Any punctuation Kings or Queens out there?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lilyofthevalley
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Lilyofthevalley:
Let me know~PLEASE???
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Hi. What is your question?

I will not diagram any sentences, though.
 
I edit a lot of the articles, papers, and several dissertations of my faculty members. While my degree is not in English, I am an excellent editor. I can’t necessarily identify every part of the English language, or even sometimes tell you why something is wrong, but I can point things out well. What are you looking for?
 
I am also a germanic, uptight, “A” type puncutation, spelling and grammar sheriff.
 
Penny Plain:
I will not diagram any sentences, though.
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It wasn’t that I “hated” diagramming sentences, it was just that I couldn’t understand why we had to do it. And, at the time, I didn’t think that it taught me anything. Maybe it did.

But I really didn’t begin to understand the English language until I studied foreign languages: Latin, German and Persian (Farsi).
 
Let’s see, mine is the 5th reply. So give us your question, and you may have as many as five different answers to choose from 😃

(I was a professional report-writer in my guv’mint job, and we had a rigorous editing process.)

DaveBj
 
I don’t know about punctuation, but it drives me up the wall when people use, for example, the word “site” when they really mean “cite” or “sight.” Or “it’s”, when they mean its. It seems that there are an increasing number of errors even in newspapers and magazines.
 
This is a lot to ask but would one of you mind proof reading a paper for Intro to Literature class? Last time I wrote a paper, the instructor was annoyed by my comma use. I am not saying to put the commas in for me, just put a <> where they whether it’s a , ; : should go.
 
Not a lot to ask in the least–I love proofreading papers. I’ve PM’ed you my email address, feel free to send the paper over.
 
Looks like you already found help, but here is a comma tip: read your work out loud, any time you have to pause and take a breath, ask yourself do I need a comma? semicolon (very rare) or period? If you find yourself adding a lot of punctuation either take your asthma medication, or look to see if you have run on sentences, awkward phrasing, too many subordinate clauses. Try to write primarily in simple declarative sentences, using the active voice. go thru your paper again and change any verbs that are passive to active, as much as possible. “The children were being cared for by neighbors–try: Neighbors cared for the children.”
Break up complicated sentences. the commas should not look like little ants crawling all over the paper.
 
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puzzleannie:
Looks like you already found help, but here is a comma tip: read your work out loud, any time you have to pause and take a breath, ask yourself do I need a comma? semicolon (very rare) or period? If you find yourself adding a lot of punctuation either take your asthma medication, or look to see if you have run on sentences, awkward phrasing, too many subordinate clauses. Try to write primarily in simple declarative sentences, using the active voice. go thru your paper again and change any verbs that are passive to active, as much as possible. “The children were being cared for by neighbors–try: Neighbors cared for the children.”
Break up complicated sentences. the commas should not look like little ants crawling all over the paper.
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Good one, Annie!

I have a real problem with writing really long sentences with lots of commas. I do have to re-read them and often make sentence or even paragraph breaks.
 
Whenever I see a misused apostrophe, I just want to :banghead:. The most common ones are “it’s” used as a possessive (it means IT IS or IT HAS) and adding an 's to make a plural (egg’s, $1.29 a doz. :eek:)

All punctuation royalty should check out the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, a British writer and journalist. The title refers to what a panda does. One quote from the preface:
Code: 
 My American correspondents, however, have made it pretty clear that the US is not immune to similar levels [to the UK] of public illiteracy. Carved in stone (in *stone*, mind you) in a Florida shopping mall one may see the splendidly apt quotation from Euripides, "Judge a tree from it's fruit: not the leaves"-and it is all too easy to imagine the stone-mason dithering momentarily over that monumental apostrophe, mallet in hand, chisel poised. Can an apostrophe ever be wrong, he asks himself, as he answers "Nah!" and decisively strikes home and the chips fly out.
I might add that the colon is wrong too! An entertaining and educational book, highly recommended. I did not know until reading this book that the point (“period”) at the end of a sentence is called a “full stop” in the UK.

-Illini
 
Lily,

If you want to e-mail the paper to me, go ahead and do so. Besides that writing and editing skills have been my stock in trade for virtually my entire professional life, I have extensive direct experience at the precise task you describe.

I spent 8 years reading (and sometimes proofing over the phone, when time was of the essence) as 2 daughters (and their roommates who effectively “adopted” me) studied for bachelor degrees in psychology and biology/chemistry. Now, they’ve moved on, in pursuit of an MSW and a DVM; I’m still proofing - and they are consistently requiring less and less of it, as their styles reflect, more and more, lessons learned in years past.

I have pm’ed you my e-mail address.

Many years,

Neil
 
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Illini:
Whenever I see a misused apostrophe, I just want to :banghead:. The most common ones are “it’s” used as a possessive (it means IT IS or IT HAS) and adding an 's to make a plural (egg’s, $1.29 a doz. :eek:)
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I have the same pet peeve. See how many levels of irony you can spot in the following story, which is true:

We were in Annapolis, Maryland. A store on the high street had quotations painted on its windows, including this:

The difference between genius & stupidity; genius has its’ limits."

The window belonged to a bookstore.

Arrrrggggghhhhhhh!
 
Ray Marshall:
It wasn’t that I “hated” diagramming sentences, it was just that I couldn’t understand why we had to do it. And, at the time, I didn’t think that it taught me anything. Maybe it did.

But I really didn’t begin to understand the English language until I studied foreign languages: Latin, German and Persian (Farsi).
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Oh, I hated it!!!
 
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