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The Question

Which is correct?

1. None of us does
2. None of us do

The Answer

In replying to this question, I can do no better than to quote from the excellent book by Martha Kolln, Rhetorical Grammar:

One special problem occurs with the word none, which has its origin in the phrase not one. Because of that original meaning, many writers insist that none always be singular, as not one clearly is. However, a more accurate way to assess its meaning is to recognize none as the negative, or opposite, of all and to treat it in the same way, with its number determined by the number of the modifier.

Kolln provides a few examples to demonstrate the logic of her claim:

So, in the questioner's example sentence, it appears that the correct version would be the second: "None of us do..."

What do my fellow English geeks out there think?

Selline Odeny asked, "Please tell me about the subject-first and non-subject-first sentence patterns."

Thanks for the request, Selline. I'd love to tell you about these sentence patterns.

While it's true that sentences can begin with a dependent clause in which the beginning word is typically an adverb, I'll be focusing on the main part of the sentence, the independent clause.

Subject First

The most common sentence patterns in English have the subject first, followed by the verb. We first learn who or what the sentence is about, and then we discover what the person or thing does or is.

Non-Subject First

Less common are the sentence patterns that begin with a part of speech other than the subject (as is the case with this sentence, in which the adverb/predicate adjective pair "Less common" comes first). These inverted sentence patterns are used sometimes to delay revealing what the sentence is about and sometimes to create tension or suspense. Still other times, these patterns can be used to connect ideas between sentences more clearly.

Sentence 4, written by Ernest Hemingway, begins with the expletive ("It") and the verb ("was always"), followed by the complement ("pleasant") before finally arriving at the subject ("crossing bridges in Paris"). The sentence rewritten in the conventional subject-verb pattern would look like this: Crossing bridges in Paris was always pleasant.

Extra Credit

A great resource for learning more about the "inverted" sentence patterns, the ones with something other than the subject first, is Scott Rice's Right Words, Right Places, from which I took a few of these examples.

Sudhir Khare recently asked the English Master, What is the 'absolute construction' in English grammar. Please explain to me in a clear and lucid manner. Okay, Sudhir, I'll do my best.

The absolute phrase is a sentence modifier, adding particular description. It's like a close-up shot in a movie that follows an establishing shot. It's also one of my favorite sentence constructions, especially for narrative writing.

In her book Rhetorical Grammar, Martha Kolln describes the absolute phrase this way:

Among the modifiers that we use to add information to our sentences, the absolute phrase is probably the least used and the least understood. In form, the absoute is a noun phrase—a noun headword with a postnoun modifier; it adds a focusing detail to the idea of the whole sentence.

Kolln points out that the absolute phrase is almost a sentence; the only thing missing is a "be" verb. For example, if we added "was" to the absolute phrase in example 3, we would get, "Its peace was reflected in her innocent face."

Extra Credit

I went to a seminar a few years ago led by a man named William Spivey, who had his own system of grammar with a corresponding nomenclature. He called the absolute phrase a "noun-part +" pattern. By noun-part, he meant a part of the actual thing itself (or a part of its environment), not a part of the word. What comes after the "+" could be an "-ing group" (present participial phrase), an "-ed group" (past participial phrase), or any of a number of other groups of words. In my first two examples above, then, the absolute phrases would be "noun-part + -ing groups"; the absolute phrase in the third example would be a "noun-part + -ed group."

Two recent visitors have asked what the difference is between which and that and when to use each.

People usually struggle with the distinction when they are used as relative pronouns beginning a relative clause, which acts as an adjective in a sentence.

Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Clauses

The pronoun which begins a nonrestrictive relative clause, which means that the clause only comments on or adds information about a noun. In other words, the clause is not essential; it's not necessary to identify the noun that it is modifying. It's descriptive only.

The pronoun that begins a restrictive relative clause. This type of clause restricts the meaning of the noun. It is essential to identify the noun that it modifies.

Punctuating Which and That

Because a clause beginning with which is not essential to the meaning or identification of the noun that it modifies, it is set off by commas. I used to tell my students to think of the commas as hooks that we put on either side of an "optional" group of words. The hooks suggest to us that we can pull the group of words out of the sentence and still retain meaning.

A restrictive clause is not set off by commas because it's necessary for the meaning of the sentence. Think of it as a permanent fixture, one that is seamlessly integrated with the rest of the sentence.

A visitor wrote in to ask when to use "a" and when to use "an." In particular, she wanted to know which of the following is correct:

1. Citibank is a MNC Bank
2. Citibank is an MNC Bank

The correct sentence is number 2.

