Grammar 101
1. Your book (ownership)
2. You're taking images (you're=you are)
3. It's not working (it's=it is)
4. The cat drinks its milk (ownership)
You're quite right with your grammar Geoff, and it's a pity that so many people these days just don't get it. Apart from some teachers not knowing their grammar, I blame computers in that now anyone can readily print the written word whether it be right or wrong, and once printed it looks official, so it must be right!
Grammar 101
1. Your book (ownership)
2. You're taking images (you're=you are)
3. It's not working (it's=it is)
4. The cat drinks its milk (ownership)
For the 'ownership' example, you could have added that normally an apostrophe is in order - as in "John's book was open". The example you chose is the exception to this rule, - its - being a possessive pronoun.
I have often wondered what is the use of certain grammatical marks and conventions.
Using a capital at the start of a sentence is superfluous. There is a full stop AND a space at the end of the previous sentence. Do we really need three alerts to show a new sentence has started.
I use/try to use correct written grammar at all times but it is becoming a little time consuming in the digital age. Our written grammar will surely change due to technology. And change is not an unusual occurance for any language.
I have often wondered what is the use of certain grammatical marks and conventions.
Using a capital at the start of a sentence is superfluous. There is a full stop AND a space at the end of the previous sentence. Do we really need three alerts to show a new sentence has started.
I use/try to use correct written grammar at all times but it is becoming a little time consuming in the digital age. Our written grammar will surely change due to technology. And change is not an unusual occurance for any language.
English is not my native language so I guess I try to pay attention a little more to what I write and the way I write it. The rules you are talking about are present in many other languages. Although you can map words to words most of the time from one language to the other, the order of the words and the structure of the sentences can be radically different. I find English is very popular because the words are fairly short, not many declination in verbs and hardly any genres in adjectives or prepositions. That level of simplicity made it a prime candidate for a base that everybody can learn. That's also why programming languages are based on English words. I agree that languages evolve over time but what you see online these days is at best ridiculous. Geoff has a very valid point. It really makes me cringe when I see University level kids making that kind of mistakes. In my eyes it looks really bad. There also seems to be a trend of labelling people who care about good spelling and syntax "grammar Nazis". So what's the next trend? "Maths Nazis" because 2+2 could be 5 in the near future?
A correction for my comment about using capitals at the start of a sentence: the space after a full stop is actually standard and necessary convention to seperate words.
I also cringe when someone makes grammatical errors.
When writing txt messages I feel wrong when I don't use correct grammar or punctuation but it makes it more expedient. I suppose grammar is a cultural part of us.
Last edited by csb; 02-03-2016 at 11:15 AM.
Reason: Word correction.
English, being such an easy language, should be mastered by the majority by the time they have completed their secondary education. Unfortunately many teachers have yet to do so thus perpetuating the problem.
English, as it is spoken today, is but a mere shadow of the language it was a century ago. There are now so many words and concepts that originated in other realms that the language has come to resemble vegetable soup.
The primary purpose of a language is to communicate effectively but there is nothing written that states such aims could not be achieved with some flair. On the subject of capitals, a paragraph or chapter written without correctly placed capitals and punctuation, or worse still in ALL UPPER CASE, takes more than twice as long to read with much reduced comprehension.
Please pardon my poor control of this language for it was not my first, second or third language, being preceded by Finnish, Swedish, Italian and German.
