{"id":59965,"date":"2016-08-17T05:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T10:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59965"},"modified":"2016-08-14T00:43:52","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T05:43:52","slug":"grammar-and-usage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59965","title":{"rendered":"Grammar And Usage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This headline bugs me.\u00a0 \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twincities.com\/2016\/08\/10\/former-somali-refugee-on-brink-of-serving-in-minnesota-legislature\/\"><span class=\"s2\">Former Somali refugee poised to serve. . . .\u201d <\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s3\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s3\">\u201cFormer\u201d means \u201cisn<\/span><span class=\"s4\">\u2019t anymore<\/span><span class=\"s3\">.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a word that modifies another.\u00a0 A person who retired and moved to Florida would be a \u201cformer Minnesotan.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s3\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s3\">Here\u2019s the thing: in my world, \u201cformer\u201d only modifies one word at a time.\u00a0 So if she\u2019s a Former Somali, then she\u2019s something else, maybe American<\/span><span class=\"s4\">?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s3\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s3\">But <\/span><span class=\"s4\">is <\/span><span class=\"s3\">she still a refugee? \u00a0How \u2013 she\u2019s lived here long enough to become a citizen and win an election.\u00a0 Or is she a Former Somali Former Refugee?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s3\">Or is she still Somali because that\u2019s a Good Thing (like being Irish) but she\u2019s a former refugee so the headline should read Somali Former Refugee?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s3\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s3\">Joe Doakes<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p3\">While I&#8217;m pretty sure adjectives can modify noun phrases &#8211; like &#8220;Somali Refugee&#8221; or &#8220;cluelss Liberal&#8221; &#8211; I take the point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: This headline bugs me.\u00a0 \u201cFormer Somali refugee poised to serve. . . .\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cFormer\u201d means \u201cisn\u2019t anymore.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a word that modifies another.\u00a0 A person who retired and moved to Florida would be a \u201cformer Minnesotan.\u201d \u00a0Here\u2019s the thing: in my world, \u201cformer\u201d only modifies one word at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59969,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59965\/revisions\/59969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}