Mixed Constructions

A mixed construction is a sentence with incompatible elements that begins with one type of structure and shifts to another type of structure. In these sentences, the speaker sets out to say one thing and abruptly switches to something else, resulting in confusion.

A sentence that is logical has a subject and a predicate. When a subject is introduced in a sentence, an expectation is set up about the grammatical direction the sentence is going in, and when that expectation is not met, the sentence does not sound right. Take this mixed construction example:

Teachers, a noble profession, involves a lot of patience.

Teachers is not a profession; teaching is. When teachers was introduced as the subject of the sentence, it created the expectation that the rest of the sentence would describe something teachers do or are. The predicate involves a lot of patience takes the sentence in a different grammatical direction, making it a faulty predicate. We could rewrite the mixed sentence this way and it would be grammatically correct:

Teachers have a lot of patience.

However, the original sentence clearly intended teaching, as a profession, to be the subject, and the predicate was intended to show that teaching does indeed require a lot of patience.

Teaching, a noble profession, involves a lot of patience.

Teaching is a noble profession that involves a lot of patience.

Of course, it would also be correct, if a little less elegant, to simply divide the sentence in two.

Teaching is a noble profession. Teachers have a lot of patience!

Sentences with mixed constructions can often be found in first drafts of writing; the writer sets out with a stream of ideas that sound misconnected on a second reading. This is just one of the reasons reading over and editing your writing is always a great idea.

8 Great Hanukkah Reads

Hanukkah, if you didn’t already know, is a Jewish holiday that begins on the twenty-fifth of the Jewish month Kislev and lasts for eight days. It’s a winter holiday, and because Jewish months don’t correspond perfectly to the Gregorian calendar months, Hanukkah can fall in November, December, or even stretch into January. This year, it begins at sunset on December 24 and lasts until nightfall on January 1.

Hanukkah (sometimes spelled Chanukah), is also called the Jewish festival of lights. On each night of the holiday, a candle is lit in the menorah, a candelabrum that holds nine candles. People observing Hanukkah will pray, eat fried food, play dreidel, and share Hanukkah stories. Those stories are often especially interesting to the children, so any good Hanukkah reading list would have to include children’s books. But there’s plenty to pique the interest of adults as well.

1 There’s No Such Thing as a Chanukah Bush, Sandy Goldstein by Susan Sussman Susan Sussman’s book There’s No Such Thing as a Chanukah Bush, Sandy Goldstein might be a children’s book, but it packs a powerful message about knowing how to respect and enjoy other people’s ways and customs while preserving your own.

2 Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric A. Kimmel, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman If you can’t celebrate Hanukkah because there are some nasty goblins messing around your village synagogue, this books and its main character will give you a good idea of how to outwit them. If, in a more realistic scenario, you’re looking for a fun and witty Hanukkah story with great illustrations, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins should be on the very top of your list.

3 Dreidels on the Brain by Joel ben Izzy In Joel ben Izzy’s book Dreidels on the Brain, we meet Joel, a twelve-year-old boy who wants one simple thing for Hanukkah—a miracle. It’s a coming-of-age story set during the eight days of Hanukkah, written with plenty of humor and warmth. Plus, you get a miracle that involves a bus, and buses aren’t usually too miraculous.

4 The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story by Lemony Snicket A latke is a type of potato pancake that’s usually eaten for Hanukkah. Latkes don’t usually run around and explain what Hanukkah is about to candy canes and pine trees, but that’s exactly what the latke from Lemony Snicket’s The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story does.

5 The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah by Isaac Bashevis Singer Besides winning a Nobel Prize in Literature and being a very prominent figure in the Yiddish literary movement, Isaac Bashevis Singer also wrote stories for a young audience. The Hanukkah stories he wrote for The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah, while aimed at younger readers, are the kind of stories that transcend age and religious barriers.

