Calling all Grammar Nazi's & Punctuation Police

Do you really want me to get into it?

I am a paid proof reader. I simply don't worry about it here unless someone tries to pull a holier grammar than thou on someone else. That does annoy me.

Why don't I generally indulge here?

1. I don't feel like constantly policing myself, and I make all kinds of mistakes I don't catch until I've already posted. Then I'm too lazy to go back and fix them. It's never good to get a reputation and then get hoisted on one's own petard.

2. I don't like it because I'm no longer on the clock, getting paid while I post here.

3. What would be the point? It's already bad enough that I hardly ever "switch off" and notice the mistakes in my son's teacher's notes that she sends home!

I will say that when it comes to ellipses ( ... ), they are used to indicate a dramatic pause or to indicate that text was left out of a quote. They are best used sparingly. I have also seen them used to indicate continuation from one place to another.

Semicolons are used to punctuate two sentences together that are generally related in subject.

It was raining; I used the umbrella.

When using the semicolon, you don't have to use a conjunction, and you don't capitalize the second sentence. A lot of times, you will see semicolons used just before sentences beginning with however or therefore.

PS ... In your OP title you don't need the apostrophe. the plural of Nazi is simply Nazis. Apostrophes indicate possession. When you use an apostrophe with "s," you indicate that something belongs to the Nazi in question ('s) and to the Nazis in question if you put the apostrophe after the "s".

a reply to: ketsuko

Oh man, I must drive you nuts sometime.

And thanks for clarifying the apostrophe for me. It was actually auto-correct that did that, interesting.

And now it's too late to change it..

But now I'll know for the future!

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

No you don't. No more than anyone else would.

I am aware that this forum is multi-national. I don't expect good grammar from anyone, especially not if I'm not going to expect it from myself!

It's interesting, but there are differences in mistake patterns. Did you know that? Work with the language long enough and you can spot people who have certain kinds of learning disabilities, people who are ESL, and people who are just plain not very good because they never learned.

You can even pick up on people who learned different varieties of English. British English and American are different in terms of some punctuation preferences and, of course, the spelling everyone knows about. I have to pay attention to spelling on the job. We have some Canadian properties, and they prefer the British spellings in some places.

originally posted by: knowledgehunter0986
a reply to: ketsuko

Oh man, I must drive you nuts sometime.

And thanks for clarifying the apostrophe for me. It was actually auto-correct that did that, interesting.

And now it's too late to change it..

But now I'll know for the future!

Somewhere out there is an entire website dedicated to the stupid things auto-correct does when trying to "help" you.

I think it's called AutoCowrecks or something like that.

a reply to: ketsuko

No I did not know that, but I guess it's similar to picking up little nuances in body language, tone, peoples reactions or lack thereof. In my line of work I deal with so many different types of people at an intimate level and I've learned over the years how to get a pretty good read on people from tiny subtleties.

Even when it comes to astrology, though it's considered pseudo-science, there is actually a lot of merit to it. It's not a one size fits all, but you just have to know where and how to look. Having good intuition also helps.

a reply to: ketsuko

Actually it's great you're getting into it.

How often do you run into a bunch of people eager to learn grammar? I'm guessing not often? Plus with the motto of ATS being Deny Ignorance this is like a two-fer.


I also have to say that I'm sure some of my convoluted sentence structures have been gruesome to read. Problem is it's how I write altho I don't speak like that. In fact my writing is much better than my speaking, unless I'm pissed in which case those twenty dollar words flow like cheap beer at a carnival.

I'm really surprised at how entertaining this thread is, considering the subject matter.
Thanks Everyone!

originally posted by: knowledgehunter0986
finally learned the difference between their vs there, and then vs than (don't judge me).
Wait, do I put the period before the brackets, inside the brackets or after the brackets?

This thread is not really me, because I get more aggravated by word usage than by details of punctuation.
I will say, though, that the full stop is in the right place outside the brackets, because you are closing the whole sentence and not just the part in the brackets.
I do sometimes put an entire sentence in brackets, when it's a parenthesis to the main argument. That is probably a sin in itself, technically, but when I do it feels right to include within them the relevant sentence ending.
(What do you think?)

a reply to: Caver78

Yeah, this thread didn't turn out as I expected and has been pretty great so far. I've learned quite a bit already and I'm sure others have as well.

I'm guessing people don't want to discuss grammar because they are probably too ashamed or embarrassmed to. Not me, I mean I got an ego, but I would never let it reach the point where I'm even fooling myself. So if I have to take the walk the shame to become a vessel for others, my pleasure.

I mean, you gotta' be able to make fun of yourself sometimes.

a reply to: DISRAELI

.(so you mean this isn't correct?).


I also do the same thing when it's parenthesis to the main argument.
(Like this)

Is it technically wrong? I have no idea, but it seems right. Maybe one of our experts can weigh in on this.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986
I have distant memories of a note on a school essay rebuking me for enclosing a complete sentence in brackets. I was going by that.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Sometimes I'll use it if I want to portray it more as a thought, rather than speaking an actual sentence. Kind of like thinking out loud.

(Don't mind me)

a reply to: ketsuko

Lawd, I prolly drive ya' nuts, huh?

So many times I intentionally bastardize the English language for comic or sarcastic relief.

I'm sure I'm on your 'tortured reading list'...LOL!!

Generally speaking, I don't deal a whole lot with parentheses. Most of the people who are writing the copy I'm working with aren't going to attempt to use them as a general rule.

So I haven't had to look up the rules surrounding their usage too often. I would not include what would be a complete sentence inside the parentheses inside another sentence.

It was raining (I used the umbrella.).

