The CAAer's Mini Guide to Proper Punctuation and Grammatical Greatness

[Radical Dreamer]

Ok, I had the idea for this today. XD I'm a pretty grammatically inclined person. I enjoy studying about it and I'm the kind of person who will notice a typo on a greeting card rather than the Hallmark message inside. XD As a "Grammar Geek", I also find tons of grammatical and typographical mistakes on the internet. Part of this is due to fast fingers and mistyping, while the other part is due to universal confusion over how the English language works sometimes. XD

But even though I notice errors and mistakes all the time, I generally feel terrible correcting a single person in his or her incorrect use of some facet of our language (unless asked, of course...or if I just get to the point where I must let it out XD). So I figured a good way to fix this problem would be to make this -- a mini-guide to punctuation and the spelling of certain commonly misunderstood words. I had fun making it, so I hope it helps!

Disclaimer: PLEASE do not take this as the "Radical Dreamer Knows Everything About Grammar and Never Makes a Mistake" thread. I make as many typographical errors as the next person, and I had a good time brushing up on my own usage of punctuation while making it. XD

. – Periods come after a full stop in a sentence. Always make sure you leave space after a period (or any basic punctuation mark, really).
That user joined yesterday.

, -- Commas have a large number of different uses, all of which I will not list here (there's really too many). You can, however, find all its uses here: http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Comma_%28punctuation%29

‘ – The apostrophe is used for two main reasons: to show possession or to make a contraction.
Possession: Have you seen my friend’s hat?
Contraction: Don’t feed the trolls.
Things that do not need an apostrophe:

Plural acronyms (DVD’s and CD’s are two examples of commonly misused apostrophes.)

Plural words of any kind

[list]Its, when used as a possessive, does not need an apostrophe. Only when “it’sâ€

[ChristianKitsune]

Mods need to sticky this XDD

YAAY thank you, Grammer Ranger! ^_^

[Solid Ronin]

...

The Grammar Nazi must be stopped! No matter what the cost!

[Mithrandir]

Ooh! Ooh! I can help with this:

Your: Belonging to you. "These misspellings are yours."
You're: You are. "You are going to totally misspell that word."
Yore: Days long since past. "They misspelled stuff a lot in days of yore."


I'll close with my favorite Grammar tip of the day: "Yore not allowed to arbitrarily split no infinitives. Moron."

[K. Ayato]

STICKY IT!

[Mithrandir]

Apparently no one got the joke.

*points at the "You're" deffinition line above*

[ChristianKitsune]

XDD I get it, Mith XDD funny.

[ADXC]

Yeah I get it too.

Yes this thread needs to be stickied. (Did I spell that right?)
Im getting tired of seeing grammatical mistakes and misspellings as well.
People take the time to look at each post you type before you actually post it, you may find a huge error and then you'll be able to fix it. Of course you could do this through the good old edit button because without which I wouldn't be able to go in life.

[Radical Dreamer]

Yeah I get it too.

Yes this thread needs to be stickied. (Did I spell that right?)
Im getting tired of seeing grammatical mistakes and misspellings as well.
People take the time to look at each post you type before you actually post it, you may find a huge error and then you'll be able to fix it. Of course you could do this through the good old edit button because without which I wouldn't be able to go in life.

*cough*

You may want to use that edit button yourself, rearrange a few words, and sprinkle a few commas and an apostrophe around the post you just made. >_>


Just a suggestion.

[Mave]

Oh dear, this thread already feels like a magnet for poor grammar, spelling and punctuation. At least, from what I've seen in the response posts so far.

[Debitt]

Go go Radical Dreamer! ;D *high fives*

[ShadowCat]

Someone break out the ointment, because Animedude just got BURNED. 8U

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Corrie, I will blindly follow your Grammarian ways. *Grabs nearest Punctuation Repair Kit* XD

[Sammy Boy]

I just wanted to add two points that I think was not included (I just skim read, so might have been there). If I am wrong about these points (especially the second one), please correct them, thanks.

[1] When describing something belonging to someone, add an apostrophe followed by an 's', unless the person's name ends with an 's'.

For example, a book belonging to John would be "John's book".

However, a book belonging to Marcus would be "Marcus' book".

[2] When describing the singular of something, the prefix is 'a', unless the sound of the object being described is like that of a vowel (there must be a linguistic term to describe this property).

For example, one speaks of "a building", but add the word "historical" in front of "building", and it becomes "an historical building".

Other examples include "an alien", "an angel", "an era". One would probably think that "an" should also prefix the word "university", but because "university" does not sound like it begins with a vowel, it is actually "a university".

[termyt]

However, a book belonging to Marcus would be "Marcus' book".

.
This is generally accepted as correct today, but it is a relatively recent phenomenon that I have never fully appreciated. Probably a sticking point for me since my given name ends with an "s."

Marcus is not plural, so the proper possessive form is Marcus’s. The real clue here is in how you pronounce it. You say Marcus’s, yes? A rare example where written language has become less formal than spoken language. It’s usually the other way around.

