(Editor's note: Martin Besant is a retired chemistry teacher from West Seneca.)
Fellow Educators at New York Teacher:
I would strongly recommend that you cease publishing excerpts from Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay. The past two examples have contained serious errors which should be an embarrassment to a publication intended for educators.
Nov. 26 has an article concerning the use of an and a before nouns beginning with h. I will quote: "The rule is that a is used with words that begin with a consonant (a, e, i, o, u)."
Almost any third-grader would be able to tell you that these five letters are vowels.
In the Oct. 9 issue, the authors attempt to correct the grammar of the sentence, ". . . are twenty times less likely to bicker over rank." In their attempted correction they state, "We must question how one can use times (which denotes multiplication) and come up with something less."
They obviously did not realize that besides being a verb for multiplication, "times" can also be, and in this sentence is used as, the plural noun which denotes the number of occurrences.
That is two errors in two "at bats." I believe these people should be sent back to the minor leagues. They are definitely not ready for prime time.
Martin Besant
Greetings, Martin Besant:
Thank you very much for your concerned and articulate outrage at the excerpted grammar advice from my book Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay, published in New York Teacher.
Regarding a and an, you are certainly correct. The listing of the major vowels, set next to the word consonant should not have appeared. That error has been corrected in later printings of the book.
I do not agree with your second objection. In our example, times can denote only multiplication and not the broader "number of occurrences."
As a lover of all aspects of language, I very much appreciate your vigilance and passion.
Richard Lederer
Original material excerpted from Richard Lederer's Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay — Practical Advice for the Grammatically Challenged (St. Martin's Griffin). His latest work, A Treasury for Teachers, is scheduled for publication this year. E-mail the author at richard.lederer@pobox.com and explore his Web site at http://www.verbivore.com.