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Saturday, February 11, 2012

If I was in L.A. ...

 
It's windy, snowy, and -14°C. Ms. Sandwalk gets it exactly right on her blog [If I was in L.A.].

We'll soon be in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks visiting our granddaughter (and her parents). I hope to meet up with some of you while I'm there. Leave a comment or email me. My email address is "l" period "moran" and the domain name is "utoronto" period "ca".


Note to grammar police. I know the proper use of subjunctive mood. I suspect John Phillips does as well. Denny Doherty was Canadian and was almost certainly taught proper grammar in school. Mama Cass attended university so it's likely she too knew about subjunctives. As for Michelle ... well, three out of four ain't bad.

5 comments :

Veronica Abbass said...

I'm altering your reply to Anonymous (http://tinyurl.com/7zt838j)to make a point: "The fact that you [make an appeal to authority]indicates that you don't understand the issue." Furthermore, song writers are not an authority on grammar.

PS The period goes outside the brackets: "We'll soon be in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks visiting our granddaughter(and her parents)[.]"

Accuracy in grammar is as important as accuracy in science.

Larry Moran said...

Thank-you for correcting that obvious typo. I fixed it.

Did you notice that I deliberately moved the period outside the quotation marks in the last sentence? It was to avoid ambiguity. Both styles are acceptable according the the Chicago Manual of Style but the number one rule of style and grammar is "avoid ambiguity."

Song writers are not authorities on grammar as I noted. They are, however, authorities on poetic license.

NAL said...

I wonder if John Phillips also knew about this:

With whoever you want to do it with

With whomever you want to do it with

Larry Moran said...

For those of you who seem puzzled, the phrase "If I was in L.A." is grammatically incorrect. It should be "If I were in L.A."

Larry Moran said...

I suspect he did.

I will use "whoever" because "whomever" is archaic. The Chicago Manual of Style agrees that the archaic forms are disappearing. It's about time.