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Purdue OWL News for May 18, 2004
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The Purdue OWL Staff
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May 18, 2004 09:48 PDT
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The Purdue OWL News
May 18, 2004
Welcome to the Purdue OWL News!
The Purdue OWL News is an online newsletter about happenings in the
Purdue University Writing Lab and the Purdue University Online Writing
Lab (OWL). You can visit our website at
<http://owl.english.purdue.edu>. To subscribe to the newsletter, visit
<http://www.topica.com/lists/purdueowlnews/subscribe/>. To unsubscribe
from the newsletter, click on the link at the bottom of this email.
During the summer session at Purdue (May to August), we'll be sending
out the OWL News every two weeks.
Writing Question of the Week
I get confused by these two words all the time. When and how do I use
advise and advice in sentences?
Answer
Advise is a verb that means to recommend, suggest, or counsel. You will
use advise in a sentence when you need to use a verb to express that
you are recommending, counseling, or giving advice to someone.
For example: My professor advised me to sign up for a new history course
being offered next spring.
Advice is a noun that means an opinion, counsel, or recommendation about
what could or should be done about a situation or problem. You will
use advice in a sentence when you need a noun to indicate a
recommendation.
For example: I followed my professor's advice and signed up for the new
history course being offered next spring.
The OWL Help Nest
Each week we'll publish a request for advice or information. If you wish
to contribute a response to the topic, please write to us at
owln-@owl.english.purdue.edu. Please let us know if you want us to
include your name and/or your email address when we publish your
information or advice. The following week, we'll publish the best
information and advice that we receive in the newsletter. If you have a
question for our readers, please send it to us at
<owln-@owl.english.purdue.edu>.
Last Week's Question
We didn't get any answers to last week's question; however, we did
receive answers to a question from several weeks ago, and so we're
running that question and its answers this week.
What is it? "I didn't like him sending me a message," or "I didn't like
his sending me a message." Why?
Answers
"I didn't like his sending me a message" is correct. "I didn't like him
sending me a message" is incorrect. Why? "his sending me a message" is
a noun phrase which complements, or completes, the sentence, telling us
what you didn't like. In this sentence, sending is used as a gerund, a
noun; his is an adjective. -- Lotte Popovic
I learned that pronouns used before gerunds [verbals] always used the
possessive case as the "-ing" converted the verb to a noun. You'll get
many arguments about this, I think. But I've never been call on using
the possessive and HAVE been corrected for using the objective case. --
David Troyer
I have always understood that a possessive pronoun (his in this case)
precedes a gerund (sending), so the correct answer is "I didn't like his
sending me a message." -- D. Armstrong.
Here's a guess at the usage of "him" or "his." When "him" is used, then
the pronoun is the object of the verb "like" and the sentence states
that the person does not like him when he is doing something, but could
like him when he doing something else, e.g. "I like him cleaning out my
car." When "his" is used, then it is a possessive pronoun, serving as a
modifier. In this case, it modifies the action of "sending a message"
and shows who sent it. If the writer wants to indicate when he is liked
and when he is not liked, then "him" could work, but if the writer wants
to express displeasure with an action, which is probably the intent,
then "his" would probably be best. -- Joseph (Jay) Howard
This Week's Questions
I desperately need some activities and resources about sentence
combining,
sentence clarity and avoiding wordiness with answers. I have already
used
the activity on the OWL Web site. Does anyone have any suggestions for
other resources?
Not being a native speaker, I only recently came across adverbs like
always/never/often/sometimes being used with "used to." E.g.: "I
always/never/often/ sometimes used to go to the cinema." Is this correct
and perfectly acceptable in standard English, or should such adverbs be
avoided?
What puzzles me most is the expression "sometimes used to," because for
me "sometimes" does not express the habit or regularity that "used to"
does. Can you help?
What's Happening On OWL
OWL Eye on... Continue to Send Us Your Suggestions!
This summer, we will begin working to transform Purdue's OWL from a
massive collection of HTML pages into a streamlined database that will
deliver content dynamically to the Web. As we make plans for this
transition, we'd like to hear from you as to what you'd like to see on
Purdue OWL in the future. Please email Karl Stolley, OWL
Coordinator/soon-to-be OWL Webmaster, at ka-@owl.english.purdue.edu
with
your wildest dreams and suggestions.
(Karl would like to thank all the people who wrote in last week with
their suggestions, but encourages you to keep writing to him!)
What's Happening in the Writing Lab
OWL Eye on ... Recent Remodelling
Last week, the Writing Lab was closed for painting and remodelling.
Please stop by Heavilon 226 and admire our freshly painted walls! We are
open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m Monday-Thursday, and 9:00 a.m. to 1:00
p.m. on Fridays. In-Lab Workshops will take place Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m.
and Thursdays at 3:00 p.m. Our ESL conversation groups will be Mondays
and Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m and Wednesdays and Thursdays at 11:00 a.m.
Final Thoughts
Thanks for reading our newsletter. You can email us at any time at
owln-@owl.english.purdue.edu. You can also email the OWL coordinator,
Karl Stolley, at <coordi-@owl.english.purdue.edu> and the webmaster,
Erin Karper, at <webma-@owl.english.purdue.edu>. (Erin and Karl take
turns writing the newsletter.)
If you received this newsletter as a forward and would like to get your
own subscription, visit
<http://www.topica.com/lists/purdueowlnews/subscribe/> to subscribe.
This newsletter is copyright (c) 2004 the Purdue University Writing Lab
and Purdue University. Purdue's OWL is located at
<http://owl.english.purdue.edu>.
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