6 What Is Chanukah? by Sholem Aleichem From the pen of the Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, a.k.a. Sholem Aleichem, the man who wrote the stories on which Fiddler on the Roof was based, comes a very recently translated short story, What Is Chanukah?. Written with the humor Aleichem is celebrated for, the story is set at a Hanukkah party where our narrator is doing his best to figure out whether anyone knows anything about the holiday they’re celebrating.

7 While the Candles Burn: Eight Stories for Hanukkah by Barbara Diamond Goldin While the Candles Burn is a collection of stories, some written by Barbara Diamond Goldin, and some coming from sources as varied as Afghani Jews, Holocaust survivors, and kids from mixed Arab and Jewish schools in Israel. Another kids’ book on the list that should be read by adults as well.

8 Seasons of Our Joy: A Modern Guide to the Jewish Holidays by Arthur Waskow

Arthur Waskow’s Seasons of Our Joy isn’t about Hanukkah alone—it’s about all Jewish holidays and observances. It’s not as much a book of stories as it is a handbook of Jewish holidays, their origins, and how they are celebrated, but it’s a very good book to turn to if knowledge is what you’re looking for.

Regards, Best Regards, In Regard To—How to Use Them

Should you write regards to close your next letter or email? What does it mean to send your regards, anyway?

When to End a Letter with “Regards”

Historically, with best regards and with kindest regards have been used as a letter closing—a.k.a. a valediction. In decades past, regards implied not only esteem but also affection; today it sits somewhat higher on the spectrum of formality. While sending regards might have once been reserved for close friends and family, the tone it currently implies makes it well suited for informal correspondence, whether business or personal. A good definition for best regards, for example, would be a comparatively neutral “with my best wishes and esteem.”

Suitable Ways to End a Letter

Formal: Yours faithfully Formal (business): Yours sincerely; Sincerely Semi-formal: With best regards; With kindest regards; Warmest regards Informal: Regards; Kind regards; Best regards Personal: Yours truly; Cheers; Love

Using regards in a letter closing suggests that you have respect for the recipient, but not necessarily a close relationship with him or her. Because it is less formal than yours faithfully or sincerely, expressions with regards are perfect in emails, which tend to be less formal than letters anyway.

The more informal style for an email would be simply Regards. It can work for emails to people you work with regularly, but you might also want to consider that if you correspond with someone very frequently, no closing may be required at all.

Using “In Regard To” in a Sentence

The phrases in regard to and with regard to are identical in meaning to concerning. These expressions are used often in business correspondence to identify matters at hand. As regards is also frequently used in this way.

We have noticed a discrepancy in regard to your bill.

I have a question with regard to your position on taxation.

As regards sustainability, we use only recycled paper in our products.

Because as regards and in regard to/with regard to are closely related, a common error is to write in regards to (with an s) or with regards to. There is no need to make regard plural in either of these phrases.

Please let me know what your preference is with regards to the payment schedule.

Please let me know what your preference is with regard to the payment schedule.

The client asks that you give her monthly reports in regards to the status of her investments.

The client asks that you give her monthly reports in regard to the status of her investments.

It is worth remembering that some people consider with regard to and in regard to unnecessary business speak, and that ninety percent of the time, they could be simply and cleanly reduced to about or concerning.

Please let me know what your preference is concerning the payment schedule.

The client asks that you give her monthly reports about the status of her investments.

Using “Regarding” and “Regard” in a Sentence

The preposition regarding can also be used in the sense of concerning or with respect to.

The doctor called this morning regarding your test results.

Has the travel agent given you any more information regarding your proposed trip to Malta?

As a noun, regard can mean “consideration”:

Jane has no regard for the safety of her employees.

Or “esteem”:

The software development team holds their supervisor in high regard.

As a verb, to regard means “to consider or think about something in a particular way”:

The law regards child endangerment as a very serious crime indeed.

Or “to observe” (although this usage is archaic):

Alas, Dante could regard the object of his affection only from a distance.

“Regards,” “Best Regards,” and “In Regard” in Summary

Regards, Best regards, and Kind regards are good email sign-offs.

