it’s amazing seeing the diversity of people here, people from everywhere around the world comes and join and play the game
but sometimes, we butcher the english language in our forums posts (i’m also guilty for this)
i have an idea.
let’s play the forum game “continue the story”. maybe just 2 sentence per user per post.
and if anyone see someone is doing the grammar wrong, he/she can point out the mistake and correct it.
now it’s not impossible for someone that’s correcting someone else is also wrong, and for that,
i’d like someone who speaks english as a 1st/mother language to volunteer help out here. since they are the least likely ones to be wrong.
[size=150]TL;DR : simply play the “coninue the story” game, and everyone tries to fix someone else’s mistake in grammar or phrasing etc. [/size]
2 sentences per post, continuing the story. For story sake you may only either introduce a new character, have existing characters perform an action, or change location. Only one of those 3, not all of them at once.
I speak proper English natively, but not “The Queen’s English”, and have for many decades as an American. After reading the initial post several times, I think I finally understand what is expected to happen in here.
Sentence fragment, no possessive indication for “story”, improper list use of either/or, and sentence fragment can all be found in the quote above. This is not a complete list, but it does cover the major blunders.
As a native speaker, and also a self-proclaimed OCD Grammar Nazi, I think it might not be such a good idea for me to play this game with anyone here. I find poor grammar frustratingly annoying, and tend to overlook it rather than driving myself insane trying to correct it.
I do speak “the Queen’s English” and have a particular penchant for misused apostrophes. I’m not mistake proof, of course, but I can chip in with suggestions on occasion. I may have to wait until next week after my exam to start.
In addition, I tolerate (and sometimes advocate) the use of idiosyncratic sentence construction, such as starting sentences with a conjunction or ending a sentence with a preposition. And I further tolerate altered constructions endemic to internet forums. I feel this is a fairly broad strokes exercise for generalised fun and improvement.
[quote=“EnryGT5”]Oh boy. This should get really interesting, really fast. I also tend to make grammar trainwrecks once in a while
So… When someone writes a grammatically butchered story bit… do we just correct that or get to continue the story as well?[/quote]
both if you can
i.e.
[quote=“strop”]I do speak “the Queen’s English” and have a particular penchant for misused apostrophes. I’m not mistake proof, of course, but I can chip in with suggestions on occasion. I may have to wait until next week after my exam to start.
In addition, I tolerate (and sometimes advocate) the use of idiosyncratic sentence construction, such as starting sentences with a conjunction or ending a sentence with a preposition. And I further tolerate altered constructions endemic to internet forums. I feel this is a fairly broad strokes exercise for generalised fun and improvement.[/quote]
oh boy. i just made a test for myself didn’t i
i had to google up 3x because of the words used in this post alone
and i still only understand maybe only 75% of what you just said
@koolkei: I’ll ignore certain abbreviations, syntax and slang, yes. In addition forum posts tend to have a lot of fragments in them, but that depends on how prosaic we get.
Yes, all good. For simplicity I’m going to suggest formatting corrections like this:
At least, when it comes to spelling errors. We don’t have strikethrough on the board, unfortunately, else that’s what I’d do. And of course if the phrase is wonky then an explanation and revision may be necessary.
“Mr.B just woke up in a hotel room that he didn’t even remember checking in to.
last night must have been a wild night, but he really doesn’t remember the things he did, so he started to look around the room to find some clue.”
[quote=“koolkei”]Mr.B just woke up in a hotel room that he didn’t even remember checking into.
Last night must have been a wild night, but he really didn’t remember the things he did, so he started to look around the room to find some clue.[/quote]
I’m assuming here that we care about keeping tenses consistent, and will assume past tense for conventional narration purposes.
The first sentence does end with a preposition; I did say I’d tolerate it but the phrasing can nonetheless be optimised. Furthermore, the prose can be made a little punchier with the elimination of a bit of redundancy, so I’ll make a suggestion below:
[quote]Mr. B woke up in a hotel room. He didn’t even remember checking in.
