Grammar

[Tiana Calthye]

Have you ever found yourself writing a sentence and looking at it and then you think: well damn, I just ended that sentence with a dangling participle!

 

A dangling participle is something up with which I will not put.

 

Sometimes grammar rules are just silly and can situationally be broken. Beginning a sentence with "and" and "but" is a no-go when it comes to grammar, but sometimes it just makes more sense.

 

Have you ever found yourself contemplating the use of semi-colons? How to format emdashes? Cringing at my fragments? Or do you enjoy creative breaking of the rules for the sake of a specific sound?

 

Or are you in the "it's not important" boat?

 

Grammar: let's discuss it. How do you feel about the minutiae of the English language and the rules thereof?

[DarthBrendo]

I tend to go with how something sounds. If it sounds right in my head, I'll usually run with that.

 

I was actually never taught much by way of grammar. I don't know the difference between adjectives, nouns, pro nouns verbs adverbs etc, which is why sometimes my writing might come across a bit odd, but I rely on how it sounds in my head, or how it sounds if spoken out loud, which I've been known to do for some of my posts.

[Amidala Skywalker]

I used to be a crazy grammar nazi. I've always been really good at grammar, never having doubts about what punctuation I need to use, etc. I think it helped that I've been an avid reader ever since I learned to read!

 

However, I've relaxed a little. I don't mind dangling participles anymore (although they annoy my bro Ian to death). I'm very strict with myself, but it doesn't bother me so much in others' writing anymore, unless I'm proofreading it or something. If it's supposed to be formal writing, there had better not be any grammatical mistakes. But with informal writing, it only bothers me when it's unreadable (ha! I just started this sentence with "but"). It really bothers me when people don't capitalize (there is an RPer that I RPed with for a while that never capitalized "I"). I also really don't like fragment sentences. Those drive me crazy.

 

I think it's my linguistics training that has caused me to be less uptight about grammar. Linguistics focuses on descriptivism, not perscriptivism. We care what and how you're saying something and try to describe it. We don't care if you're breaking grammatical rules. That might be an interesting phenomenon for us to study, but it's not "right" or "wrong".

[NavyGal]

What's a participle?

 

I like to think my grammar is pretty decent, but I know that at times it just sucks. It also doesn't help when learning different languages and the grammer changes completely and words just don't exist as such in the language so you get very confused.

[Jidai Geki]

A participle is either a verb which follows an auxiliary verb (He is running; I have been to...) or a verb which functions as an adjective ("English as a spoken language...").

 

I have very few problems with grammar, as a result of some 18 years of foreign language study as well as four and a half years of teaching English for a living. I'm conversant with all the technical terms and have to teach them week in week out, so grammar is pretty much my bread and butter.

[DarthBrendo]

The 'technical' side of English is somethgin I am going to have to work really hard on.Lee...that sentence made no sense to me...I didn't even know there was such a thing as an auxiliary verb!

[Jidai Geki]

There's no shame in it, you don't need to be a doctor to breathe and you don't need to know the ins and outs of grammar to use it naturally.

 

An auxiliary verb is a verb that goes with a second verb after it (I don't like apples; I have never been to London; do you like chicken?). They tend to be the less 'important' verbs in a sentence, the one that doesn't convey the meaning.

[Travis]

I am just waiting for the day they start teaching "American" courses rather than "English."

[DarthBrendo]

There's no shame in it, you don't need to be a doctor to breathe and you don't need to know the ins and outs of grammar to use it naturally.

 

An auxiliary verb is a verb that goes with a second verb after it (I don't like apples; I have never been to London; do you like chicken?). They tend to be the less 'important' verbs in a sentence, the one that doesn't convey the meaning.

 

I like the way you put that.

 

That said...in those examples you've given, i don't know whats the verb. *shrug* it was stuff I was never taught, and have never really needed to know so I've not bothered. But it's going to be something I'll need to work on for teaching.