Delusions of Grammar (26)

hey....who needed punctuation!!!

However, I have every sympathy with your plight. Trendy teachers seem, sadly, to have betrayed at least one, and probably two, generations, by omitting punctuation and grammar from the teaching of English.

A friend of mine, of a similar age to me, was forever using the apostrophe incorrectly, on another forum. One day, he asked me how it should be used. He had never been taught the basic rules and was genuinely happy to have them explained. He now uses the apostrophe correctly.

In what I have written above, there is a considerable use of commas. They are used to separate phrases and clauses, to aid readability and understanding. On the other hand, in legal documentation, the use of a comma can entirely shift the meaning of a sentence, and extreme care is needed in it's placement.

I will now put on my tin hat, and await the flak

Edited 23 Oct 09, 11:57 AM by Lj_switch

Well,I may be a writer, but no Grammar Nazi - over the years I've shared your confusions and responded with tentative intuition and internal self-regulation! You'll get a few replies replete with the 'rules'I expect - but often I think commas, and to an extent semi-colons, can be used creatively. Certainly commas are best thought of as a natural pause, or slight break for emphasis, as if it was spoken speech. Or, just then, a better way to have an inner sentence present than using ( ) or hyphonating - rather clumsily like this - an extra thought or aside in a sentence...They used to tell me at school that a comma shouldn't follow a comma. Not at all sure about that.

I've been driven crazy by semi-colons for years and will be fascinated by other answers - I cannot be bothered with books on Grammar. I interpret them literally as a merger of comma and full stop. The pause is there because there is a slight change of subject, list, or sharp RELATED second-half of the construction to follow; but the sentence doesn't want to say goodbye just yet. Also after a full colon, you will often see the start of some type of litany separated by semi-colons! So maybe something like, "It was completely and utterly hopeless: no style; compassion; verve; truculence; or use of colour evident in any way." But you could write that sentence without semi-colons and just commas. If you were listing song titles or plays etc. then semis are regularly used. The full colon is just like a denoument: stand back, here it is; the final information or the big list or the impact of a salient word is just about to be reeled out. I'm probably technically wrong in these areas, and it's much easier to read someone's writing and edit it for colons, than applying it readily to your own work! For interest, if I had to proof edit your post in this way (and it would only add slight colour, maybe even spoil it)it would be: _______________ I'm not sure if I wasn't there, or I wasn't paying attention on the day when they taught punctuation. Perhaps I was dreaming of The Bay City Rollers and admiring my lurex tank top and tartan trim on my flares; wishing desperately for cork soled platforms instead of sensible shoes. But grammar seems to have passed me by; commas are a mystery, semi-colons a foreign country. If in doubt I leave them out. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in the limbo of the bewildered - by commas, semi-colons and colons. Any tips or pointers from Grammar Nazis would be appreciated. _________________ Of course all these are are tools, never really rules. (William Burroughs etc.!) Great post, hope this helps(?).

Edited 23 Oct 09, 12:41 PM by CuckoldressSought

This is very clear, and gives plenty of examples.

Speaking as commander of a Panzer division in the grammar nazi army I am obviously biased, but I tend to think that ultimately its quite simple. If you want other people to take what you write seriously, you need to learn how to punctuate correctly. If someone doesn't feel they need that, then maybe they should ask themselves why they don't think what they have to say deserves serious consideration.

We all make mistakes, myself included, and sometimes a decision over whether a colon or semi-colon is the right thing in a given situation seems a bit of a labour. But that labour is part of thinking clearly about what you are saying, considering what it is you are trying to communicate, and valuing it.

Spot the deliberate mistake in the above...

A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn't.

Edited 23 Oct 09, 1:05 PM by Malbon

My 6 year old daughter made signs for the door of every room at her father's house. He called me up proudly to tell me that she had written M_____'s room with the apostrophe in the right place. So she's obviously learning well at school.

She read to me yesterday evening and commented on the book she was reading "that sentence starts with "And" that's not very good". She seems to be getting a good grounding in grammar.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates

Kes i hope this is not ment !

delighted to hear that. My daughter's Primary School was a small village school, no more than 60 kids, two classes coevering all six years, and they did an equally good job.

On the other hand, after the original Head retired, the next used to correct spelling almost on an arbitrary basis, today the "ough" errors which were given the red pen treatment, next day the "ei, ie" errors but she would ignore yesterday's errors. Very confusing.

I have found though that it's not so much bad grammar that makes things hard to read, it's more how evenly and well spaced out it is.

I find it hard to read posts that aren't paragraphed at least Sometimes if I really want to make a point and not have people criticise my grammar and miss my point, I will type it out in word 1st and that has a cool grammar check

Thank you. Better now?