Last night must have been wild. But as Mr B. had absolutely no recollection of any of it, he started to search the room for clues.[/quote]
Two seconds later, Mr B. doubled over, clutching his head. Oh! What a hangover! He stumbled towards the ensuite bathroom, but the door wouldn’t budge: something was most likely blocking it from the other side.
“Darn it! What have I gotten myself into this time,” he thought to himself. Just as he began trying hard to recollect any memories from the previous night, his train of thought was interrupted by a buzzing sound, likely coming from a cell phone.
/* Couldn’t find anything to fix in strop’s text. Not that there probably is anything to fix anyway, I’m always looking to better my English. Tried some direct speech. */
Staggering towards the source of the buzzing, Mr B. rummaged through a pile of clothes next to the bed. He wasn’t even sure if any of it was his. Fingers finally closing around something plastic, he scooped it up and blearily peered at the screen. On it, was a text message that read only thus:
As Mr.B. stumbled towards the window, tripping over furniture and avoiding broken glass, random wild guesses blasted past in his mind. The blinding, shining, light of the sun hit his eyes, as he forced himself to focus on the dark figures standing outside, waiting for him patiently.
[quote=“squidhead”]I did not find any problems with the text above.
As Mr.B. stumbled towards the window, tripping over furniture and avoiding broken glass, random wild guesses blasted past in his mind. The blinding, shining, light of the sun hit his eyes, as he forced himself to focus on the dark figures standing outside, waiting for him patiently.[/quote]
[quote=“corrected”]As Mr.B. stumbled towards the window tripping over furniture and avoiding broken glass, random wild guesses blasted past in his mind. The blinding, shining light of the sun hit his eyes, as he forced himself to focus on the dark figures standing outside waiting for him patiently.
Overuse of commas make sentence pauses overwhelming and should be used sparingly. Light is the subject and adjectives should be separated from each other but not from their subjects. Again, more overuse of commas. As a general rule, compound sentences should only use commas when fully separated as independent clauses. Fragmented clauses should use commas, but only if the sentence fragment can be left out with no change in meaning.[/quote]
Mr. B rushed to the bureau to see his gun was not with its holster and gasped in frustration. A flashback of the night before reminded him how he arrived here and what his purpose was. He rushed through the door to the hallway, only to be stopped in his tracks by what was standing just behind the door.
wow just a couple of words changed and it sounds way more story-ish… thx a lot
also, if you can’t find anything wrong with the post(s) before you, no need to explicitly say it.
continuing on…
Being still badly hungover, it seems that his brain just refuses to recall anything from last night.
doubtfully, he finally decides to ask “i’m really sorry but, do i know you? and what happened here?”
[quote=“koolkei”]
Being still badly hungover, it seems that his brain just refuses to recall anything from last night.
doubtfully, he finally decides to ask “i’m really sorry but, do i know you? and what happened here?”[/quote]
[quote]Still being hungover, it seems that his brain just refuses to recall anything from last night.
Doubtfully, he finally decides to ask, “I’m really sorry, but do I know you, and what happened here?”
Badly should be poor or not used at all. Serious, debilitating, unforgiving, and relentless would be good substitutes for badly in this sentence, but are really unnecessary. The second half of the sentence also could use structural changes, but I really don’t have a good suggestion for it. “I” should always be capitalized and quotes should always be separated by a comma in a mixed sentence. On a side note, KUDOS! Most native English speakers put the ending punctuation, a question mark in this case, outside the quotations. They should always be included inside, or a comma should be used to indicate a separation before the ending quotation mark. Regarding the same sentence, they should be included as a single sentence, or two stand alone sentences. “And” is not a proper sentence beginning.[/quote]
The tall, slender figure in the doorway speaks in a husky voice. “The darkness will overcome you.” It appears to be feminine, but Mr. B could not be absolutely positive, as the figure disappears into the shadows as if it were never there.
[/size]
ops