March 4th was National Grammar Day, and one of the events held to celebrate the occasion was a Grammar Haiku Contest, overseen by editor Mark Allen. Language lovers were asked to post grammar- or usage-based haikus on Twitter, and nearly 200 entries were submitted. Herewith, from Allen's blog, the winning haiku and the runners-up, as determined by a distinguished panel of judges.
First place:
Being a dangler,
Jane knew it would have to come
out of the sentence
— Larry Kunz, @larry_kunz
Second place:
Tiny hyphen mark
marries words, charms editor.
Turns out to be lint.
— @APvsChicago
Third place:
Tree in full word bloom
falling across the blackboard
sentence diagram
— Bob Schroeder, @BobSchroeder5
Fourth place:
If I were to say
I missed you, oh subjunctive,
would that set the mood?
— Michelle Baker, @corpwritingpro
Fifth place:
My word, your syntax
stirs the imperative mood:
Let's coordinate
— Stan Carey, @StanCarey (Visual Thesaurus contributor!)
Honorable mentions:
After a sentence
be like Obi-Wan and just
hit the space bar once.
— Holly Ashworth, @ActuallyHollyFirst person: I love.
Second person: You love me.
Third person: Uh, oh.
— Rachel Cooper, @RachelCooper_NSDangling oddly
I conjured absurdities
With modifiers.
— Tom Freeman, @SnoozeInBriefLoose rhymes with moose and
lose with booze, which I want to
drink when they're confused
— @shaunarumJudge me not grammar
I have memorized your rules
they shatter like glass
— Gerri Berendzen, @gerrribWanted: one pronoun,
To take the place of he/she
"They" need not apply
— Charlie MacFadyen, @csmacfPeople shouldn't say
"I could care less" when they mean
"I could care fewer"
— Tom Freeman, @SnoozeInBrief
To see all of the submissions, check out the full Twitter stream on Storify. The judges for the contest were:
- Gordon Roberts, winner of last year's contest, writer of technical documentation and short poems (though rarely at the same time), and language enthusiast
- Martha Brockenbrough, founder of National Grammar Day and the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, and author of "Things That Make Us (Sic)."
- Dawn McIlvain Stahl, editorial professional with 15 years' experience and online editor and daily contributor for Copyediting.com
- Peter Sokolowski, a leader of ESL workshops, a pronouncer for spelling bees around the world, and editor at large at Merriam-Webster
- Grant Barrett, host of the nationally syndicated public radio program "A Way with Words," and a lexicographer specializing in slang and new words