The Rule

Use "a" when the following word begins with a consonant sound; use "an" when the following word begins with a vowel sound. What matters is how the following word is pronounced, not what it looks like. In the example sentence, "MNC" begins with a consonant, but it begins with the sound of the vowel "e," since we would pronounce it as "em en see."

Extra Credit

Some people, especially those who are trying extra hard to sound erudite, will use "an" before a word that begins with the letter "h," such as "an historical artifact." In the United States, this usage is incorrect. Instead, we write, "a historical artifact." For a more detailed and discussion of this issue, see "More on A vs. An" from Bill Walsh's Sharp Points.

Ask a grammar geek about the double negative, and you'll invariably hear about its long and noble heritage in the English language, from Chaucer to Shakespeare, up to the 18th century, when it all but died at the hands of overly zealous, systematizing Enlightenment linguists.

Whatever its history, however, the current view of most pragmatic writers is that the double negative should be avoided, if for no other reason than that a crotchety old English teacher might discover it and try to publicly humiliate them for using it. In many cases, people will read a double negative as if it equals a positive. One exception, as the American Heritage Dictionary of English Usage points out, is the expression, "You ain't seen nothing yet," which any reasonable person would admit is the equivalent of "You haven't seen anything yet."

The problem with the double negative is probably more social than grammatical. Sadly, many people are quick to make assumptions about the education, intelligence, or even social class of someone when they hear him or her use a double negative such as "I didn't do nothing last night," or "I couldn't find nothing at the store." My advice is to avoid it, especially in writing or when standard spoken English is expected.

Extra Credit

One form of a double negative is also an example of the rhetorical figure litotes, or the use of understatement by denying the contrary. (e.g. She is not unkind.)

Reference

You can read more about double negatives at the American Heritage Dictionary of English Usage.

Thank you, Marla, for the question and the examples!

Manju submitted a request for information on "how to write passive sentences & cosutive [sic] sentences." I'll focus here on passive (voice) sentences, and how to distinguish them from sentences using active voice.

Active Voice

A sentence is written in the active voice if the subject—the main person, place, thing, or idea—performs the action.

Passive Voice

A sentence is written in the passive voice if the subject—the main person, place, thing, or idea—receives the action.

How to Identify Active and Passive Voice

To find out if a sentence is written in the active or passive voice, ask yourself these two questions:

1. What is the subject?
2. Is the subject doing something?

If the answer to question 2 is "Yes," the sentence is active; if the answer is "No," the sentence is passive.

Thanks for the question, Manju!

Sentences can be classified in a number of ways—grammatically, rhetorically, functionally, and so on. One visitor to this site asks about grammatical sentence types:

How [do I] tell the difference between Compound, Simple, Complex, Compound-Complex sentences?

Before we can identify these sentence types, we need to understand the following terms:

Phrase:

A group of words that may have a subject or a verb, but not both. (ex: in the beginning, to grow up, running around the room).

Dependent Clause:

A group of words that contains a subject and verb but does not express a complete thought. A dependent clause cannot be a sentence. Dependent clauses are sometimes referred to as subordinate clauses.

Independent Clause:

A group of words that contains a subject and verb and expresses a complete thought. An independent clause is a sentence. Independent clauses are sometimes referred to as main clauses.

For more information on dependent and independent clauses, see the handout from the Purdue University Online Writing Lab, which is where I got the above definitions.

Here's a quick rundown of the grammatical sentence types, along with an example or two of each.

Simple Sentence

The simple sentence has a single subject-verb pair. In other words, it has only one independent clause and no dependent clause. Example 1 below is obviously a simple sentence. Example 2's single verb gives it away. But what about example 3? Isn't it too long to be a simple sentence?

I italicized the third example's subject-verb pair so you can see that it really is just a simple sentence. The groups of words that come before the main part of the sentence are prepositional phrases, neither of them having a subject or a verb. Also, while there are two verbs in the independent clause ("stretched" and "peered"), they are both paired up with the same subject.

Compound Sentence

A compound sentence has two or more independent clauses, but it has no dependent clauses. The independent clauses can be joined by a semicolon; they can also be joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction (and, or nor, for, but, yet, so).

Complex Sentence

Although a complex sentence has only one independent clause, it may have more than one dependent clauses.

Compound-Complex Sentence

A compound-complex sentence, which may be the most difficult type to write, has more than one independent clause, and it has at least one dependent clause.

Bonus!

Here's a little table I whipped together to show you the sentence types at a glance.

