Q:  My question is about a construction that is common, but I think incorrect. How about, "I have been friends with her for many years." It’s even used in writing.

A: The use of the plural noun friends to refer to the singular pronoun (I) is so common as to be labeled "idiomatic." The people who use the expression consider it an appropriate substitute for "She and I have been friends for many years," or "We have been friends for many years." But "I have been friends ...." is not only ungrammatical, but logically impossible, so I would avoid it.

Another construction that is so common it might be considered idiomatic is "I have been a close friend of Mary’s for a long time." Conservative grammarians disapprove of "the double‑possessive" in of and Mary’s. Columnist James J. Kilpatrick chastised The New York Times for the language, "The death [of Bobby Fischer] was confirmed by Gardar Sverisson, a close friend of Mr. Fischer’s." In his criticism of the possessive noun Fischer’s, Mr. Kilpatrick asked rhetorically in his column, "How’s that again? What’s that hanging possessive doing there?"

But the possessive noun, "Mr. Fischer’s," is justifiable if you compare it to a similar construction containing a pronoun instead of a noun in which you would use the possessive form his, the possessive case of the pronoun he, not the objective form (him): "Fischer’s death was confirmed by Gardar Sverisson, a close friend of his." (Of and his) are both possessives. So by analogy, why not use the possessive form of the noun, "Mr. Fischer’s"? If the construction irritates him, Kilpatrick’s criticism should be directed at the redundancy, not the grammar.

My thanks to librarian Jack Bales, Reference and Humanities Librarian at the University of Mary Washington Library, who sent Mr. Kilpatrick’s column. Mr. Bales’ twin brother, an  Illinois attorney, sends him the ISBA Bar News.

Q: Should there be a comma after improving in the following sentence? I have been going back and forth on this, but even switching the order of the last two clauses didn’t give it the right nuance. Here’s the sentence, "Though she often needs help, as her skills are improving, so is her independence."

A: My own question, as I read this, was not whether a comma is needed after improving, but whether the word as means "because" or "while." The word as is ambiguous, so I would substitute either because or while. I would also omit the second comma (after improving) ifyou mean "because" but leave it in ifyou mean "while." But that choice is merely subjective.

The reason you are "going back and forth" about the need for the comma is that it is permissible either to keep the comma or delete it. The grammatical rule is that a comma follows a dependent clause when that clause precedes an independent clause, the exception being that if the dependent clause is short, you can omit the comma. Here, the dependent clause that immediately precedes the independent clause is short: "as her skills are improving." The independent clause, "so is her independence," is also short, so it’s your decision whether to use a comma after improving.

FROM THE MAILBAG:

Chicago reader Benjamin Cohen has sent a possible explanation for our peculiar American style of regularly placing periods and commas inside the final quotation marks in quoted material. He wrote that when he learned to set type by hand in the seventh grade, in 1949‑1950, he was taught that punctuation marks went inside the quotation marks because the punctuation mark was on a piece of type that was thinner than the piece for the quotation mark, and thus was better protected from inadvertent damage.

POTPOURRI:

The adjective long‑lived and the adverb patently have become popular with the media and the general public, but neither is pronounced properly. The adjective long‑lived is derived from the plural of the Old English noun līf (pronounced like leaf), which in Modern English has become the noun life. In long‑līved, weborrowed the O.E. plural, which changed the f sound to v; hence long‑lived should be pronounced with a long‑i sound, as in the Modern English word alive. English speakers assume that the adjective derives from the verb to live. But if you prefer to be correct instead of in the majority, pronounce the adjective long‑līved.

The adverb pătently and the noun pătent both descend from the Latin past participle of the Latin verb patere, which means "to be opened." When it became the English noun that describes an exclusive right or title, often granted by government to an inventor for a certain length of time, it is pronounced the way everyone now pronounces it: pătent. But as an adverb or an adjective, pātent means "clear and obvious" and is unrelated to the noun. The adverb pātently takes on the pronunciation and meaning of the adjective. (Both are pronounced to rhyme with blatant/blatantly.) As a pejorative, the adverb can appear in a statement like, "The argument is patently false," properly pronounced pātently. But nobody pronounces it that way, so dictionaries now report as acceptable the alternate pronunciations.

Most English speakers are uninterested in etymology; they borrow the pronunciation of a newly encountered word from the pronunciation of a word they recognize that looks the same. They also assume the new word has the same meaning. Thus problematic, whose original meaning was "questionable or doubtful" has come to mean "a problem." But that’s another story.

Gertrude Block is Lecturer Emerita at the University of Florida College of Law. Her book, ”Legal Writing Advice: Questions and Answers” (William S. Hein & Co., Inc.) was published in December 2004. Ms. Block is also author of “Effective Legal Writing”, 5th Edition (Foundation Press), with an accompanying instructor’s manual. She is co-author of the “Judicial Opinion Writing Manual” (published by the American Bar Association, 1991).  Send questions to the ISBA Bar News – Language Tips, Illinois State Bar Association, Illinois Bar Center, Springfield, IL 62701, or e-mail her at block@law.ufl.edu.