Answers to Grammar Questions
@prismatic-bell, you asked these questions here. I don’t know if you still need them answered, but I figured that someone on Tumblr might, and I wanted to help, if I could.
1) –what is the difference between its and it’s and how do I know when to use each one?
“It’s” Is a contraction. It stands for “it is” or, less commonly, “it has.” Examples: It’s [It is] going to be hot today. It’s [It has] been a long and frustrating three months.
“Its” (without the apostrophe) shows possession or ownership by something not gendered. Examples: The dog dislikes its collar. The corporation was violating its own rules.
If you are not sure when to use it, try expanding “its” to “it is” or it has”. Example: She had a job at Wal-Mart, but she loathed its policies toward workers. If you expand that to “she loathed it is policies”, it doesn’t make sense. If you expand the contraction and the sentence makes no sense, you know that you should use “its,” not “it’s.”
For further information: Google “it's vs its.”
2) –what is the difference between ‘one’ and ‘each’?
“Each” is used to indicate every member of a group of two or more. “One” means, well, one.
For further information: Google “each definition.”
3) –what is the difference between ‘which’ and ‘that’?
If the sentence doesn’t need the clause that the word in question is connecting, use which. If it does, use that. (Pretty easy to remember, isn’t it?) Let me explain with a couple of examples.
Our office, which has two lunchrooms, is located in Cincinnati.
Our office that has two lunchrooms is located in Cincinnati.
These sentences are not the same. The first sentence tells us that you have just one office, and it’s located in Cincinnati. The clause which has two lunchrooms gives us additional information, but it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence. Remove the clause and the location of our one office would still be clear: Our office is located in Cincinnati.
The second sentence suggests that we have multiple offices, but the office with two lunchrooms is located in Cincinnati. The phrase that has two lunchrooms is known as a restrictive clause because another part of the sentence (our office) depends on it. You can’t remove that clause without changing the meaning of the sentence.
Let’s look at another example:
The time machine, which looked like a telephone booth, concerned Bill and Ted.
The time machine that looked like a telephone booth concerned Bill and Ted.
In the first sentence (thanks to the use of which), the time machine concerned Bill and Ted. It also happened to look like a telephone booth. In the second sentence (which uses the restrictive clause), Bill and Ted are concerned with the time machine that looks like a telephone booth. They aren’t concerned with the one that looks like a garden shed or the one that looks like a DeLorean (Marty McFly may have reservations about that one).
4) –please, PLEASE explain how to use who, whose, and whom in a way that involves an actual sentence. (This one was me.)
“Who” is a subject pronoun like “I,” “he”, “she”, “we” or “they”. It asks “what person” did, is doing, or is going to do something or was, is, or will be in a certain state. Examples: Who taught you science last year? Who is responsible for that terrible law? Who will be at the dance?
“Who” also has a contraction, “who’s.” That stands for “who is” or “who has.” The second sentence in the above example could be written as “Who’s responsible for that terrible law?” Or, to give another example, “Who’s your favorite actor?”
“Whose” is a possessive pronoun meaning “belonging to what person.” Examples: Whose phone is lying on the floor? Whose party are you going to, Emma’s or Tanisha’s?
“Whom” is an object pronoun like “me,” "him,” “her,” "us,” and “them.” It’s used to indicate that that someone is having an action done to them. It is primarily used in extremely formal English: To whom am I speaking? (But most people would just say “Who am I speaking to?)
To quote Grammarly.com: When in doubt, try this simple trick: If you can replace the word with “he”' or “'she,” use who. If you can replace it with “him” or “her,” use whom.
5) –what is an indirect object? (this boy actually acknowledged his own question and said in tenth grade his teacher said “you’ll already have learned this in sixth grade.” They had not.)
Okay. The shortest sentences are just a subject and a verb. Stephen King gives some examples of nonsense sentences like “Mountains float” and “Plums deify” in his book On Writing. Here, I’m going to use “Margaret built.” We don’t know what she built. We just know that she built something.
Next, we’ll add a direct object. Who or what did Margaret build?
“Robot” is the direct object. “Margaret” is the subject of the sentence; she is doing the building. “Robot” is the direct object; it is the thing being built. It receives the action of the verb.
Now that we have a direct object, we can add an indirect object. An indirect object is the person, place or thing that the direct object is directed toward.
Margaret built her beloved wife a robot.
Margaret also wrote her wife a love letter.
In both cases, “wife” is the indirect object; she’s the one that is receiving the direct object.
In most cases, sentences with indirect objects can be turned into sentences with the propositions “to” or “for.” Margaret built a robot FOR her beloved wife. Margaret also wrote a love letter TO her wife
6) –what’s the difference between further and farther?
The quick and dirty tip is to use “farther” for physical distance and “further” for metaphorical, or figurative, distance. It's easy to remember because “farther” has the word “far” in it, and “far” obviously relates to physical distance.
These examples will help:
Imagine Squiggly and Aardvark are flying to a galaxy far, far away, but Squiggly gets bored and starts mercilessly bugging Aardvark. "How much farther?'" he keeps asking in despair.
Did you hear that? Squiggly used “farther” because he was asking about physical distance.
If Aardvark gets frustrated with Squiggly, which he surely will, he could respond, “If you complain further, I'm going to shoot you out the airlock.”
Aardvark used “further” because he isn't talking about physical distance. He's talking about a figurative distance: the extent of Squiggly's complaining.
The good news is that in ambiguous cases it doesn't matter which word you choose. Although careful writers will try to stick with the distinction between “further” and “farther,” the Oxford English Dictionary, Fowler's Modern English Usage, and a number of other sources say that, in most cases, it's fine to use “further” and “farther” interchangeably, especially when the distinction isn't clear. People have been using them interchangeably for hundreds of years, and a few experts don't even follow the distinction.
For further info, Google “farther vs further.”
7) I’m 29 years old and I STILL don’t understand the difference between “to lie” and “to lay.” I know there is one! I know that grammatically it should be “it was laid down, and there it lies,” but I don’t know why.
First off, “lie” and “lay” are a headache for a lot of people. You aren’t alone. Second, I’m going back to Grammar Girl for this one.
First, we'll do the easy part, which is the present tense.
If you exclude the meaning "to tell an untruth" and just focus on the setting/reclining meaning of lay and lie, then the important distinction is that lay requires a direct object and lie does not. So you lie down on the sofa (no direct object), but you lay the book down on the table (the book is the direct object).
This is in the present tense, where you are talking about doing something now: you lie down on the sofa, and you lay down a book.
But then everything goes all haywire, because lay is the past tense of lie. It's a total nightmare! I tried and tried to come up with a mnemonic for this, but I couldn't do it. Instead, I've made a table that you can print out from the website and tape up over your desk or in your notebook, because you just have to memorize this or look it up every time.
Here's how to conjugate these two verbs:
The past tense of lie is lay, so
Last week, Steve lay down on the floor.
The cat lay in the mud after it rained yesterday.
The past tense of lay is laid, so
Last week, I laid the TPS report [direct object] on your desk.
Mary forcefully laid her ring [direct object] on the table.
The past participle of lie is lain, so
Steve has lain on the floor for days.
The cat has lain in the mud for hours.
The past participle of lay is laid, so
I have laid the TPS report on your desk.
Mary has forcefully laid her ring on the table.
Don't feel bad if you can't remember these right away. Practice will help, and truthfully, I still have to look them up every time I use them.
