’d. The letter “d” with an apostrophe before it is used to form contractions of past tense and other auxiliary verbs and pronouns: “he had—he’d,” “I would—I’d.” Avoid contractions in formal, standard English writing. See also verb.
Dangling modifier. One very common problem in writing concerns adjectives, adverbs, phrases, and clauses that are worded or located in sentences in such a way that they do not have clear, or any, referents or antecedents—they dangle somewhere without a clear relationship to any other part of the sentence: “Lying in the sun, the day was clear.” In this example it is not clear who or what is lying in the sun—certainly not the day. You can detect problems like this in your writing only by rereading, checking, revising, and proofreading. You can solve such problems by putting the dangling words close to what they are talking about and by making sure that the relationship between that thing or person and the words describing it is clear and logical. Thus the sentence used in the example might become “Lying in the sun, I enjoyed the clear day,” depending on what you intend to say. The point is to match clearly intention and expression.
Dash. The dash punctuation mark (—) is used to separate parts of a sentence that are more or less equivalent but that have no words to link or join them (that lack conjunctions): “The minister spoke of a book—the Bible—known to us all.” Here the dashes take the place of words like “that is,” which could also be used to blend the concepts of “book” and “Bible” together. Clauses can also be joined by dashes: “The lecturer gave a speech—the audience listened with interest.” Again, the dashes stand for something like “that is” and indicate a sort of contraction, or elision, of the ideas or words in the sentence.
Since dashes are used where words might have been supplied to specify a relationship, there is always the risk that the dash will not clearly convey the nature of the relationship or the things linked. Moreover, the things dashes set off are usually interjected into a sentence rather than being integrated into it with connective words. By their nature, such interjections interrupt the flow of thought to some degree (and often to good effect), and many of them can prove distracting. For these reasons, most style guides suggest restricted use of dashes.
Dashes can be typed as two hyphens with or without spaces around them or as any solid line longer than a hyphen. But using more than two hyphens is not preferred in standard English.
Data. Although “data” is a plural form of the Latin “datum” and since the singular is not used in standard English except in the most erudite writing, this “plural” noun has come to be used quite commonly as a singular, especially when the topic is large quantities of information seen as a collection: “The data on this subject is copious and convincing.” Many academic settings would find this example substandard, but singular uses of “data” have spread with the growth of computers and information science.
Dates. There are several systems for expressing dates in writing. Which you use in your writing depends on the standards set in the community in which you are expressing yourself or by the audience to which you are addressing yourself.
The most commonly used date system is month, day, year. The full name of the month comes before the number of the day, a comma follows, and then comes the numbers of the year: “March 23, 1987.” The number of the year is followed by a comma if the sentence continues or by any other punctuation mark that is appropriate at that point in the sentence: “On March 23, 1987, the contract took effect. But work began only on March 28, 1988—much later than anticipated. The completion date was March 22, 1999.” The numbers are in figures, and they are not followed by letters to indicate that they are ordinal numbers, even though the date in the example is frequently pronounced as the “twenty-third of March.” WRONG: “March 23rd, 1987.”
If the day of the week is specified in this style, it can come before the date and is followed by a comma: “Friday, March 23, 1987” (because the day of the week and the numerical date are seen to be in apposition, as are the numerical date and the year; see appositive). The day of the week following the date is preceded by a comma and usually adds an article, since the following day is seen as an afterthought or interjection: “May 23, 1987, a Friday.” No comma is needed if month and year alone are recorded: “It happened in March 1987.”
An alternate system avoids the commas by placing the day number before the month and year: “23 March 1987.” All the other rules noted above apply to this system, which is common in the military and other styles: “Friday, 23 March 1987.”
In formal English it is preferred to spell out dates in one of the systems noted above. However, our digitized society more and more commonly also expresses dates in numbers alone: “5/23/87,” “5-23-87,” or some variant on these. Follow the style set or likely to be least confusing for the circumstances in which you are writing. If your audience includes British or European readers or writers, be aware that numerical notations of dates in Europe (and the United Kingdom) usually reverse the month and day from American usage: “23/5/87.” In the now-boring example, there is no question that March 23 is meant because “23” can only be a day. But a European who writes “11/12/1992” probably means “December 11,” while an American who wrote the same numbers would mean “November 12.” See A.D., B.C., and century.
