It's almost here! March 4 is National Grammar Day.

Does that go hand in hand with National Spelling Day. Perhaps it ties in with Yuzzzz Ur Spell Checker Day. TIC

I FAIL

Can the decline in IQ scores be attributed to Google making us stupid?

Hey, that article is more than 1100 words long. Who has time to read the whole thing?!

Probably just us "old guys."

And County employees.

!!!! I aint partis-pating in no here gramma day!

OK, a Grammar pet peeve of mine....."My Bad" makes my hair stand on end!

Now that's a picture!

sooy, my bad!

Piddlin’ Rules

1. No sentence fragments.
2. It behooves us to avoid archaisms.
3. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
4. Don't use no double negatives.
5. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, “Resist hyperbole!”
6. Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
7. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
8. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
9. Writing carefully, dangling participles should not be used.
10. Kill all exclamation points!!!
11. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
12. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
13. Take the bull by the hand and don't mix metaphors.
14. Don’t verb nouns.
15. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
16. Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.

—William Safire (1929-2009), Pulitzer Prize-winner, wordguy, presidential speechifier and columnist

The Exclamation Point!

The exclamation point is greatly overused!
One could even say it is frequently abused!
In advertising copy, it repeatedly resounds!
And in breathless prose, it literally abounds!
The poorer the writer, the more frequently the case!
The exclamation point, they readily embrace!
To give a little emphasis! To make a little point!
This punctuation mark they will appoint!
But, to make emphasis perfectly clear,
Good writers generally appear
to make little use of exclamations
and other such typographic affectations.

— Ed Truitt
Ed Truitt is a science writer at the Weizmann Institute of Science

Ode to the Comma

The female body part of punctuation,
So tiny, yet able to arouse such aggravation.
The comma slips in under the quotation,
Tells you when to pause for reflection,
Then plunge ahead to the period's conclusion.
Neglect it at your peril: accusations,
law suits, wars. Nations
fall. Pretend it doesn't exist at all? Risk condemnation.
Treat it right for absolution.
That's right, put it there: Yes, oh, yes . . . satisfaction.

—Stacey Harwood
Stacey Harwood is a policy analyst with the New York State Department of Public Service. She is a freelance writer and managing editor of The Best American Poetry blog.

aye aye aye!!! that was? such satire in such a small sentance! i aint saw no other poems, like that, EVA... well i got most em!!!

thre and the miss spel'in and da cliche, and the proofreading!

You mean like this? Résumé

On a Mac, hold down the "option" key and press the letter "e." Then press the letter you want the diacritic over (in the case of résumé, press "e.")

I just learned that it's called an "acute accent."

Not to start a war or anything, but you used a grave, not an acute accent.

As Shakespeare once wrote, "résumé or rèsumè, that is the question."

Sooooooo how does this bit of oooopsie happen ræsumæ???

I think you used option-grave-e instead of option-e-e. (The grave key is the lowercase tilde key.)

I had to learn these tricks to type menus, like table d'hôte.

How did you do that? I usually use the glyph palette to insert funny characters.

Option key and apostrophe key ...

still can't get my accent to flip

Today is March 4, National Grammar Day!

I know that HGS can post things in this forum that most of us can't, since he's one of the administrators. For example, there were those upside-down letters a while back. So this is a test to see if these accent marks are available to the rest of us. This was done on an iMac; I don't know how to get these on a PC.

á é í ó ú Á É Í Ó Ú (option-E followed by a vowel)
à è ì ò ù À È Ì Ò Ù (option-` followed by a vowel)
ä ë ï ö ü Ä Ë Ï Ö Ü (option-U followed by a vowel)
â ê î ô û Â Ê Î Ô Û (option-I followed by a vowel)
ñ Ñ (option-N followed by N)


P.S.: Yes, it works.

On a PC I had to use ALT+####. For example:

• ALT+0224—>à
• ALT+0226—>â
• ALT+0230—>æ
• ALT+0231—>ç
• ALT+0232—>è
• ALT+0233—>é
• ALT+0234—>ê
• ALT+0235—>ë
• ALT+0238—>î
• ALT+0239—>ï
• ALT+0244—>ô
• ALT+0251—>û
• ALT+0249—>ù
• ALT+0156—>œ

Soooooooo is Grammar day Anglo centric or is it Amero-Anglo centric and thereby discriminatory in either case?

Well, English is the official language of many countries. The United States, however, does not have a national language, although 28 states do have English as their official language.

latin?æ œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ“‘«¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–≠åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æΩ≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥ got em all

darn this forum doesnt support some!

" Englanders " seem to think that American English is foreign.

Didn't we settle that score back in 1776?

On a more serious note, Grammar Girl often elaborates on grammatical differences between America and the U.K.

For example, style guides in the U.S. dictate that quotation marks include most ending punctuation marks, like "this." The British, however, put them "inside".

Nylimb and I often wonder why.

vive la difference

Shouldn't there be an acute accent in différence?


I couldn't help myself.

My accents are not very cute so I couldn't be acute. Chronic maybe, but not acute.

Vanna thinks you're cute.

Urban dictionary vs Ebonics dictionary vs " A Real Dictionary " ... but ... but ... but.

urbandictionary.com.au >>>>> is dat Australian or Austrian ?

I was going to reply "That's cute" to his post but decided not to!

my accents are obtuse

My accents are from the eastern part of the continent

well that makes you special!

Maybe / maybe not, however, somewhat erudite and an ability to use a dictionary from time time to time. Ziiiiiing

i have that and bad!!!!!