sometimes, whilst ploughing through the semi-literate prose which comprises [i'd guess] 99,9% of the content on the internet, i find myself wondering if anyone else on the planet can actually spell and understand basic english grammar? i’m not talking about the plankton-brained kids of today and their teeth-grindingly irritating “…u no wot i want cuz u is gr8…” SMS inspired terminal illiteracy, but seemingly intelligent ‘grown-ups’ who, in the middle of an otherwise coherent paragraph will suddenly drop in a “… you know what your doing…” or a “..i went to see there new house…”. i don’t know about anyone else, but when my eye falls on something like that, i just think “i’m sorry. you may be making a valid point, or a cogent argument, but i just can’t help thinking you’re a fuckwitt now!”
so, in the interests of my sanity and for the education of the rest of you, i present “madra’s simple guide to english grammar and spelling”
now sit up straight and pay attention… and you boy at the back! – get rid of that chewing gum!
madra’s simple guide to english grammar and spelling
1. the apostrophe.
the apostrophe is used to indicate a place in a word where a letter or letters have been omitted, or where two words have been welded together in the interests of brevity. thus in the word “don’t”, the apostrophe represents the missing “O” in the words “do not”. if follows from this that:
your = something belonging to you [eg. your hat]
you’re = you are [contraction. apostrophe representing missing "A"]
there = in that place [eg. over there]
their = belonging to them [eg. their hats]
they’re = they are [contraction. apostrophe representing missing "A"]
it’s not exactly fucking brain surgery, is it folks?
2. [for the english] just because you don’t pronounce your “R”s doesn’t mean they don’t exist. ie. “draw” is something you do with a pencil. the thing in your bedside cabinet that you keep your socks and grundies in is called a “drawer”.
3. [for the americans] just because you pronounce your “A”s as “E”s doesn’t mean you spell that way too. ie. fred is not taller then you. he is taller than you. think about it – “than” is a comparative and “then” refers to a period of time. again, this is not exactly advanced nuclear physics.
4. the full stop [or 'period' as the yanks call it]
is used to break up text into meaningful, self-contained pieces called ‘sentences’. just because you’re obviously one of those people who speaks without stopping for breath, doesn’t mean you have to write that way too…. in fact it’s really annoying when you read a long screed of text with no commas or full stops you don’t know where one part ends and the next begins it almost leaves you feeling out of breath reading it yourself so it does its a really really silly thing to do and not something i would ever do no way!
5. the comma
a bit of a tricky one this. it’s used to indicate a pause in a sentence, but one that falls just short of requiring you to start a new one. a classic example would be “i have red, green, blue and yellow hats”. i accept that use of the comma is a bit subjective and owes much to the individual’s writing style… however it is, extremely bad form to just stick, them in seemingly at random, into the middle of a sentence because, you seem to think it’s, some kind of milepost that you have to put in every, ten or fifteen words to try and make your writing look grown up especially if you’re not, using proper sentences, in the first place.
6. the apostrophe [again!]
oh. by the way folks, apostrophe followed by “S” is a way of indicating ownership or belonging, as in “that is fred’s hat”. it is not the way you form a plural. therefore “hat’s for sale” leads me to think that you are selling some undisclosed object that belongs to a hat.
7. the apostrophe [one more time!]
seriously. if you can’t wrap your head round the mind-boggling concept of the apostrophe, don’t just try throwing some words and parts of words together with one in the middle and hoping it’ll work. “your’re” is not a real word. neither is “youre’re”. if you don’t know what you’re doing, just ‘put the apostrophe down, son’ and write out the word[s] in full “i think youre’re an idiot” will always say more about the sender than the recipient!
OK. that’s enough to be getting on with for now. next week we’ll be discussing the age-old adage “empty vessels make most sound”. in particular we’ll find out that TYPING AN ENTIRE PARAGRAPH OF TEXT IN CAPITAL LETTERS DOESN’T ACTUALLY MAKE PEOPLE THINK “WOW! THIS GUY’S GOT SOME REALLY FORCEFUL OPINIONS AND IS A REALLY OUTSPOKEN AND FORTHRIGHT DEBATER!” instead, it makes them scroll past the “big shouty loudmouthed cunt” to read what the next person has to say.
class dismissed!
