Free grammar lessons!

[Mychilli]

gr4mm3r? wh475 7h47?

[banditcom]

That's just the difference between you and me, bandit... <3 grammar.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

Plus you have Amanda...

[Artist]

don't be sad

[BlueFlameZero]

This is what school is for :P

[ToshX]

This is what school is for :P

Meh, people fall asleep during that bullshit anyway.

[Squeek]

...

The problem (as I've stated MANY TIMES BEFORE) is that people seem to lose their English skills when they start using a keyboard to convey messages to others.

I said before that most of us learned the majority of this stuff in 3rd grade. The problem is people seem to like having two separate writing styles and only use proper English for school assignments or professional letters.

Which, as you know, I will kill you for.

~Squeek

[alainbryden]

I strongly agree Squeek. It drives me insane to see people become complete linguistic idiots when they go online. I don't mind the occasional slip up, as most are prone to at some time or another, but a complete disregard for the Enlish language merits, in my opinion, a shot in the mouth.

[ddrruler]

oh noes shoot me in the mouth

[evilbutterfly]

Which, as you know, I will kill you for.

Tsk tsk, Squeek. Never end a sentence with a preposition!

Moving on: I don't lose my grammar skills when I go online, I just get lazy. For instance, I tend to not capitalize things or put in apostrophes unless they are helpful to the sentence's meaning (as is the case when using it's or its). typing like this is something i dont have a problem with. i mean, it's still legible and all, and you know what i'm saying. i really am an oddball. it's mostly because i'm lazy, but i dont let my laziness make what i wrote completely unreadable. my ex-gf has a xanga site, and most of her entries (which are sometimes quite long) have little or no puncuation. i cant even understand it without reading it again because what should be 15 sentences is one huge run-on. it's ridiculous, but whatever. uhoh, i've been typing badly . Squeek is gonna kill me now, just like when i first came to ffr. hehe, good times, fighting with Mr. Grammar. silly boy :P.

[alainbryden]

Oh and I agree that all punctuation should be outside a quoted statement, unless quoting the entire phrase. I believe you should say:

Elenor said that the day was "very pleasing indeed". <-- A seemingly correct solution.

or otherwise

The day, apparently, was "very pleasing indeed", according to Elenor. <-- The seemingly best solution in this case.

however, for complete citations:

Elenor then spoke her opinion on the matter. "Today was very pleasing indeed." <-- Definately right in this case, by any principle


I don't think that punctuation not part a citation should be included in the citation. It destroys, for me, a part of the credibility of the quote. Anything changed in a citation except for punctuation usually has [] brackets around it.

According to Elenor "[Monday, Febuary 12th] was very pleasing indeed." <-- Correctly stated

But it would look awkward to attempt to just correct for altering the punctuation in a citation the same way:

The day, apparently, was "very pleasing indeed[,]" according to Elenor. <-- A would-be appropriate statement, but awkward.

See it's just wrong. It is thus that I believe it only makes sence to do as Squeek said and insert altered punctuation outside the quotation marks. I didn't invent the language though, so who cares.

[Squeek]

The British do as I like to see.

GG, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (<--Punctuated properly in British English).

However, I will not get over the non-usage of the Oxford Comma. That is the comma in sets of 3 or more. In America, we put that comma after each item, but not after the "and", "or", or "but".

Sorry, EB. I should not end sentences with prepositional phrases. I'm a horrible person now. Kill me.

Like I said, I won't care for mistakes like that. I care for stupid mistakes that seeemingly uneducated people make.

IE - "definately", "definitly", "defintly", and so on.

If you're unsure how to spell a word, take the time to look it up. If you screw up and say the wrong word I will insult you and, whenver appropriate, point out what you actually said. For example, if you said "the wether is good lol", I'd then comment on how much you liked castrated sheep.

~Squeek

[evilbutterfly]

Wait wait wait. Commas and lists. I often see things listed like this:

Item1, item2, item3 and item4.

But I'm pretty sure that, as a child, I was taught to do it like this:

Item1, item2, items3, and item4.

English teachers never mark that as wrong, so I'm assuming that it's fine. What I really want to know is wether or not the former is correct, because when I read it I read it as I would the following:

Item3 and Item4, Item1, and Item2.

I'm a crazy comma kid. I tend to make very broken sentences with lots of commas separating fragments and such. I guess it's part of my style, which is kinda funny. I never mean to write the same way all the time, but looking back I always do things the same way. For example: often while posting I will make a new paragraph and start it with "and" or "also". <--lol, period after quotes! When I wrote my short story, I found that I often put "He verbed, verbing that something something." Things like, "He dodged, hoping the bullet would not hit him" and, "He yelled, thinking the soldiers were his allies." My teacher circled some of these instances and didn't circle others. It seems right to me, and may be he just thinks I use commas too much. What's your take on this?

And Squeek, I just had to seize the opportunity to correct you on grammar. The irony was just too overwhelming. If I ever make a mistake, please do point it out. I rather hate screwing things up, and would love to know all the proper rules. Since you know them all so well, you might as well educate me :P.

[Squeek]

Most people get pissed as soon as I correct their grammar.

Take my co-worker, for instance...

Well, in his case, he can't even spell "machine". I worry about him.

British comma use - "I went to buy milk, cookies and butter."

American comma use - "I went to buy milk, cookies, and butter."

Wrong - "I went to buy milk, cookies, and, butter."

Just sound it out and use whatever sounds right to you. Written English is supposed to be used as a means of expressing what one wants to say vocally. That's why we have so much punctuation. The comma is a slight pause, the colon sets off what comes next: the semicolon is a break in the sentence; the dash indicates a long pause or a side-note from the text itself - wouldn't you believe, - and the ending punctuation sums up how you should vocally pronounce the last few syllables.

Eh, I can't do one sentence like that grammatically. It looks cool though.

~Squeek

[alainbryden]

RE: Free grammar lessons!

I was skimming and landed on this phrase.

Bear - Almost always associated with an animal. For some reason, there are two special cases. "Bear with it" and "Bear children" are those two special cases.

Just to correct, Bear spelled that way means "To Sustain" ie: "I can't bear to be around you." It also means "To present or be in possession of" such as in "I bear gifts," "bear children" or "to bear arms." This explains what you denoted as 'special cases' and all other uses of "Bear" not referring to the mammal.

[Squeek]

RE: Free grammar lessons!

Yea, I'll write it into my notes of things to (eventually (never)) update.

I couldn't think of the proper term at the time.

~Squeek