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Grammar, Spelling, and Fonts

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I hate receiving notes from the various public schools. Both teachers and administrators send home notes and letters that contain grammatical mistakes. I become livid and disheartened when this happens as I wonder, if the teachers do not know how to employ correct English, how can they teach it?

 

English is an extremely difficult language. It has many exceptions to the rule, and it, also, has quite a few rules. Pronunciation is hard to always get correctly when following phonics rules. Writers and teachers from 200 years ago agreed that English seemed to have more exceptions to the rules than words that followed the rules. Prepositions are extremely tricky to use correctly, especially for those whose native tongue is not English.

 

As a general rule coordinating conjunctions should not start a sentence. There are exceptions and this is basically an issue of style. It is not a truly hard and fast grammar rule. I am not sure there truly are hard and fast grammar rules in English. During my lifetime quite a few basic rules have been modified or completely changed. Punctuation, other than end marks was totally tossed out the window for three to five years in the 1970's. Those of us who attended school in that time period have punctuation issues. Then the grammar rulers put punctuation back in place and made the change dealing with serial commas only being needed in a list for clarity of the last 2 items.

 

English grammar is a mess. Spelling has joined it in the ranks of the "I can do it any way I want as long as it makes sense to me." THat particular version of the rules works only in a private journal or diary.

 

For those of you who intend to become English teachers or already are, I'd love to know why the grammar nazi rule makers have decided to ignore so many rules when grading papers and accepting papers. My dad taught math and computer science in college in the 1960's and 1970's. Papers written for him which were riddled with grammatical errors, either failed or had to be rewritten before he would grad them. My teachers believed in the more than 3 mistakes and you have a failing paper. Grades were A, B, C, and see me. I used the same sytem when I taught Juniors and seniors in high school.

 

This is driving me crazy just thinking about it. I am going to end my post.

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Er, it's been a while. Please do not mock me or anything, but regarding adjectives, how do you know if it distributes to the rest of the objects?

 

Example: green eggs and ham

 

Is the ham also green or is it just the eggs?

I think both are green.

 

~

 

Are Japanese and Korean considered pitched languages? Chinese is.

I think they are, giving that I didn't misread this.

 

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Er, it's been a while. Please do not mock me or anything, but regarding adjectives, how do you know if it distributes to the rest of the objects?

 

Example: green eggs and ham

 

Is the ham also green or is it just the eggs?

That's ambiguous; it could be either. wink.gif

 

I'm actually proofreading for quite a few local newspapers so it's safe to say I'm decent at spelling, grammar and punctuation. It's just the weird symbols they use that irks me; I much prefer to correct things on a word processor and bold respectively - not because it helps with checking but because I find the proofreading symbols hard to draw/write. X3

 

I agree with DustyBelle (and the first paragraph especially). I'm probably the biggest grammar Nazi in the school and I'm known for it in class. Every time we get a school letter home and I put it away, my friends are all, "Well?" xd.png

 

My biggest pet peeve... Capitalisation and paragraphs are the biggest ones, I think.

(With newspapers, I hate seeing text that isn't justified. It just looks so untidy. :I I don't like seeing widows or orphans either.)

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I think both are green.

 

~

 

 

I think they are, giving that I didn't misread this.

Japanese is pitched, but not tonal like Chinese is. Pitch accent is variable depending on dialect and isn't extremely important, because context will prevail and you won't really confuse people with a wrong pitch.

 

As for Japanese being a more "logical" language than English, well, all languages have their problems. It's true that あ is always pronounced "a" and that's easy, but the language isn't always written like that and you can't rely on that. The fact that even a simple character like 日has several readings doesn't make for easy comprehension. That character could be read nichi, ka, hi, bi, ni, and so on. There's no way to know what the reading will be without looking it up and remembering. You can take some educated guesses but there's still lots of room for error.

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I think both are green.

I apologise for this. How do you separate the adjective like having eggs only the green one?

