Derfreebie's Grammar Garbage and Decrepit Diction Dump

Grammar Nazis unite. Or maybe just briefly congregate here--
to argue the delicate nuances, contrasted by prehistoric abuses
to the King's English. Everything in between is where we live.
I care more if you have something to get off your chest, and don't:
than if you were to blow this thread off as inconsequential: IT IS.

Disclaimer pursuant to the T&C--
I submit the middle of a thread is a most inappropriate place to call
some other member out for punctuation, diction or sentence
construction.. especially if some discreditation to the member's
talking point is an underlying motive. Face it: if we all haven't done
it once or twice we've been tempted to go there. I personally can't
recall Luftwaffling someone's post for Comp, Diction or a spell checker
out to a long lunch... but the day is still young.

This is no New Year's resolution gone rotten or a resolve to change
much if nobody's getting ruffled out there. But an occasional U2U
to our less fluent or more understandably other-than-Yank/Brit
denizens politely calling a phrase 'off-camera' is only neighborly.
We're here because we can't stand to read WEEDS. /End of Disclaimer

Enough of the tap dancing-- this is where I want to see Yogi Berra
compare favorably with Keats or Thoreau... compared to the posted
gaffes. If there's no finger hair or blood-dampened skin on the
sidewalk it didn't happen. You know what I mean. Hoooh.
Lips out chin up ... or was that chimp already out?

"And They're OFF!" Phil Georgeff on the call. RIP mister: I miss you.

Fraidys First. I encountered an article on another site this morning
that did more than repulse me-- it caused genuine concern about
"Who taught the Teacher??" It was simply stunning; with the amount
and severity of basic usage, I afterward questioned whether or
not the individual was fit to administer his office.

I will diligently attempt to keep off-site content accredited...
although an emphasis will also be footnoted as required.

1,400 Illegal Immigrant Kids Enter Miami-Dade Schools

or: the Cumulative Dangers of Multiculturalism

NEWSMAX Wednesday, 03 Sep 2014 09:51 AM * By Melanie Batley

The Miami-Dade school district has seen an influx of 1,400
unaccompanied minors from Central America this year, forcing
it to expand first-year English language classes and assess new
educations needs.

According to National Public Radio, the flood of new students
into the district amounts to 800 more than last year.

"These kids basically all been here within a couple of months.
I think the ones that have been here the longest have been
here three months. We had one just enter a week ago,"
Miami Jackson High School Principal Carlos Rios told NPR.
(Emphasis added by submitter)

"Obviously, the first week of school we saw about 100 students
come in, and it hasn't stopped. You see the office out there,
there's still parents coming in, there's still students coming in."

This is sentence construction and diction — as practiced by a
High School PRINCIPAL in Dade County Florida. Check.

I have three questions regarding the dialog’s content:
First:
“These kids, basically all ^having^ been” indoctrinated for several
generations in ghetto slang, will soon have succeeded in absorbing
career suicide skills by grammar rulu.

Secondly:
Did the one kid last week merely attain residence in Dade
County (after all it was described literally by you that he
simply arrived); encounter the culture: so what happened
THEN?

Did he escape; hopefully with his wits intact? Did he slip
the rift back into his sane universe? To hear the principal of
my imminent brain jail using that level of diction would get
me back out the door—running down the street screaming
myself hoarse by the 10th Grade.

Please finish that thought, Your Honor… the fate of a young
human mind hangs in the balance.

Ultimately, with no further elaboration I see in the accounting,
some unknown is indicated as to the candidate’s present status.
It may be just as well under the circumstances that the where-
abouts of the individual remain a mystery. For the sake of the
young one it also could lend a grain of plausibility to one of my
escape scenarios.

Toward whatever outcome, and to where our young migrant
could eventually reappear, I pray for a better fortune in his
search for knowledge. To the extent of learning the new
indigenous lingo it could be less than a toss-up chance for his
making it.



Lastly:
I’m sure there are still English Composition students that
caught the third problem, aren’t there?

JUST A STUPID KNUCKLE DRAGGING TOOL MAKER FROM CHICAGO, retired

a reply to: derfreebie
That be funny, yo.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: derfreebie
That be funny, yo.

Thanks Butch. And my Lobster be hangin' and lobbin'...
wet ones.


For what it's worth, this could be the least visited and most
reviled thread I've ever authored. As the old wife somewhere
once said, "A watched pot never boils." The stove moreover
could indeed use more noble grist to be fueled. meh
I'll be back-- maybe.

a reply to: derfreebie

my Lobster be hangin' and lobbin'.