[this article was apparently sponsored by "the hat marketing board" ]
12 June 2005 at 00:01
Madra,
You should definitely take over my own “Dr. McKendricks Spelling and Grammar” thread on the
Rock’n'Roll Hellkat website.
It was a thread bestowed on me – much against my own will, I have to add – by the proprietors
of that site.
Your own proliferations are, however, of a calibre that I can only aspire to and I therefore
offer my mantle and gauntlet.
I don’t REALLY have any great gift of the gab; I just tend to suffer from retorting in a short
sharp manner when I see people using such obviously bad grammer – the likes of which you describe
so very well on your home page, here on “Bilge”.
Keep up the good work.
My next battle is going to be explaining to the U.S.A. why their use of the word “ASS” – instead of
the correct “Arse” is absolute in it’s missuse – both spelled and implied – through their
total ignorance of the effect of dialect. Have you heard the way commentate a “soccer” match?
For fuck’s sake……..
Best Regards,
Mark Mc.
12 June 2005 at 00:15
well, for a start you’ve spelt “mantle and gauntlet” wrong. i think you’ll find the correct version is, of course “poisoned chalice”. my heart does go out to anyone, brave [or foolish?] enough to land themselves with the job of grammar patrolling the superhighway. although, to be fair, the standard on “hellkat” does seem several leagues above that of the rest of the “intarweb”. just imagine if you’d landed the same post on the “teenage salford scallies hotline” discussion forum!
29 June 2005 at 21:02
The fact of the matter is, Americans can’t spell, and I would guess that the majority of Internet “writing” still originates from somewhere in the US. Even if that’s not true, it seems speed is of the essence in Internet dialog, and all other concerns, e.g., spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. are secondary. I wonder if a similar situation exists on websites using languages other than English? That would make for a truly interesting Wired article.
Ishan Bhattacharya
30 June 2005 at 10:01
i just came across these “
20…er… 19 rules of good grammar” elsewhere on the “fishin’ net” – a good supplement to “madra’s simple guide…”, methinks:01 – verbs has to agree with their subjects
02 – prepositions are not words to end sentences with
03 – it is wrong to ever split an infinitive
04 – avoid clichés like the plague
05 – also, always avoid annoying alliteration
06 – be more or less specific
07 – parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary
08 – no sentence fragments
09 – contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used
10 – one should never generalise
11 – don’t use no double negatives
12 – eschew ampersands & abbreviation, etc
13 – eliminate commas, that are not necessary
14 – never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice
15 – kill the exclamation mark!!!
16 – use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them
17 – use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed
18 – puns are for children, not for groan readers
19 – proofread carefully to see that you haven’t any words out
08 March 2006 at 18:54
Errr… just a couple of “minor” points:
Sentences start with capitals.
The word “I” as in the first person singular is always capitalised.
Otherwise, I would have to agree. There seems to be some kind of global conspiracy
to mis-spell the word definite. I haven’t seen it spelt correctly now for several
months. Someone, somewhere appears to have decided that henceforth it shall be
“definate”.
Noooooooooooooooooooo. I blame Word: If it doesn’t underline it, people assume it
is correct. That having been said, MS Word DOES underline definate – so why can’t
anyone get it right?
10 November 2006 at 14:37
aha! – i wondered who’d pick me up on that one.
my choosing not to use capital letters is a personal stylistic decision, the aesthetic reasons for which i can go into at length [and often do!] there is all the difference in the world between this and being palin illiterate.
02 August 2008 at 14:58
here’s another one from our transatlantic cousins, which they do all the time:
YANK: i could care less about ….
you fuckwitt! – if you could care less about something that means you care about it to some degree – hence your potential for ‘caring less’. the correct phrase is ‘i couldn’t care less about …’ ie. i care so little about the thing in question that it is not actually physically possible for me to care any less. i have reached the absolute nadir of caring about whatever it is!
why is that so fucking hard for you to understand?
