Re: Grammar Errors That Drive You Insane

[Blaze]

flopsy's quotation mark is backwards.

/driven insane.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Semi-colons
People constantly misuse these. Essentially, semi-colons (;) are used in place of a period to join two related thought processes. However, when they’re used in place of a period, you do not capitalize the word after it!

For example:
The dog went for a walk; this made it very happy.

That is the correct way to use it.

An incorrect way to use it is this:
The dog went for a walk; A little boy ran to the store.

Quotation Marks
These are usually used incorrectly as far as where to place them goes. Just remember that all finishing punctuation goes before the quotation marks.

For example:
“That girl was really nice.”
This is correctly used.

An incorrect way to place it is this:
“That girl was really nice”.

[Tartra]

How about 'further' and 'farther'? Farther is for distance, further relates to concepts.

Let's take this idea one step further.

I live farther away than you.

[Kathryn Lacey]

Oooh. That's definitely a good one, Tartra.

[Starstruck]

alot. i like this alot better.

This alot has to be my favorite:

[Lyonesse]

I'm actually in a graduate book publishing program, so I have lots of pet peeves in the writing and editing department. The thing that I noticed mentioned in here that really caught me off-guard was the two spaces after a period thing. I can tell you all right now ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO THIS. It was, as someone pointed out a long time ago, a result of spacing on typewriters. Now that we don't use typewriters, it's been completely thrown out of the writing and style rulebooks.

Especially don't do it if you ever want to be published. It can honestly get a manuscript thrown out because sometimes someone actually has to go in and delete every single extra space after a period. That costs time and money and gives you a super pissed off copy editor.

[Kalon Ordona II]

Awwwww really? I like double spacing.

[SanityStealer]

Ooh, nice. I'll have to tell that to my mom; she thought it was one of those optional things. I win!

Oh, right, grammatical stuff I hate.

Nevermind: It should be two seperate words. Never mind, not nevermind. One of the best instances of this is in one of the Dragonlance books with Mount Nevermind. It's a humorous showcasing that I enjoy, but I hate seeing it unless it's used as a name.

Example: "Oh, never mind, I'll do it myself."

Like: Unless it's being used properly (character a likes character b) or in dialogue, don't use it. Please. I am so tired of seeing valley-girl speak in actual sentences that aren't dialogue.

[Harper]

I actually have so much to put here, but instead of spewing a long list of pet peeves, I decided to take the easy route and post this rant I made for my English class of the Nation Book Award winning Cold Mountain. It's an amusing piece of work.

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Here's a passage from the "to live like a gamecock" chapter:

"The ball that hit Inman had already passed through Veasey's shoulder and as a result did not strike with full briskness. It took Inman in the side of the head at his hairline and ran along his skull between hide and bone, routing a shallow groove there as it passed. It exited behind his ear. He fell as if struck by a lathing hatchet, but consciousness did not leave him entirely. He could not move, not so much as a blink of an eye, nor did he wish to. The world moved on without him and he observed it, though he felt not a part of it. It seemed to scorn understanding. People died all around him and fell bound together."

First an admittance:
I like the quick punctuation in the last half of this paragraph, it shows racing thoughts despite the detachment. Gives the sense he is on a distended high of callous adrenaline. I like the observation of the world and the subtle implication that death takes all.

Now a rant:
My problem with a passage supposed to be as "action intensive" as this (and the punctuation does help to move it along quickly) is the way the sentences and verbs are arranged. It makes the reader slough through unnecessary words and passive verbs. It's like Frazier tries to make a story already in the past tense in the past tense again. His "style" of writing is the entire reason I am behind on this book. Here's how I would right it:

"The ball shot through Veasey's shoulder and struck Inman. It took him in the side of the head, at the hairline, and ran along his skull between hide and bone, a shallow groove routed there as it passed. The ball exited behind Inman's left ear. He fell as if struck by a lathing hatchet, but awareness did not leave him. He could not move, not even blink an eye, but he did not wish to. The world turned without him and he became a silent bystander, drifting and apart. People died around him and fell bound together. Their act scorning understanding."

I could write an essay on how much I changed, but the basics are this:

I made the passage more assertive and took out words like "seemed", "entirely", and "full". Especially in the first sentence, the writer does not need to explain that a bullet passing through someone will slow down, it should be safely assumed the reader is not an idiot and that "as a result did not strike him with full briskness" is trash.

