Some Common Errors in Writing

[plix (imported)]

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post - there is nothing necessarily wrong with contractions. In academic and professional writing they are generally considered inappropriate, but in creative writing they certainly have a place, especially in dialogue. How many people speak out "do not, they are, there is," etc.? When you write fiction, you are trying to make people sound natural. Since people use contractions when they speak, they should use them in your dialogue.

Another thing I do want to point out - it's not "an eunuch." A lot of people on this site write "an eunuch." Listen to how that sounds compared to "a eunuch," and then decide for yourself. "Eunuch" is one of the exceptions to the "an" rule. Sometimes you have

to go off of what sounds natural and

violate the rules.

Also, when it comes to putting quotes around spoken words, the punctuation goes inside the quotes, not outside.

Correct: "I am going to cut your nuts off."

Incorrect: "I am going to cut your nuts off".

Correct: "I am going to cut your nuts off," she said.

Incorrect: I am going to cut your nuts off", she said.

Correct: "When are you going to cut my nuts off?"

Incorrect: When are you going to cut my nuts off"?

Correct: "Don't you dare cut my nuts off!"

Incorrect: "Don't you dare cut my nuts off"!

We do want to remember that there are things far more important than grammar, and that in the real world grammar does not hold much weight. Sure, you can get upset about a sign reading "everyday" rather than the techincally correct "every day." But how much does that really matter to most people? How many people actually know the difference?

I base how I speak in part from who I am speaking with (or with whom I am speaking if you want to get technical). If I am taking part in a casual conversation with people who don't know any better and probably would have no reason to care even if they did, I speak in a way that most of them would speak. I use the word "lay" rather than "lie" among other things. There is no reason to make these people feel uncomfortable or make yourself uncomfortable by sounding unnatural, even though you may be correct.

In online chat, I very rarely use the contractions "you're" and "they're." Most people do not know these words, and I see no need to confuse anyone. But I will give you that I cannot bring myself to use "your" or "there" when I know that is not the correct form, so I will just write out "you are" or "they are."

In informal writing, such as but not limited to my posts here, I will often use the words "very, rather, and quite" because they are convenient, and I like how they sound. But as Kortpeel says, in creative writing such words are considered unnecessary, and your writing will probably not be considered competent until you remove them.

Let us not forget that there is a big difference between formal (academic, professional, and even creative in some contexts) and informal writing (such as posts here and other types of online communication). In informal writing the rules can be relaxed. We aren't being graded on the way we speak here on these boards or in other types of online communication. One can know the correct way to write but find it convienient and comfortable to write differently.

[fredericlei (imported)]

Sure, you can get upset about a sign reading "everyday" rather than the techincally correct "every day." But how much does that really matter to most people?

It’s not a matter of being technically correct: one version, “now open every day” would communicate clearly and succinctly that the supermarkets are open daily, and the other “now open everyday” is utter nonsense. The supermarkets might as well have had their signs say “now open quotidian” or “waterballoon fuzz gallop”! [Aha, a legitimate exception to the no-punctuation-outside-the-quotation-marks rule.]

It might not be so important in the grand scheme of things, but such carelessness is often indicative of other, deeper problems. I don’t know about you, but I rather like the idea of my physician knowing the fine distinctions between various similarly-named parts of the body. I don’t want my doctor confusing malign and benign or assuming that malodorous is malignant I like the idea of restaurateurs and commercial manufacturers of comestibles being able to discern which similarly-named ingredients are tasty and which are toxic. I, for one, don’t want an ignorant cook putting Epsom salts instead of table salt in my food. I don’t want soap in my soup-bowl. If a supermarket manager cannot get a simple sign right, how can I reasonably trust what he says about the freshness of his fruit and vegetables? What faith can I put in his assertion that the trevalla is fresh, and that the trevally is local?

