#National Grammar Day

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

March 4th is National Grammar Day when we are all encouraged to “speak well, write well, and help others do the same!” For those in need of a grammatical refresher, we’re sharing Friend Grammar Pictured Lessons in Grammar by Helen L. Smith. Published in Duluth, Minnesota in 1930, Smith’s workbook takes learners on an animated journey of the rules of language and writing with the guidance of “Friend Grammar.” In her own words, “This book appeals to the EYE, the EAR, the IMAGINATION, lends itself to DRAMATIZATION, and HAND WORK”.  

Friend Grammar Pictured Lessons in Grammar was a gift Verna L. Newsome and is part of our extensive Historical Curriculum Collection. 

Read other Milestone Monday posts here! 

– Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[duckprintspress]

Round Table Discussion: Grammar Pet Peeves

Today, March 4th, is National Grammar Day! Last year, we celebrated with six of our favorite grammar quirks. This year, we’re going to the other end of the spectrum: we had a conversation with our editors and blog contributors about grammar things we hate. They may be technically correct, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make us crazy. Eighteen people, many anonymous, contributed to this discussion.

Dangling Modifiers

boneturtle: Dangling modifiers, hands down. Even when I can decipher what the writer meant based on context, it viscerally hurts me every time. When I am editing I have to stand up and take a lap around my apartment when I hit a dangling modifier. Remind myself that I am here to help. Learn more about dangling modifiers.

Commas

anonymous: Commas are not difficult! Commas end phrases. Full stop. That’s all they do. Is a phrase necessary to the grammatical coherence of the sentence? if the answer is yes, no commas because that phrase hasn’t ended. If the answer is no, commas! comma hug that bish if it’s the middle of a sentence. The difference between grammatical and informational is whether or not the sentence makes sense without the phrase. 

Examples: 

The man who ordered the six double anchovy pizzas claims to have a dolphin in his pool. 

You need “who ordered the six double anchovy pizzas” because you need to identify which man you’re talking about. The world is full of many men. 

The ancient Buick, which Madeleine purchased via Craigslist, belched black smoke whenever she pressed the accelerator. 

We don’t need to know how Madeleine purchased the car for the sentence to make sense. You don’t even meed “Madeleine” for the grammar to make sense. Therefore, hug that phrase! 

(a comma on each side of the phrase) or give it a dramatic send off with a comma and an end punctuation. (i could go into conjunctions, too, but those are a little more complex, and if you were taught them properly, i understand not getting the comma use 😂 ) 

Prepositions at the End of Sentences

Tris Lawrence: There was a dictionary (Merriam-Webster? Oxford? idek) that posted recently on social media about how the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition came from English scholars trying to make English line up with Latin, and that it’s totally okay to do it… and I’m just wanting to point to it to yell THIS because uhhh trying to rework sentences to not end in a preposition often creates clunky awkward things (my opinion, I recognize this).

D. V. Morse: Ending sentences/clauses with a preposition. Well, not doing that is supposed to be the rule, but depending on the sentence, it can be a convoluted mess to try and avoid it. Winston Churchill famously told someone off after they “caught” him breaking that rule, saying, “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.” (Yes, I had to look that up.)

Pronoun Confusion

anonymous: I hate playing the pronoun game when reading. I hate it in life when someone comes up to me and tells me a story involving 2 people of the same pronouns and stops using names halfway through, and I hate it while reading too. Nothing makes me fall out of scene more if I don’t know who just did/said what. Use names. That’s why we have them.

Nina Waters: epithets. If I know the characters name…why? Also, when people use “you” in third person writing. There are times I’ll allow it as an editor/times when I do think it’s at least acceptable but not gonna lie, I absolutely hate it.

anonymous: My pet peeve … I read hundreds of essays in a given month for work, plus a whole lot of fanfic for fun. A rising issue that I have noticed in both places is incomplete sentences (lacking subjects, typically). I think it’s because people rely on Google’s grammar checker to tell them if something is wrong and…Google doesn’t check for that apparently. I’m increasingly convinced that my high schoolers simply weren’t taught sentence structure, because when I ask them to fix it they almost universally say some variant of “I don’t understand what you’re asking me to do.” Therefore, it might be punching down a little to complain about it. I’m not sure. It does drive me nuts though. Lol

“Would Of”

Neo Scarlett: Not quite sure if that falls under grammar, but I hate hate hate when people use “should of” instead of should’ve. Or “would of.” It just makes my toe nails curl up because it may sound right, but it looks wrong and is wrong.