It’s also a better practice to follow periods (any sentence-ending punctuation, actually) and colons with two spaces instead of just one. I can’t demonstrate this as CAA does not allow judicious use of white space within a paragraph. Rest assured, though, through habit alone, I’ve typed two spaces after every period in this paragraph. I’ve often wondered how many would even notice that CAA does not allow these double spaces.

[Htom Sirveaux]

Alright I half to say Im offended by this blatent critisim of people, who have a hard time with grammer, and spelling. You should be ashamed of youreselves! How dare you come here, and make fun off people who dont know as much about the English language, as you do. I don't care if your right or wrong keep it to yourselves please thank you.

[Taliesin]

I sincerely hope that you are being sarcastic.

[Htom Sirveaux]

no im dead, sereous.

[Azier the Swordsman]

OMG this is awesum111!!!! bes post evah!!!!!!!

ROFL

[KeybladeWarrior]

Fer sure! LOL. XD;;; (I stink at 1337.)

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Alright I half to say Im offended by this blatent critisim of people, who have a hard time with grammer, and spelling. You should be ashamed of youreselves! How dare you come here, and make fun off people who dont know as much about the English language, as you do. I don't care if your right or wrong keep it to yourselves please thank you.

But there are people who purposefully use every internet abbreviation out there, and every slang word and every word-shortener and purposefully leave out grammar due to laziness. (For example: idk by bff jill?)

[Htom Sirveaux]

welll if it's deliberate, then i'm not sure it counts as "poor grammar". After all, poor grammar was the foundation of l33t.

[TheMelodyMaker]

RD, I really need you to come and post this at Anime Angels. I've been wanting to do something like this there for a long time but have never had the time and keep forgetting to anyway. Thank you so much for taking the time to type it up! (Honestly, there are more than a few users there whose posts I'd love to just go and fix the poor sentence structure of, but I don't dare... XD;; )

There are some things I'd like to add, though, if I may:


1. Two spaces should always come after the end of a sentence, regardless of the ending punctuation mark. (Because words within the same sentence are separated by a single space, this is how the end of a sentence is distinguished from a mere separation of words within a sentence.)


2. My understanding of the dash ( -- ) is that it is interchangable with either a colon or semicolon, depending on the context. (Feel free to correct me on this, though.)


3. (This is a tough one to explain, so please bear with me here. ^_^; ) I don't know how many times I have seen people misuse personal pronouns, but I felt it something I should address. As an example of poor usage:

No one is better than her.

That is an incomplete sentence. It rightly should be finished off like so:

No one is better than her is.

But, to turn the object into the subject:

Her is better than everyone.

This is obviously wrong; it should be "She is better than everyone." Therefore, the first sentence above should read:

No one is better than she.

I think that's about it for now; I'll let you know if I think of any more. (Please feel free to do a better job explaining if you like; I know I'm quite awful with it. XD; )

[Radical Dreamer]

Alright I half to say Im offended by this blatent critisim of people, who have a hard time with grammer, and spelling. You should be ashamed of youreselves! How dare you come here, and make fun off people who dont know as much about the English language, as you do. I don't care if your right or wrong keep it to yourselves please thank you.

If you'll read the disclaimer that I put in my original post, you'll see that it's absolutely not supposed to come across that way. This thread is meant to help people improve their grammar, and I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of for simply wanting to help people remember grammatical rules. o_o

[Nate]

o hay gyz wats gong on in tihs thred??????

[Htom Sirveaux]

If you'll read the disclaimer that I put in my original post, you'll see that it's absolutely not supposed to come across that way. This thread is meant to help people improve their grammar, and I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of for simply wanting to help people remember grammatical rules. o_o

If you'll read my post again, you'll see it is painfully obvious that I was joking. Jeez, U.C.'s humor is even drier than mine and you'd know if he was joking. How is there that much difference between me and him?

[Radical Dreamer]

If you'll read my post again, you'll see it is painfully obvious that I was joking. Jeez, U.C.'s humor is even drier than mine and you'd know if he was joking. How is there that much difference between me and him?

*reads again*

...I should've realized it at "half to say". XDD I thought the villagers were after me with their torches and pitch forks already! XD Sorry 'bout that! XD

[Htom Sirveaux]

*reads again*

...I should've realized it at "half to say". XDD I thought the villagers were after me with their torches and pictch forks already! XD Sorry 'bout that! XD

HA!

[Radical Dreamer]

HA!

>_>
<_<

I didn't see aaaanything. XDD

[Nate]

Personally, I believe Strong Bad, as always, put it best. So rock out to Strong Bad's Rhythm N' Grammar!

Its vs. It's

http://hekima.lionking.org/thestick/its.mp3

Whatever Happened to Capitalization?

http://hekima.lionking.org/thestick/caps.mp3

Don't Forget to Spell Check

http://hekima.lionking.org/thestick/spellcheck.mp3

Your vs. You're

http://hekima.lionking.org/thestick/your.mp3

I Don't Care How They Spell Things on the Internet

http://hekima.lionking.org/thestick/ontheinternet.mp3