Commentary about complex sentences

Complex sentences with one or more subordinate clauses are sometimes confusing  and often, the best approach is to simplify the sentence.  This is according to a July 23, 2013 post from The New York Times at the following link:
http://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/favorite-grammar-gaffes-danglers/

Lengthy sentences distract the reader from understanding the content.
The following is an example of a complex sentence which I believe would be more effective if it were simplified:

Whatever you think becomes plausible,  like swimming across the ocean, like inventing another appliance, like helping all special needs people, like writing a book, like creating a new recipe, like thanking the teacher and like "having a nice day," even though everybody says that so it does not mean much. 

My comment about having a nice day should be a separate sentence.

A superstition and a folf belief

Rules Project

I don't understand why  one of my daughter's teachers mentioned to her to use  whose  only to refer to people.    I thought  whose  refers to people as well as animals and things.  So I researched this.   According to     http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog
whose is the possessive of who and which.   Whose can mean of whom or of which.   Also according to the aforementioned website, Fowler's Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd  ed.) by R. W.  Birchfield,   Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage and the Oxford English Dictionary all concur that limiting the usage of whose to refer to people is "superstition" and a  "folk belief."

Plan Ahead

     In the  USA Weekend insert of the Schenectady Daily Gazette, July 21st, 2013 page four, there was a headline entitled "Plan Ahead."   Although "plan ahead" is technically grammatical, it is an expression that bothers me because it is redundant.  I believe redundancy leads to lower quality writing.  How else do you plan if you do not plan ahead?   This is just my little pet peeve that I forgot to mention at the beginning of this course.  Oh well.

A Trip

 The following was posted on an Internet message board by  EnglishTeacher702:  "I am looking forward  to my husband and I's first trip."  So June Casagrande,  a journalist, said that  even though it is difficult  to verify whether EnglishTeacher702 is truly an English teacher,  she most likely is.  "Most English teachers know very little about grammar"  Casagrande wrote in her July 14th 2012 Albany Times Union article entitled "World Wide Web of Grammar Errors."   Casagrande said she could not find a grammar rule about  when two or more people possess something jointly and a pronoun substitutes one of the names.  However, I found information at the following website:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/PossessivesandAttributives.html?old=PossessivesandAttributives01.html

According to the aforementioned website,  EnglishTeacher702 should have written "I am looking forward to my husband's and my first trip."

I could not remember

Rules Project

I could not remember the rule about whether to place the period inside or outside the parenthesis, so I found the answer at the following website:
     http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/parens.asp  

According to this website, the period goes outside the parenthesis when the information within parenthesis is adding detail.  The example from the website was "I expect five hundred dollars ($500).

Periods are supposed to be inside parenthesis only if the entire sentence is inside parenthesis. An example would be the following:   (Eat lots of fruit and you will have nice skin.)

The Colorectal Surgeon

"We praise the colorectal surgeon slaving  away in the heart of darkness, working where the sun don't shine." That was the lyric that caught my attention in the following you tube video:
http://biggeekdad.com/2013/06/the-colorectal-surgeon-song/#.Uc8-2GggSF8.email

However, if "don't" were replaced with "doesn't" then the song probably wouldn't flow as well.  No pun intended when I say "flow."

Jessica Simpson

Rules Project



According to     http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/between-you-and-me.aspx
Jessica Simpson's song title "Between You and I"  is grammatically incorrect.   The title should be "Between You and Me"  because  between is a preposition. Pronouns following prepositions in a prepositional phrase are always object pronouns according to grammar girl.  Grammar girl says that Jessica Simpson might have done a service to the world  if people remember that her song title is grammatically incorrect.