Spelling and grammar

[IJ Reilly]

semicolons are used to join independent clauses. the clause that followed your semicolon was dependent.

Usually; but not always.

The semicolon can be tricky, in part because it relies on a judgement call about whether the clauses are independent or dependent. In my example, an orthodox grammarian would insist that I could not start a sentence with a conjunction, or construct a one-word sentence, making the usage wrong.

Fine. But good writers and journalists do it all the time.

 

[skunk]

good writers and journalists do it all the time.

Is that a bumper sticker?

 

[Eric5h5]

(I love semi-colons, they rule)

How ironic, then, that you didn't use one there, but instead used an ungrammatical comma splice.

--Eric

 

[AppleMatt389]

I'm immensely regretting my first post. Allow me to take back any grammatical wrong-doings (I'm sure someone will say that I shouldn't have a hyphen there). I would also like to apologise for any hurt I may have caused and will endeavour to be more correct in the future.

Thanking you all in advance,

Matt

 

[guifa]

What drives me up the wall is when people misuse commas. Like this:

blah blah blah , blah ablah blah , lah blah.

Since when does a comma require a space before it? The "could of" and "should of" also drives me nuts. It's just hard to imagine how certain people made it through school with such poor grammar; basic skills that were taught in primary/elementary school (I love semi-colons, they rule).

It's so nice to see that other people on these forums get majorly ticked off by poor grammar.

youse guys rullzzzz lyk so much man. dese forums are totes the ****!

Where a comma goes has nothing to do with grammar. That's more a question of orthography and standard deportment in the English language. But, to answer your question as to where it comes from, try other languages. If I recally correctly, French requires space on each side of most punctuation and I'm sure it's not the only language like that. Just like lots of Americans always put punctuation inside quotation marks in Spanish (even though Spanish generally places it outside as in most languages), so to I'm sure lots of foreigners probably retain their punctuation styles in English.

 

[xsedrinam]

Just like lots of Americans always put punctuation inside quotation marks in Spanish (even though Spanish generally places it outside as in most languages), so to I'm sure lots of foreigners probably retain their punctuation styles in English.

I'm not sure what you mean by that? Can you give an example?
Thanks.

 

[guifa]

I'm not sure what you mean by that? Can you give an example?
Thanks.

In (chiefly American) English:
He said she was a “good girlfriend.”

In (chiefly British) English:
He said she was a ‘good girlfriend’.

I'm not familiar with Canadian and Aussie/Kiwi styles, but I'd imagine the former closer to American, the latter closer to the British.

In Spanish:
Él dijo que ella era una «buena novia».

Note the difference in the placement of the period. Academic writing in the US is moving toward the punctuation-outside style, since it is more explicit as to what was originally part of the text (and is mandated by the ACS Style Guide, for instance), but it's not 100% standard either. Then again, French doesn't indicate when a quote stops, so soemtimes you don't know if the person actually says "he said"; hence oftentimes newspapers italicise the actual quotation like so:

« Je, a proclamé le président, rentre à Caracas avec plus d'optimisme. »

 

[AppleMatt389]

Where a comma goes has nothing to do with grammar. That's more a question of orthography and standard deportment in the English language. But, to answer your question as to where it comes from, try other languages. If I recally correctly, French requires space on each side of most punctuation and I'm sure it's not the only language like that. Just like lots of Americans always put punctuation inside quotation marks in Spanish (even though Spanish generally places it outside as in most languages), so to I'm sure lots of foreigners probably retain their punctuation styles in English.

i would think where a comma goes has everything to do with grammar. its a grammatical puncutuation mark. if you look at the wiki article, it has a whole section on the grammar of the comma.

since we're all speaking a variation of modern english, i think it's assumed that a space only follows a comma. there is no need for a space before a comma.

these are just my thoughts, feel free to tell me im wrong again.

 

[Aranince]

i r teh lol'd in rl


Yea...I dislike teenage IM language. I usually try to type in legible sentences as often as I'm not too lazy too. But that doesn't mean I don't misspell words when typing fast on AIM or in a game. My pet-peeve is when people don't use capital letters properly.

 

[xsedrinam]

In (chiefly American) English:
He said she was a “good girlfriend.”

In (chiefly British) English:
He said she was a ‘good girlfriend’.

I'm not familiar with Canadian and Aussie/Kiwi styles, but I'd imagine the former closer to American, the latter closer to the British.

In Spanish:
Él dijo que ella era una «buena novia».

