How much of a grammar geek are you?
2008 June 15
OK, guys, I know there are some fellow grammar geeks out there in my audience. Take this quiz (no Wikipedia or Google cheating!) and see if you can do better than I did. That shouldn’t be too hard—I only scored 30%. 
Some of those questions were really tricky, but still…my score is kinda pathetic. I am a good editor and writer, but I get by on instinct far too often, with an occasional reference to the CMoS only if I need something clarified. I think I need to hit the books. How have I not yet bought a Garner…?
I got 60%. I skipped the first question because I don’t know what an adverb is.
I got 50%, mostly from gut instinct. I agree it was tricky.
I think if you over-think your answers you’ll get a bad score. Would our two 50% and above scorers care to corroborate that theory?
(P.S. Dad, I love that you don’t know what an adverb is and still managed to score highly.)
Dylan, you’re right. RohanFreak, we’re going to have so much fun in Language Arts next year! The Potentate – well, that just makes me so mad that you scored so high and don’t know what an adverb is! I just don’t get it. I wonder…is NZ grammar different? I really don’t know. Is your English based on American or British English? I don’t even know if that would make a difference. Jenn, could you pass along a quiz that I’ll score higher on? (Yeah, I know, that sentence ended with a preposition.)
Looking at British, American, and NZ English, there are certain differences in pronunciation, spelling, and in some grammar choices (an American might be more likely to split an infinitive than a Brit, for example). But aside from dialect differences, the basic structure would be the same.
P.S. I’ll look around for another grammar quiz. I think this one was designed specifically to trip up people who do know a lot about grammar and cause them to doubt themselves.
Considering the quiz was written by a “anti-grammar snob,” I would agree that it’s designed to trip people up. It definitely looked for the edge and corner cases of particular rules, which isn’t exactly fair.
It’d be like if there were questions involving general relativity and quantum physics in a first semester engineering course. Advanced spaceship design is third year, I believe.
Sign me up for that engineering course! (not)
so jenn’s family all have nicknames? awesome.
The nicknames are actually disguises to protect the guilty. Dylan uses his real name. Uh-oh, am I revealing TMI? Dad and the girls have covers. I, on the other hand, use what Jenn originally put in the name slot (I think that’s how it happened). Jenn, did you do that, or did I?