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Which is actually a lie.

I have nothing against grammar nazis; In fact, I find them simply *adorable*.

The semi colon and this community don't seem to mix well. Hell, it's probably the trickiest form of punctuation to use in the history of everything, but that's no excuse! I tend to avoid its use if I can; it reads a little pretentiously in every day text (even though it is proper). I only ever really employ its wonderful function when it's needed above all else, and as you can often replace the need for one with either a conjunction+comma or a simple re-evaluation of your syntax, there's often very little need to delve into such dark and ominous depths.

Here's an article that should help clear up the troubles some of you run into. It's not only humorous, but it's probably the best and most comprehensive guide I've read.
How to use a semicolon

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Your more than welcome contribute to this thread if you'd like to ad other grammatically related tutorials. I know their are many of you who find this kind of thing highly irritating if your honest with yourselves.

*heh*

Also, A LOT is NOT one word.

Thank you.

*you're

toasters wrote:*you're

Indeed. How about: add*, or there*?

It was intentional, a joke, etc.. Notice the *heh*? ;)

My buddy always gets the "me and my friends/my friends and I" thing wrong, which bugs me.

toasters wrote:My buddy always gets the "me and my friends/my friends and I" thing wrong, which bugs me.

The only thing worse than making that mistake is hypercorrection, like saying "she looked at my friends and I" instead of "she looked at me and my friends". Similarly, people who think the word order is important and that there's some gramatical reason to put 'I' last.

I prefer a dash to a semicolon when possible.

EDIT: Thing that bother's me the most is adding an apostrophe for no good reason.

toasters wrote:My buddy always gets the "me and my friends/my friends and I" thing wrong, which bugs me.

Ahh, that one's actually a little trickier than it first appears.

The way you can tell if 'xx and I' is used is if you can remove the 'xx and' and the sentence still makes sense.

For example:

"James and I went to the shops."

If you remove 'James', the sentence still reads correctly,

"I went to the shops".

And here's where it gets tricky at first, you can /also/ use 'I' if you're refereeing to yourself first, as in:

"I and James are wondering if this makes sense?"

(although that does read rather clunky, imo, and while 'proper' I tend to avoid it).

This site is great for general punctuation and grammar rules if you're feeling unsure.

This thread is pretty doucheful.

hairscapades wrote:This thread is pretty doucheful.

Is that irony intended, sir?

I'd have thought the general tone of the thing told you that it was as much for fun as it's intended to educate. There's no need to be an arse about it.

Irony not intended. The tongue in your cheek serves only to further aggravate the recipient of your rigid blowjob of a grammar lesson.

hairscapades wrote:Irony not intended. The tongue in your cheek serves only to further aggravate the recipient of your rigid blowjob of a grammar lesson.

Nice. Thanks for the input, dude.

hairscapades wrote:Irony not intended. The tongue in your cheek serves only to further aggravate the recipient of your rigid blowjob of a grammar lesson.

This seems to be an entirely unnecessary post, but I'm sigging it anyway.

Ok, guys, this thread really is intended as a bit of light hearted fun (It's poking fun at myself as much as anyone else) inter-spliced with some informative information. I'm more than guilty of misusing semicolons, so when I found that article I was quite pleased and felt it a useful thing to share.

Let's try not to derail it with pointless antagonism, if the thread isn't liked just ignore it and it'll eventually go away.

I think my favorite book I've ever read on the subject of grammar (out of maybe only 2) has to be Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. She gives so many humorous examples and analogies that it's actually fun to read, I thought.

atob and I are; in agreement about this topic.

This is for all the grammar nazis out there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_spelling

I, myself suck at spelling and the general use of punctuation and I will, most likely, make many grammatical errors in what I type next. However (yeah I just started a sentence with a conjunctive adverb, what are you going to about it? lol) when I read this wiki page and a few article about this "inventive spelling" I almost threw up. It has to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen proposed to teach to our children. From what I gather the basic premise is that "spelling correctly is too hard, so we should just make it phonetic." I find this ridiculous, while I do like the way Spanish and possibly other languages are very phonetic this does not mean we should change the whole English language because it is "too hard." This is like saying that unifying gravity and the other three forces of nature is too hard so we should just give up and make our own rules of the universe. Preposterous.