I just received an excellent question about proper first-person pronoun usage. The issue is tough to resolve because sometimes grammatical correctness takes a back seat to common usage, and rightly so. Now, on to the question:

I am a teacher in South Africa and recently found a worksheet with the heading "Me and My Environment". Is this heading grammatically correct and would it be appropriate to hand out to the children (I don't want parents turning around and complaining)

Let's start with the easier part of the question:

Is "Me and My Environment" grammatically correct?

The short answer is no. It's not grammatically correct, in the most prescriptive sense of the term. Consider, though, another expression that technically isn't correct: "Woe is me." Would anyone in her right mind argue that the expression should be "Woe is I"? Of course not. In fact, Patricia O'Connor has written a book called Woe Is I that addresses a number of grammar issues that perhaps concern people a little too much. Another common expression, "Me and my big mouth!" would sound ridiculous in the grammatically correct form: "My big mouth and I!"

Would it be appropriate to hand out to the children

Only you can determine what is appropriate for your classroom in this regard. However, I can give you some suggestions based on what I might do in the same situation.

If you are an elementary school teacher responsible for instructing students in English as well as environmental science, you could use the handout's title as an opportunity to teach a "mini-lesson" on pronoun use and see if they can rewrite it to be more proper. You could ask students to consider differences between colloquial English and formal English—or ask them to think about differences between the way people talk and the way people write. Sometimes it just helps to get children to think about the language and play with it a little.

I'm very interested to hear how you ultimately handle the situation. I hope you will find the time to post a comment and let us know what decision you made and how it went.

One more note: While I understand the fear of parental complaint, my experience has been that it's nearly unavoidable. Some parents seem predisposed to pick a fight, even on the shakiest of grounds. Remember that you are the expert. Have confidence in the decisions you make for your classroom. But also be willing to admit a mistake. Your integrity and honesty will go a long way in disarming those who try to bully you.

Many people struggle with the possessive case of singular nouns when the words already end with s. The general rule is this:
Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.

Here are some examples:

• James's cat
• Mrs. Jones's attorney
• Dr. Seuss's book

Exceptions

Of course, we're talking about the English language, so we're going to have some exceptions to the rule. While grammar books and style guides don't necessarily agree on how to determine these exceptions, most consider a word's pronunciation. Here is what a few of the books say:

• If pronunciation would be awkward with the added -'s, some writers use only the apostrophe. Either use is acceptable. (Diana Hacker, A Writer's Reference)
• Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names in -es and -is [such as Achilles' and Isis'], the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. (Strunk and White, The Elements of Style)
• With some singular nouns that end in -s, pronouncing the possessive ending as a separate syllable can sound awkward; in such cases, it is acceptable to use just an apostrophe. (Kirszner & Mandell, The Brief Holt Handbook)
• Since writers vary in the use of the apostrophe, it is not possible to make a hard and fast rule about the apostrophe in singular words ending in s.… Punctuate according to pronunciation. (John E. Warriner, English Grammar and Composition)

For more on this issue, see the article at World Wide Words

Time for the English Master to settle another contentious grammar issue, before someone gets hurt. Pat asks:

My friend and I were having a dispute about when to use "me" correctly in a sentence that's referring to two people. If I were to say something along the lines as, "Is that meat okay for Bob and I/me to eat?" would I use I or me? If I were to eliminate Bob from the sentence, it would be correct to say "Is that meat okay for me to eat?" So why would I change me to I?

The Answer

You shouldn't change "me" to "I." The correct form of the sentence is: "Is that meat okay for Bob and me to eat?" You may breathe a sigh of relief now.

Your little test for discerning whether to use "I" or "me" is the same one that I use. Eliminate the other part of the noun phrase and see how it sounds with each pronoun.

People Have Become Me-Phobic!

The educated classes are so afraid of improperly using "me" in a sentence that they hyper-correct, going into all sorts of contortions to avoid it.

Here are a few examples of incorrect first-person pronoun usage:

• Let's keep this little secret between you and I.
• The international community presented Mr. Trimble and myself with a prestigious award for our life-long commitment to saving the muskrat.
• Davis will certainly choose you and I to co-chair the campaign.

All three of the sentences need "me" instead.

A student asks the English Master to settle a dispute:

Please answer this grammar question for me:

Neither my brother nor my sister ______ ever visited the White House.
a. have
b. has
c. is
d. are

If you answer it, please explain why. There is a battle on our school grounds as to what the correct answer is. Thanks for the help.