Semi-Colons

Shea Sullivan: I saw a list punctuated by semicolons recently and that made me froth at the mouth a bit.

anonymous: I think any editor who’s worked with me knows that I have a pet peeve about using colons or semi-colons in dialogue. Or really, any punctuation mark that I don’t think people can actually pronounce. Semicolons can live anywhere that I don’t have to imagine a character actually pronouncing them.

English isn’t Dumb!

theirprofoundbond: As a former linguistics student, it bugs me a lot when people say that English is a dumb or stupid language because it has borrowed from so many languages. What people mean when they say this is, “English can be really difficult (even for native speakers).” But I wish people would say that, instead of “it’s dumb/stupid.” Languages are living things. Like other living things, they adapt and evolve. English is basically a beautiful, delightful platypus. Let it be a platypus.

Dei Walker: I remember seeing somewhere that English has four types of rules (I’m trying to find the citation today) and everyone conflates them. And I guess my pet peeve is that everyone treats them equally when they’re NOT. There are rules but not all of them are the same – there’s a difference between “adjectives precede nouns” (big truck, not *truck big) and “don’t split infinitives” (which is arbitrary).

And, because we couldn’t resist, here are some of our favorite things, because when we asked for pet peeves…some people still shared things they loved instead of things they hated.

Oxford Comma

Terra P. Waters: I really really love the Oxford comma.

boneturtle: me: [in kindergarten, using oxford comma]

teacher: no, we don’t add a comma between the last two objects in a list.

me: that’s illogical and incorrect.

anonymous: I will forever appreciate my second grade teacher’s explanation of Oxford comma use: Some sentences are harder to understand if you don’t use it, but no sentence will ever be harder to understand because you do use it. Preach, Mrs. D

anonymous: I am definitely Team Oxford Comma. I even have a bumper sticker which says so

Other Favorites

Shea Sullivan: I adore the emdash, to every editor’s chagrin.

Shadaras: zeugmas! I think they’re super cool!

Shea Sullivan and Hermit: I use sentence fragments a lot. Fragments my beloved.

English Grammar vs. Grammar in Other Languages

anonymous: so in English my favourite thing is the parallel Latin and Saxon registers because of how that affects grammar, but in Japanese my favourite grammatical thing is the use of an actual sound at the end of the sentence to denote a question, as opposed to how in English we use intonation? Also how in Japanese the sentence structure requires reasoning first and action second in terms of clauses. So rather than go “let’s go to the cinema because it’s raining and I’m cold,” you’d go “because it’s raining and I’m cold, let’s go to the cinema.” (My least favourite thing is the lack of spaces between words in the written form but that’s purely because I find that level of continuous letters intimidating to translate.)

I also love how Japanglish in the foreign communities in Japan starts to develop its own grammatical structure as a way of situating yourself in this space between the two languages. It’s used as a call-sign of belonging to that specific community, because in order to make some of the jokes and consciously break the rules of English or Japanese grammar and/or choose to obey one or the other, you’re basically displaying your control over both/knowledge of them. Like, the foreign community in Japan is often a disparate group of people with multiple different native languages who are relying on their knowledge of at least one non-native language but often two to signify their status in the group as Also An Outsider and I think that’s really interesting.

Nina Waters: Chinese and Japanese both drop subjects, and Chinese doesn’t have like… a/the… Japanese doesn’t have a future tense… Chinese kinda sorta doesn’t have tenses at all… (these are not pet peeves, btw, I love how learning a language with such different ways of approaching these things reshapes my brain). Chinese also doesn’t really have yes or no.

There’s a joke somewhere on Tumblr about that, though I actually think it’s about using “a” versus “the,” like, someone was giving a Russian speaker a hard time after they said “get in car” and they were like “only you English speakers are dumb enough to feel this is essential why would I be talking about getting into any random car of course I mean our car wtf.”

anonymous: on the subject of other languages, epithets are also something that happen differently in other languages. In French repeating a word (names included, and sometimes even pronouns) is considered bad writing. As in, way more than in English. Going by how grating the English translation of the Witcher books was to me when the French one was fine, I’d say it’s the same with Polish, at least. It’s also very interesting how brains adapt to writing styles in other languages.

What are some of your favorite and least favorite grammar quirks, in English or in the language of your choice?

[alliterative-endlessknot]

It’s #NationalGrammarDay! To celebrate, here’s a short video on the surprisingly glamorous history of teaching grammar.

[theimpalatales]

Today is National Grammar Day, so why not brush up on some grammar knowledge?

Learn the difference between hyphens (-), en-dashes (–), and em-dashes (—)!

Find out what each mark is meant to be used for, how to apply this to your writing, and how to type each mark.

