As you may recall, I held a Top Thinker Contest last month, giving away almost US$200 in prizes. Well, I’m in a generous mood again, so I’ve got another contest for readers of Beyond the Rhetoric.
From time to time, I publish a Grammar 101 post here, talking about less and fewer, compliment and complement, and other common mistakes that people make with everyday language. It seems that I’m not the only one who does this kind of thing.
Up for grabs is a free copy of Booher’s Rules of Business Grammar: 101 Fast and Easy Ways to Correct the Most Common Errors
Dianna Booher had previously previously published books on
So, how can you win? First, you’ll need to follow me on Twitter. Then, some time between now and next Thursday, I’ll send out a grammar-related question via Twitter and the first follower to provide the correct response wins the book! To make sure that you’re response gets through, you’ll want to format your tweet as follows:
@michaelkwan Here is the answer to the question. http://tinyurl.com/btrgrammar
Please include that exact tinyurl in your tweet as that will lead back to this contest page. In the event that more than one follower sends the response at the same time, the winner will be determined by the order the replies appear on the Twitter replies page.
I will ship to anywhere in the world with reasonable postal service. Antarctica is off-limits, but Malaysia is fine (for example).
Keep a close eye on my Twitter feed in the next seven days. You never know when I may pose my contest question! Good luck!
UPDATE: (03/23/09)
We have a winner! I asked a grammar question on Monday afternoon, and Ray Ebersole was the first to respond correctly. Yes, the same Ray Ebersole who won my other contest. Congratulations, Ray! Thanks for being a dedicated reader and follower.
Michael,
Looks like you’re getting creative with your contest. Grammar CAN be fun!
Rachel
Grammar contest should be fun but what’s even more challenging for me is to even spot the contest tweet within the next 7 days(given the 15 hours time difference), let alone be the first follower to provide the correct response .
Can you give us a general time-of-day bracket on when your grammar question will go out?
During the hours when I am awake. 🙂
Which is just about most of the time. Since I see you on almost on my Eastern Time and you are 3 hours behind I find it hard to see a time when you sleep.
I’m look forward to participating in this contest. I very rarely win anythig online.
Not sure if I posted my contest answer properly:
hshomestaging@michaelkwan Here is the answer to the question. http://tinyurl.com/btrgrammar Tom and I attended the conference.
Probably nothing wrong grammatically with your sentence – it just sounds awkward.
The answer was that the sentence is correct as it is. The rule to follow to see if the sentence is correct is to take the other person out and read the sentence to see if it sounds correct.
The original: “The conference was attended by Tom and me.”
Which sounds right:
“The conference was attended by me.”
or
“The conference was attended by I.”
Dude. I didn’t even *see* the question, and I’m on twitter all day.
IT went out @ 19:08 on the Twitter timeline, my answer shows a time stamp on Twitter of 19:12.
Thanks Michael! I’m looking forward to reading it.
I asked John Chow why he went out and bought the book from your recommendation instead of waiting for the contest. He responded, as you probably saw, that it was too much effort for him with the price of the book. Of course, I don’t make $400,000 from my blog, so I’m happy that I won it.
See John Chow, it paid off for me to try to win…;-)
For all of you who don’t know John Chow, I’m just teasing him. I like his blog, follow him on Twitter and he is a friend on Facebook.