Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Grammar Nemesis & I'm 100!


I’m 100 today; I’m allowed to be a little cantankerous.

I don’t love grammar. Words, yes. Formatting sentences, yes. Creating believable dialogue, yes. Coming up with an irresistible original story, yes. I’m beginning to sound a little like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. I love all the above things. Grammar, not so much. But, I want to be teachable in this. I learned a lot in my schooling and it certainly helped to major with an English degree, but I am not without fault and slip ups. Guess what? Neither are you. All of us have our grammatical strengths and weaknesses. I think the key if we want to improve our craft is that we be willing to learn. So I’m going to ask for something strange. If you notice my making a repeated grammar mistake in my blog posts, I’d like you to send me an email to tip me off. Short and sweet. And I will be ever grateful.

Now just for fun I wrote a little something:

I’m not writing affectively lately. Something is mising. I’m not sure its what I write about or who. It all comes back null and voy. Weather or not I include exhaustive quotes or not doesnt seem to matter. Noone or nothing seem to help. Is it just a loss cause or is their hope? I want my message to be recieved. With everything inside of myself I want to make an inpact with my words. I want to form sentences you can not forget. I care alot about the craft. I just don’t know why that isn’t coming a cross. Maybe its just a mute point.

What is your grammar nemesis?

Have a sunny day! I get to hang out with my sister. Ketchup with you later. :D
Go check out what I wrote about PRIDE at Exemplify!


*photo by flickr

10 comments:

  1. LOL Love the example. My weakness is probably commas--love them, hate them. I also overuse the em dash and have had to back off.

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  2. Okay - I just tried to comment and half way through my son closed internet explorer. :)He's sitting on my lap. Oh wow, I love the song that's playing right now. Come and Listen.. not sure if that's the title. But I love it.

    Okay... anyway, great post! Loved the funny example. I will just throw in there that sometimes breaking the grammar rules is necessary for the sake of sound. If I refused to end a sentence with a preposition throughout my stories, they would start to sound WACK! :)

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  3. What a great post! I needed to laugh today.

    I am in the middle of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Such a great book about grammar. The stories behind puncuation make me laugh, and help me remember the rules- most of the time- LOL!

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  4. This is great. That last paragraph makes me twitch a little when reading it... :)

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  5. What does the 100 stand for? Number of posts? Or number of grammar mistakes you've made so far? ;) I'm sure I make hundreds of grammar mistakes too. Thank the Lord for line edits!! Have a great day with your family!

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  6. Terri, I think maybe I just hate 'em. :D

    Katie, I agree 100%. I'm willing to risk and break rules. Makes life interesting.

    Andrea, I'll have to check that one out. Haven't heard of it.

    Whitney, don't want to cause any twitching...just having a little fun. :D

    Jody, I got so excited about seeing my sister I guess I didn't clarify the 100 stands for my 100th post. I look forward to sharing about my time with my family soon.

    Hope you all are feeling loved today!
    ~ Wendy

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  7. *grin*

    Grammar and I work best in our separate corners. ;-) My nemesis is commas. And the fact that I understand the theory, but can't keep the terms in my head long enough to put theory into practice. :$

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  8. Wendy -- I love the creativity you've used in your example of grammatical errors. You make me smile.

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  9. I have a very hard time with grammar in general. I always get it all mixed up and confused and have always had a problem with run on sentences. See what I mean, but in my blogging life I kind of write how I think and talk. Which is normally with a lot of quick changes and run ons.

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  10. LOL, what a great example—there aren't any "grammatical" problems in that paragraph (I mean, your clauses are all in order, your sentences are all complete and your subjects and your verbs all agree), and yet it's still so terrible.

    Sometimes I have the opposite problem—I can construct a sentence that's grammatically correct, yet seems to be unintelligible. It doesn't get the meaning across, at least not clearly.

    (Here from Rachelle Gardner's blog party!)

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