Word selection was another problem. Consciousness is a terribly cumbersome word and shouldn't be used unless for alliteration (I.e. Frazier's cumbersome consciousness needs to rest before he writes). Awareness also works better because you can be at the brink and still be aware. Rather than "felt not a part of it" "silent bystander" is more vivid and sounds better read, ("a part" read aloud can be confused as "apart", ruining the meaning of the sentence). And instead of "moved on" which is very vague for a planet, the idea of the world "turning" is not only more economic but more vivid. Also "It, it, it, it, it" as a pronoun for the ball makes the reader lose image of the actual bullet, and adding the detail that the bullet struck Inman's "left ear" (I can't remember which side of his head got struck) gives a better image of the whole head.

Tense for the love of God drives me crazy in this book! Though you only find it once here, there are three wretched words that come up constantly: had, has, and have. How can this man be a professional author when he uses these words so much, how can anyone? There is no place for those words in good storytelling, they are neither nouns nor verbs and provide nothing but junk to read. If you attended a feast, how outraged would you be if you must eat a handful of bland white rice to help sate you before you could move on to a glorious dish of your favorite food?

A Few Last Remarks:
To be fair, I enjoy the story line of this book and the symbolisms, meanings, etc. I enjoy discussing it, and I understand that most every book I read is plagued with similar problems, but I do not consider this book to be the piece of "literature" it is claimed to be. Granted, it can still be called literature, but this style of writing is one I will never lose myself in because its too clunky.

And I am sorry about how long this message is, I don't have to time to shorten it.

[Sy23]

OK, I'll confess. I'm a grammar/spelling Nazi. Not so much accidental mis-spellings, 'cos we can all do them. And I don't even mind a bit of text-talk or net slang. What's a bit of OOC LAWLZ between friendz, eh?

What I hate is basic errors that could be so easily fixed. For example

"There not eating there food over they're."

Now, the fact that the words "they're", "their" and "there" sound the same is perhaps a reason for this, but in my mind not an excuse. All three are common enough that you can find out how to use them properly. All you have to do is pick up a novel or magazine, and go through until you see an example of when to use each particular word.

The Aussie apostrophe's

OK, this is a harder one, since the apostrophe is kind of confusing. To know how to use that tricky little beast properly, a bit of history is necessary. Just remember that in days of yore, ownership was indicated by use of four words, thus:

The boy, his book.
The girl, her ribbon.

And since the human race are lazy, when writing words the tendency was to shorten them by leaving parts out. For example:

The boy his book became the boy's book.

Now, since at that time the world was male-dominated (No, I don't condone - I just report) even girls were given an "s" rather than an "r" to indicate possession. Thus "the girl's ribbon" became legit use.

Simply put, an apostrophe means something has been left out. This could be for ease of writing (for example, the British soccer team Southampton becomes S'ton), to indicate dialect ('e's a nice 'appy man from London, I 'ope), or to indicate an accepted contraction (ie "they are" becomes "they're" -

But English being what it is, things are never that simple. If a non-gender specified thing "owns" something, the rule is broken. If a spider loses a leg, it doesn't lose "it's leg", it loses "its leg"... the reason, of course, is that the apostrophe has already been utilized in "it is"...

OK, before teacher rings the bell and we all go off to RP, let's bring up my final pet peeve. When talking about the common, unwashed, grubby masses, and wanting to show how erudite you are... the total effect is broken, and your credibility is shattered into a million pieces by calling them "the Hoi Polloi"... Why? 'cos the word "Hoi" means "The"... so, you are, in effect, calling them "The The Masses"...

I was also going to talk about je ne sais qui - but I don't know what that is.

[Count]

Insanity! 'Tis my personal pastime.

Alot of the things I wanted to say (and he is a dirty gross alot, too) were taken by the previous posters, but I wanted to intercede with a quick note on the spacing after periods.

It is incorrect to double-space after a period nowadays because of the sizing of letters.

qwerty
ghjkl

In a font like Courier New, the letters are all sized the same...including the periods. This made it quite difficult to differentiate between sentences, and yes, this dated back to typewriter days, at a point where typewriters moved the page a specific amount after each character was set. Newer fonts, on the computer, are optimized for spacing. Funnily enough, this rendered the extra spaces that were required for static-spacing typesets obsolete, except for those kinds of fonts.

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