All Generalizations Are Wrong Trivia Quiz

Answer: Stereotype

People can be (and sadly, often are) stereotyped based on pretty much any characteristic: the color of their hair, the clothes they wear, the way they speak, or their jewelry and makeup. If you can tell from faces on a movie poster which character is supposed to be the hero, which the love interest and which the comic relief, you're likely seeing stereotypes in action! But stereotypes aren't just lazy writing: many are also deeply hurtful, especially those associated with gender, ethnicity, or religion. Good writers create human, believable characters, not one-dimensional tropes or prejudices; stereotypes are one kind of generalization that's best left on the shelf.

Answer: Exaggeration

Hyperbole is a way of generating vivid imagery through extreme exaggeration. For example, "I'll love you forever" is, technically, an impossible promise, but its purpose is to convey depth of feeling. Meanwhile, even an overpacked suitcase doesn't really weigh a ton and it's a rare person who could actually eat a horse, but each expression makes its point (heaviness or hunger) effectively and efficiently. Hyperbole is best used in poetic or informal writing, however; as the rule notes, it's out of place in formal essays or reports.

Answer: Apostrophes

The grammatically correct version of the rule is, "It's important to use apostrophes right in everybody's writing." The word "it's" needs an apostrophe because it's a contraction: "it's" stands for "it is," and the apostrophe stands in for the missing letter. (This is also why colloquial gerunds, like "singin'" and "dancin'", end with apostrophes: the apostrophe substitutes for the dropped letter G.) Meanwhile, "everybody's" takes an apostrophe and an S to show possession: "monkeys typing" refers to monkeys in the act of striking keys, but "monkey's typing" is the typed output belonging to a monkey.

Apostrophes are not needed to form plurals, however. And there's also one exception to the possession rule: "its cold" means the cold belonging to it, whereas "it's cold" means that it is cold.

Answer: Tongue-twisters

A tongue-twister is a phrase designed to trip the tongue, making it a real challenge to say quickly. The twisty nature of such a phrase often comes partly from alliteration, the repetition of a sound several times in short succession. Think of the famous "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," with alliteration in the "p" sound and consonance (a closely related device) in the "k" sound. Or, if peppers don't suit you, what about some alliteration in "s" and "sh"? "She sells sea shells by the sea shore," after all.

In addition to tongue twisters, alliteration appears in poetry, songs, and even comic books: witness Clark Kent, Mickey Mouse, and Peter Parker.

Answer: "To boldly go where no man has gone before ..."

An English infinitive is the plain, unconjugated form of a verb, often paired with the word "to" - to swim, to fly, to go. A split infinitive is when another word is inserted between "to" and the verb; "to boldly go", from the opening voiceover of the television show "Star Trek", is one of the most famous examples.

Beginning in the 19th century, many grammarians argued that an infinitive (like "to be") was grammatically one word -- and, therefore, splitting it was always incorrect. In more recent decades, however, many grammarians have rejected this argument, noting that a split infinitive can sometimes offer advantages in clarity and poetry. Yet writers should remain vigilant: not all split infinitives are stylistic improvements over their unsplit kin.

"To have and to hold ...," which contains two unsplit infinitives, comes from the wedding vows in the Anglican "Book of Common Prayer." The other two phrases do not contain any infinitives at all: "To everything there is a season" is from the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, while "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings" is a sports proverb inspired by opera.

Answer: The noun that a pronoun represents

A pronoun is a word that stands in for a noun or noun phrase; famous pronouns include I, you, he, she, it, and them. They're very useful, but they often need a little help, and that's where the antecedent comes in. Suppose I call you up and announce, "It's on sale!" That isn't going to be much help to you, until you know what "it" is. Now suppose that, instead, I say, "I looked up the price of a FunTrivia gold membership. It's on sale!" We now have a clear antecedent ("a FunTrivia gold membership") for the word "it," and all is made clear.

Even with a clear antecedent, however, there's room for confusion if the writer forgets it! In the rule quoted above, "their" is a possessive pronoun whose antecedent is the word "pronoun." But "pronoun" is singular and "their" is plural: they disagree, which may send the reader off looking for another possible antecedent that WOULD match. So, in your own writing, make sure each pronoun agrees with ITS antecedent!

Answer: Comparison

A metaphor is a figure of speech that involves making an implied comparison between two things. For example, "all the world's a stage" (from William Shakespeare) compares the world to a stage without ever directly saying that it's doing so. A direct comparison -- a simile -- would be something along the lines of "all the world is like a stage."

Trouble arises when two contradictory metaphors are used together, or "mixed." "Mixed metaphors are a pain in the neck" compares mixed metaphors to an unpleasant sensation; "mixed metaphors ought to be weeded out" compares them to undesirable plants. They can't be both! Instead of casting light on a concept through comparison, a poorly chosen mix of metaphors only causes confusion.

Answer: As something happening to other people (he, she, etc)

A first-person narrative, be it a work of fiction, a personal essay, or a memoir, is told from the perspective of one of the people involved in the story. In second-person narratives, such as instruction manuals or "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, it's the reader who is part of the story. Finally, third-person works -- the most common type of narrative -- narrate what is happening (or has happened) to other people.

The narrator may be omniscient (able to report on the characters' thoughts, feelings, and future fates), or limited (either to externally available facts or to a single character's thoughts and observations), but she or he must be consistent! Narration that abruptly shifts from third-person to second-, as in William Safire's perverse rule, is bound to confuse.

Answer: Yeah, right.

"Yeah, right," is a commonly used sarcastic formulation: its true meaning is most often the opposite of what it might seem. This question was inspired by an old saw about a linguistics professor who told his class that there were languages (like French) where a double negative formed a negative, and languages (like English) where a double negative formed a positive, but there were no languages where a double positive formed a negative.

He was brought up short by a student making this very reply.

Answer: Overuse

The artist Salvador Dalí gave a harsh but succinct summary of the problem: "The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot." A cliche may originally have carried profound meaning, but has been so heavily used that it has become a kind of shorthand for itself.

The opener "It was a dark and stormy night" no longer sets an ominous and gloomy scene for most readers; instead, it sets an expectation of a poorly written mystery or horror story. Likewise, "avoid it like the plague" once conjured up vivid and frightening imagery of disease; now, it's just words.