Grammar Question

Only in composition. After first year I assume students can figure out their own prose style. I want students to write like them, not like me.

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The toughest thing for me to adjust my writing to was the “style” books each professor insisted was the “proper” … but even then I usually got away with following my own. I’ve been blessed with decent teachers at the different levels and when I did find myself in bad situations, I was always able to weasle my way to a better class and/or professor.

Well, as the video further up indicates (I just watched it again). The style books often recommended by academia often violate their own rules in the explanation.

There are some valid core rules to the English language, most of the rest are just pet-peeves. For instance, Gower’s dislike of “choice but”. This pet-peeve could become a grammar rule should it be wished and students would then have no choice but to follow it :wink:

I will continue to argue that unless you are writing for a specific formal style such as legal documents, then you should write as you speak and for clarity. There is no need to twist your sentences into a knot just to avoid some perceived grammar error.

Ironically, the legal writing I helped edit that was cited in our Supreme Court was grammatically incorrect - but it illustrated the matter being adjudicated in such vivid terms that the court went with it. :blush:

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Yes, if a document is clear and easily understood it should be considered “correct” in my opinion.

Grammar has and will continue to evolve over time. When writing for CoG/HG I wouldn’t be overly concerned so long as your sentences flow and are not disjointed. I would go so far as to suggest some of CoG’s more pedantic style objections be ignored (no italics/bold-face and no interrobangs come to mind as recent examples).

I totally agree. Grammar is mostly just good manners. I think that’s probably the most important thing people should learn. People get really hung up on the notion that there are immutable grammar rules, but the one constant in language is it’s always shifting around, and words are meaning different things today than ten years ago. I think that’s cool.

It’s good to teach people good manners, but it’s also important to teach them that there’s no special reason for why the rules are as they are, and also that they really aren’t even rules. (This means that we have to be ok with “My head literally exploded,” though.)

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I’m generally okay with the use of “literally” as a source of emphasis, figuratively just doesn’t have the same sound. If I caught its usage that way in a formal document I’d have it altered, but in casual speech, it’s gained a new usage and meaning I feel.

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What about the sentence:

“Upon further observation, it seems his initial theory was correct.”

Should that comma be there?

Yes, the comma should be there.

I love these little one sentence stories. I try to make up an elaborate narrative that the sentence would be in.

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I’ve never really learned grammar, most of what I type is just based on experience, which makes it both hard to change and hard to explain. One day I probably ought to actually learn some of those guidelines though.

I’m okay with literally as emphasis, until I go ahead and think about it, then I wonder if there’s a better way. Though most of language is hardly logical anyway. Brought this xkcd strip to mind.

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Easy way to grammar: read your text out loud. If you run out of breath before the end of the sentence, you need a comma. If you get tongue-tied, you need to rephrase. If you sound awkward, you need to rephrase.

The rest is largely just common sense :slight_smile:

Edit: can’t spell :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hey guys, long time no talk. I’m still working on my game, but unfortunately this semester has started off as a busy one between work and school. Since I already have a thread about grammar I figure I’d post this question here even though it doesn’t have anything to do with CoG.

I am writing a thesis about the LGBTIQ community and this is one of the sentences in my introductory paragraph:

I searched “LGBT history,” expecting a plethora of results, each containing a hundred or two-hundred years worth of historical data for me to boggle at, then decide I’d have to narrow my search, but that’s not what happened.

The sentence seems difficult to read in my opinion, but I can’t think of a way to shorten it and still achieve the effect I want the sentence to have. I thought about making “But that’s not what happened” an independent sentence, but I’m not sure if that would just make it worse. What are your thoughts?

First, why on earth are you writing a thesis in first person? Sorry, huge peeve of mine – unless it’s in the assignment, of course.

Second, I’d word it like so:

“I searched “LGBT history”, expecting a plethora of results, each of which containing a hundred years’, perhaps two hundred years’, worth of historical data for me to boggle at. I figured I would then have to narrow my search, however that is not what happened.”

Something along those lines. You have run-on sentences, incorrectly placed commas, and some unnecessary words…I also don’t much like the word “boggle” since it means “to confuse”. Perhaps exchange “boggle at” with “ponder over” or something similar.

Forgive me, if I’ve made any mistakes of my own. I am only on the forums today due to being sick in bed – fever of over 102*F :laughing:

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Here’s what I came up with:

Today, relatively little information exists online about the recent history of the LGBTIQ community. With the vast popularity of their civil rights movements, one would expect a simple Google search of “LGBT history” to reveal a plethora of results, each containing a hundred or two-hundred years worth of historical data to be boggled by, but that’s not what happens.

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How about just, “Relatively little information can be found online about the recent history of the LGBTIQ community.”

I’m not sure if you even need the rest. I would just go right into the facts of the case from there.

Or maybe “Despite the sheer information on the internet, the information about LGBTIQ community itself is relatively little” or you can change that last phrase into something like “lacking info of LGBTIQ”

And then finish the sentence “A simple Google search of LGBTIQ community, unfortunately, isn’t enough to give us general insight about LGBTIQ community itself”

P.S.: Urgh… I’m feeling bad writing this… That topic is true :point_up: :point_up_2:

Got a little grammar problem of my own concerning speech and what follows it. Personally, I’ve always thought the rule on speech was that, if the speech ends with a comma, follow it with a lowercase letter (Unless of course it’s followed by I or a name) and if the speech ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark, follow it with a capital letter. For example:

"I am hungry," said Suzy.

"Would you like some cake?" Asked Gary.

But I’ve found a lot of people tend to follow both with a lowercase letter:

"Would you like some cake?" asked Gary.

Does anyone know which is correct? I can’t seem to find a definitive answer online.

“‘I am hungry,’ said Suzy” works because there is a comma to transition when it is a statement and not a question, so it’s actually a whole sentence together. When a quote has ended with a “.” or “?” my understanding is that you capitalize the next word because it’s a new and separate sentence (if I’m wrong, I’m happy for someone to please correct me). That said, I get why it may look weird. I suppose if it bothers you, you could avoid that problem by switching it up with:

"I am hungry," said Suzy.

"Would you like some cake?" Gary asked.

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Well of course that’s going to look right because you used a possessive noun after the quotation marks. If you used any other noun and it would indeed look weird. The following word after the end quotation mark should always be a lowercase if it’s describing the sentence before it, like whos talking or how they’re talking. Its just a normal dependent clause that would be separated by a comma, but the quote has its own punctuation that is outside of the actual sentence. So it should be:

“I like chocolate cake!” the girl screamed.

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Nope, speech tags (said, asked, shouted, etc), are always lower case, because the dialogue acts as the object part of the sentence. You might see something like this: “I don’t know.” He laughed.
In this case, however, the ‘He laughed’ bit is a standalone sentence, indicating that he spoke and then laughed.

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