The Cranky Language Lady: Wednesday Grammar Quiz for Grownups

The Cranky Language Lady: Wednesday Grammar Quiz for Grownups comes from CrankyLanguageLady.com. To find out more about the Cranky Language Lady, view sample pages from her new book, peruse her blog, or visit the website.

Grammar Quiz #19 — Comma Crisis

Commas are troublesome. People often leave them out when they are needed or toss them in when they are not. Can you find the five comma errors below? (Pat yourself on the back if you can find the two spelling errors as well.)


Donald had doubts about his new therapist when she handed him an accordian, and said "Learn to play polkas, no one can be depressed when playing a perky polka."


Donald was skeptical. After all a big reason for his divorce was his wife's insistence on watching reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show every night while they ate dinner.


He picked up the accordian and put it on. In just moments, "The Chicken Dance Polka" started looping through his brain. He smiled, suddenly he did feel better.


View answer.

Tuesday Trivia

1. Which author was sent a rejection letter that read "I regret the American public is not interested in anything on China"?
2. Which U.S. President was a Finalist for the National Book Award?
3. What does the “K” stand for in J.K. Rowling’s name?
4. What was Judy Blume's maiden name?

Last Week's Answer

1. Louisa May Alcott — Beth (Little Women)
2. Pearl S. Buck — O-Lan (The Good Earth)
3. Geoffrey Chaucer — Troilus (Troilus and Criseyde)
4. Virginia Woolf — Septimus Warren Smith (Mrs. Dalloway)
5. Charles Dickens — Nell Trent (The Old Curiosity Shop)
6. Kate Chopin — Edna Pontellier (The Awakening)
7. Thornton Wilder — Emily (Our Town)
8. Aldous Huxley — John (Brave New World)
9. Toni Morrison — Pilate Dead (Song of Solomon)
10. Arthur Miller — Willie (Death of a Salesman)

Prestwick House Congratulates Alaska’s Poetry Out Loud Winner, Lakeidra Chavis

Lakeidra Chavis of Lathrop High School in Fairbanks was named the winner of the Poetry Out Loud Alaska state finals.

Chavis gained top honors for the recitation of three poems:”Who Understands Me But Me,” by Jimmy Santiago Baca; “The Author to Her Book,” by Anne Bradstreet; and “Domestic Violence,” by Eavan Boland.
Lakeidra’s sponsor in the competition was her Advanced Placement English Literature teacher, Nicole Stellon O’Donnell. Click here for more information on the Poetry Out Loud program.

Prestwick House Congratulates Colorado Poetry Out Loud Winner, Samuel Opoku

Colorado’s representative at the Poetry Out Loud national finals in Washington, DC, will be Thornton High's Samuel Opoku.

Samuel took top honors with "Early Affection," by George Moses Horton. Click here for more information on the Poetry Out Loud program, or read more from Denver Westwood Blogs below.

Memorizing and reciting great verse kept the epics of the ancient world alive. It helped former hostage Terry Anderson survive years of dismal captivity -- and countless closet poets from losing their sanity in a tin-ear world.

And last night the act of performing classic poems became a group celebration, rather than cutthroat competition, for 24 students from across Colorado joining in the Poetry Out Loud state finals.

Now in its sixth year, Poetry Out Loud seeks to further understanding and appreciation of poetry among high schools students, who vie with classmates for the honor of representing their school at state and ultimately a national final. Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Art and the Poetry Foundation, the event demonstrates that all that's supposed to be creaky and taboo in current education -- memorization and declamation, personal interpretation and a love of the spoken word -- can be refreshingly new again.

"Having beautiful language in your head is one of the great ways of being a human being," declared the evening's master of ceremonies, Colorado poet laureate David Mason.

Mason kept the proceedings at the Lakewood Cultural Center moving smoothly with a stream of genial anecdotes about poets and their work in the intervals between readings. Then a hardy group of performers, many with theater backgrounds, stepped to the mic to urge the audience not to go gently into that good night or to admit no impediment to the marriage of true minds.

The students were required to recite two poems flawlessly from memory, one of which had to be from the nineteenth century or earlier. There were several Longfellows and Millays, an occasional Frost or Dickinson. Ignorant armies clashed by night, and La Belle Dame who so enchanted Keats was still sans merci.

Quinita Thomas of the Colorado School for the Blind knocked 'em dead with her rendition of Allen Ginsberg wandering the aisles of a California supermarket and bumping into his spirit guide:

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eying the grocery boys.

