Sentance. Fragments.
NO doubt about it: blogging can make a fella a sloppy writer. Publish? No problem. Just hit the SAVE button and your sentance fraggments go to. "And you're misquotations. And your misplaced, punctuations. And your bad grammarical habits. And all your sentences that start with "and". Who's to edit out the entrenched bad tastes that takes the form of just plane bad form?
Now, I've had editors as regular readers of Fragments at times. They would kindly say "er, Fred, I don't think you meant X" or somesuch. One of my first sloppy sometimes right sometimes wrong habits that I was called on was where punctuations go in regard to quotes. Going back over blog entries from 2002, I pretty consistently put periods AFTER the final double quotes like this". Wrong. Or does it depend on the content of the phrase or sentence being quoted?
I bring this up because more recently, I've discovered I must have been 'British' in another lifetime, because without realizing how much I do it, I have used single quotes (so called "sneer quotes") without realizing in Euorpean usage, I'd be right. This side of the pond, wrong. So I have to go back through 70,000 words and fix them.
Right? Wrong? Who makes up these rules is a complex and interesting story, some of which I look forward to reading in the book I mentioned yesterday. Who cares? Readers--at least some--who find a slew of sloppy mistakes one one page in a book and this entirely discredits whatever it is the author is trying to tell them. Don't want that, do we?
So. I may have to subject this pile of pixels and print to the careful eye of a word-by-word editor. I've been convinced I have bad grammar. But grampa wasn't so bad. Sorry. But hey--it's my blog. All I have to do is. Hit the SAVE button like this
Comments
British in a previous lifetime? Bullocks! If you were indeed British in a previous life your present incarnation would have realised much better grammar, my good man!
Just my 0,02.
;)
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | February 15, 2006 6:22 AM
HA! That showed 'em. I also put quote marks in the wrong spot. I could swear that was the way it was taught back in the 40's and 50's.
I make so many typos and reverse so many letters that I could not in good conscience correct other people.
But when I went to work (at a new shop) for the holiday, they had a sign out front saying "Order for Valentine's Day. It's not to late." It was all I could do not to ask for the chalk immediately so I could change it. After about 2 hours, I summoned the courage to tell the owner that it should be
"too". I'm not sure how he took it, but it made me feel better when he changed it....LOL
Posted by: kenju | February 15, 2006 8:11 AM
I always have trouble with quotation marks and where the period goes. But I think it's just because I'm anal and can't stand to see those quotes at the end!
Posted by: Rurality | February 15, 2006 8:56 AM
Guess you've been reading "Eats, Shoots and Leaves". (oops)
Posted by: Dave | February 15, 2006 9:02 AM
I feel for you Fred. When I was working on The Jim and Dan Stories, I put certain commas in, then took them out, then put them back again.
The link was very informative.
Posted by: colleen | February 15, 2006 9:04 AM
I'm a word by word reader with everything I read. I can't scan or skim for love or money. I have read your blog for at least a year, and I rarely, if ever, find errors. I am a law school graduate and a valedictorian, in science, not English. If your error rate doesn't offend me, it shouldn't offend hardly anyone!
Posted by: Kathy Barron | February 15, 2006 8:16 PM
Oh dear! I was taught bad style in the 60's. We were taught to place a comma before the quotation marks.
Fred shouted, "Tsuga! Don't mess with that ol' dead mole! It probably has parasites!" :-)
Posted by: M. Lawless | February 15, 2006 10:02 PM
“Sin and Syntax” is an excellent book. It didn’t do much for my grammar but then again I ain’t that smart. However, it is a great book!
Posted by: D L Ennis | February 16, 2006 12:39 AM