 

Does it work by adding commas? Like this:

Green eggs, and ham

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I apologise for this. How do you separate the adjective like having eggs only the green one?

 

Does it work by adding commas? Like this:

Green eggs, and ham

I would personally go with "ham and green eggs".

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Does it work by adding commas? Like this:

Green eggs, and ham

You could do that in a list (that uses the Oxford/Harvard comma); e.g. "I gave her baked beans, fresh fish, green eggs, and ham." Otherwise you could just go for Sock's solution. tongue.gif

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Yes, yes. I'd do either of those things to separate it. Or mention the color of the ham (i.e., green eggs and pink ham).

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@cfmtfm:

You could do that in a list (that uses the Oxford/Harvard comma); e.g. "I gave her baked beans, fresh fish, green eggs, and ham." Otherwise you could just go for Sock's solution.

laugh.gif Oh, thanks. These help greatly, friends!

 

user posted imageuser posted imageuser posted imageuser posted imageuser posted image

 

@Mousia:

Yes, yes. I'd do either of those things to separate it. Or mention the color of the ham (i.e., green eggs and pink ham).

smile.gif Yes, that works too. Although I must say, sometimes putting a description to the other object is weird, like in the case of the ham which is pink. laugh.gif When you just say ham, you picture it to be pink, which is the ordinary one.

Edited by georgexu94

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Although I must say, sometimes putting a description to the other object is weird, like in the case of the ham which is pink. laugh.gif When you just say ham, you picture it to be pink, which is the ordinary one.

Well, given that you have green eggs, you can never be sure that the ham is pink. Who knows what crazy colours you have. tongue.gif

 

Is there a substitute for "and/or"? I often find myself using "and/or" in essays but forward slashes are a little informal. (I was thinking of using "and or or", but... X3)

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I suppose you could say:

A phrase is a group of words that is missing a subject or a verb, and sometimes both.

 

I used that example because I was recently explaining it quite simply to a less well-read friend of mine and it's the most recent thing I've said with "and/or".

 

But yeah. That's the only substitute I can come up with at the moment, though I'm sure there are more.

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I have a pet peeve when people don't write dialogue correctly.

 

 

"Hello." she said.

"Hello." She said.

 

Okay, I know my grammar isn't perfect, but yeah. It just sort of bothers me, even though it's not really their fault for not knowing.

 

There's also the problem of this:

 

"Cow," she said.

 

Did she say "cow?"

She said "cow".

 

I have a question as well, concerning essays. Say I am writing a report of Bob Brown. His father is Phil Brown.

 

Bob Brown's father is Phil Brown, who is famous for discovering the cure for the common cold. Although his father made a great discovery, ____ made a greater one.

 

So that was bad, but disregard that for a moment. How do I refer to Bob Brown? By his last name? First name? Full name? My sister suggested that I don't even include the name of his father, but... well... let's just say I have to. What then?

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I think 'Bob' would fit the best in that sentence, as it seems redundant to include his last name.

 

Of course, I'm no grammar expert, so I'm interested in hearing other people's opinions about this.

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I have been constantly told that using a person's first name in a formal essay is, well, not formal. To quote some person whose name I can't remember, "It implies that you are on a first-name basis with that person."

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I have been constantly told that using a person's first name in a formal essay is, well, not formal. To quote some person whose name I can't remember, "It implies that you are on a first-name basis with that person."

Wat. So if I'm writing about George Washington I should just refer to him as Mr. Washington, the first president of the USA?

 

I'll have to disagree. Perhaps they're talking about citations? Or they meant not to just use the first name. Tech writing never mentioned not being able to use people's first names in your writing. Did a quick google and it says nothing of the sort either. In fact, it says to use both the first and last name. That sounds like silly advice you've been given.

The example sentence you provided reads best as is, IMO.

Edited by SockPuppet Strangler

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Here is where I quoted the person from. "Quoted." More like paraphrased, but you know.

 

What example did I provide that reads best as is?

