It would be remiss of me to approach so near National Grammar Day without bringing up punctuation. Punctuation sometimes seems like the appendix of the body of grammar, because oftentimes you can eliminate it entirely and still make something worth reading (I’m looking at you, James Joyce). But in reality it’s probably something more like [...]
Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
March 1, 2010
0
NGD Preparatory Academy, Vol. 7
By aliciaaho in WritingAlas! I have little time today. So I’ll post on something brief: interjections! Anything can be an interjection if you punctuate it correctly. Airplane! See how that works? And how lovely to discover that holla was a word in the Victorian lexicon! Though it had a completely different meaning, which puts it in company with [...]
February 27, 2010
0
NGD Preparatory Academy, Vol. 6
By aliciaaho in WritingThe three words I’m considering are as follows (and I quote): drink, drank, drunk. Early in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ford Prefect is warning Arthur Dent that hyperspace jumps are unpleasantly like being drunk. Arthur asks what is so unpleasant about being drunk — Ford replies: “You ask a glass of water.” The [...]
February 25, 2010
0
NGD Preparatory Academy, Vol. 5
By aliciaaho in WritingFor the first time in this experiment, I find myself relieved to agree with the Practical, and on no less a subject than the passive voice: The passive voice is often talked about, but rarely defended. This is a travesty. I am uncommonly fond of the passive voice, because it is important and useful. The [...]
February 23, 2010
0
NGD Preparatory Academy, Vol. 4.
By aliciaaho in WritingTime to talk participles! From the Practical: (As a side note, how often do you think this male-active/female-passive paired structure crops up in this text? Frequently! It can be a little infuriating.) Finally — finally! — we get explicit confirmation that Noble Butler looks upon his grammar as an attempt to scientifically classify the words [...]
February 19, 2010
0
NGD Preparatory Academy, Vol. 2
By aliciaaho in WritingIn my last post I talked about grammatical gender, which is pretty straightforward even for us gender-impoverished Anglophones. Today, we enter the slightly more terrifying world of case. From the Practical:Put simply, case is the difference between the words I and me. I is in the nominative, which simply means it is the subject of [...]
February 17, 2010
0
National Grammar Day Preparatory Academy, Vol. 1
By aliciaaho in WritingDid you know we have a National Grammar Day? It is true. It seems we have all manner of National Days lately, though I haven’t yet tracked down which government office is ultimately responsible for the proliferation of Days. When I do, I fully intend to send them a card. The point is this: National [...]