FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for August 27, 2009

You are aware of the use of verb tense, right? (If your gonna criticize someone’s usage, you should at least get your own correct )

Hugh, if you’re going to criticize someone’s usage, you should at least get your own correct.

Remember:

You’re going to fail English if you don’t know your contractions!

:) Have a nice day!

ARE this the English Teachers’ convention…

This would be a much better world if we were each given a copy of “Strunk and White” at birth. (Don’t know how to do italics, so I did quotation marks. Please forgive me.)

LOL, you got me there Librarian! You know I must have corrected that statement about 5 times with the edit command, before leaving it. I probably wouldn’t even have commented but I thought baslim’s post was a hoot and have a low tolerance for people with no sense of humor. Whenever I read message boards on the internet, I repeat the following mantra…..”I will not let the comments p!ss me off” over and over, but sometimes it doesn’t always work.

My wife is a linguist and nothing infuriates her more than when our kids’ teachers send home notes with spelling and grammar mistakes on them. The use of “your” vs. “you’re” and “there” vs. “their” vs. “they’re” are the highest on the list of occurrence and sometimes used differently, yet all times incorrectly, on the same note.

She’s decided that the next time it happens she’ll correct the mistakes, assign the note a grade value, and then return it to the teacher.

(Of course I’m such a poor speller myself that I just had to run this through a spell checker and correct 2 mistakes before posting, :-).

im a grate speler, but yull half to excuse my grammer. she’s Dutch.

no corrections, please. i meant to do that (as Peewee used to say).

as for baslim and Hugh: i-guana or e-guana? i always heard it as ih-guana (short “i” sound). but what does it matter? you have to stretch, sometimes, for the pun to go off.

Wait until you see Thomas Jefferson’s inconsistencies in the use of contractions and such. Not many, but enough!

I try to be very rigorous in “English as she is spoke”, but who knows what strange stuff gets under my radar…tons of formal and colloquial idioms mixed together, to be certain.

Just Like JasPr

Magasek: I used to get upset when my son was still in the lower grades and would bring home a list of spelling words to study, and one or two of the words he was supposed to learn to spell were spelled incorrectly by the TEACHER! Then, of course, being little, teachers were like gods to him, and he wouldn’t believe his dad, because “my teacher SAID”. I would then have to include a note for his teacher the next day (of course, those were the days before computers and spell check in every classroom). yyyguy: I are a gud spelr but your not gud.

Jason + soft hit = no motion

@yyyyguy: brilliant!

I like the writers’ convention here today.

I’d be really good if they kick it away from the goal!

yyyguy. Funny. I love humor. As I’ve stated before. I’m no grammar Nazi. I just like irony. Now ironing? I hate ironing.

(Did I mention I’m also a fan of puns?)

Ushindi (and Librarian): I know what you mean about teachers and errors. The daughter of a friend was “corrected” by a teacher for the title of a science project, something like “How Do Impurities Affect the Freezing Point of Water?” The teacher said it should be “Effect.” My friend asked me, and I told her the teacher was wrong. She eventually won the argument, but it was tough going. Teachers don’t like to admit they were wrong.. Another friend, I could not teach the difference between “He affected the result” and “He effected a conclusion.” One is “caused to change” and the other is “achieved” (roughly speaking). Then of course, there is the noun “effect” thrown into the mix to complicate things further. The person had a Ph.D. in engineering, but never could grasp the distinction. One would conclude that I’d be a lousy English teacher. Librarian: Yet another argument for home-schooling. ;-)

“Ěli, Ěli, lamah sheḇaqtani?”( which is translated, “My Ěl, My Ěl, why have You forsaken Me?”) Only the first four words appear in earliest MSS . The last eleven added by well meaning translators . This Aramaic idiom spoken in a obscure dialect from the Galilee area . By a few separated family clans today . With no possiable English translation . Try to explain “it’s raining cats & dogs” in English to a Chinese speaking only Chinese person . The words spoken from the stake that day . Echoes from the Arabian businessman opening the registered letter from their form of the IRS . ” For this I was born “. Hanging there like a three piece $2.00 suit at Good-Will secondhand store . Looking down seeing his Mom , Brothers , sisters , friends & close buds . Ruptured in uncontrollable excruciating anguish . Comforted them by saying “Ěli, Ěli, lamah sheḇaqtani?” the nonbelievers were in the dark . To think he said to the ONE sending him to do a job “My Ěl, My Ěl, why have You forsaken Me? Has never read about the night in the garden before his earth shaking pole party .

Ray C said, about 15 hours ago: This would be a much better world if we were each given a copy of “Strunk and White” at birth.

I dunno about from birth, but it should definitely be on the desk of every English-speaker from about age ten on up. (Italics: single asterisk fore and aft. Bold: double asterisks fore and aft. Education courtesy of The Old Wolf.)

Here’s Strunk and White, but this is one book that is worth some dead trees (and I’m a treehugger). It’s small; it fits easily into a jeans pocket. http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Also, here is the most wonderful website on the Net: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/ And the second most wonderful site: http://www.drgrammar.org/

Affect/effect is further complicated by the fact that affect is a noun when used by shrinks in certain contexts.

The negotiator struggled to effect a resolution to the stalemate. She did not expect to see the effects of her efforts immediately. She could only hope to affect the hostile assumptions of her opposite number over time. He repeatedly tried to upset her equilibrium, but she displayed zero affect; she had always been a good poker player.

Just put a couple more iguanas on the left. No problem!