Spreading the grammar doctrine

JUNE CASAGRANDE

Today, Rancho Cucamonga. Tomorrow, the world!

This has long been the motto of my expansionist agenda and finally

my glorious plan is beginning to take shape.

For those of you just tuning in, every week I examine some topic

pertaining to grammar. (That’s right, I said grammar. No, this is not

a joke.)

Often, that topic pertains to some embarrassing mistake I made.

I’m always happier when it’s inspired by someone else’s mistake, but

I’m careful not to get too smug because I usually get knocked down a

peg soon afterward.

The best columns are the ones that aren’t about blame or

finger-pointing but instead explore a grammar topic for the sheer

thrill of learning. Don’t hold your breath for too many of those.

For example, today’s topic has to do with a mistake someone made.

I’m sorry to report, that someone was I.

It happened just as I was feeling sassy in my superior knowledge

of the English language. I had written that city officials had “set

their sites” on something. I was thinking that was clever because I

knew this expression pertains not to vision but to weaponry. It’s not

about fixing one’s gaze on something; it’s about fixing one’s AK-47

on something. So it’s not about sight, per se.

I was so proud I knew this that I forgot that it should still be

spelled “sight.” The thingy you look through when you aim a rifle is

called a “sight.” So, if you’re putting something in your aim, you

could say you’re setting your sights on it.

As those of you in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa already know, my

motto whenever a mistake appears in the paper under my name is:

“Blame the copy editor.” So in fairness, I should point out that copy

editor Mike Swanson saved my hide on this one. He even did it with

grace, giving me the benefit of the doubt for having known it in the

first place.

So now, readers of the Daily Pilot in Newport Beach and Costa

Mesa, you are no longer alone. My evil doctrine is being spread

through Times Community News papers the Rancho Cucamonga Voice and

Claremont-Upland Voice.

I’m hoping these new readers will go a little more gently on me

than their Orange County counterparts -- the tough customers who made

me feel obliged to write above “that someone was I” instead of the

less-formal “that someone was me.”

The reason, as I wrote in a previous column, is due to a little

rule called the “predicate nominative.” Because I’ve since lost my

grasp of this evil reality, I’ll just repeat what I wrote the first

time:

When a sentence’s subject refers to basically the same person or

the same thing as the object, and when the verb connecting them is

some form of “to be,” well, that’s the predicate nominative. And the

rule is, in this oddball case, to use the subject pronoun instead of

the object pronoun. I am she. Not I am me.

Now, some of you might be asking yourselves: What does all this

have to do with community news?

The official answer is that many of these issues are culled

straight from the pages of local newspapers and others touch directly

on issues important to the community. The unofficial answer is

bupkis. But I hope that you, like readers in Newport-Mesa, can

refrain from pointing this out to my editors.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].