Hilarious tweets

Ancient grammar police! Funny! http://t.co/cSS7dgVsxU #plainlanguage

— Cntr 4 PlainLanguage (@plain_language) October 31, 2013

The best case ever for the Oxford comma: pic.twitter.com/gDt1gUOfJk

— Aaron Zamost (@zamosta) December 10, 2013

Funny headlines http://t.co/DYUlWSjE3n #plainlanguage

— Cntr 4 PlainLanguage (@plain_language) October 24, 2013

Click on the image in the last tweet to view it in a larger size.

Fair better or fare better?

According to yesterday's Times of India, "doctors' children fair better than that of engineers" in IIT entrance exams.

Nope; they fare better.

The second mistake is the use of that, which refers to children. Since children is plural, the sentence should have read: Doctors' children fare better than those of engineers.

I wish I were an astronaut

I wish I were an astronaut on the International Space Station; I could then look out through the portholes and take in breathtaking views of the Earth. Sadly, I am not.

But what does this have to do with the English language?

Well, when we talk of situations which are not true (for example when we express a wish) we should use a verb in the subjunctive mood. In the sentence If I were an astronaut..., were is in the subjunctive mood because I am talking about a situation which is not real. Many people would have written If I was an astronaut..., where was is in the indicative mood.

Source: www.grammar.net/iwishiwere

 Similarly, the song If I were a rich man from the movie Fiddler on the Roof correctly uses the subjunctive were because the character in the film is not rich; he is just singing about what he would do if indeed he were rich.

Likewise, were is correctly used in the following sentences:

• If I were you I would... (in reality I am not you)
• If you were the Prime Minister what would you do to tackle corruption? (in reality you are not the Prime Minister) 
• I wish you were here.

You might have noticed that the second part of such sentences usually contains would or could.

It is for this reason that If God was a Banker, a novel written by Ravi Subramanian, should have used the subjunctive, were, in the title. The same holds true for the Ronan Keating song Carrickfergus, whose first line reads: I wish I was in Carrickfergus; were would have been more appropriate. Ditto for Enrique Iglesias' Wish I was your lover.

You can read more on this topic here and here.

The use of the indicative was is very common, nevertheless. A google search for "I wish I was" produced 350 million results whereas "I wish I were" gave 59.4 million.

Prone vs Supine

I don't know about you but I used to think that these two words were synonyms. They are not. A person is prone when they lie on their stomach and supine when they lie on their back.

    Prone                                                          Photo: Daily Mail       

Supine                             Photo: Finger Lakes Runners Club

Learn a new word: tare

While searching for a digital weighing scale for my kitchen I came across the term tare, a word which I had never heard before. I looked it up on Macmillan online dictionary and this is what it said:

The weight of an empty truck or large container, used for calculating the weight of the goods that it carries.

And according to Collins dictionary:

1. The weight of the wrapping or container in which goods are packed.
2. A deduction from gross weight to compensate for this.

It can also be used as a transitive verb to mean to weigh (a package etc.) in order to calculate the amount of tare. 

So let us say that you are going to bake a cake and want to weigh baking powder on a digital weighing machine. The tare function will help you by deducting the weight of the container and arriving at the net weight of the baking powder in it.