Remember that concerning and about can work just as well as, and more concisely than, in regard to and with regard to. The phrases in regards to and with regards to are never correct, and you might garner criticism if you use them.

3 Cool Ways English Evolved in 2015

It’s hard to keep up with a language evolving as fast as English. Before you know it, a new turn of phrase has come and gone before you can say selfie. That’s so passé. Do try to keep up. Let’s have a look at some trends from 2015.

1 Portmanteaus, or word mashups

It’s been climbing the charts for a few years now, but in 2015, the portmanteau officially arrived. Portmanteaus are nothing new, but lately they’re “spiviralling” out of control. That’s a new one right there; we can’t break their stride. Originally meaning a suitcase with two equal compartments, portmanteau is now used to describe the merging of two words to create a new, unique meaning. Also known as a “word blend,” many are so baked into English we no longer notice the separate ingredients, as with brunch, motel, or workaholic. Often credited with switching on the blender in 1871 was Lewis Carroll. In his Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains the word slithy to a confused Alice:

Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy.” “Lithe” is the same as “active.” You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.

In recent years we’ve had a love affair with word mushing. Trendy business buzzwords like mompreneur (mom + entrepreneur) and guesstimate (guess + estimate) cropped up. Technology has presented us with new objects for which no words exist. And when we do try to describe them, we sometimes end up with creations like phablet, a mix of phone and tablet.

Similarly, as new conditions arise, a scramble to name them ensues and word blends are the choice of choice. A recent Wall Street Journal article ponders the phenomenon of people who text while walking—should they be named pedtextrians (pedestrians+texters) or wexters (walkers + texters)? Elsewhere, a suggestion to Oxford Dictionaries proposed they be described as moblivious (mobile + oblivious). Whatever it is, nothing less than a portmanteau will do. Hell, there are even guides on what makes a rough blend or a smooth blend.

In December, Oxford Dictionaries added twitterati (Twitter + literati) into its fold, and indeed it is the twitterati who cook up of many of these blends. Starting off with some portmanteau peeps—no celebrity couple is an item until they’ve had their names mushed together. We’ve all heard of Kimye ( Kim Kardashian and Kanye West) and Brangelina (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie). But 2015 has seen the portmanteaus evolve from the Twittersphere slang to legitimate and political terms. From the US presidential race the words cuckservative and hispadering have emerged through Twitter. The former is an insult used within Republican debates and is a mix of cuckold (a husband whose wife cheats on him) and conservative. The latter was an accusation fired at Hillary Clinton after her attempt to appeal to the Hispanic vote, a mix of pandering and Hispanic.

The news coverage of countries possibly exiting the European Union was peppered with the terms Grexit (Greece + exit) and Brexit (Britain + exit). These terms were used widely without explanation or irony. Grexit was even shortlisted for the Oxford Dictionary word of the year.

2 Mx., a gender-neutral honorific

The new honorific Mx. (pronounced “mix”), has begun to take its place among the traditional Mr., Mrs., Miss, and Ms. It has emerged from obscurity to being used in an article in the New York Times in June and has been added to dictionary.com and Oxford English Dictionaries. The title has been adopted by transgender individuals, non-binary people, or those who don’t wish to reveal their gender. This sudden acceptance of a relatively unknown title reflects how 2015 has seen conventional gender identities reassessed.

According to Jonathan Dent, OED assistant editor, the honorific first appeared in the American magazine Single Parent in 1977. It was then mooted as an alternative to the standard titles. At that time, Ms. was entering the mainstream, allowing speakers to avoid the implications about marital status inherent in Mrs. or Miss.

Taking the lead among British institutions, The Royal Bank of Scotland provided customers with the option of Mx. when filling out forms. Others have followed suit. In the United States, the title is beginning to make itself known. Events such as the public transitioning of Bruce Jenner to Caitlyn Jenner and her appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair during the summer highlighted issues of gender and sparked subsequent discussions. About the same time, the New York Times tried out using the term Mx. In a later piece, Philip B. Corbett, an editor at the New York Times said that the paper is not entirely ready to roll out the red carpet for the title. “It remains too unfamiliar to most people, and it’s not clear when or if it will emerge as a widely adopted term,” he said.