On the other hand, like I said, I suck at spelling and general grammar and I hate when people go over board and correct you on everything when they can clearly understand what you mean, but making spelling easier just because of the simple fact that it isn't the easiest thing in the world is fucking stupid (run on sentence, yay!). All I have to say these "Inventive Spellers" is Go fuck yourself.

"Noone":
Noone is a man who cares about the most trivial of things, and not a whole lot else. But he is a man of very delicate sensibilities, and his feelings must be taken into consideration when discussing unimportant subjects. For this reason, it is usually considered a compelling reason to stop discussion about a certain topic if it is mentioned that Noone cares about it.
In the same style as e. e. cummings, it is traditional to write Noone's name without proper capitalization: noone.

e.g.
Person A: "So what did you guys think of that healthcare bill?"
Person B: "dude stfu noone cares"
Person A: "Oh, goodness. My mistake."

(Although there are some of us who insist that the proper response to the mention of "noone" is, "who the hell is Noone?")

TheRealOne wrote:This is for all the grammar nazis out there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_spelling

I, myself suck at spelling and the general use of punctuation and I will, most likely, make many grammatical errors in what I type next. However (yeah I just started a sentence with a conjunctive adverb, what are you going to about it? lol) when I read this wiki page and a few article about this "inventive spelling" I almost threw up. It has to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen proposed to teach to our children. From what I gather the basic premise is that "spelling correctly is too hard, so we should just make it phonetic." I find this ridiculous, while I do like the way Spanish and possibly other languages are very phonetic this does not mean we should change the whole English language because it is "too hard." This is like saying that unifying gravity and the other three forces of nature is too hard so we should just give up and make our own rules of the universe. Preposterous.

On the other hand, like I said, I suck at spelling and general grammar and I hate when people go over board and correct you on everything when they can clearly understand what you mean, but making spelling easier just because of the simple fact that it isn't the easiest thing in the world is fucking stupid (run on sentence, yay!). All I have to say these "Inventive Spellers" is Go fuck yourself.

1. It is perfectly acceptable to begin a sentence with "however." However, it should be followed by a comma.
2. From what I gathered from that article, Inventive Spelling is not a reinvention of the English language. Rather, inventive spelling is a misspelling of a word by a novice speller which can be either ignored or corrected when teaching spelling. Those who advocate ignoring inventive spelling argue that there are no right or wrong ways to spell, so inventive spelling is not an error but a reflection of the speller's interpretation of language and development as a speller. In other words, they're completely missing the point of that big book we like to call a dictionary.
3. That wasn't necessarily a run-on sentence; its grammar is pretty coherent. It's possible to write grammatically correct sentences that are far longer than what you just wrote. I think my personal best is in the 70s in word count.

Also, while we're talking about spelling: Miss Pell will never misspell "misspell!"

I'm fairly sure that is the only thing I remember from third grade aside from multiplication tables, which were scarred into my brain tissue by hours and hours of flash cards. o_O;;

Today in English we read an essay that included a 43-line sentence with 19 semicolons.

ghoulash wrote:Today in English we read an essay that included a 43-line sentence with 19 semicolons.

Yeah, I've had to read a few authors for my English Literature course this semester who could really carry on. Forty-three lines, though? That's a mighty long sentence.

I love semicolons! I use them a lot, and I'm fairly competent in grammar ;) Sometimes I feel that a semicolon provides the right, I don't know, tone? Mood? Right amount of pause? I don't know what word I'm looking for; I simply find them to be the best option sometimes (like in this sentence! :D).

a happy song wrote:And here's where it gets tricky at first, you can /also/ use 'I' if you're refereeing to yourself first, as in:

"I and James are wondering if this makes sense?"

(although that does read rather clunky, imo, and while 'proper' I tend to avoid it).

In the above instance you couldn't use "James and I.." as, if removed, "I are wondering.." does not make sense.

I don't really know what you were trying to say here, but all I can say is that what you ended up saying is wrong.

The verb "are" is there because the subject is plural. This wasn't a problem in your first example because the verb you used there was "went", which just so happens to conjugate the same for 1P singular and 1P plural.

So:
"James and I are going to the store." ==> "I are going to the store", which doesn't make sense, so per your rule, using "James and I" there isn't correct (when, of course, it actually is correct).

You're right, I made a muddle of that one entirely (made a few edits not paying attention where I was going). Just cut off the very last sentence.