IEW’s Customer Service team often receives grammar questions from customers. Most often these questions have to do with why something is marked a certain way in Fix It!® Grammar. Occasionally, we are asked to settle a dispute between instructor and student. Whatever it may be, we love to answer grammar questions! In celebration of March, which some say is National Grammar Month, we offer some of our favorite grammar questions and answers.
Commas seem to be the most troublesome punctuation mark. We’ve all heard various “rules” for adding commas, the most dangerous being “Put it where you would pause.” Instead of these vague, subjective instructions, Fix It! Grammar teaches students rules and objective tests for commas.
Q: What comma rule would apply to this sentence?
The majestic mountain Mt. Olympus is an awesome place to visit.
A: Mt. Olympus is an appositive, a noun or noun phrase that renames the noun it follows. An essential appositive defines the noun it follows. If the essential information is removed, the overall meaning of the sentence changes. Do not use commas with essential elements.
If we reword the sentence, commas are needed:
Mt. Olympus, the majestic mountain, is an awesome place to visit.
Notice that the appositive is nonessential when the noun is specific and the appositive is general.
Q: In Fix It! Grammar Robin Hood: Level 3, my daughter used a comma between broad and pebbly. Is that wrong and why?
At a sharp curve in a path, Robin neared a log, which spanned a broad pebbly stream and acted as a narrow bridge.
A: Adjectives are cumulative if the first adjective describes the second adjective and the noun that follows. Cumulative adjectives follow this specific order: quantity, opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose. Adjectives are coordinate if each adjective independently describes the noun that follows. The order is not important.
The test for this is whether you can switch the order of the adjectives: broad pebbly stream vs. pebbly broad stream. Since you cannot switch the order of the adjectives, these are cumulative adjectives and do not take a comma.
Fix It! Grammar teaches students to identify clauses to determine if commas are necessary. In the process of marking clauses, questions arise. Customers often ask how to punctuate clauses, where a clause begins or ends, or how to explain clauses to students.
Q: We are working on Fix It! Grammar Nose Tree Level 1. Can you help me better understand the that clause? Why is it significant, and when do you know where it stops?
A: Clauses that begin with that function as either nouns or adjectives. Knowing what it is helps to determine whether the clause is a noun or an adjective. The clause is functioning as an adjective if you can substitute the word which for that. It is significant because it adds essential information to the main clause to complete the sentence.
The second soldier remembered that he had told the story of the bag to the princess.
The second soldier remembered which he had told the story of the bag to the princess.
This does not make sense, so it is not an adjective clause but a noun clause.
She dressed like a lowly maid with a basket that she carefully placed on her arm.
She dressed like a lowly maid with a basket which she carefully placed on her arm.
This makes sense. This is an adjective clause.
To answer your question about where it ends: It is a clause, so it will have a subject, verb, and other words or phrases that complete the thought. When you reach the end of the thought, you have reached the end of the clause.
Q: When we mark main clauses, when do we include the prepositional phrases? I thought that they should only be the subject and the verb, the core part of the sentence. In Fix It! Grammar, the examples include prepositional phrases.
[1] [Many families lived in the forest].
[3] Usually [Robin practiced his archery in the morning].
A: In Fix It! Grammar prepositional phrases that are not openers are included when we mark the main clause. Prepositional phrases add details to sentences. Just as we include the adjectives and adverbs, we include prepositional phrases. The only exception to this is when the prepositional phrase is the opener. All sentence openers precede the main clause and therefore are not included in the marking.
[2] In the morning [Robin practiced his archery].
Q: As my son and I were working on Fix It! Grammar, I taught him to mark the main clause beginning with the subject. But then on Day 1, the marking for the main clause begins with an adjective. Why is that included if the instructions in the lesson say to begin with the subject?
[Robin’s followers declared] (that they would rob everyone) (who had robbed them).
A: When you are analyzing a sentence, look for who or what the sentence is about. That is the subject; in this case followers. When you mark the main clause, always include the adjectives. They add details.
As these next two questions show, infinitives often confuse students because they see the word after to as an action and think it should be marked as a verb.
Q: My daughter and I are trying to figure out why the phrase to sell her the thirty-five apples is not a prepositional phrase. Can you help us please? This is from Fix It! Grammar: Nose Tree Level 1.
Q: In the sentence below from Fix It! Grammar: Nose Tree Level 1, my daughter labeled buy as a verb. She’s been doing the same in similar sentences where there is to before the word. I told her that buy in that case is not a verb. When she asks me what to buy is, I don’t know how to answer.
The princess appointed her maid to buy all the ripe and rosy apples.
A: These tricky phrases are not functioning as verbs. In both of these questions, the phrase is an infinitive formed when the word to is placed in front of a verb. You can read more about infinitives in this blog post. It is not a prepositional phrase because the pattern for preposition phrases is preposition + noun (no verb). If it frustrates your child, tell them they should circle the infinitive to remember that to makes the word that follows it not able to function as a verb.
If you enjoy grammar questions as much as we do, be sure to read our other grammar blog posts. March forth, assured that you can teach your students to be confident and competent grammarians!
March 4 is National Grammar Day, the only calendar day that is a complete sentence.
