Problem:
The verb “feel” can take an adjective or an adverb.

Explanation:
The verb “feel” is a loaded verb in that it relates to a state of health or emotion as well as to the sense of touch.

The verb “feel” can be used as a linking verb, which is called a “copula” in linguistics.

A linking verb ties the subject of a sentence with the predicate of the sentence.

As described elsewhere, the verbs “be”, “become”, and “seem” are called true linking verbs because they can be nothing else.

Examples include:

• “I am rich!”
• “You became wealthy.”
• “They seem nice.”

In contrast, each of the following verbs can act as an action verb or as a linking verb:

• “appear”;
• “feel”;
• “grow”
• “look”;
• “prove”;
• “remain”;
• “smell”;
• “sound”;
• “taste”;
• “turn”.

Here are examples of these verbs used as action verbs, each of which can be modified by one or more adverbs:

• “She effortlessly appeared from the bushes.”
• “He barely feels that tack in the carpet.”
• “Mary often grows hibiscus plants.”
• “Look now at that cow crossing the road!”
• “Can you quickly prove this theorem?”
• “I can remain here.”
• “Everyone should always smell the flowers.”
• “Paul Revere urgently sounded the alarm.”
• “Can they barely taste the ginger in that dessert?”
• “Please slowly turn the car to the right at the next light.”

Here are examples of the same verbs used as linking verbs, each of which is followed by an adjective:

• “She appears ill.”
• “He feels odd.”
• “Mary grows angry when she sees her hibiscus flowers destroyed.”
• “Darling, you look marvelous!”
• “Purchase of Manhattan proved inexpensive.”
• “The dishes remain dirty.”
• “You smell delightful.”
• “His argument sounds correct.”
• “This dessert tastes delicious.”
• “His face turns red when you embarrass him.”

Solution:
Use (quote) “I feel bad.” (unquote) to describe the current state of your emotions or health. Use (quote) “I feel badly.” (unquote) to describe your ability to feel with your sensory neurons.

Problem:
A comma is missing.

Explanation:
The TV program on truTV was titled “World’s Wildest Police Videos”.

The complete warning appeared in all-capital letters at the beginning of the program: (quote) “DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE OF THIS PROGRAM VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.” (unquote).

A line break appeared after the word “NATURE”, and another line break appeared after the word “VIEWER”, so the warning was formatted as follows:

DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE
OF THIS PROGRAM VIEWER
DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

My first reaction to this warning was, “What is a PROGRAM VIEWER?”

Some sign and warning writers mistakenly claim that they can insert line breaks where commas should occur and therefore that a comma is unnecessary with these implied-comma line breaks.

If the warning writer for “World’s Wildest Police Videos” had followed that rule, then he or she would have created a warning that would have been formatted with a line break between “PROGRAM” and “VIEWER”:

DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE
OF THIS PROGRAM
VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

But whoever entered the text for the warning screen could not even claim that he or she was using an implied comma between the word “PROGRAM” and the word “VIEWER”.

I believe that the warning writer was unaware of a basic principle about commas, which is that they indicate pauses. I otherwise could not explain how the writer could have read the warning aloud and not noticed that a comma was missing after the word “PROGRAM”.

Solution:
“Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer …”

Problem:
The reflexive pronoun is triply misspelled.

Explanation:
My wife was researching a carpentry tool on Amazon.com.

She was reading comments from those who had bought the tool when she came across (quote) “The tool it’s self seems …” (unquote).

The obvious solution is to replace I-T-APOSTROPHE-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F with the reflexive pronoun “itself” — spelled I-T-S-E-L-F.

What fascinates me is how the commenter managed to make three spelling mistakes in the process of misspelling this pronoun.

1. Mistake #1 was to assume that reflexive pronouns are always formed by combining a possessive pronoun with the word “self”.
2. Mistake #2 was to assume that a space should appear between such a possessive pronoun and the word “self”.
3. Mistake #3 was to misspell the possessive pronoun “its” as I-T-APOSTROPHE-S.

Let us discuss these three mistakes in reverse order.

If we undo mistake #3, then we get “its self” — spelled I-T-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F.

If we undo mistake #2, then we get “itsself” — spelled I-T-S-S-E-L-F.

If we undo mistake #1, then we get “itself” — spelled I-T-S-E-L-F.

Solution:
“The tool itself seems …”

Problem:
One of these nouns formerly was a synonym for the other noun but now is not.

Explanation:
The noun “phonics”, which dates back to around the year 1680, refers to a way to teach spelling and reading based on the phonetic interpretation of ordinary spelling.

Put briefly, the primary meaning of the noun “phonetics”, which dates back to around the year 1840, is the study of speech sounds.

An obsolete meaning of the noun “phonics” is the noun “phonetics”.

Given that “phonics” is an older noun than “phonetics”, it seems that it was temporarily fashionable to use “phonics” as a synonym for “phonetics”, a much newer noun.

Note that one does not (quote) “teach phonics” (unquote) unless one is teaching others how to use phonics for teaching spelling and reading.