[oconnormusicstudio]

It's Grammar Day

  National Grammar Day is observed across the United States each year on March 4th. According to Global Language Monitor, the estimated number of words in the English language is 1,025,109.  There is some controversy to that number, but it’s safe to say it is over a million. Language is something to celebrate.  Some people might suggest that grammar is a set of rules for language, but really it…

[murderousink23]

03/04/2024 is National Safety Day 🇮🇳, National Grammar Day 🇺🇸, National Hug a G.I. Day 🇺🇸, National Pound Cake Day 🇺🇸, Idaho Day 🇺🇸, British Pie Week 🥧🇬🇧

[pat7garcia]

Welcome to #RRBC’s 2nd Annual “A DAY IN MY LIFE” 30-Day Blogging Challenge! @RRBC_Org @RRBC_RWISA @Tweets4RWISA @pat_garcia

Happy National Grammar Day, National Salt Awareness Day, and World Obesity Day DAY 4, MARCH 4, 2024 Good Morning To All!First, here’s something to laugh about.😄The day before yesterday, I had beautiful sunshine. Yesterday too. My co-host of the RNH Show (Raters Not Haters Show) has been visiting my blog posts during the challenge, and I wrote about how sunny the day had been. He commented on my…

[el-blog-pepe]

National Grammar Day

Listen to the most recent episode of my podcast: National Grammar Day. National Grammar Day, Banksey’s real name and the lyrics of a song by the Stylistics. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/joseph-mc42/episodes/National-Grammar-Day-e2gjv39 Transcripts will be back tomorrow

[gramrgednangel]

National Grammar Day 2023

Martha Brockenbrough started this particular grammar ball rolling back in 2008. Because the date, March 4, is also rendered March 4th in certain circumstances, it is not only a date but an imperative with a homophone for “fourth”: March forth! It was (and presumably still is) her intention that people fond of grammar would take the day to celebrate the joys of “good grammar” (as she called it)…

[punctuation-bracket]

AND THE WINNER IS...

After eight weeks and five rounds of polls, defeating thirty-five other punctuation marks from around the globe, rising from third place in last year's Punctuation Poll, the ultimate winner of Tumblr's First Annual Punctuation Bracket is,

THE EM DASH!!!!!!

🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉

Congratulations to the em dash, Tumblr's Official Favorite Punctuation Mark of 2024!

>> Leave your comments, questions, and congratulations in the replies, or send an ask with suggestions/requests for next year's bracket! <<

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED!

[flwoie]

i hate proofreading in american english with a burning passion

[duckprintspress]

Celebrate National Grammar Day with 6 of Our Favorite Grammar Quirks!

What are your favorite things in grammar?

Here are some of ours!

Interrobang: a punction mark ‽ designed for use especially at the end of an exclamatory rhetorical question.

Example: You call that a cat‽

Kenning: a metaphorical compound word or phrase used especially in Old English and Old Norse poetry.

Example: a bone-cage = a body.

Oxford Comma: a comma used to separate the second-to-last item in a list from a final item introduced by the conjunction and or or

Example: She thanked her parents, Dolly Parton, and Jay-Z.

Em Dash: a dash that is one em wide; the em dash can function like a comma, a colon, or a parenthesis

Example: I and Justin—no not that one, the other Justin—are going out tonight.

Garden Path Sentences: a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader’s most likely interpretation will be incorrect

Example: The old man the boat.

Zeugma: the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words, usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one

Example: She opened the door and her heart to the homeless boy.

*

Comment and tell us YOUR favorite grammar quirk in English (or some other language, why not!) We'd love to hear about it!

Post contributors: theirprofoundbond, boneturtle, unforth, owlish, and shadaras.

Who we are: Duck Prints Press LLC is an independent publisher based in New York State. Our founding vision is to help fanfiction authors navigate the complex process of bringing their original works from first draft to print, culminating in publishing their work under our imprint. We are particularly dedicated to working with queer authors and publishing stories featuring characters from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Love what we do? Want to make sure you don’t miss the announcement for future giveaways? Sign up for our monthly newsletter and get previews, behind-the-scenes information, coupons, and more!

[alliterative-endlessknot]

It’s #NationalGrammarDay! To celebrate, here’s a short video on the surprisingly murky development of a basic piece of English grammar, the pronoun “She”

[orcelito]

Ok there r some pretty big things I wanna fix with the first chapter of ITNL, but I don't rly have the brain for that. Putting it on the backburner.

Might fuck around with chapter 2 tho. Just maybe.

[gravitasmalfunction]

I am "I can't read the news without missing subeditors" years old