Declension. The pattern of inflection—changes in word forms to reflect changed grammatical roles—for nouns and pronouns is called “declension.” In nouns and pronouns, declensions list patterns of changes in case, gender, and number, pronouns can also be inflected (and therefore declined) in person. The declension for the personal pronoun in the nominative case is “I; you; he, she, it; we; you; they.”
Demonstrative. Demonstrative pronouns are “that” “these,” “this,” and “those.” They work the same way all other pronouns work, and they are used mainly to point at, identify, or indicate a noun (thing or person): “Do you see this picture?” “I saw that film.” “The child read those comic books.” “This” and “these” (plural) generally refer to things or people that are or are perceived to be closer or more immediate, while “that” and “those” (plural) indicate more remote nouns. Be sure that these pronouns agree in number with the words they modify or refer to. WRONG: “These are the picture I had in mind.” Don’t use “them” as a demonstrative pronoun. WRONG: “I saw them things.” See agreement, modifier, and antecedent.
Dependent clause. See clause.
Dialect. The dialects or variants of English that ethnic, religious, regional, cultural, or economic groups speak are often highly prized by them as important signs of group identity or solidarity. Many people in such groups speak or write standard English in some circumstances but prefer to observe the standards and usages of their dialects in other, usually less formal, communications. However, keeping the two sets of grammatical and usage rules separate is often difficult, just as it is often hard to judge what parts of any standard apply in any specific instance. Perfectly sound constructions, spellings, pronunciations, and so on in one dialect or pattern of standards might indicate seriously defective education, intelligence, or taste in another.
Most standard English writing should, by definition, avoid dialect. However, it must be recognized that standard English is simply the dialect of preference among those who are or believe themselves to be in a position to dictate what the standards are or should be. Thus the choice of what standard to apply—what dialect to choose—at any moment is not as clear as one would hope. In general, it is safe to follow the strictures of any widely recognized grammar handbook or dictionary to produce an acceptable standard English. It is always a matter of judgment on the part of each writer to decide whether that dialect is suitable for the writing she or he is doing at the moment. See colloquial.
Dialogue. Recording others’ speech directly is called writing in dialogue. Conventionally, quotation marks are used to indicate directly recorded speed: “‘Hello,’ he said.” In this example, the directly quoted speech is contained in single quotes because examples in this book are contained in double quotes. Normally, dialogue appears in double quotes, while direct speech recorded within a dialogue is put in single quotes, as in the example. Directly quoted speech can also be indented and made a block quotation to indicate that the words of someone other than the author are being reported: “The politician said
I am, as usual, confused on this point, but I would say that it is possible. Actually, I’m not sure that it is possible, but I am guessing that it is. It’s most probably probable.
The news conference ended shortly thereafter.”
Directly reported speech within an indented block appears in double quotes, but the block itself has no quotes around it. Normally the reported speech of each person who takes part in the dialogue being recorded is also set off by beginning a new paragraph:
It was a dark and stormy night. Thunder crashed, and the rain poured down.
“Wow,” Chris said, “I’m scared.”
“Don’t worry,” replied Sandy, “We’re safe here.”
However, to save space in nonfiction writing, some briefer dialogues are reported without such paragraphing.
Note that contractions appear in the last example. Such less formal elements are common in dialogues, which are, after all, representations of more colloquial, informal, dialectic speech, rather than formal, standard writing. Dialogue—real or invented—thus presents the writer an opportunity to relax a formal style and introduce into a document more conversational elements and all the variants they entail. See dialect, standard English, and quotation.
Dialogue can also be reported less directly and therefore without quotation marks or other clear markers of speakers and speeches: “He said that he was scared.” This is called “indirect quotation.”
Dictionary. The only way to be sure words are spelled correctly is to look them up in a dictionary. No dictionary is particularly better than any other, except that longer ones tend to have more words, examples, and explanations, which means you are more likely to find what you want.
