a sticklers’ article of faith that this adverb had to be placed directly in front of the word it was modifying, or else all sorts of ambiguous hell would break loose. Thus, the sticklers would have had you write:
    I have eyes only for you.
    Only God knows what I’d be without you.
    I want to be with only you.
    Music fans of a certain advanced age will recognize these as