For example, children in elementary school would not be (quote) “taught phonics” (unquote).

Instead, their teacher would (quote) “use phonics” (unquote) to teach those children to read and spell, and that teacher would have been (quote) “taught phonics” (unquote) by his or her college professor.

Solution:
Think “a way to teach” when thinking of the noun “phonics”; think “sounds” when thinking of the noun “phonetics”.

Problem:
The “If” clause should have been written in the past subjunctive mood.

Explanation:
The TV commercial was on the Discovery Health channel.

“Could You Survive?” is the title of the show that was being advertised.

The premise of the show is to ask viewers whether they would be prepared to survive in the event of a disaster or other emergency.

The complete sentence that I saw was along the lines of (quote) “If your husband was trapped in a car, would you be able to rescue him?” (unquote).

The problem with this sentence is that “was” is the wrong form of the verb “be” to use in the if-clause.

The if-clause is a subordinate clause — also called a “protasis” — in this conditional sentence.

A conditional sentence discusses one of the following:

• a factual implication, as in (quote) “If you cool water to 0 degrees Celsius, it freezes.” (unquote);
• a hypothetical situation, as in (quote) “If you were king, would you make me a knight?” (unquote).

If the hypothetical situation is described with a contrary-to-fact present conditional, then the past subjunctive must be used.

In other words, as noted at Wikipedia, the past subjunctive is used after the conjunction if to express hypotheses.

It is a common English blunder to use simply the past tense, and that is the blunder made by the TV ad writer.

Solution:
“If your husband were trapped in a car, would …”

Problem:
The writer used the wrong verb.

Explanation:
The full sentence was (quote) “He sites the following historic quotes regarding Thanksgiving.” (unquote).

The verb “site” — spelled S-I-T-E — means to place, situate or locate at or on a site.

It is clear that the writer of the sentence was trying to say (quote) “refers to” (unquote) when he wrote “site” with an “s”.

So the writer should have used the verb “cite” — spelled C-I-T-E — which means to quote, especially as an authority.

Solution:
“He cites the following historic quotes …”

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Problem:
The adjective is misspelled — in capital letters, no less!

Explanation:
The adjective “visible” — misspelled as V-I-S-A-B-L-E — appeared in a banner advertisement on the MEN7 website, which I discovered after seeing a television program called “MEN7″ on the ION network a few nights ago.

The website’s banner ad was for something called “Billionaires Car Club”.

The full text of the all-capital-letters ad was (quote) “LAMBORGHINI, MURCIELAGO | PRICE TO OWN $350K | ALWAYS VISABLE | SEE IT ON BILLIONAIRES CAR CLUB” (unquote).

I was not surprised to see the adjective “visible” misspelled by a website and TV program focused on fast cars and the male equivalent of “Cosmopolitan” magazine instead of on more intellectual pursuits.

But seeing the adjective “visible” spelled with an “a” in the middle made me wonder how typical this blunder was.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “visible” — 238,000,000 matches
• “visable” — 723,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spelling versus the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 329-to-1, which is superb.

However, nearly three-quarters of a million misspellings tells me that spelling the adjective “visible” with an “a” is a common English blunder.

I believe that this blunder is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

It is simpler to pronounce this adjective as if there were an “a” in the middle than to clearly pronounce the “i” in the middle.

And I believe that this mispronunciation drives the misspelling.

Solution:
“ALWAYS VISIBLE”

Problem:
I was not sure which verb represented proper English.

Explanation:
The conference call entailed a review of verbiage to go into a Web-based application.

The review centered on how to communicate to a customer that two identities with the same company could be disconnected from one another.

One part of the document used the verb “disassociate”; another part of the document used the verb “dissociate”.

I had to look up these two verbs because I was unsure whether both were correct. Both verbs are correct and mean to remove from association.

The difference, according to at least one dictionary, is the age of the two verbs.

• The verb “disassociate” originated in the period of 1595 to 1605.
• The verb “dissociate” originated in the period of 1605 to 1615.

Solution:
Both verbs represent proper English. Use the one that you prefer, but be consistent within any given document that you are writing.

Problem:
The Taliban were not held in captivity for three months.

Explanation:
The full sentence was (quote) “After being held in captivity for three months, the Taliban execute a local official when their demands are not met.” (unquote).

The sentence appeared at a website that tracks Islamic terror attacks.

This sentence documented an attack — by the Taliban, not ON the Taliban — that was purported to have occurred in Kunar, Afghanistan, on 22 November 2008.

The problem with the sentence is that (quote) “the Taliban” (unquote) immediately follows the comma-terminated (quote) “After being held in captivity for three months” (unquote) and therefore implies to the reader that the Taliban were held in captivity for three months.

I usually appreciate the use of active voice instead of passive voice, but this sentence calls for passive voice after the comma.

In other words, the correct way to leave the “After” clause in place is to say immediately after the comma WHO was executed.

Solution:
“… held in captivity for three months, a local official was executed …”