I had to look that one up in the book filled with words.
Apparently you have a stoat that is droopy.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: derfreebie

my Lobster be hangin' and lobbin'.

I had to look that one up in the book filled with words.
Apparently you have a stoat that is droopy.

Actually and per another ava, he's a medium sized dove
that gets way too much starch. If it was a diuretic weasel
the miniature tennis balls would be something much
larger and less manageable. I'm off to change.

a reply to: derfreebie

There is nothing quite as damaging to a persons argument than an inability to communicate it effectively. Personally speaking, my concern about the quality of grammar used on this site, is rather less to do with how poor grammar affects me as a person (I can usually just about make out what it is that people are talking about, unless their spelling is as terrible as their grammar, in which case... eek), and rather more to do with the fact that in order to contribute effectively and in a manner which is useful to the membership, it is necessary to have a bare minimum of ability to read, comprehend, and write in English.

I worry for those members who have not grasped the importance of good grammar, because I can only assume that their enjoyment of their membership cannot possibly be as great as my own, and given that I value my membership here very much, I want everyone to be able to enjoy theirs, at least as much as I do mine! That, however, is hard to do if by lack of comprehension, one cannot discern the meaning of a good post, or for that matter if ones grammar is so poor that the entire effort of communication is a failure.

originally posted by: derfreebie

Lastly:
I’m sure there are still English Composition students that
caught the third problem, aren’t there?

JUST A STUPID KNUCKLE DRAGGING TOOL MAKER FROM CHICAGO, retired

You mean this one...

"...there's still parents coming in, there's still students coming in."

Broken down, this says "There IS still parents coming in..."

This principal may as well do the fingernails on the chalkboard thing. I couldn't cringe more!

OK, here's one from Time that's been grating on me. Maybe this is a verb form I am not aware of, or maybe they though they were being cute. Whatever. It's like fingers on a chalk board.

If the findings sound far-flunged, so to speak, researchers point out that Yellowstone’s last massive eruption spewed ash over tens of thousands of square kilometers.

Far-flunged?

I've always been addicted to very accumulative sentences, because thoughts link up with each other and I want to express that.
I cut them down as a concession to this site by starting fresh sentences with "And" or "But", which in itself goes against all the rules I was taught in school.
I think the more serious problem is misuse of words, which matters because it impedes communication.
An especial problem now is the habit of "spell as you talk" combined with sloppy diction.
The worst example that I know is the spelling of "cannot" as "can"; so that if somebody writes "you can do that", it's impossible to tell whether he means "yes" or "no".

originally posted by: DISRAELI
I've always been addicted to very accumulative sentences, because thoughts link up with each other and I want to express that.
I cut them down as a concession to this site by starting fresh sentences with "And" or "But", which in itself goes against all the rules I was taught in school.
I think the more serious problem is misuse of words, which matters because it impedes communication.
An especial problem now is the habit of "spell as you talk" combined with sloppy diction.
The worst example that I know is the spelling of "cannot" as "can"; so that if somebody writes "you can do that", it's impossible to tell whether he means "yes" or "no".

As a tech writer for that Quality Engineer, I was tasked with
the SPC manuals and other internal sundries. The target
readers were variable in comprehension between the 6th
and PhD. Needless to say, bite-sized sentence construction
got yawns from the eggheads; and the more esoteric trans-
cendental math had to be turned back to modules of fairy
tale for a significant portion of the production population.

In the middle was the unhappy and finally approved literature.
Easy will always be easy-- but I have serious issues with lazy.
As people resist change, I also fall into large chunks of writing
too much with the character and flavor of boiled hominy.
The end result of the basic pulp back then kept up the quality,
at the expense of artistic flourish.

I was admonished by more than a couple of peers to keep
things in plain English because most everyone loses me--
quite the opposite of sloppy and even more objectionable.
But you should flame me anyway when I mess up... please do.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: derfreebie

There is nothing quite as damaging to a persons argument than an inability to communicate it effectively. Personally speaking, my concern about the quality of grammar used on this site, is rather less to do with how poor grammar affects me as a person (I can usually just about make out what it is that people are talking about, unless their spelling is as terrible as their grammar, in which case... eek), and rather more to do with the fact that in order to contribute effectively and in a manner which is useful to the membership, it is necessary to have a bare minimum of ability to read, comprehend, and write in English.

