Plurals and Singulars, Verb Tenses, and Redundancies (IIB)

Part IIA gave you an overview of the kinds of deficiencies we see in Harriet’s use of the English language, particularly focusing on incorrect words and compound words.

Part IIB continues the overview of problems with Harriet’s written words, highlighting the areas of singular and plurals, verb tenses, and redundancies.  The same slice of 600 reviews over about a three-month period was used to develop this information.

First, we’ll look at singulars and plurals.  The following samples are pretty uniform and give you more than enough information to see the problem.

•	the political, military and economics of the era comes alive
•	Benjamin and Kate takes her three years old son
•	her paternal grandparents, the Brightens thinks she is a troubled youth
•	The fire department put out the blaze
•	Her recipe on rutabaga and sweet potato casseroles remind me of one of my late grandma
•	starring interesting characters that endear themselves to readers as do their picturesque town.
•	The Ashton Corners Mystery Readers and Cheese Straws Society host their initial session at Molly Matthews's Southern mansion
•	Annie and her best customer Henny Brawley thinks otherwise.
•	The feline's prints are on the weapon as are feline fur
•	Readers sees the adult in the child
•	she works the case in which the other students goes along with the two accusers
•	The stretches into the lifestyle of the rich slows down the suspense
•	there is plenty of others with political motives
•	the trio want to do what is best
•	Soon Amelia's good intentions to undo any damage she may have caused between the realms of the living and dead forces her to choose
•	the lead couple (and a teammate and a fan) fall in love
•	their passiveness slows down the otherwise exciting plot but also prove how passionate David Gibbins is
•	Josh the teen and Megs the tweener who act their respective age,
•	any who foolishly falls in love die young.
•	Neither he nor his siblings (Harry and Margaret) want an early demise so in their own respective way avoid entanglements
•	The pair soon finds a second body and fear they could be next
•	there remains plenty of 1940s tidbits.
•	The insight into the ethics of law enforcement and generational pot hunters add to the storyline
•	The cast is strong especially the lead protagonists whose point of view enhance the bloody conditions
•	this leads to multiple suspects with a motive to end the extortion.
•	the townsfolk treats him with scorn
•	it is Wood City and its malevolence that makes for a tense exhilarating thriller
•	the townsfolk is shaken

What does this show us?  Actually, it shows us that not only is there confusion about the plural nature of nouns and verbs, but it also reveals confusion when it comes to identifying the subject of a sentence.  It reveals a gaping hole in the logic of sentence structure.

Let’s turn to verb tense.  This is basic English.  Verb tense is about keeping your tenses consistent so that, if you use a verb in the past tense, your verbs have to be in the past tense through the rest of the sentence.  There are three main tenses—past, present, and future—with an additional three “subtenses" associated with them.  Each tense has a perfect tense associated with it, and then there are two additional progressive tenses (meaning that a verb is strung onto another verb or you have a series of verbs acting as one).  Whatever main tense you use in your sentence, any additional verbs have to match the tense or come from the other three associated with that tense.

Here are some lovely examples of what not to do with your verb tenses:

•	She receives a call asking where her father is; when she responds she did not know the man hung up.
•	The royal widow wants nothing further to do with the blood of man so she climbed the thousand steps of the Citadel
•	the power brokers squabble over their role in the new government rather than insuring what is best for the country.
•	Ms. Zacharias injects herself too much into her account of what went wrong as if she is writing a fictional family drama in which she is a key character.
•	Judi and Shari Zucker provides an easy to use cookbook
•	The soaked grounds leads to the axle on their coach breaking
•	Sheriff Billy Preston investigates the accidents that he feels is sabotage
•	Moira is unaware that her rendezvous with Connlan Kayrs turned out to be much more
•	her sense of being a chip off the old block crashes when her father Charlie the cop turned alcoholic was forced into retirement to avoid a corruption charge and her now former husband Sam Musco the cop was angry and jealous of her success.
•	President Kipper and the White House moved to Seattle where the new America is formed
•	Over the years Benji works hard on the farm, but never forgot his samurai roots
•	His legs no longer work and his arms are as useless while he lost his teeth, hair and time nor any idea what is killing him or why he was kept on ice.
•	time has run out on Horkai even before he thawed.
•	Sahara formed a cult focused on her being a goddess ruling the world while her former BFF turned enemy Astrid tries to heal the world
•	She is pregnant but her boyfriend vanished.
•	Her family fled to Gray and then Lyon as the Nazis annex Alsace Lorraine.
•	Soon they will find a connection to a bewildered European doctor in New York who learned Leamas funded the protection
•	when he opens his eyes he sees a Christmas pageant with animated figures singing; that is until the tree fell in his chest.
•	George Everest believes in a big entrance and this one was a doozy.
•	His partner will be Kathy Donahue, but this is one mission he personalized.

We’ll conclude this section with redundancies.  A redundancy occurs when you say the same thing you just said.  Or saying something that is unnecessary because it is already stated another way.

•	she horribly pays full price for the gorgeous dress she purchased
•	However, though he realizes he must not intercede,
•	a hidden secret prison.
•	He condemned the Vikings to cultural assimilation extinction
• •	to the Ton, even to the impoverish aristocrats, Leo remains a commoner beneath them. She has no idea of whom he is talking about

Part IIC of this very lengthy English discussion will take on nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and possessives flowing from the pen of Amazon’s No. 1 Hall of Fame Reviewer.

Click here to go to Part IIC, A Mess of Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, Verbs, and  

Click here to return to Main Page for “A Reviewer with a Masters Degree in Library Science”.