The correct answer is…drumroll please…"b. has." Here's why:

We can eliminate "c" and "d" immediately because they don't make sense grammatically. Then, to determine whether the appropriate verb is have or has, we need to make sure that the verb "agrees" with the subject in number. This task is relatively easy when the subject is a single word: The house is on fire. When we're confronted with an "either/or" or "neither/nor" construction, we need to go with the noun that is closer to the verb (in this case, "sister"). That's because we're only referring to one or the other, the sister or the brother, but not both. If, on the other hand, you had written, "My brother and my sister," the verb would be have visited.

In your example, it doesn't really matter which noun is closer to the verb, because they're both singular. However, consider the following sentence: Neither the car nor the trucks were able to cross the flooded intersection. Here "car" is singular and "trucks" is plural, but since "trucks" is closer to the verb, we use the plural verb "were."

Extra Credit:
As I demonstrated above, a compound subject (such as "my brother and my sister") typically gets a plural verb. Sometimes, though, what looks like a compound subject is actually a simple subject in disguise. This deception occurs with what one grammarian refers to as "clumsy joiners," phrases such as together with, along with, as well as, and in addition to. Let's take a look at the example sentence with a clumsy joiner:
My brother, along with my sister, has visited the White House.
Because "along with my sister" is parenthetical, set off from the rest of the sentence, we don't consider it part of the subject. Therefore, the verb needs to be singular (has) in order to agree with the subject.

I'm glad you asked this question about subject-verb agreement, and I hope you had put your money on "b."

Kevin writes:

Your semicolon discussions inspired this inquiry. Many of my students use "however" as a conjunction when they are really using it as a signal adverb to begin an independent clause.

Example: My professor is a kind soul at heart, however he is a nasty grader.

I insist that the comma should be a semicolon or period, but I'm overwhelmed with students who use "however" as the equivalent of "but." I am increasingly seeing this usage in periodicals and among my colleagues as well. Do you think, English Master, that this usage rule is going the way of the split infinitive?

Kevin, you are right; your students are wrong. Your colleagues should know better. Your example above should read: My professor is a kind soul at heart; however, he is a nasty grader. It also, as you mention, could be split into two sentences.

It's easy to understand why so many people would make the mistake. After all, why should anyone assume that two words with the same meaning would function differently in a sentence?

"However" is a conjunctive adverb. I like to call conjunctive adverbs "fancy joiners," because they're usually polysyllabic and sound more formal than their more common equivalents. Others include therefore, nevertheless, hence, in fact, and indeed.

"But" is a coordinating conjunction, or what I like to call a "common joiner." The other coordinating conjunctions are and, or, for, not, yet, and so. If you substitute buthowever in your sentence, it would look like this: My professor is a kind soul at heart, but he is a nasty grader.

If you think in terms of fancy versus common, then it makes sense that a conjunctive adverb (fancy joiner) should get a semicolon, because semicolons really do seem fancier than commas, right?

Extra Credit:
Keep in mind that our discussion so far refers only to these punctuation marks when they are joining two independent clauses, or groups of words that can stand alone as sentences. If "however" were moved to a different position in the second clause, it would be offset by commas. Sure, we'd still have the semicolon to join the two independent clauses, but our conjunctive adverb would get a little different treatment. Back to our example: My professor is a kind soul at heart; he is, however, a nasty grader.

Phew! I hope I didn't confuse matters more. If anyone needs clarification on this issue, post a comment and I'll emend the entry as necessary.

Kevin, as to your question about where this rule will go, I am no grammatical soothsayer. The rule for not splitting infinitives has had a shady past, so it's only fair that people are abandoning it, even if unconsciously. I'm not sure, though, about the semicolon rule. I, for one, am going to hold onto it tenaciously. They'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead… Okay, enough of that.

Marc wrote in with a question for the English Master:

English is not my mother tongue; but I am very interested in improving my English. One of my problems is "Since." What tense should I use after since? Example: I haven't seen you, since...

"Since" is typically used to suggest a passage of time—from then until now, or between then and now—as we see in Marc's example. In the example, since could be followed by a simple noun, such as "November": I haven't seen you since November.

However, Marc's question suggests that he would like "since" to begin a clause, which is a group of words that has both a subject and a verb. In that case, we would follow "since" with a verb in the past tense: I haven't seen you since you won the Olympic gold medal in fencing.

Extra Credit: "Since" can also mean "because," or "inasmuch as." If we use it in this sense, the verb that follows it could be in any tense. For example: We can go outside tomorrow, since the weather will be glorious.

Thanks a lot for the question, Marc!