A Word, Please: A reader questions a sure thing

I was making a point about hyphens when, in a recent column, I gave this example: “That water-skier sure knows how to water-ski on his water skis.” But for David in Albany, N.Y., the sentence touched on a language issue that had nothing to do with punctuation.

“Immediately, I heard the words of my former high school home room/English teacher: ‘Use “sure” when you would use “certain” and “surely” when you would use “certainly,”’” David wrote. “Have the rules changed since I graduated from high school?”

I’ve been writing about grammar for 14 years and sometimes I think I’ve heard every grammar rule in existence — real and imaginary.

Among the shibboleths readers report picking up in school: You can’t start a sentence with “it.” You can’t start a sentence with “and.” You must say “with me or Joe” instead of “with Joe or me.” You can’t split a phrasal verb. You can’t use “like” to mean “such as.” You can’t use “than” as a preposition. The list goes on forever, and the rules cited are almost always untrue.

But this business about “sure” was a new one on me. If it’s true, I would have been required to say, “That water-skier surely knows how to water-ski,” instead of “sure knows.”

When you think about it, there’s some logic there. I used the word “sure” to modify a verb “knows.” Traditionally, we think of that as a job for an adverb. So, it would make sense that “surely” would have been the proper choice because it’s clearly an adverb.

So how can we find out?

The best place to start, as usual, is the dictionary. Though most people don’t realize it, there’s a lot more in there than just spellings and definitions. For example, fishing around in a dictionary you can learn that adverbs aren’t just words that end in “ly.”

Look up the word “right,” for instance, and you’ll see it’s not just an adjective and a noun but also an adverb. You can use it to modify a verb, as in “Joe did it right.” This flies in the face of traditional thinking on adverbs, in which the form without an “ly” is an adjective, like “quick,” and with the tail it becomes an adverb: “quickly.”

“Right” does have a corresponding “ly” form: “rightly.” Yet if you think “Joe did it rightly” sounds inferior to “Joe did it right,” there’s a reason. “Right” is a card-carrying member of the adverb club — and it’s much more popular as an adverb than “rightly.”

When I check “sure” in Merriam-Webster’s, I see that it is at times an adverb. In fact, it’s a synonym for “surely,” which we know because that’s one of Merriam’s definitions for it.

And here’s yet another definition for “sure”: “certainly.”

Often a dictionary’s help will end there. But sometimes these reference books go even further by including discussions of controversial usage of a word.

Here’s what Merriam-Webster’s throws in, free of charge, in its entry for “sure”: “Most commentators consider the adverb ‘sure’ to be something less than completely standard; ‘surely’ is usually recommended as a substitute. Our current evidence shows, however, that ‘sure’ and ‘surely’ have become differentiated in use. ‘Sure’ is used in much more informal contexts than ‘surely.’ It is used as a simple intensive: ‘I can never know how much I bored her, but, be certain, she sure amused me.’ — Norman Mailer, and, because it connotes strong affirmation, it is used when the speaker or writer expects to be agreed with: ‘It’s a moot point whether politicians are less venal than in Twain’s day. But they’re sure as the devil more intrusive,’ — Alan Abelson.”

So can you use “sure” to mean “certainly”? As an answer to that question, either of those words works nicely.

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JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.