English and Grammar Rules

How important is grammar, anyway?

My students frequently ask me about the importance of grammar, but my friends do as well--my college-educated friends, so I think I need to set the record straight. So, how important is grammar, anyway? Well, in a word, VERY!

Grammar (spoken and written) is very important in some situations:

-Jobs interviews and resumes

-Professional meetings, telephone conversations, memos, etc.

-Emails generated as an employee or representative of any professional organization

-Website content

-Academic essays

-Published articles (in print and online)

And there are situations where grammar is not as important:

-Dialog from a character who should be perceived as less educated or from a different region or part of the world (Some blogs fall into this category.)

-Emails or letters to family and friends (See my caveat below.)

Caveat: Remember that everyone you know is part of your network, and that network will, most likely, contribute to future business opportunities, personal references, potential employment, and so on; therefore, it’s just a good habit to use proper grammar, if you have those skills.

Now, don't let your lack of grammatical skills (or just the fear) keep you from contributing. We all have something important to say (and write), but sure, we can all improve.

If you’re feeling particularly vulnerable about your grammar skills, there is something you can do about it, short of putting yourself to sleep each night reading a handbook. If you slip during a conversation and use the word “irregardless,” for example, don’t panic. Conversations flow, and listeners tend to move with them, BUT written mistakes stop readers in their tracks--and you have the opportunity to minimize written mistakes, so take note of my top five tricks for looking and sounding smarter:

If there’s a rule you’ve never quite understood, reword to avoid it!
Use a spellchecker at ALL times (Spellcheckers are not 100% effective, but they’re better than a stick in the eye.)
Proofread your writing, and the best way to proofread is to read aloud. If it sounds wrong, it probably is.
Know the most common mistakes (next entry in my blog, I promise).
Avoid using regional language or colloquialisms (expressions not used in formal speech or writing), such as the colloquialism I used in item #1 above.

So, to all my future friends out there, and those of you who were just wondering: Yes, grammar IS important, but it's not important enough to stop you, so get going!

Reason Why is Because

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Lately, I’ve noticed more and more that people are using the phrase “reason why,” for example, The reason why I called is to tell you I’ll be there shortly. I won’t even get into “reason why is because,” since this seems an obvious slip-up to most people, but I do want to discuss the logic—or illogic—of the phrase “reason why.”

Let’s look at the terms’ definitions individually, and for ease, I’ll include the word “because” (just in case you don’t see the problem with using all three of these words together):

REASON: “an explanation of the CAUSE of some phenomenon”

WHY: “the CAUSE or intention underlying an action or situation”

BECAUSE: “expresses various concepts of obligation and CAUSE”

Okay, so we’ve established that each of these words means the same thing, CAUSE.

If these words have the same meaning, why do we continue to put them together? It’s just illogical, and it sounds redundant. Let’s take the example sentence from the first paragraph and reword it, to see if we lose any meaning: The reason I called is to tell you I’ll be there shortly. No meaning lost, and the writer/speaker actually sounds more intelligent.

The short and dirty of this lesson: never use REASON, WHY, and BECAUSE in the same sentence.

ITS or IT'S?

Affect and Effect

Their, Someone, Everyone, Everything

Did you ever write a sentence like the following, where you just knew something was wrong, but you couldn’t put your finger on it? For example, “Someone forgot their ticket.”

Most people know that the word THEIR refers back to a plural subject, such as in this sentence, “They forgot THEIR tickets.” THEIR refers to THEY, both being plural. So what do we do about the sentence, “Someone forgot their ticket.”?

(If you're getting ready to lie down in bed, then this is perfect timing, because this next paragraph will put you to sleep.)

The obvious is to use SHE or HE instead of THEIR, but what if you don’t know the gender? And please, please, please, do NOT use HIS without knowing. That’s gender bias and with over 60% of merchandise purchased by females, you do not want to alienate your buyers. The English language lacks of a neutral, singular personal pronoun; the only singular personal pronouns are SHE, HE, and IT. It does seem to be more acceptable these days to use THEIR in this situation; but be cautious! If you do this in academic writing, you’ll be treated like a criminal. If you use this in a professional report, you may get away with it, but not without jeopardizing your reputation. Most people just use my #1 trick for looking and sounding smart: rewarding to avoid the problem.

I don’t want to make this more complicated, but I’m going to. The same problem arises when you use the following words: EVERYONE, EVERYTHING, SOMEBODY. Yes, I know two of these words sound plural, but they’re not. Do I LOOK like I’m joking? Here are some perplexing examples:

“Everyone wants their paycheck.” (Yeah, it sounds okay because everyone sounds plural—but it’s not.) Just avoid this mistake by writing, “Everyone wants a paycheck.”

