Slovene Association for the Study of English

Holidays are a linguistic pain. This is because so much time passes between Good Fridays and All Hallows’ Eves and Victoria Days for you to forget what you said and spelled last time.

The Chicago Manual or Style says, “The names of secular and religious holidays or officially designated days or seasons are capitalized,” and provides a few examples – Christmas Day, Hanukkah, etc.

One problem solved. But that’s only part of the story.

Apostrophes are a problem. Remember, it’s New Year’s Eve, followed by New Year’s Day (see 6).

Other tips (use them at your own peril):
1) In the UK, say, “Happy Christmas.” In North America, say, “Merry Christmas.” Elsewhere, mumble. (Actually, this is a dodgy rule of thumb: the British National Corpus has 78 hits for “Happy Christmas” and 68 for “Merry Christmas” – and the latter may be gaining ground).

2) “Christmass” (sic) is a howler.

3) If in doubt about religion, etc., belt out “Happy Holidays!”

4) If you don’t really like the greetee, say “Season’s Greetings.” It’s the “have a nice day” of the Christmas season.

5) If you are very, very old, speak of “Yuletide.”

6) “Boxing Day” is the day after Christmas. Nobody knows what it is, but because it’s a day off in many countries, nobody complains.

7) “Happy New Year!” is the correct pre-snog (i.e. pre-midnight-kiss) greeting.
But if you slur “Happy New Year’s” and someone nit-picks, just argue that you meant it elliptically (i.e. short for “Happy New Year’s EVE”).
“Happy New Years” is wrong, unless you are wishing for future years as well.

8) You do not have to shake hands when you wish somebody “Happy New Year.” In fact, if they don’t know you well, they might find you weird. Oh, and that mistletoe stuff only happens in movies.

9) Sylvester is a Puddy Tat in English.

10) James Joyce’s “The Dead” never actually mentions that the aunts’ party is on the “Feast of the Epiphany” (January 6). This was news to one of us.

Jason Blake and Monika Kavalir

Do not start sentences with “This + verb” (e.g. “This is a massive generalization…” “This sounds glib…”; “This runs counter to…”; “This is troublesome…”).

This tip is a massive generalization. This advice sounds glib, but it’s an easy way to make sure that the reader knows what “this” refers to.

Follow “This” with a full noun.

“While we were watching The Muppet Show, Barry burst into the room and showed us his new sombrero. This was distracting.”

What does “This” refer to?
a) bursting into the room?
b) the sombrero?

Solutions:
a) “This intrusion/interruption/bothersome burst was distracting.”
b) “This sombrero/hat was distracting.”

This is easy to fix – sorry! This ERROR/POTENTIALLY AMBIGUOUS STRUCTURE is easy to fix. Just search through your essay for sentences that begin with “This…” and see whether you can add a noun and clarity.

This tip is, of course, not limited to Slovenians writing in English.

Two things to keep in mind:
1) Slovenian and other languages with grammatical gender are clearer in terms of reference
2) Slovenians tend to overuse “that” at the expense of “this” – what’s up with this (sic)?
Jason Blake and Monika Kavalir

One of us was taught in high school that “like” should not precede an example:

“I saw many fruits like oranges and apples and pears” supposedly meant “I saw many fruits THAT HAD A DISTINCT RESEMBLANCE TO oranges and apples and pears (but I didn’t actually see any oranges and apples and pears.”

“I saw many fruits, SUCH AS oranges and apples and pears” was correct.

Nobody listened to this rule back in high school, and few care about it today – though “such as” sounds slightly more formal and some style guides still do not admit “like” in place of “such as.”

Slovenian students often ignore “such as” altogether and instead write “like” all the time, which is, like, annoying.
Next time you write an essay, search through for “like” and see if you can use “such as” to add some variety.

Jason Blake and Monika Kavalir

Quoting.

Quoting is not a get-out-syntax-free card. When you integrate quoted words into your sentence, your “combined” sentence has to be grammatical.

This is nonsense:

In “Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known” Wordsworth uses the symbol of the moon to increase suspense, “the sinking moon,” “on the descending moon,” leading all the way to “at once, the bright moon dropped,” to mark his arrival at Lucy’s cottage, where, “if Lucy should be dead.”

There are two easy tests for whether you have quoted properly:

i) Read your sentence aloud. Is it syntactically sound?

ii) Temporarily eliminate the quotation marks and look at your sentence. Does it make grammatical sense? Can you tell where the quoted passages are? (No? That’s a good thing in this case!)

After all, nobody would write a sentence like this:

In Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known Wordsworth uses the symbol of the moon to increase suspense, the sinking moon, on the descending moon, leading all the way to at once, the bright moon dropped, to mark his arrival at Lucy’s cottage, where, if Lucy should be dead.

Just remember to put the quotation marks back if you use the second test.

Here’s another example, albeit one that is syntactically confusing rather than flat-out wrong:

The rhyme “This Is the House That Jack Built” is replete with domestic animals, “the cat / That chased the rat” and dairy products, “the cheese.”

Solution 1:

“This Is the House That Jack Built” is replete with domestic animals, including “the cat / That chased the rat[,]” and dairy products, specifically, “the cheese.”

Solution 2:

“This Is the House That Jack Built” is replete with domestic animals and dairy products, including “the cat / That chased the rat” and “the cheese.”

Try putting the passage on Wordsworth into a sentence that is both correct and clear.
Jason Blake and Monika Kavalir