However, this statement was published before Ms. achieved the milestone of entering the OED. Also, the Times, in turn, raised awareness of Mx. and prompted a further bout of media coverage explaining the title. It made its mark in 2015 and might be commonplace by the end of 2016. Watch this space.

3 Delicious words

In the year 2015, it was food o’clock. If you didn’t get your fair share of eats, you might be hangry about it now. Maybe you clock up a few food miles, or perhaps you’re more of a locavore? Or could it be that you’ve been living in a bubble and have no idea what any of this means? Well, food is trending—the way we eat, what we eat, where it comes from, and who it comes from. Again, the Internet has incubated many of these new phrases, as food bloggers and foodie users of Instagram and Pinterest all find each other and find terms for every kind of gastronomical state or niche.

Josh Friedland, a food blogger, says this “has spawned an ever-expanding vocabulary to capture our fast-moving edible landscape” and was compelled to compile a dictionary called Eatymology: The Dictionary of Modern Gastronomy. Dictionaries are trying to catch the trend, but it’s moving along swiftly and they are only grabbing the tail. Oxford Dictionaries named locavore—someone who eats only locally sourced food—as its word of the year in 2007 but has only included it in its dictionary in December 2015. However, Friedland’s blog lists farm drag as one of his favorite 2015 food terms. According to Friedland, the term is a reaction to locavorism, especially where it has been hijacked and made into a cliché by restaurants hoping to remain on-trend.

Another neologism linking food and environment is climatarian. Like locavores, climatarians aim to reverse climate change by avoiding meat and eating local. Food and emotion are found together in hangry, how we feel when we are hungry and angry. The obsession with photographing your dinner and uploading it to social media has created loads of foodspo, or food-porn.

Wine o’ clock or beer o’ clock, also added to Oxford Dictionaries in 2015, is when a person decides that it’s the correct time to have a glass of the drink in question.

Our appetite for food lore is not yet satisfied and looks to continue into 2016.

Spelling Words With EI and IE: “I Before E Except After C” Rule

I Before E, Except After C

Have you ever memorized the chorus of a song? You may sing a few lines over and over, but you can’t remember what comes after the section you know. Many people recite the mnemonic “I before E, except after C.” They either don’t remember or never learned the rest of the rhyme. Here are two additional lines that reveal some exceptions to the spelling rule:

I before E, Except after C, unless it sounds like A, as in neighbor or weigh

There are many exceptions to this rule—maybe it’s better to think of it as a guideline—but it can be helpful with words like the ones below.

I before E

Would you like a piece of cake? Jerry will believe anything. They’re planting new grass on the football field.

Except before C

Darnell received an A on his spelling test. Jeremy spotted a spider on the ceiling. I never expected such deceit from you!

Unless it sounds like A

Our neighbors live in a beige house. How much does the kitten weigh?

Here’s a tip: It’s a good idea to memorize these common exceptions to the rule:

seize, either, weird, height, foreign, leisure, conscience, counterfeit, forfeit, neither, science, species, sufficient

Occurred, Occured, or Ocurred—Which Spelling Is Right?

Spelling words isn’t always easy, especially when they contain double letters. In this case, the correct spelling is occurred. How can you remember it when you need it?

The best way to remember how to spell occurred is to remember its double set of double consonants. In English, the final letter is doubled when a word of two or more syllables has stress on the final syllable. Occur fits the rule, so there are two Cs and two Rs in occurred. Would you like to see some examples?

Examples

Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.

Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing.

Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

It’s never occurred to me that the stars are still up there shining even in the daytime when we can’t see them.

Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Dad,” I said, grasping his hands and looking directly into his eyes. “I’m in the deepest love that has ever occurred in the history of the world.”

The Harvard Lampoon