In Defense of Participles

Are students taught about participles any more? I, for one, am getting sick and tired of hearing people who should know better using a participle when a past tense is called for. Chief among this group are the TV newsreaders, who prefer to be called “anchors.”

Perhaps that appellation causes them to think they know something about matters nautical. If that were so, they’d never report, “The boat sunk in 100 feet of water.” No, no, no! The boat didn’t “sunk;” it SANK! Why do they make that mistake when they’d never make the opposite mistake and say, “The boat has sank”?

Sink, sank, sunk, sinking. Present, past, past participle, present participle (also gerund). Does no one learn to conjugate verbs anymore?

Same goes for stink, stank, stunk, stinking.

And you wonder why I’m sometimes referred to as the anal-compulsive grammarian?