Note the difference in the placement of the period. Academic writing in the US is moving toward the punctuation-outside style, since it is more explicit as to what was originally part of the text (and is mandated by the ACS Style Guide, for instance), but it's not 100% standard either. Then again, French doesn't indicate when a quote stops, so soemtimes you don't know if the person actually says "he said"; hence oftentimes newspapers italicise the actual quotation like so:

« Je, a proclamé le président, rentre à Caracas avec plus d'optimisme. »

Meh. I'd say the first example's punctuation is not correct. It should be "good girlfriend".

Spanish capital letters do not have a tilde. "El" dijo........ I've never seen those marks used for quotations in any formal Spanish use.

 

[guifa]

i would think where a comma goes has everything to do with grammar. its a grammatical puncutuation mark. if you look at the wiki article, it has a whole section on the grammar of the comma.

since we're all speaking a variation of modern english, i think it's assumed that a space only follows a comma. there is no need for a space before a comma.

these are just my thoughts, feel free to tell me im wrong again.

Part of the problem is that when people think back to high school, they think back to "grammar lessons" where they were taught where to put commas, and what order quotation marks and such go. All good and great stuff, but it really has no effect on the language itself.

I'm working out of a 1700s book in Spanish and there is nothing to mark dialogue, change of speaker, or anything of the sort. But it's perfectly readable because human language is spoken first, and written second. Here's a synopsis of a Hemmingway novel with all punctuation taken out:

By the end of the story Nick is sitting alone at one end of the boat while they are returning home trying to make sense of the things that have happened in his time at the Indian Camp and horrible things have happened Nick and his Uncle George have to watch as his father operate on the Indian woman with only a pen knife and no anesthestic for the woman Nicks father saves the womans life delivers a baby boy and brags about his achievements in operating with such crude equipment a pen knife and tapered gut leaders to sew up the cut in the woman's body

Grammar necessarily only deals with elements of the former. Per the Oxford, grammar consists of "syntax, morphology (including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics". Note that writing systems and orthography aren't included.

Punctuation primarily serves to assist the reader in understanding and clarifying things that tone or other such audible things might otherwise help a listener, but it's just that, a type of assistance. It doesn't actually form grammar itself.

Anyways, it's not a problem with people in general. Once explained most people understand quite well, but most English teachers these days are taught the same so they continue to teach the same thing as well and it doesn't end up helping anyone. Geoffrey Pullum is probably the most well known (thanks to Language Log) person to heavily speak out against the status quo on English education.

 

[guifa]

Meh. I'd say the first example's punctuation is not correct. It should be "good girlfriend".

Spanish capital letters do not have a tilde. "El" dijo........ I've never seen those marks used for quotations in any formal Spanish use.

I just noted what the standard is as taught in American high schools. We are instructed to always place it inside of the quotation mark. While a lot of people say us Americans are switching is because of influence from the Brits or other languages, I honestly think it's because of the number of people who program. In programming, putting something between quotes that for all intents and purposes belongs outside of the quotation mark will screw up programs royally.

Spanish capital letters DO have tildes. In the past it was considered acceptable to forego their placement because of limitations in printing. However, that is not the case today, and if by taking a glance at the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, under tilde, point 7: "Las letras mayúsculas, tanto si se trata de iniciales como si se integran en una palabra escrita enteramente en mayúsculas, deben llevar tilde si así les corresponde según las reglas de acentuación: Ángel, PROHIBIDO PISAR EL CÉSPED. No se acentúan, sin embargo, las mayúsculas que forman parte de las siglas".

As well, if you've never seen «» used in Spanish, then you must not read very much in Spanish. On-line, as in French, many people use "" for lack of keys to type «», just as in English most people don't use real quotation marks but things that look like ditto marks, but in printed material (dependent on country to some extent) «» is used just as often as "". And again, from the entry for comillas in the DPD, the quotation mark is a "Signo ortográfico doble del cual se usan diferentes tipos en español: las comillas angulares, también llamadas latinas o españolas (« »), las inglesas (“ ”) y las simples (‘ ’). Las comillas inglesas y las simples se escriben en la parte alta del renglón, mientras que las angulares se escriben centradas. En los textos impresos, se recomienda utilizar en primera instancia las comillas angulares, reservando los otros tipos para cuando deban entrecomillarse partes de un texto ya entrecomillado. En este caso, las comillas simples se emplearán en último lugar: «Antonio me dijo: “Vaya ‘cacharro’ que se ha comprado Julián”»." (emphasis mine)

 

[gnasher729]

I always laugh when I see posts starting out, "I am sorry for my English, but it's not my first language," because 95% of the time, it's far better than most native English speakers can do, apparently....

