Award Winning Wednesday – James at James Proclaims

Herb’s blog, Herbdate 22097-668:

Well, I’m sorry I missed last week but there were extenuating circumstances. I could have tried sticking it in last week somewhere but I would rather wait and do it right. As I always seem to do, I have a lot of choices because I have a number of blogs I follow that are all very diverse. There are still a lot to choose from. (As an aside, I think this previous sentence should read as it is, “There are still a lot to choose from” but Grammarly insists that the sentence should be “There is still a lot to choose from.” I left it as I wrote it, and long-time readers will know that I hold grammar and spelling checkers in despite but I still can’t quite wrap my brain around this one.)

The final choice, as you can tell from the title is James at James Proclaims. Whether it is the collaborative art projects he does with the world famous, almost 2, Little Proclaims, or his weekly clickbait tile or stories of strolls to the park splashing through puddles with his daughter, or his haiku, James Proclaims, from the beautiful Proclaims Towers, is worth giving a look. I follow him and read him every day and he sounds like the kind of guy I would like to sit and have coffee and a nice leisurely chat with. Since he is the married father of an almost two-year old I doubt he has much leisure. Plus, he lives in Jolly Old England. Someday Mrs. Herb and I would like to visit the U.K. but such a trip is not in the foreseeable future. But who can see the future? If it happens we may want to visit several of the bloggers we have met from across the pond.

My award does not require any backlinks or answering a bunch of questions or finding a bunch of other bloggers to tag. He can put it in a post or place it on his blog, link to me if he wants, or do nothing whatsoever with it, but I am offering the “Herb likes this blog and would like to have coffee with this blogger sometime,” award to the interesting, intelligent, often eclectic, frequently artistic blog, James Proclaims.

23 Comments

  1. From what I know, “There are a lot” is used for countable nouns, while “There is a lot” for uncountable nouns. Since you didn’t specify what exactly the noun is in the sentence, Grammarly might have made that suggestion. As far as I know, blogs must be countable.
    But of course, I am no Grammarly so might be wrong.

  2. I am in full support of your choice. I feel the same way you do about James Proclaims. It would be great to have a coffee with him! Also, I think I can solve your grammar issue. You were correct to keep the plural verb “are” when writing “There are still a lot to choose from”. This is correct because you are using “a lot ” to mean “many”. “Many”, as you can see, is plural; therefore, you need the plural verb. It would be correct to use the singular verb “is” if you were using “a lot” to mean a parcel of land or some other such singular noun. In order to keep it straight in your mind, just ask yourself if you can substitute in the word “many”. If you can, use the plural verb form. I actually teach my students to avoid using “a lot” and to use either “many” or “much’. I hope this helps.

    • Thank you so much! You are going to be a welcome addition to my little blogging family. I appreciate that and will try to clip it on my brain in the future.

  3. Grammar! Ah, it’s an elusive little bugger at the best of times. I don’t trust IT to help me out there, so, consequently my grammar is a complete mess.
    As for James, couldn’t agree more. Top blog, top bloke and trusted running guru (dreadful artist, but you can’t have it all!) One day I hope to meet him in the pub…

  4. Can’t believe I’m late to my own party! Thanks for the honour. What I like about this blogging award is that it’s possible to actually win it. Because I’ve been ‘nominated’ for a quite a few over the years, but this is the first one I’ve won!

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