Oops!

Last week the printer's devil reared its head and the word 'agentive', the doer of the verb, appeared as 'adjective'. Our apologies. The devil has to be slapped periodically.

Between 6.00 to/and 9.00 p.m.

You hear and see this one every day - in advertisements, from the announcers, from all and sundry. "The show will be held between 6.00-9.00 p.m." Wheel and come again. If you use the preposition 'between' then the connector between the two nouns must be 'and' , not 'to', e.g. between nine and five, or between Montego Bay and Negril. If, however, your preposition of choice is 'from', then you are at liberty to use 'to' as a connector. It is perfectly acceptable therefore to say the show will be held from 6.00 to 9.00 p.m, or you will be moving from Montego Bay to Negril. So the pairing is between/and, and from/to.

The Past Participle

The past participle seems to be giving several persons problems. This causes you to get gems like "The situation had just began." No. Today, the drama 'begins' (present tense); earlier or yesterday or last week, the drama 'began' (simple past tense). Once you see the auxiliary verb 'had' or 'has', you must apply the past participle, in this case 'begun'. So the movie had or has 'begun'. There was a simple rule of 'sing, sang, sung', 'drink, drank, drunk', etc. However, be mindful of verbs such as 'run', where you get present tense 'run', past tense' 'ran', past participle 'run'. So the boys had 'run', not the boys had 'ran'.

For questions and comments, email: speechcoach_ja@yahoo.com

Calling Literary Arts Writers

The Sunday Gleaner welcomes your poems and short stories for publication in our Literary Arts Section. Include a photograph of yourself with your submission which should be emailed to editorial@gleanerjm.com. You may also mail or drop of your material at: The Gleaner Company, 7 North Street, Kingston. Please note that the Gleaner reserves the right to edit all works selected for publication.