I worry for those members who have not grasped the importance of good grammar, because I can only assume that their enjoyment of their membership cannot possibly be as great as my own, and given that I value my membership here very much, I want everyone to be able to enjoy theirs, at least as much as I do mine! That, however, is hard to do if by lack of comprehension, one cannot discern the meaning of a good post, or for that matter if ones grammar is so poor that the entire effort of communication is a failure.

For the lesser half of your diligence my friend we all are richer.
If only most of us had enough crayons in the box to appreciate
your work. FFS I was considering making a t-shirt of the
signature but for copyright issues.

Guess I'll have to settle for harder studs on the morning star
and nothing else... poor little thing.

E D I T:: in order to properly thank everyone for contributing
to this foundering blinker in a sea of filth. Well maybe a little
over dramatic, but I for one must learn tolerance of some here
who simply MUST post on something more inhospitable than
a wallet sized photo of an IBM Selectric... and seem evolved
while waiting for lunch. Dunno, I think better hungry. For the
lazy we will give no quarter until it's me. Oh wait, Damn!

Well, I've been a proofreader for almost six years. Now I do something that bridges the function between proofer and editor.

My main function? Proofreading apartment complex and retirement community newsletters! I'm sure you can imagine the joys of that. My job was to take the customer provided content and make it ... erm ... "not make the customer look stupid" in the words of my boss. The challenge was to use customer copy as much as possible while doing so.

These days, I now proofread/edit content for a large retail client our company has an account with along with editing in-house produced content for another of our in-house companies. It's a lot less aggravating but also tends to produce a lot less of the humorous mistakes that the other position commonly produced.

One of my favorite examples was the article about the lady who went on many cruises with her husband where they pleasured themselves (customer wording), and then there was the infamous example of the complex who was thrilled with the new security cameras they had installed on their gates to detour the people ramming them; they could tell it was already working too as they already had video of the culprits!

a reply to: ketsuko

A marvelous hybrid -- something of a geriatric
content farm referee. I envy you not your previous
niche.
But conversely, it had to be bleeding wonderful
at quitting time, and you got to stop.

Congratulations by the way on your finding a
smaller hammer with which to pop yourself.

a reply to: derfreebie

You had to have a sense of humor to do it, and you also had to have a mind for the tedious.

New people either survived their first month and were there long-term, or you never saw them again. One guy stood up at lunch one day, said, "I'm done." and meant it. We never saw him again. At least he waited for lunch. Most people only did four hours at a time. I was hard-core ... eight hour days!

a reply to: derfreebie

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with the occasional mispelling or grammatical gaffe. However, trying to read some of the more opaque posts that I have seen, is like trying to decode some kind of quantum cryptographic puzzle, which changes ten quadrillion times per nanosecond, and can only be seen if one is standing on ones nose, and repeating the words "Gobble, draw, pick, wobble" over and over again.

Tricky, in other words.

As for the t-shirt idea, just go ahead! I would wager that since there are only two hundred and sixty eight thousand, six hundred and eighty six members here, the chances of you bumping into one of the small percentage of them who would complain and get you into trouble over it are not something to concern yourself with overmuch!

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: derfreebie

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with the occasional mispelling or grammatical gaffe. However, trying to read some of the more opaque posts that I have seen, is like trying to decode some kind of quantum cryptographic puzzle, which changes ten quadrillion times per nanosecond, and can only be seen if one is standing on ones nose, and repeating the words "Gobble, draw, pick, wobble" over and over again.

Tricky, in other words.

As for the t-shirt idea, just go ahead! I would wager that since there are only two hundred and sixty eight thousand, six hundred and eighty six members here, the chances of you bumping into one of the small percentage of them who would complain and get you into trouble over it are not something to concern yourself with overmuch!

And the Anonymous owner will be credited at its end
I will wear THAT one only whilst bi-amping a fresh set
of Dean Markleys.. and a pickup group of mates unafraid to
obliterate a few windows. Where's that laurie full of Servos?

This yank lives to echo that wonderful and defiant thundersnap
of a once black haired blacksmith later parked over in Devon. I'll
never fill his shoes, or would dream of taking his place: but I
loved his insanely fast & naughty things for the pure challenge.

There's a mentor: one whom makes you better than if you went
ahead without him. My thanks again for the one-up plagiarism:
and suffering another eon of shameless drivel for an old hero.