Caesar's Foolproof Guide to the English Language
It's quite painful to see our wonderful language abused by those who never learned (It's 'learned' and not 'learnt') to use it properly. So I'm going to teach you all, especially the ones that clearly never stayed in school for very long, the basics.
First off. A common mistake is misusing the three; There, their and they're.
There - Normally used to point someone out. E.g. 'Over there', 'Look there' 'There is' etc.
Their - Used to describe someone/thing as a possessor of an object/action. E.g. 'Their house', 'Their responsibility' etc.
They're - Used to abbreviate 'They are'. E.g. 'They're not here', 'They're the ones' etc.
Similar to the above, there are two types of 'your'.
Your - Used to describe someone as a possessor or an object/action. E.g. 'Your house', 'Your responsibility' etc.
You're - Used to abbreviate 'You are'. E.g. 'You're not going', 'You're the one' etc.
There are also the three; Where, were and we're.
Where - Used to describe the place of something E.g. 'Where is it?', 'Where are you going?' etc.
Were - Normally used in the past tense. E.g. 'What were you going to do?', 'Were there any?' etc.
We're - Used to abbreviate 'We are'. E.g. 'We're going now.', 'We're back.' etc.
Another thing I have noticed on here, people seem to enjoy omitting any form of punctuation in their sentences. This does not make easy reading if you can't show where your sentence begins or ends.
Capital Letters
Capital letters, or 'upper case', is normally used for two reasons; to begin a sentence, and to begin a name of a person, place or thing. E.g. 'My name is Caesar.' Please also note the spelling of 'Caesar'. There is a capital 'C' and the 'a' comes before the 'e'. Not 'ceasar' as some of you have an affinity for.
Punctuation
The Full Stop: . - Used to complete a sentence. This simple, yet genius, little invention works wonders to clearly show when you have finished a sentence. Without it, your sentence is not complete and gives the impression that the next sentence is still a part of your previous one.
The Comma: , - Typically used in a sentence to show a pause, or to divide a list. Without it, separate items in a list will appear to be merged into one super item. This may cause confusion if your significant other attempts to buy a macaroni steak hot-dog milk cake chocolate pizza pie on your orders. Two Commas can also be used in parenthesis.
The Apostrophe: ' - Used to indicate possession. E.g. 'Lion's Pride', 'Children's toys' etc. It can also be used to abbreviate two words into one. E.g. 'You are' becomes 'You're', 'It is' becomes 'It's'. Note this last one. Certain possession words not require an Apostrophe. To say 'It's engine' is wrong as you are actually saying 'It is engine'. 'Its, his and hers' do not require an apostrophe. Apostrophes can also be used instead of quotation marks.
The Ellipses: ... - Used to show a pause in a sentence or to suggest a piece of text has been left incomplete. On this forum, it seems to be commonly used to show a lapse in the ability to think, i.e. confusion.
The Colon and Semi-Colon: : and ; - The Colon is typically used to introduce a list, to summarize something or to give an explanation. E.g. 'I couldn't find some things: a pencil, a pen and a sharpener.'
The Semi-Colon is used to link two sentences that are very close to each other, or to help balance a sentence out. E.g. 'The children came home today; they had been away for a week.'
Brackets: ( and ) - Text between Brackets is extra information within a sentence, but is not vital to the sentence. This is called 'parentheses'. As I said earlier; two Commas, as well as two Hyphens, can also be used within a sentence to show parentheses. This is not always the case, however, as words between commas can also be a list, and not parentheses. Or to show multiple pauses in a sentence.
The Hyphen: - - Used to avoid multiple letters. E.g. 're-evaluate (reevaluate)'. Hyphens are also used to join two words into one. E.g. 'vice-president', 'self-sacrificing' etc.
It can also be used if a root word is capitalised. E.g. 'pre-Christmas, anti-American' etc.
That's all I can think of for now. Might add some more later.
Also, ironic posts in this topic to deliberately annoy me by going against everything I have just said will not be tolerated.
Last edited by Caesar : 11-04-2008 at 07:06 PM.
|
soph
Linear Mode