As I intimated earlier, taking a little extra time and effort to ensure that your authorial opera are well-written, and say what you want them to say, shows courteous consideration to your reader, and ensures that your thoughts are understood. I concede that most people these days worry little that, for instance, fulsome and full are not synonymous. Similarly, many could care less that very many people (including supposedly pious Roman Catholics) mistakenly believe that the Immaculate Conception refers to the birth of Jesus. Others, I know, don’t give a hoot that a cohort (a Roman military unit of six centuries) ought not to be misused to mean associate. Others don’t mind that some unlettered folk utter such solecisms as “the hoi polloi”—meaning “the the many” in Ancient Greek—, and compound the error by misconstruing the phrase as referring to the élite (perhaps by confusing it with hoity toity) instead of the general populace.

Unfortunately, ever since the end of the nineteenth century, particularly in the US and the UK, prominent educators have perpetrated a self-serving and destructive pedagogic policy of promoting the proposition that a knowledge of grammar and other niceties of English expression are outmoded, inessential, and elitist. I think that good grammar does help us to communicate and that is why, for several years, I have edited stories, academic theses and even slight ephemera for no charge to anyone who requests my assistance.

Yes, of course, there are matters more important than grammar; but, considering the evils of the world which ever beset us, I submit that there are actually few things more important than maintaining, optimally, the human ability to communicate comprehensively and comprehensibly.

[kristoff]

Generally speaking, I find that those who are overly concerned about such issues, to the point of being nit-pickers, are those who are most easily ignored because they go far beyond the bounds of acceptable, daily, functional useage and behavior, that which the vast majority of people use.

For those purists who wish to go beyond that, please preserve the grace of the language in all of its many splendorous forms; make it available for those who give a damn. For the rest of us, a clean, well-mannered exposition that follows generally accepted form, without the need to write with a stick up the ass, is perfectly OK.

We all have our peeves. No doubt a book can be written just about those. Probably be a bust - only the purists would likely buy it.

I am reminded of a young gentleman who once sat in one of my therapy groups, and where I learned not to speak with a dictionary stuck in my neck. He looked at me with a very serious but respectful expression, and said, "Hey, Doc, can ya talk in nickels instead o' dollars?" I carried lots of nickels after that.

[Paolo]

As far as EA stories, I should I also mention that we really don't care if your participles dangle.

[Unregistered (imported)]

That should be something like “differently from the way Americans do.”

Well, the ablative seemed fine enough to Terentius; he wrote: “homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.” (Heaut. i. I. 75). Still, what would he know, eh?

I suppose you mean “ethic dative.”

No, he wrote "Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto" and the verb puto is different from the verb sum which requires an ethical dative Gloria (nom. sg) in excelsis (abl pl) Deo (dat sg). And Terence wasn't a native speaker anyway. Seneca "Nihil humanum alienum mihi est" was.

[fredericlei (imported)]

It may astound some, but I can actually move around ordinary people without their believing that I have any rigid foreign material up my arse. I do like polysyllables, I admit, but when I do employ sesquipedalian terminology, I always pay the words extra. “Ah, you should see ’em come round me of a Saturday night ... for to get their wages, you know.”

After all, I’m not popping up all over the place gratuitously shouting pedantries, here, in a thread specifically established to improve stories, I’m offering aid.

You have a right, of course, to maintain that fine distinctions are unimportant; and I equally have a right (I hope) to maintain that fine distinctions are often what lie between order and chaos, between peace and war, between belletrism and bellicosity, and between life and death.

In the relatively recent London bombings (wherein, you may remember, some young Englishmen wished to persuade some of their compatriots forcefully that British foreign policy might be improved by some Koranic considerations), I read and saw some contradictory accounts of the conduct of some of the passengers attempting to escape from ruined carriages. Some people reported that there was no panic, just a small amount of understandable confusion, whereas some witnesses who fled from exactly the same sites reported that there was massive chaos and panic. It is logically impossible for a small group of stranded passengers to be in complete panic and yet simultaneously be relatively calm. Now, we all know that eyewitnesses often relate widely diverging accounts of the same situations, specially when the events are traumatic and terrifying, but in this case I believe that the apparent contradictory accounts can be explained by the eyewitnesses' understandable imperfect command of language. Few people (particularly in the immediate aftermath of life-threatening terrors) can readily distinguish between the gradations of disorder from some mild confusion, through turmoil, to tumult, to complete turbulent chaos. My take is that many witnesses had used a poor choice of words when reporting to the assembled news-hounds, and that there was some mild disorder, a little weeping, a few screams, and a small degree of confusion, agitation, and consternation, but no panic. I’m not blaming the victims of the London bombings for being, like most of us, not as articulate as we could be—and this, if you’re still following me, is an example of inadequate vocabulary not of bad grammar—but other people around the world were possibly deceived by differing accounts and misunderstood the course of events and underestimated the courage and tenacity of the victims thereby. One may pardon a man who hears that there was panic in an underground tunnel if he conclude that there must have panic. You may well argue that it matters very little whether people confuse perturbation and turmoil. I think that it matters greatly if people are mislead by inadequate descriptions. The powerful ever use the ignorance of the powerless against them, and knowledge does bring power.