02 August 2008 at 16:23
yes, most of us yanks can’t spell or write.
:: note :: for those of you questioning the grammatical integrity of previous sentence, us is the correct word, as it is the object of the preposition of. we (which undoubtely, many people would have tried to use in place of us) is a subjective pronoun, rendering it grammatically incapable of being used as an object. i used yanks as a predicate nominative (fancy grammar-speak for using a noun to describe another noun); it’s just extra. take out yanks and the obviousness of using us instead of we becomes readily apparent.
next time on english with aaron: dispelling the myth that gerunds can’t be used as indirect objects.
04 August 2008 at 12:54
> my choosing not to use capital letters is a personal stylistic decision, the aesthetic reasons for which [blah blah blah]
Your personal stylistic decisions are your prerogative, of course. It still makes you look a bit of a knob, though, when you’re complaining about others’ poor spelling and grammar.
04 August 2008 at 23:53
Wow.
For an article criticising poor English, I see a lot of poor English. You can’t choose not to use capital letters and then inform others that choosing to spell ‘there’ as ‘their’ and vice versa is incorrect. If you want to tell others what they’re doing wrong, at least do stuff right yourself…
Also, using capital letters correctly is the most important step in making your English look literate.
Thank you.
14 August 2008 at 23:06
Okay, I’m a yank and agree most here are incompetent when it comes to grammar. The “Your, You’re” drives me absolutely batty, and I want to scream every time I see “That is Rediculous!!!” I seem to see that misspelling so often I want to slap someone
My 2 bits from across the big waters.
15 August 2008 at 15:45
Now, what about those of us who use proper grammar but also like to over contractulize and create semi-abstract compound words, not to mention regional slang?
As in the following sentences; “I ain’t here fer yer amusements, but simply ta’ comment on all these commentious committed contributions. So’s you’ll possibly understand this here question I’m askin’.”
06 October 2008 at 10:43
Irony: Your personal stylistic decisions are your prerogative … It still makes you look a bit of a knob, though, when you’re complaining about others’ poor spelling and grammar…
James Stanley: For an article criticising poor English, I see a lot of poor English … using capital letters correctly is the most important step in making your English look literate…
a ‘lot’ of poor english? what then, apart from the heinous crime of not using capital letters, offends you so much about my use of english?
as regards capital letters being the ‘most important’ factor in making english look literate, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. personally i find the use of ‘txt spk’ or the inability to distinguish ‘there’, ‘their’, ‘they’re’, ‘were’, ‘we’re’, ‘where’, ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ to be much more of a badge of illiteracy than the *deliberate* refusal to use capital letters. but then, of course, i am extremely biased so YMMV* [oh yes. i do use capital letters for acronyms!]
BTW [hey! there i go again. i have got a shift key, after all. it's just covered in cobwebs!] i think i could make a good case for the abandoning of capital letters being a great democratic reform. i suppose the use of capitals in the first place comes from the germanic roots of english, where all nouns are capitalised. this has largely gone now but we’re left with the pointless capitalisation of sentences and names and also that strangely subservient convention whereby you’re supposed to capitalise any possessives when talking about your betters; ‘His Majesty favoured me with a two-fingered salute’, ‘God gave His only begotten son…’ etc.
methinks capital letters therefore are an evil tool for oppressing the lower orders, the workers and miscellaneous other such downtrodden [and probably lumpen] masses
[* your mileage may vary]
08 May 2009 at 22:53
this one has it all! – it’s one of those pisspoor ‘spamverts’ disguised as an OS dialogue box. it uses two sentences, without any full stops in between. and* it also features one of my favourite yank illiteracies.
classy stuff!
*yes, i know you’re not supposed to start a sentence with a conjunction, but it sounds like the kind of thing that would annoy the fuck out of winston churchill, which makes doing it even more enjoyable.