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That's impossible
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Say my friend John and I have shared ownership of a set of books. How would you write about our books?
This question was inspired by one of you! We're inviting you to share your editing challenges here, and we'll answer your questions in this newsletter. Now let's see how you did on last week's quiz... Most of you got it right, which means you must be pretty good at identifying the subjunctive mood. The subjunctive mood is one of three moods in the English language. There’s the indicative mood, which is used to express facts or opinions. The imperative mood is for giving orders or instructions. And we use the subjunctive to express a hypothetical, an impossible scenario, a wish or a contrary-to-fact statement. And while "was" is usually the verb you use with the first- and third-person singular, you use "were" regardless of the subject in the subjunctive mood. Even if you know that rule, though, using the subjunctive mood can still be tricky. "If" can be a good indicator of the subjunctive mood, but it doesn't always work. The reason "were" is correct in our quiz is because the temperature is the temperature — it's not possible that it's different at that moment. Read more in our full lesson here, or download our grammar guide for lessons on the subjunctive mood, subjects and objects, collective nouns and dangling modifiers. Here's a friendly reminder to anyone who got the email this week that they were accepted into our beta program but hasn't confirmed participation yet: Let us know soon, because the program is filling up fast. We're overwhelmed by the response. Thank you! ❤ Team Stylebot
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Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebot’s newsletter.
To write the phrase do's and don'ts, you need to create your own list of do's and don'ts. Do you, for example, stay consistent on apostrophe use, or do you instead insert an extra apostrophe for clarity? You can see that we opt for the latter, but that's not what you prefer. The vast majority of you who took last week's quiz like "dos and don'ts." We can relate. As longtime newsletter readers know, one of our pet peeves is when people unnecessarily add an apostrophe along with the "s" to make...
If you picked "whomever" in last week's quiz, why did you do that? "Well," you might have said to yourself, "whomever is for objects." That's true. But consider this sentence: The boss said she'll recommend whoever/whomever performs best. Would you make the same choice? We can get two lessons out of last week's quiz. There's subjects and objects: Subjects carry out the verb of a sentence, while objects receive the action of the verb. In the sentence, "She will recommend him," "she" is the...
Last week's quiz question might have seemed confusing because of the lesson that preceded it about subject-verb agreement, but most of you got it right. "Neither" usually takes singular verbs, and even though "of the options" is right next to the verb, it doesn't affect the verb since it's a prepositional phrase. What writing challenges trip you up? Remember that we're happy to tackle them in this newsletter. Submit your questions here. In the meantime, here's this week's quiz: The boss said...