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After explaining who vs. that, I realized I’m still getting hung up on who’s versus whose. I like apostrophes to show ownership. Unfortunately, with these two the one with the apostrophe does not equal ownership.
Who’s is who is. Or who has. It does not show ownership.
Examples: Who’s at the door? (Who is at the door?)
Who’s leave? (Who is leaving?)
Whose is for ownership.
Examples: Whose sandwich is this?
Whose children are those?
Make sense now?
Image from: cafepress.com
That’s because I knew both were about distance, I just thought the right one was whichever sounded better in the sentence. Turns out there is a difference.
Farther is for physical distance. Further is for a metaphorical distance.
So if you can replace the answer with miles, feet, or centimeters then the right word is farther. For example, I’m farther away from Far, Far, Away than I was when I lived in Disneyland. And I need more coffee before I can get any further involved in this project.
Make sense now?
Image from: http://www.unenlightenedenglish.com/wp-content
All Together is an adverb that means at the same time or as a group. For example: One, two, three, all together, sing happy Birthday to you and let’s go to the movie at the drive-in all together, it’s much more fun that way! So if you can substitute let us or drop the all and the sentence still makes sense use all together.
Altogether
Altogether is also an adverb that can mean completely, total or considering everything. For example: today’s deposit was $439 in cash and $588 in checks: $1027 altogether or altogether, it wasn’t such a bad trip, despite the sort of disastrous incident with the beehive.
The Education Bug website offers a mnemonic you can use to differentiate all together and altogether. “Remember that all together – because it’s two separate words – is the one that needs to get into a group and get in sync. This associates the meaning with the spelling to help you remember which of these easily confused words is which.”
Image from theoatmeal.com (always good for a laugh)
Full disclosure, in high school, I once wrote an entire paper without than. I had convinced myself it wasn’t a word. Part of that was writing the paper a little too late in the evening and part of it was general confusion. The day after I turned the paper in, my teacher stopped me on the way out of class with a laugh, turns out I wasn’t the first and I’m sure I won’t be the last to make this mistake.
So given that tidbit, it should be no surprise that nearly a decade later, I still see this same mistake in other’s writing. As you can see from theoatmeal.com’s rendition, this grammar mistake is really easy to fix.
Image from: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_GHIgmLZU2xg
After some research and a quick visit to Grammar Girl, I learned that it is a fairly simple rule, you bring something to where you are, you take something to where you are going.
Her example is, “I would ask Aardvark to bring Squiggly to my party next week, and then Aardvark would call Squiggly and ask, ‘May I take you to Grammar Girl’s party?’ I am asking Aardvark to bring Squiggly because I am at the destination—from my perspective, Aardvark is bringing someone here. Aardvark is offering to take Squiggly because he is transporting someone to a remote destination—from Aardvark’s perspective, he is taking someone there.”
Sounds easy, right? It is, but there are exceptions. For those you should go to Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips on the topic, here.
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