A few years ago (if I may digress on the excesses of journalism for a tick), on the first Martin Luther King Day, I was watching one of the US morning television shows and saw a reporter interview a young schoolchild of fairly dark hue; he asked what Dr. King taught. The child answered that Dr. King wanted black children to be able to go to black schools and for white children to go to white schools. This travesty of King’s message was allowed to go unchallenged. No challege from the interviewer. None from the teacher nearby. No correction from the presenters. For all I know, the young schoolgirl grew up with similar distortions of truth corrupting her entire world view.

Now, bringing all this back to the issue at hand, namely the avoidable errors which can be found in the stories of this site, many authors are publishing stories without even checking the spelling. Too many stories, which might be very entertaining for all I know, are presented with all sorts of preventable mistakes which could be removed by a little judicious proof-reading. Even a spell-checking program, though, won’t correct a hastily written form instead of a from, a cook instead of a cock, a sad instead of a said, or cat balls from cut bulls.

As much as I wish that grammar and logic were given more attention in schools, I do realise that even fairly well-educated people can get by in life perfectly well without knowing the parts of speech, or when to use a relative adverb, or how to construct an argument without fallacies; but, when it comes to presenting a story which your readers will read with pleasure and profit, it is always better to have it proof-read. If a story be worth presenting to the world, it is worth reflecting beforehand, is this as good as I can make it (or as good as it needs to be) or could it be improved?

No, he wrote "Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto" and the verb puto is different from the verb sum which requires an ethical dative Gloria (nom. sg) in excelsis (abl pl) Deo (dat sg). And Terence wasn't a native speaker anyway. Seneca "Nihil humanum alienum mihi est" was.

Huh? Terence was born in Carthage; Seneca was born in Corduba. Since when has being a native speaker been the criterion denoting literary merit?

Nihil and nil are the same. The case of Deo, above, is the Dative of Advantage or Disadvantage.

From E.C. Woodcock’s New Latin Syntax (1964, p. 67):

The Ethic Dative

When the dative of a pronoun is used very loosely in the syntax of the sentence to indicate a person who regards, or who may be expected to regard the action with interest, it is called the Ethic Dative.; cf. ‘Come knock me at that door’, where ‘me’ is almost equivalent to ‘Please!’ or ‘I beg you’. The usage is esentially colloquial.

[gelding (imported)]

Lynn Truss wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves, an excellent humorous diatribe against the evils of bad punctuation. Too bad we do not have today the nuns armed with wooden rulers teaching students and rapping knuckles when they write bad grammar or bad punctuation. The book is recommended for all writers, to improve their English punctuation, and also, perhaps, knowledge of Mr. Bush's lack of knowledge of Saddam Hussein's WMD, cited in the last few pages of the book as the "Downing Street Memo". Bald-faced lies revealed by bad punctuation in a twelve-year-old failed doctoral thesis.

[IbPervert (imported)]

As far as EA stories, I should I also mention that we really don't care if your participles dangle.

Yeah, I like to see participles dangle between them legs!:D

[Blaise (imported)]

Lynn Truss wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves, an excellent humorous diatribe against the evils of bad punctuation.

I love that book, even if she early stopped preaching and went to meddling.

[curious_guy (imported)]

Here are some more:

People use dose instead of does.

People use cloths instead of clothes.

People use quite instead of quiet.