If you know very little English, it is just difficult because you have problems figuring out what words to use. If you know a bit more, you can usually get around by using a word that doesn't match quite perfect. At some stage, you'll make mistakes that are typical for the country you are coming from.

However, many non-native English speakers are actually more English readers/writers than speakers. So many mistakes that a native English speaker would make because two words sound very similar, a native French speaker for example wouldn't make because the words look very different. No French person would ever make the mistake of writing "could of" instead of "could have".

What you should think about before decide that sloppy writing doesn't matter is that (1) a non-native English speaker will find it very, very hard to understand what you mean. It is hard enough to understand correct English, it is much harder to interpolate from some mangled up sentence to the correct English and then to your own language. And (2) you are just giving wrong examples all the time. If that French speaker has read "allot" or "alot" often enough, or the wrong spelling of affect/effect, he or she might believe that it is actually the correct spelling. So I just find needless sloppy spelling very impolite.

 

[xsedrinam]

Spanish capital letters DO have tildes. In the past it was considered acceptable to forego their placement because of limitations in printing. However, that is not the case today, and if by taking a glance at the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, under tilde, point 7: "Las letras mayúsculas, tanto si se trata de iniciales como si se integran en una palabra escrita enteramente en mayúsculas, deben llevar tilde si así les corresponde según las reglas de acentuación: Ángel, PROHIBIDO PISAR EL CÉSPED. No se acentúan, sin embargo, las mayúsculas que forman parte de las siglas".

Point taken IF the word is written entirely in capitals. However, the Academia Real has updated the non-tilde rule for all monosyllabic words (ex. "EL" would would not require a tilde).

 

[guifa]

Point taken IF the word is written entirely in capitals. However, the Academia Real has updated the non-tilde rule for all monosyllabic words (ex. "EL" would would not require a tilde).

Do you have a source for that? I don't have a copy of the 2nd edition of the DPD, but I highly doubt that putting the tilde would be wrong, more that the omission of it is acceptable. At present the only time when it is not proper to use tildes is in all-cap acronyms.

 

[Mac Kiwi]

Sorry for the rant, but I'm at work and just had to get this out. Does it amaze anyone else how many supposedly educated adults have horrible grammatical and spelling skills?

I'm talking about people who don't know the difference between their / there / they're, or your / you're, or who simply lack basic grammatical skills. They don't know where to end sentences, how to appropriately use commas, etc. I work at a University and it boggles my mind how many people I work with, people who work for an institution of higher education, who don't possess skills that a pre-teen going into high school would be expected to have.

Thoughts!?

Well for myself {and possibly others} I have a neurological condition,and where once I was able to punctuate correctly I now no longer can,no matter how many times I try to relearn the process/rules I just can no longer retain it all as I once could.

 

[Applespider]

what bothers me a lot is how people get all hissy fitty about it in the forums. drives me nuts.

While bad spelling or grammar irks me, I only tend to have a hissy fit occasionally. Generally when someone else has decided to correct it and made another mistake. I don't jump on the original offender but I will on the would-be pedant.

Some time ago I started just skipping over posts where the spelling and grammar are below a certain level of badness. I don't expect perfection by any means, but at some point it's just not worth the bother to try to decipher such posts.

Likewise - although it's often because it's just harder to read. I read quickly and skimming through poorly spelled or punctuated sentences feels like stubbing your toe when running; it disrupts your pace and throws me off.

my 13 year old niece has informed me that I am a TOTAL geek for using capitalization and punctuation in text messaging. It's just not done.

I'm a geek too using that definition. The only time I use shortened words like 2moro in a text is when I'm running out of characters in the message and I shudder each time i do it.

I don't think I'm a grammar nazi but I like to see the basic conventions of capital letters, full-stops and apostrophes used correctly. I'm less bothered about people starting sentences with 'And' or 'But' since it's commonly done in commercial writing these days or sentences ended in a preposition.

However, my big bugbear is people who use variants of 'loose' when they mean 'lose'. They mean different things; they're pronounced differently and it drives me nuts to hear that someone has loosed their iPod.

 

[Tom B.]

The thing I hate the most is when people don't leave spaces after commas or full stops/periods. How can anyone write like that without knowing it's wrong? It just looks completely awful and stupid.

 

[skunk]

Some time ago I started just skipping over posts where the spelling and grammar are below a certain level of badness.

Shouldn't that be "above a certain level of badness"?