And Mackenzie Seuss of Palmer High School enthralled with one of the weirder poems by one of our weirdest free-verse pioneers, Stephen Crane, which asks a naked fellow in the desert if he's enjoying snacking on his own heart:

"It is bitter, bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

After two rounds, National Poetry Slam Champion Ken Arkind and other distinguished poet/judges trimmed the field to five finalists. A few minutes later, Mei Mei Pollitt of the Denver School of the Arts scored the runner-up prize with her dramatic rendition of "La Belle Dame," and Thornton High's Samuel Opoku, an immigrant from a Ghana with a masterful sense of phrasing, took top honors with "Early Affection," by George Moses Horton.

Opoku will represent Colorado in the national finals in Washington D.C. in April, where the first prize is a hefty $20,000. It might also be the last such prize; although last night proved the enduring appeal of beautiful language, beautifully spoken, the NEA budget is in the crosshairs of lawmakers, and it's possible Poetry Out Loud will be silenced.

The Cranky Language Lady: Wednesday Grammar Quiz for Grownups

The Cranky Language Lady: Wednesday Grammar Quiz for Grownups comes from CrankyLanguageLady.com. To find out more about the Cranky Language Lady, view sample pages from her new book, peruse her blog, or visit the website.

Grammar Quiz #18 — Run-On Sentences

Correct the run-on sentences in the following selection:

Gary was in charge of casting for the new reality television show, Dumped on a Tropical Island, and he quite enjoyed his job, despite the long hours, the piles of paperwork, and the fact that his assistant—an annoying woman named Francine—objected to most of his choices. Those selected for the show were supposed to display any of these qualities: intelligence, wit, humor, or exceptional good looks, Gary managed to hire only young women who would look good in a bikini. Francine complained, he stuck to his guns. She went to the director, he approved of the bikini girls. Gary suggested that maybe she would be happier if he chose some men who looked good in a swimsuit, too, however, she continued to insist that people would quickly become bored with the show if good looks were the only requirement for being on it.


Gary won, the show was a hit, Francine decided to become a librarian.


View answer.

Tuesday Trivia

Match the authors in column A and their famous characters who die in Column B.

Column A

• Louisa May Alcott
• Pearl S. Buck
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Virginia Woolf
• Charles Dickens
• Kate Chopin
• Thornton Wilder
• Aldous Huxley
• Toni Morrison
• Arthur Miller

Column B

• John
• Willie
• Nell Trent
• Beth
• O-Lan
• Troilus
• Pilate Dead
• Septimus Warren Smith
• Emily
• Edna Pontellier

Last Week's Answers



Which poem remains unfinished because the author could not remember the dream about which he had begun writing?



Samuel Taylor Coleridge was in the midst of writing down his dream when someone knocked on the door. The interruption caused him to forget the rest of the dream, which is why "Kubla Khan" remains unfinished.




What does the "R" in Dean R. Koontz's name stand for?



Ray




Which winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was born in a ladies’ room during a dance?



Winston Churchill




Of all the words in the English language, which has the most definitions?



The word “set.”

Prestwick House Congratulates Rhode Island Poetry Out Loud Winner, Daraja Hines

Prestwick House Congratulates Rhode Island Poetry Out Loud Winner, Daraja Hines

Ms. Hines is a junior at Jacqueline M Walsh School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Pawtucket.

Click here for more information on the Poetry Out Loud program.

The Cranky Language Lady: Wednesday Grammar Quiz for Grownups

The Cranky Language Lady: Wednesday Grammar Quiz for Grownups comes from CrankyLanguageLady.com. To find out more about the Cranky Language Lady, view sample pages from her new book, peruse her blog, or visit the website.

Grammar Quiz #16 — Semicolon Savvy

To many, semicolons are the most mysterious of punctuation marks. Check your semicolon savvy by correcting the following:

Rita couldn’t believe it; she had dropped her cell phone into the toilet yet again. She had spent a lot of money on cell phones in the past year; $953.00, to be exact.

She sighed. She had three options; to give up using a cell phone altogether, to fish the cell phone out, wash it off, and pray for a miracle, or to suggest to her husband, perhaps after an especially nice home-cooked meal, that he might want to be gracious about the money they were going to have to pay Verizon, yet again.

View possible correction.

Tuesday Trivia

1. Which poem remains unfinished because the author could not remember the dream about which he had begun writing?
2. What does the "R" in Dean R. Koontz's name stand for?
3. Which winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was born in a ladies’ room during a dance?
4. Of all the words in the English language, which has the most definitions?

Last Week's Answers

• J. M. Barrie — Peter Pan, The Admirable Crichton
• George Orwell — 1984, A Clergyman’s Daughter
• Charlotte Bronte — Jane Eyre, Shirley
• Zora Neale Hurston — Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jonah’s Gourd Vine
• Louisa May Alcott — Little Women, Lulu’s Library
• Thornton Wilder — Our Town, The Matchmaker
• Ralph Ellison — Invisible Man, Juneteenth
• Arthur Miller — Death of a Salesman, The Creation of the World and Other Business
• Tennessee Williams — The Glass Menagerie, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
• Harriet Beecher Stowe — Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Little Pussy Willow

Happy National Grammar Day!