To me, that's just wrong. If you had that, It would be two separate sentences with one of them in parentheses for some reason.

I have my Big Blue Book of Grammar around here somewhere, and I'm simply too lazy to go get it. OK. I looked it up online instead.

www.grammarbook.com...

You can have punctuation inside a parentheses if you need it to make the aside work and still have the parenthetic inside the sentence.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

No.

Believe me. Compared to some of the stuff I have to read and fix or simply read and let go at work, this place is downright wonderful for the most part.

Besides, there is a difference between doing it on purpose and doing it unintentionally. Mark Twain did it on purpose all the time. The results are wonderful.

Truth be known, I had a junior level Composition class in college. The "instructor" (not going to call him a professor because he wasn't) would absolutely murder me on grammar. On a semi-final "composition" test I wrote what I thought was a great paper called "The Layman's Guide to the Universe" (this was long before Hawking). He gave me a big fat "F" as a grade. It was a good paper and I appealed. He didn't budge. I escalated the matter to the Dean of the Physics department and he agreed with me. (I was in the Physics school). He (the instructor) still didn't budge. I even asked to come to his house and meet with him. He agreed. It turned out, he didn't understand Physics very well. In the end, he still didn't change my grade. I was doomed. My final exam would be a worthless endeavor as the class only had three grades (break, mid and final).

I showed up for the final and wrote a piece of absolute garbage. I didn't even care; I was mad and just didn't give a crap anymore. It was a wasted credit class and a black mark on my record, and I knew it. I don't even know what I scored on that paper, but it should have been below an "F". I'd intentionally misspelled things, left out obvious grammar and just wrote this awful piece filled with nonsense and non-sequiteurs, complete garbage. (I thought it was a masterpiece of intentional garbage personally). Honestly, I don't even know what my score was on that paper, I never looked.

When grades came out I was stunned to see I received a "B+" overall grade for the course. Perhaps my appeals had worked in the end.

I honestly felt bad over the whole experience. My actions probably subjected that poor dude to some pretty serious scrutiny, calling his very credentials to task, but after all this was a "composition" class, not a grammar class. (so I didn't feel that bad).

Many years later my wife, who was a paralegal at the time, showed me a book called the Gregg's Manual. We were in a debate over "it's" vs. "its" (this particular example was a razor thin point). For anyone wishing to understand grammar, Gregg's Manual is definitely the end-all, be-all, manual for grammar (at least in MHO).

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Sounds like the TA I was saddled with for Comp I.

He was nice enough, but he was teaching a logic and rhetoric based class and really didn't get it. We turned an entire session into an argument over whether or not you could logically compare Science Fiction to Westerns and do a comparison. To be fair, I was arguing you could using Star Wars which is technically space opera, not true hard science fiction, but he didn't seem to know enough to even try to call me on that, and I wasn't going to make it easy.

You can make a valid comparison between space opera and Westerns.

However, what his argument boiled down to is "You can't because the book says you can't!" And at that point, I simply was unprepared to let it go or go easy on him. It's like finding out the graduate student is waving the white flag of surrender on you.

In the end, I was so annoyed with the class that my final essay could have been written by the Woody Harrelson character out of the movie 2012. Seriously, I wrote about the government supressing UFO, never once too the subject seriously at all, never intended anyone who read what I wrote to think as much ... and somehow I landed an A?

a reply to: ketsuko

Heck, I can compare the Wizard of Oz to real-world events, and do a pretty convincing job...across the board. In fact, I did it just today when someone brought up the subject on the NK front.

So, I can understand Star Wars vs Old West, provided it wasn't done in a historical way, but rather in a metaphorical way.

a reply to: ketsuko

BTW...I wrote my final in pencil, with diagrams, on purpose. I was tempted to do it in red pencil, seeing as how this dude loved his red pen so much, but I didn't! I intentionally made large eraser mark blurs and just did an awful job. He knew my penmanship was meticulous (I was a draftsman at the time). I wrote in part cursive and part upper case, stumbling and just being a butt. Anyone who ever read that piece since then must have known what a flaming joke it was toward the "instructor". Incidentally, this guy wasn't a TA. He was an ex-grade school teacher trying to climb the ranks in the collegiate world without the creds.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

Now you're a puppet and programmed and y7our most likely will turn into a sheaple, why did you want to change?

originally posted by: intrptr

Grammar 'Nazis' use mistakes to discredit posters content. They won't admit that though...

Not true. I wouldn't call myself a grammar nazi, despite pointing out mistakes that people make because of lazyness.
I can read through pages of totally wrong writings if it becomes clear to me that the writer is either foreign or dyslexic. You can tell, because there will be a pattern to the mistakes.

I can also tell when someone is typing on a phone, you know it's not easy to hit all the right letters, again no problem.
When kids write wrong, I can also forgive that and read beyond. Fast typing errors, equally no problem.


What 'grinds my gears' however is when people seem pretty eloquent but get 'there, their and they're wrong. If there are no other mistakes, this one is down to 'not being arsed to check it out once and for all'. So instead they just type away because it doesn't matter to them. They don't care.
However it should, because when I read anything with those mistakes, my opinion of the person goes straight down a few notches.

The same for using 'would off', instead of 'would have'. I don't even upvote posts on any sites any longer where someone uses this. That's how much I hate it and think the user is a complete moron, even if everything else they said is my opinion too. Saveable however if they change their ways and never use this atrocity again.

Last but not least, when all grammar, logic and punctuation is going out of the window to make space for childish interpretations of real words intertwined with numbers, fantasy spellings and completely missing interpunctuation; then I assume that person should not be let out unsupervised.

There you go. And I am not grammar nazi, I just hate lazy people.