Common Grammatical Errors

killjoy · Post by **killjoy** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 12:57 am

Ok here's a question that's been bugging me.

I need someone to tell me the proper way to write this phrase.It's when a person is trying to tell others how someone holds two major jobs in their life.

Do you do it like this...."You know about Judy right? She's my sister/best friend" Or do you do it like this "You know about Judy right? She's my sister slash best friend."?

Zanity · Post by **Zanity** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 1:00 am

They both read exactly the same way as / is the slash symbol. However I'd use the first one.

ultimatepickupline · Post by **ultimatepickupline** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:31 am

Okay, here's one that bothers me.

Barely vs. Barley

Barely is the one people ususally mean. It means something similar to "almost didn't". As in "I just barely got it done."

Barley is a grain. As in a food.

Another one of my peeves is the way physical interaction is written during dialogue. As a general rule of thumb character actions stay with the same person's words. So if someone says something and another character reacts physically, the reaction deserves a new paragraph.

Incorrect Example: "I just don't know what to do anymore." Maria shrugged.

"Personally, I would kick his butt," Maria said.

If I were reading that in a story I would get all the way to the end before I realized someone other than Maria was talking at the beginning, because some authors (myself included) use a character's actions to show who has said the line instead of using a tag like "Liz said". Therefore, the correct way to write that would be:

"I just don't know what to do anymore."

Maria shrugged. "Personally, I would kick his butt."

When it's done correctly, you get to leave out that extra "Maria said".

I hope I explained that clearly. It can be hard to just think of an example out of thin air.

Someone else asked before about correct grammar within dialogue. My opinion is that once the character is actually speaking, almost anything is fair game. Punctuation should still be correct, but writing things like "sayin' " within dialogue are perfectly acceptable, because that's how that character talks. In fact, it can get really annoying when characters speak with "perfect grammar" because it's NOT how people talk. Example: "Whom are you going to call?" Maria asked.

Now techincally that's correct. But nobody actually talks like that. So it's better for the question to be "Who are you going to call?"

Likewise, sometimes authors don't use contractions in writing when they really should. Most people talk with contractions, and therefore contractions should be used in fictional writing. When a contraction isn't used, it should be done on purpose to make something stand out.

Heavenli24 · Post by **Heavenli24** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:07 pm

ultimatepickupline wrote:Okay, here's one that bothers me.
Another one of my peeves is the way physical interaction is written during dialogue. As a general rule of thumb character actions stay with the same person's words. So if someone says something and another character reacts physically, the reaction deserves a new paragraph.

Incorrect Example: "I just don't know what to do anymore." Maria shrugged.

"Personally, I would kick his butt," Maria said.

If I were reading that in a story I would get all the way to the end before I realized someone other than Maria was talking at the beginning, because some authors (myself included) use a character's actions to show who has said the line instead of using a tag like "Liz said". Therefore, the correct way to write that would be:

"I just don't know what to do anymore."

Maria shrugged. "Personally, I would kick his butt."

When it's done correctly, you get to leave out that extra "Maria said".

I hope I explained that clearly. It can be hard to just think of an example out of thin air.

Someone else asked before about correct grammar within dialogue. My opinion is that once the character is actually speaking, almost anything is fair game. Punctuation should still be correct, but writing things like "sayin' " within dialogue are perfectly acceptable, because that's how that character talks. In fact, it can get really annoying when characters speak with "perfect grammar" because it's NOT how people talk. Example: "Whom are you going to call?" Maria asked.

Now techincally that's correct. But nobody actually talks like that. So it's better for the question to be "Who are you going to call?"

Likewise, sometimes authors don't use contractions in writing when they really should. Most people talk with contractions, and therefore contractions should be used in fictional writing. When a contraction isn't used, it should be done on purpose to make something stand out.

This is one of my pet peeves too, because otherwise the dialogue gets confusing. Although if I'm going to be picky, technically it should be:

"I just don't know what to do anymore."

Maria shrugged, "Personally, I would kick his butt."

Since Maria is presumably shrugging just before or at the same time as she talks, the comma rather than a full-stop/period before she talks therefore leads into her speech. Just as you need a comma at the end of a speech, before 'she said', you should also put a comma after 'She shrugged'.

nibbles2 · Post by **nibbles2** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 4:50 pm

totally agree about character actions.

Barely vs. Barley

Barely is the one people ususally mean. It means something similar to "almost didn't". As in "I just barely got it done."

Barley is a grain. As in a food.

Apparently, when we read, we don't read all the letters in a word but guess what it is by the shape and the letters that make it up, so if a word looks right and spell checker doesn't pick up on it, it's easy to make that mistake.

What really bugs me is when people write behrly.