I've come upon an alternative, and I cannot take credit for this pure genius, but I can, at the very least, pass it along to others, who need a nuetral personal pronoun. This word can be broken down like this: she/he/it, hence s/h/it, shorter even, shit. Okay, I realize it's known as a profanity in our language, but let's get past that.

A Case of Meningococcal Disease in Healthcare Workers

Sample: Audience: Internet, Healthcare; Length: 1700 words.
Please contact me for the entire article.

Background
An infectious disease is one that is triggered by various pathogens that can be transmitted by means of either a biological or physical agent to a host. Some of the common infectious diseases are as follows: influenza, mononucleosis, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), hepatitis, and tuberculosis, and meningococcal disease. Having an infectious disease management program in place can cut down considerably on the possibility of spreading the infection and thus putting more people, including both hospital staff and patients at risk.

In the journal Lancet, of November 11, 2000, researchers Anna Gilmore, James Stuart, and Nick Andrews, describe the risk to health-care workers who are exposed to meningococcal disease. In the particular situation discussed by these researchers, modes of contact for the primary infection included while doctor was performing a full clinical admission when patient coughed in doctor's face, daily contact with infected patients, during the process of airway insertion of a patient on an ambulance, during delivery and fitting of oxygen while patient was restless, and close contact with coughing, crying child over a prolonged period of time.

Organizational Management Behavior
Awareness: The first step in dealing with the potential threat for infections is awareness. Health care workers are, or should be aware of the potential for infection in the hospital setting but this should not be taken for granted. A good program that will cut down on the potential for infections should start with ascertaining that these health care workers do have the necessary knowledge. While the most effective way might be to test the knowledge of these workers with respect to modes of transmission of various infectious diseases, a more effective method might be a regular program of discussions among health care workers regarding how they could avoid being the victims of such infections. Probably quarterly meetings of health care staff where issues of this nature are discussed are likely to keep the issue on the forefront for all health care workers, at least, until the next meeting. At such meetings, staff may focus both on the possibility of avoiding such infections in their particular setting and also discuss what might have occurred in other settings. The citing of current or past journal articles should be encouraged. Since it might appear unnecessary to focus on only one topic every three months, staff may focus on different particular issues regarding the health care setting but with the view to protecting both staff and patients foremost on everyone's mind.

Hygiene regime:
Nurses and health care staff, as part of their routine operations, often have to touch patients or articles that are infected. A regular program of hand hygiene, through either washing or hand disinfections, can cut down on the rate of cross-infection in hospitals (Pittet 2). Though this seems to be an elementary item in the health care setting it appears that in many cases there is poor compliance among health care workers, with doctors being the worst offenders (Pittet 2). To increase compliance, it is important to raise what seems to be a minor matter to one of giant proportions. By dramatizing the situation and showing what some of the negative outcomes might be for neglecting hand washing, it might be possible to increase compliance. A Hand Washing campaign that enlists the help of patients is likely to be the most effective. This might meet with initial resistance from health care workers, but plastering the hospital with posters that empower patients to ask health care workers if they have washed their hands prior to dealing with them could be very useful. Since health care workers would want to say yes rather than go and wash their hands to show that they have not already done so, it appears that such a campaign would promote hand-washing frequency among health care workers. But it should not be limited to health care workers.

Consciousness

Sample Excerpt: Audience: Internet, Healthcare; Length: 1650 words.
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In the mid 1970s psychologist Charles Tart (1975, 1972) showed that consciousness can be usefully understood from a systems perspective. He argued that ordinary waking consciousness, or ordinary reality, can be seen as a state of consciousness surrounded by a large number of alternative or “altered” states. Dream sleep is another system, although several states may be accessible in dreams (Krippner, 1994). Others include an unknown number of ecstatic states that can erupt spontaneously into ordinary consciousness, plus states that are accessible through meditation, the shamanic trance, hypnosis, and drug induced states, as well as ordinary non- dream sleep. Tart states that consciousness is composed of a harmonious set of psychological functions, which include memory, cognition, sense of humor, sense of self, external perception (exteroception), and perception of internal body states (interoception). Together they form a gestalt- like whole, or a working system.

According to William James, “Our normal waking consciousness…is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are all there in all their completeness” (James,1929, 378).

Allan Combs’ Theory of Consciousness

According to Combs, transitions between states of consciousness can be brought about by disrupting the stabilizing processes and the positive patterning of forces in the direction of the new desired state. For example the technologies of consciousness, found in yoga or shamanism, involve many patterning techniques designed both to disrupt ordinary consciousness and to move the practitioner toward extraordinary states (Combs, 1993, 1995).