As promised I will start a thread to hopefully improve the grammar and language skills of users of the site. Many of you become frustrated with issues ranging from poor spelling to sentences which make absolutely no sense. I sympathize and am here to help. As always, the Ivory Tower invites all to participate with ideas and questions.
Please note the title of this thread. I don't care if you have dyslexia or are bipolar or drunk on your ass, this is a "no excuses" class. It's called a dictionary if you're old fashioned. They work just fine. Maybe you're a lazy ass and use spell-check. That's fine as well, but this is a "no excuses" class so check your victimhood at the door.
Lesson One:
Good writers are prolific readers. One of my early teachers encouraged us to read essays, opinions, or whatever we could get our hands on. The more you read, the more you learn. That may sound simplistic, but it is true. Language is a marvelous tool. If you have command of the language, you will have control of your destiny.
A special note to the non-English speakers on the site. This thread is in no way a condemnation of those who have English as a second language who happen to make grammatical errors in a sincere effort to communicate here. Your efforts are laudible. Neither is this an "English is superior" thread. I'm just trying to do my part to help others communicate the written language more effectively. Let the learnin' begin.
Originally posted by kirksey957what about when people write like this never using any punctuation and everything runs into one huge thought that the reader is somehow supposed to follow and eventually make sense of as the single sentence keeps getting longer and longer and more confusing to the reader who now has probably given up trying to make any sense of it at all till you are inches away from your monitor trying to break it down into something more easily understandable and it has you wondering how this person really thinks or even talks when hes out in public and you dont even know where the whole thing started because they were not even kind enough to capitalize the first letter and you don’t know where it ends because they were not kind enough to put any punctuation at the end probably because they became confused over weather they should use a period or a question mark to end it since they had been typing so long and probably forgot what they were writing by the time they finally finished it
As promised I will start a thread to hopefully improve the grammar and language skills of users of the site. Many of you become frustrated with issues ranging from poor spelling to sentences which make absolutely no sense. I sympathize and am here to help. As always, the Ivory Tower invites all to participate with ideas and questions.
Please note th ...[text shortened]... part to help others communicate the written language more effectively. Let the learnin' begin.
Originally posted by kirksey957Rythm is what you need when you are writing. A sentence can roll along like a little river on a warm spring afternoon, alas, it can also stall.
Do I need to ask you to bend over and receive a little lesson from the "board" of education? 😉
See. That last part of the sentence was too short. Too short by far!
Now, listen to Kirksey and read some books. And on the subject of reading books, let me offer a few stories which are classic to read out loud:
The bold bad bus
Lord of the rings
Romeo and Juliet
Feel the rythm. That's what writing is all about.
And spelling. And not using the same words too often.
OK, let us begin with a very basic lesson that will not require much discipline to master. It is called the "noun of address." When I address you, or call your name, I will follow your name with a comma.
For example: "Shavixmer, thank you for your encouragement." Or I could have said, "Thank you for your encouragement, Shavixmer." This is one of the simplist of rules.