I'm very intolerant.

ultimatepickupline · Post by **ultimatepickupline** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 8:40 pm

Heavenli24: My example of the dialogue is not from something I've actually written, so it's not exactly how I would write it. However, I didn't think that it would be punctuated with a comma after shrugged and before the quote, because technically both phrases are complete sentences...Thoughts on that?

nibbles2 wrote:totally agree about character actions.

Barely vs. Barley

Barely is the one people ususally mean. It means something similar to "almost didn't". As in "I just barely got it done."

Barley is a grain. As in a food.
Apparently, when we read, we don't read all the letters in a word but guess what it is by the shape and the letters that make it up, so if a word looks right and spell checker doesn't pick up on it, it's easy to make that mistake.

What really bugs me is when people write behrly. I'm very intolerant.

Yes, I've heard about that reading the word as a whole thing before too, which is why the mistake usually doesn't bother me until I realize that the author is using the wrong one nearly every time. Then it starts annoying me. However, when people write "behrly" I immediately can't help but wonder what they were thinking. I try to tell myself that the misspelling was on purpose to relate it to Jason Behr better, because it would make me feel just a tiny bit better to know that the author knew what the correct spelling was, but chose to ignore it.

Heavenli24 · Post by **Heavenli24** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 1:46 am

ultimatepickupline wrote:Heavenli24: My example of the dialogue is not from something I've actually written, so it's not exactly how I would write it. However, I didn't think that it would be punctuated with a comma after shrugged and before the quote, because technically both phrases are complete sentences...Thoughts on that?

It really depends on the context with this one. If you were using 'She shrugged' as an alternative to 'she replied' or 'she said', then you would need a comma.

However, if the action has nothing to do with the dialogue, then a comma probably wouldn't be necessary, for example:

Maria picked up a sock from the floor. 'Personally, I would kick his butt.'

If the dialogue is preceded by a sentence describing the actions of the character so you can get a feel for the scene, then you don't need a comma. However, 'she shrugged' on its own comes across as a dialogue tag (like 'she replied') so it looks incorrect to put a full stop/period after it.

Both of these are correct for their particular wording:

She shrugged, 'Personally, I would kick his butt."

She shrugged before turning to look out of the window. 'Personally, I would kick his butt.'

This webpage has some good examples.

ultimatepickupline · Post by **ultimatepickupline** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:40 am

Heavenli24 wrote:
ultimatepickupline wrote:Heavenli24: My example of the dialogue is not from something I've actually written, so it's not exactly how I would write it. However, I didn't think that it would be punctuated with a comma after shrugged and before the quote, because technically both phrases are complete sentences...Thoughts on that?
It really depends on the context with this one. If you were using 'She shrugged' as an alternative to 'she replied' or 'she said', then you would need a comma.

However, if the action has nothing to do with the dialogue, then a comma probably wouldn't be necessary, for example:

Maria picked up a sock from the floor. 'Personally, I would kick his butt.'

If the dialogue is preceded by a sentence describing the actions of the character so you can get a feel for the scene, then you don't need a comma. However, 'she shrugged' on its own comes across as a dialogue tag (like 'she replied') so it looks incorrect to put a full stop/period after it.

Both of these are correct for their particular wording:

She shrugged, 'Personally, I would kick his butt."

She shrugged before turning to look out of the window. 'Personally, I would kick his butt.'

This webpage has some good examples.

Thank you very much. That was along the lines of what I thought, and it looks like I have been writing it correctly then. So that makes me happy.

OrangeSky · Post by **OrangeSky** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 6:10 pm

killjoy wrote:Ok here's a question that's been bugging me.

I need someone to tell me the proper way to write this phrase.It's when a person is trying to tell others how someone holds two major jobs in their life.

Do you do it like this...."You know about Judy right? She's my sister/best friend" Or do you do it like this "You know about Judy right? She's my sister slash best friend."?

If it's dialogue, then it's the second one, KJ.

You can't use the first one because if they were really speaking it with the symbol, this is how it would read:
"You know about Judy right? She's my sister backslash best friend."
or
"You know about Judy right? She's my sister slash symbol best friend."

Depending of course on which you say, slash sybol or backslash.

Make sense?

You always write out symbols, numbers and abbreviations in speech so that when you read it it sounds like the way someone would say it.

Zanity · Post by **Zanity** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 7:07 pm

OrangeSky wrote:"You know about Judy right? She's my sister backslash best friend."
or
"You know about Judy right? She's my sister slash symbol best friend."

Depending of course on which you say, slash symbol or backslash.

Minor notes regarding slash and backslash....

Firstly if you're going to say slash symbol instead of slash you'd have to say backslash symbol instead of backslash too.

Secondly there is a difference between slash / and backslash \

Slash slants forward and backslash slants backward.