Don’t be fooled by finding a word in a dictionary. You might have found a correct spelling of the wrong word for your sentence. See the entries on homonyms (sound-alikes) and such words as “their” and “to.”
Different from, than. The preferred usage is “different from” when a distinction is being drawn between things or people: “Old is different from young.” Don’t use “different than” unless you are introducing a clause: “That is different than I had expected.” Or: “That is different from what I had expected.”
“Differ with” means disagree and should not be confused with or used for “differ from” (be different).
Dig, dug, dug. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Direct object. The object of a verb’s action is said to be its “direct object,” while someone or something to which that action and object may be transferred is called the “indirect object”: “The boss gave the bonus to Horton.” “The bonus” is the direct object, and “Horton” is the indirect object.
Discreet, discrete. The first word refers to tact or prudence, while the second adjective means separate or separable: “People are discrete individuals who are sometimes discreet in their dealings with others.”
Discrete. See discreet.
Dive, dived, dived. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Dived. See dive.
Do. Besides its direct meanings (to perform or act), “do” is an auxiliary verb that combines with other verbs to change or intensify their meaning: “I do believe you are right.” “It does not seem you agree.” The first example borders on dialect and is the kind of intensifier that should not be overused.
“Do” is an irregular verb, forming its past tense and past participle in an unpredictable way (see conjugation): Present: do, does; past: did; past participle: done. These forms are important because they are commonly used with other verbs when “do” plays an auxiliary role: “I did not see him.” Forms of “do” are also commonly confused or used wrong: “Jan done killed the bug.” “Jan done it.” RIGHT: “Jan killed the bug.” “Jan did it.”
Doesn’t. The contraction of “does not,” which should normally not be used in formal writing.
Dollars. Put a dollar sign before any amounts in figures, and indicate cents after a decimal: “$1.95.” No additional spaces or punctuation is needed. When spelling out numbers, spell out “dollars” after the figures: “Ten dollars changed hands.”
Sums of dollars can be singular if they are seen as lumps of money rather than individual bills: “A billion dollars is a lot of money.”
If you are dealing with non-American dollars, you can distinguish between currencies by putting an abbreviation before the figure and dollar sign—“C$1.95,” indicating Canadian dollars—or, preferably, by following the figure with a parenthetical expression of sufficient length to make the matter clear: “$1.95 (C)” or “$1.65 (Can.).” Dollars of various kinds are used in many countries, so you should be sure to distinguish between any countries that could be confused by single-letter abbreviations.
Don’t. The contraction of “do not,” which should not be used normally in standard English writing.
Double negative. It is wrong in standard English to include more than one word in a sentence, clause, or verb phrase that negates the element. WRONG: “He never did nothing.” RIGHT: “He never did anything.” Having double or multiple negatives in a sentence is a very common error, particularly when phrases or clauses are long and the negation of an early element is forgotten later. Only careful proofreading or revising can catch such mistakes and fix them. Since the error is particularly frowned on in standard English, it is important that you take care when writing to avoid such problems.
Down. Preposition governing the objective case: “The elephant blew water on Dave’s head, and it dribbled down him.”
Dr. This title is commonly written as an abbreviation rather than spelled out. Note that the pronoun following a reference to a doctor by name or in general is not automatically masculine: “Dr. Smith picked up her bag.” “A doctor could forget his or her equipment.” When referring to two married doctors, it is offensive to write “Dr. and Mrs. Smith” or “Drs. John and Mary Smith.” Put instead “Dr. John and Dr. Mary Smith.” The same point applies to coauthors or coinventors. See the entry on sexist language. “Dr.” is also an abbreviation for “drive”: “3789 West Brookdale Dr.”
Drank. See drink.
Draw, drew, drawn. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Drawn. See draw.
Drew. See draw.
Drink, drank, drunk. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Drive, drove, driven. An irregular verb in its main, past tense, and past participle forms.
Driven. See drive.
Drove. See drive.
Drunk. See drink.
Dug. See dig.
During. Preposition governing the objective case: “The conductor coughed during the concert.”