Grammar Question

Warning, warning! Comma splice found.

Nope, speech tags (said, asked, shouted, etc), are always lower case, because the dialogue acts as the object part of the sentence.

I see a superfluous comma after the parentheses, but that’s no splice; and surely a comma is permissible after an interjection (“Nope”)?

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No comma is necessary before “because.” There may be a more accurate term for that kind of error, but splice was just the first word that came to mind.

Okay, so I’ve got a random one for you guys… Is it “a ewe” or “an ewe”?

Originally I wrote “a ewe” because that just sounds right to me, but I had a person tell me it’s actually “an ewe”. I still wasn’t sure, so I looked it up and still couldn’t find a definitive answer. Half the sources say one and half say the other. Anybody know for sure? :blush:

As with “a historical text” or “an historical text,” the grammar gods have not revealed to us the truth of this matter.

It’s actually a ewe.

It actually depends on your dialect and accent, under the rule of “there is no such thing as proper English because dialects and accents are valid”. If you drop “h/aitch” like me, it’s “an”. If you don’t, it’s “a”.

Back in the olden days they used “an” a lot more for this very reason, but nowadays as “standards” lean more towards pronouncing the “h” in full, we start using “a” in place of “an” a lot more.

General rule of thumb: if you can hear the vowel at the start, it’s “an”, if you don’t, it’s “a”. Ewe is pronounced “yoo”, so it doesn’t require “an”. No one ever pronounces the “h” in honour, so it requires “an”. Opinions differ on how to pronounce “historical”, so it varies on area.

By Standard English technicalities it would be “a historical text”, but really, there’s enough room for leeway on this word.

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Thank you @Laguz :slight_smile:

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