This Day in Literary History: Remembering Maxwell Perkins
On this day, June 17, in 1947, legendary literary editor Maxwell Perkins passed away. Perkins edited the works of literary greats such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Born and raised in New York, Perkins went to St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and then studied economics at Harvard College. I particularly love Perkins as he was a reporter for The New York Times (yay journalism!), yet what I truly admire about him is his ability to help others reach their maximum potential as writers. Perkins often said his toughest job was editing works by prolific and temperamental writer Thomas Wolfe. However, with patience and a skilled eye, Perkins was able to highlight Wolfe's talents as a writer and Wolfe attributes his success to Perkins, his editor and best friend.
In remembering the "most famous editor who ever lived," I would like to take a moment to discuss grammar, something I am extremely passionate about. We all make mistakes when writing- some people skip words or use the passive voice unnecessarily. These mistakes are usually due to poor proofreading. However, grammar is something that everyone should learn, but many people don't learn. Getting grammar rules right shows the world that you know how to express yourself clearly and intelligently. So right now, I’m going to take a few moments to share some the most common mix ups and how to avoid them:
1. Your & You’re
“Your” is a possessive adjective. (i.e. your cup, your house, your friend.) ”You’re” is a contraction of the noun "you" and the verb "are." (i.e. you’re kind, you’re funny.) On this blog, I use a lot of contractions as I try to make things sound conversational. However in academic writing, I never use contractions which eliminates the whole your/you're dilemma. If you struggle with this, I would recommend asking yourself the question, can I say this with "you are?" If so, use you're, or better yet use both words.
2. Should Have & Should Of
This grammar mistake is actually really easy to fix because “should of” is not an expression in the English language. What the user is probably trying to say is “should have.” When using an auxiliary verb (should, would, could) in the past tense, you need to add a past tense verb (i.e. have). The word “of” isn’t a verb, people! It’s a preposition. Keep this in mind in your writing and you'll be set!
3. Their, There & They’re
“Their,” like “your,” is possessive (i.e. their dog). "There" is either a pronoun or an adverb: The dog played there (pronoun), There is a dog (adverb). “They’re” is actually a contraction of two words (note the apostrophe): “they” and “are” (i.e. they’re funny). You can usually avoid misusing “they’re” by simply writing, “they are”. For the other two, try this: “their” has an “i” because I possess it. For there, ask yourself “there?”, “where?”, “there.” Hopefully this helps.
4. Pronoun errors
If you really want to impress me, get this right because I occasionally get this incorrect myself. Pronouns need to agree in both number & gender to the noun they refer to. For example, “Everyone must bring their own wine” is incorrect because “everyone” is singular and “their” is plural. However, “Everyone must bring his or her own wine” is correct. Academic tip: this can be extremely cumbersome, especially in long papers. If you are referencing a character in a book with ambiguous gender, use the same gender as the author of the book.
5. Misplaced modifiers
An SAT tutor I had called this “leaking oil”, because that’s the example he remembers it by: “Leaking oil, Amy took the car to the repair shop.” This is incorrect because the modifier, “leaking oil”, refers to Amy in this case. The correct version of this sentence would read, "Leaking oil, the car was taken to the repair shop by Amy."
These are five of the most common grammar mistakes I hear- If you really want to impress someone, use perfect grammar. Those five extra seconds of thought make you sound infinitely more intelligent.
Have a wonderful day!