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Oooh. That's because: "In a work, when you introduce someone by their full name and later refer to them in a context which is not appropriate for a pronoun, do you use their first or last name?"

 

Which is correct, yes. After you've introduced them, you can stick to just their last name. So it should be their full name or their last name. In a sentence where, like you provided, there are many Brown's, you might use everyone's full name to avoid confusion on who is who.

 

The sentence I said was correct was the one you posted having a question about.

 

Bob Brown's father is Phil Brown, who is famous for discovering the cure for the common cold. Although his father made a great discovery, ____ made a greater one.
Edited by SockPuppet Strangler

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Hm, alright. Thanks a bunch!

 

There were a few words that looked like a word with a prefix/suffix, but if you removed the prefix/suffix, it didn't become a word. Does anyone have an example for this?

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I have a pet peeve when people don't write dialogue correctly.

 

 

"Hello." she said.

"Hello." She said.

 

Okay, I know my grammar isn't perfect, but yeah. It just sort of bothers me, even though it's not really their fault for not knowing.

 

There's also the problem of this:

 

"Cow," she said.

 

Did she say "cow?"

She said "cow".

 

I have a question as well, concerning essays. Say I am writing a report of Bob Brown. His father is Phil Brown.

 

Bob Brown's father is Phil Brown, who is famous for discovering the cure for the common cold. Although his father made a great discovery, ____ made a greater one.

 

So that was bad, but disregard that for a moment. How do I refer to Bob Brown? By his last name? First name? Full name? My sister suggested that I don't even include the name of his father, but... well... let's just say I have to. What then?

I'm a little confused at what you're implying with your quotes. As far as I know,

 

"'Hello," she said.'" is the correct way to do that one.

 

As for the second example, depending on which rules you subscribe to "Did she say 'cow'?" and "She said 'cow'." are both arguably correct.

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I'm a little confused at what you're implying with your quotes. As far as I know,

 

"'Hello," she said.'" is the correct way to do that one.

 

As for the second example, depending on which rules you subscribe to "Did she say 'cow'?" and "She said 'cow'." are both arguably correct.

I wasn't referring to quotes within quotes, I just meant the comma inside the quotation marks instead of out of them/periods/etc.

 

I was taught this:

 

Did she say "cow?"

 

That is only correct when she says, "Cow?"

 

She said "cow".

 

I haven't seen an exception for that yet. If I typed like that in my essay, I would be marked off. However, there are different grammatical rules, like:

 

Juice, eggs, and ham.

Juice, eggs and ham.

 

Both are accepted ways. In the US (and some other places) the first one is used. Otherwise, I believe the second is used.

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Juice, eggs, and ham.

Juice, eggs and ham.

 

Both are accepted ways. In the US (and some other places) the first one is used. Otherwise, I believe the second is used.

Really? I used the second one. I thought I was wrong.

---

Anyway, I hope this thread covers spelling too, lest I'm off-topic. So, something that annoys me is when people keep on correcting my spelling. I live in the Philippines and as we know, they use American standards. I often use the UK spellings like "grey", "encyclopaedia", etc. it is just annoying to have people correct me when it is in fact correct. It is just different for other culture.

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Really? I used the second one. I thought I was wrong.

It's called the "Oxford comma" or "serial comma". And yes, either one is correct (although I personally prefer using the Oxford comma because I think it looks neater in most lists and makes more sense - but I'm also a serial comma splicer =p ).

 

~

 

On punctuation with quotes, I believe the use when it's a question mark is standardized, but the preference for:

She said "cow".

and

She said "cow."

are location-dependent.

 

Too tired to google it right now, though. I know I googled it a while ago because I thought I had been taught the first but in RP and cave descriptions I see people get corrected to the second all the time. I think it makes the most sense to take it on a case by case basis for what flows best or works best.

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as far as specific font type is concerned, i'm partial to georgia. i dont really care how people punctuate or spell things as long as i can read it. i do have an irrational hatred of adding multiple Ds onto the end of XD however Edited by Kingsley

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