Celebrate Grammar in your classroom for National Grammar Day! Check out a variety of websites including www.NationalGrammarDay.com to enter a fiction writing contest, download fun grammar activities and teaching resources, listen to the National Grammar Day Theme Song, send a free Grammar Day e-card, and check out Grammar Day T-Shirts.

Also, check out this great blogpost from the Grammar Monkeys blog on Why We Need Grammar:

On this day each year, March 4, we celebrate National Grammar Day, a chance to honor grammar in all its glory. But why should grammar get a holiday? Why is it even important at all?

A couple of recent discussions inspired me to think about why grammar is important. Of course it is, or I wouldn’t waste a bunch of time writing about it. But I’ve always thought of it as a given, rather than something needing an explanation.

So when someone on Twitter asked, “How would you convince someone that understanding grammar is important? ‘I will never use it, I know how to spell without it’ ” I had to articulate an answer.

First, spelling doesn’t equal grammar. (It’s important too, though.)

Second, you do use grammar — we all use it, every time we speak or write. Most of us don’t even think about it if we’re speaking our native language. Grammar is why we know Yoda talks funny, why we are able to differentiate “Dog bites man” from “Man bites dog,” and why we can pile up modifiers and clauses and compound predicates and still come away with a sentence that makes perfect sense.

Grammar isn’t a bunch of arcane rules invented by pedants to trip students up. It’s a system of language — building sounds into words, words into phrases, phrases into sentences — most of which you already know. Grammar is what makes language work as a means of communication. It grows and changes; it bends to accommodate poets and philosophers and physicists.

But when grammar is ignored or abused, sentences come crashing down and meaning gets lost. Certainly sometimes people can figure out what you meant, even if it’s not what you said, but other times your communication fails. You’re not deliberately wasting breath or ink or bandwidth, but if you’re not being clear, you may as well be. And that’s why grammar is important.

Back to the figuring-out-what-you-meant part: Someone commented to me (in an e-mail lamenting, not encouraging, sloppy writing), “I suppose it’s true that language use is all about communication, so if you get your point across, it may not matter as much if you use proper grammar rules.”

Well, I suppose it may not. And “good enough” may be sufficient for texts and status updates and casual conversation. But if you’re speaking or writing professionally (this includes students), don’t you want to give your clients, bosses, colleagues, teachers and potential audiences — or, for that matter, your friends and relatives — better than “good enough”? Don’t all the people you communicate with deserve clear, smooth, meaningful language?

You wouldn’t show up for a job interview or a business presentation in sweats and a T-shirt. Your language shouldn’t either.

Cheers!

Celebrate National Grammar Day by spreading the word that good grammar puts you in good company.

The Twitter hashtag for today is #grammarday.
The National Grammar Day home page has all sorts of fun grammar facts, and a free e-card to boot.

The Cranky Language Lady: Wednesday Grammar Quiz for Grownups

The Cranky Language Lady: Wednesday Grammar Quiz for Grownups comes from CrankyLanguageLady.com. To find out more about the Cranky Language Lady, view sample pages from her new book, peruse her blog, or visit the website.

Grammar Quiz #14 — Puffy Prose Onstage

People often write in a wordy, stilted, formal style because they think that’s how they should write. Good writing, however, is usually clear and to the point. The paragraph below is full of empty or needless phrases. See if you can pare it down to around 70 words (instead of 131), without losing any meaning.



The board members of the theater have assessed the situation and decided that, at this point in time, another original show by Edgar Wharton would not be in the theater’s best interests, primarily because of the fact that ticket sales for his previous show, My Life as an Accountant, did not reach anywhere near a level that could be considered even marginally acceptable. Possible potential revenue from Stock Options and Derivatives—the Musical does not appear likely to allow the theater to pay for even the associated costs of producing the show. As a result, the board, as a whole, has determined that The Sound of Music would, when all is said and done, represent a choice that would be more acceptable with the public at large for the next show.



View a possible answer.

Celebrate Dr. Seuss's Birthday with Read Across America

According to Seussville.com, we should all get involved!

"NEA’s Read Across America Day is a nationwide reading celebration that takes place annually on March 2—Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Across the country, thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers participate by bringing together kids, teens, and books, and you can too! Incorporate these guides and activities to celebrate reading with young people."

Visit www.Seussville.com to check out classroom resources like printable activities, lesson plans, and an author study. Additional information includes a complete listing of Read Across America sponsored events and programs and a sign up form for the NEA's newsletter!