Common Errors

Hello People,
I am back to discuss certain inadvertant mistakes that we tend to commit while solving sentence correction questions. I chanced upon few of these on the internet and consider it worth to share with all of you. Fine nuances of grammar, here it goes...
Aspect Vs Respect:
These two words are widely used when talking about different perspectives of an idea but we have to keep in mind that they are NOT interchangeable, like we can say "in all/some/this RESPECT" but we cannot say "in all/some/this ASPECT". But we look at all ASPECTS of an issue and not RESPECTS of an issue.

As less as possible:
Now many of us are going to be surprised to know this...the expression is "as little as possible" and NOT "as less as possible".

As time progressed/passed:
Time as such can never progress...events progress...time passes.So the correct expression should be "as time passed".

Everyone/Every one:
“Everyone” means “everybody” and is used when you want to refer to all the people in a group: “Everyone in my family is an engineer.”
But while referring to the individuals who make up a group, then the phrase is “every one.” like “We wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas” (every single one of you).

New lease of/on life:
Reinvigorated people are said to have been granted with a "new lease on life" and not "new lease of life."

For sale/On sale:
When you sell something it is "for sale" and when you lower the price it is "on sale".

Maybe/May be:
Maybe is an adverb meaning "perhaps", like "Maybe he is coming for the party" and this sentenece MAY BE rephrased by "Perhaps he is coming for the party"(Now you get the difference?)

Worse comes to worse/Worst comes to worst:
The traditional phrase was "worst comes to worst", however with the passage of time a more logical form has been adopted i.e. "worse comes to worst". The phrase "worse comes to worse" is simply incorrect.

Possessed of/by/with:
When you own any object or thing the you are "possessed of it"; You are "possessed by" a spirit; When you have a strong desire to win, you are "possessed with" passion for vistory and success.

AND

If Vs Whether:
While discussing two possibilities it is always advisable to use WHETHER and in case of conditional clauses, the use of IF is preferred. "I do not know whether you want to go for the movie" and "You must go for the film IF you want to meet him"

Phew...that was quite an exhaustive fact finding tour, wasn't it?? I shall surely keep all of you updated with many more errors of this kind. Till then let's continue our efforts of conquering the world of grammar!!!

GRAMMAR QUANDARY!!!!!

After quite a long hiatus I am back to mete out a few ways to deal with one of the most dubious sections of CAT grammar- MODIFIERS.

I call this area dubious because there are hardly any rules per se but then, here is where our reading habits come to the rescue. If we are well read, we generally tend to understand the nuances better for the simple fact being our comfort with the flow of a language(any language) always helps us to identify the slightest error in the construction.

So let's take some typical modifier questions (from OG for GMAT) and analyse them.

"The automotive conveyor belt system, which Henry Ford modeled after an assembly line technique introduced by Ransom Olds, reduced from a day and a half to 93 minutes the required time of assembling a Model T."

Now as we know a modifier is that part of the sentence that gives some extra information or adds to the meaning. We also know that it is preferred to keep the modifier and the modified together. Now in the above example, our modifying phrase, naturally is "from a day and a half to 93 minutes". Let's delve further into it. the word "reduced" is followed by "from a day...", which leads to the ambiguity about what is being reduced. Therefore to make the sentence unambiguous and crisp, it can be reframed as, "reduced the time required to assemble a Model T from one and a half day to 93 minutes."

Now let's take a look at another one

"As a result of medical advances, many people that might at one time have died as children of such infections as diphtheria,pneumonia or rheumatic fever now live well into old age."

Now in this case, following the pronoun rule we know "people" calls for "who" instead of "that". Secondly, "at one time" can be transformed into "once"(adjective). In the given statement, it seems that the people had died as children of diseases like diphtheria etc but that is not what the statement wants to convey . In case of compound verbs like, "may have", "could have" etc, it is advisable to insert the modifier between the verbs. Hence, the corrected sentence could be, "who might once have died in childhood of such" which shall remove ambiguity of any kind from the statement.

Do not panic if you find Modifiers to take some time as this area needs a lot of reading and practice. I will keep you posted on some more typical modifier based questions. Till then, keep reading newspapers like Wall street Journal or our very own HINDU or Economic Times to get used to the flow of the structure.