A Playful Way to Learn Grammar: 10 Things I’ve Picked Up From Chicago Style Workouts
If you’re a writer or editor, you must learn grammar and usage.
Most people learn these subjects with books and exercises. Books give you rules and conditions to memorize, and exercises provide problems for you to apply your new knowledge. But this regimen can be tedious. Plus, you won’t know how much you’ve retained.
There’s a way to make this dull task fun.
Play-Based Learning
Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that learning blended with play helps students of all ages. Play enlivens lessons and helps students approach a topic in a relaxed and engaged way. Play also helps older students because it inspires a sense of ownership, curiosity, and enjoyment.
Enter Chicago Style Workouts
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
Chicago Style Workouts are short quizzes offered on the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) Shop Talk site.
Each quiz asks ten multiple-choice questions. There are quizzes on commas, proofreading, danglers, possessives, and word usage. All you have to do is choose a quiz, answer the questions, and submit. The website marks the quiz in no time and your results pop up. Explanations for each answer, right or wrong, are provided.
More than a game than a quiz, Chicago Style Workouts are good-natured tests of your knowledge of style. Straight away, you’re shown what you know, and what you need to work on. Plus, they’re fun—a brief respite in the middle of a long afternoon of work.
10 Things I’ve learned from Chicago Style Workouts
1. The term jack-o’-lantern can refer to the familiar carved pumpkin, to the spontaneous combustion of methane gas over a marsh, or a luminescent fungus.
I knew of the term related to marsh gas but had not known of the fungus. In fact, both the latter meanings are older than the one associated with Hallowe’en.
2. The first edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (1906) recommended placing a semicolon before (inside) a closing quotation mark in the manner of a comma or a period. True or false?
The answer is True. This was a practice on its way out in the late nineteenth century. It was reversed to the current standard of placing it outside the quotation mark by the time the second edition of CMOS came out in 1910.
3. Omit a serial comma when an ampersand (&) is used instead of the word and (as in company names). True or false?
True. See Chicago Style Workout 1: Series and the Serial Comma
So, write Adam, Eve & Company sell fig leaves, not Adam, Eve, & Company sell fig leaves.
4. Do you have class on Monday, or Wednesday, or Friday?
Is this Chicago style or not?
Yes, and, as a Canadian, it surprised me to note an American style guide adhering to the Oxford comma.
5. Participles are subject to dangling; gerunds are not.
False. Both participles and gerunds dangle if their position in a sentence gives them no logical relationship to the nearest subject. See CMOS 5.112.
6. When an italicized term appears in roman text, the possessives should be set in roman (the Atlantic Monthly’s editor or Pride and Prejudice’s readers).
True. Do not italicize the possessive s. See CMOS 7.28.
7. When the joke backfired, they got their just desserts.
Is this correct usage?
No. Use desert instead of dessert. I expected a sweet and tasty dessert to be a metaphor for a reward, but that’s not the case. Deserts are deserved, while desserts are eaten. See CMOS 5.220.
8. The two tiaras were equally as brilliant.
Is this correct usage?
No, it’s not. The correct usage omits as. (The two tiaras were equally brilliant.) See CMOS 5.220, equally as.
9. After subtracting his expenses from his estimated income, Omar’s budget had to be revised.
Is this a dangler or not?
In fact, it is.
This expands on item 5 above, which explains both participles and gerunds can be danglers. This example has subtracting [a gerund] as the object of the preposition after. As Omar did the subtracting, he’ll also have to do the revising. The sentence should be After subtracting his expenses from his estimated income, Omar had to revise his budget.
10. The genitive case has many other functions besides showing possession.
True. See CMOS 17, paragraph 5.20 that says, “The genitive case is also called the possessive case, but possessive is a misleadingly narrow term, given the seven different functions of this case—true possession, as ordinarily understood, being only one.”
Conclusion
It’s fun to do some of the tests and see how you do. Their playful outlook provides a fun and safe environment for making mistakes. You find out pretty quickly what you know, and what you don’t. Both are revealing. I seldom get all the questions right, but the wrong answers are the ones I tend to remember. Occasionally, I’ll surprise myself with a perfect score.