differences

[Three]

I'm sorry Don. LOL

Hopefully you weren't talking about me.

[Bodarc]

The one I see most often is their and there

[DSchles]

I wasn't talking about any one individual. I was talking about 99% of the people who write online.

Don

[DSchles]

"The one I see most often is their and there."

Can't hold a candle to "your" for "you're." You see the latter spelled correctly about one time in five. As for "it's" for "its," I'd make it about 90% wrong. No one has a clue.

Don

[RS]

Not picking on Tarzan. Maybe he got it correct...I don't know. But something about his post caught my eye.

I think it was in 4th grade grammar (I think), we learned about.....hmmm, I'm not sure exactly what it's called, but it's this:

There are a lot of people who should care. To give a case in point, a friend of mine was interviewing someone for a job in a law office to assist the paralegal types. The applicant was a recent college graduate with no work experience. They wore casual clothing to the interview, held their cell phone in their hand for the entire interview, apparently were incapable of reading cursive handwriting (critical for the job) and last but not least used noticeably improper grammar during the course of the interview. The applicant was completely baffled as to why they didn't get the job.

Don, is this proper usage? I can't remember if you're supposed to use "they" or "he" [regardless of gender, oddly], or "s/he"? I was never too great at Grammar back in the day, but later in life its importance grew on me.


Spelling always came easy to me. Maybe I don't always spell words properly, although I do try to. My dad is absolutely horrendous at spelling. As a child, it seemed like every night he'd be writing a paper or writing a speech and asked me how to spell some certain word. It was never a difficult word to spell....always very easy. I remember him asking me how to spell Jello, the difference between through/threw/thru, how to spell Tucson (okay, that one's kinda hard?), thoroughly, and others.

Recently, his business sent out Christmas cards to everyone on their mailing list. When I got it, I asked him who, if anyone, proof-read the text on the back. He proof-read it. There were TWO spelling errors, a misuse of "there/their/they're", and used the Oxford comma in one sentence and the non-Oxford comma in another sentence.

[Bodarc]

See, I can write without a southern accent!

[JPhoenixX]

This is great not only can we get better at beating casinos, but we learn the proper use of the English language as well. I love it

[ZenMaster_Flash]

Rollingstoned,

I feel your pain.

Here is your analgesic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

[Three]

I rarely put a comma in a list before the terminal conjunction. If I notice ambiguity I will make sure it is not ambiguous which will sometimes involve use of a comma before the conjunction. For some reason I just don't think the comma belongs in most cases. I doubt I will change my style because I read this link. We will see. It isn't that I am attached to my style. That extra comma just bothers me for some reason. I don't know why.

[ZenMaster_Flash]

Punctuation is bungled, to varying degrees, by the majority of people;
and the "millennials" raised with keyboards instead of paper and pencil,
can barely write in cursive, and often depend upon grammar checkers.

There are even (some) enjoyable grammar books.

Read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. VERY good stuff.

A funny book about the (ig)noble apostrophe !

I used to put book titles in quotation marks,

but in this century proper usage is italicizing the title!

We are told to put a sentence's final "stop", (British for "period"),

inside the quotation marks; but what about the first comma in this sentence ?

I doggedly put a space before final question marks or exclamation point,

This is my heretical syntactical "error" and I actually take pride in it !

A pet peeve is people who do not know that an ellipsis is 3 dots,

or know what the proper use of an ellipsis is. It is not a random

number of dots; and similarly for the exclamation point. One suffices !

The above offends my eyes, but my ears are offended as well.

There is much verbiage that raises my hackles.
Do you note any problem with an expression like
"Point in time" [note that the first word inside
of quotation marks is capitalized; but do I use
parentheses, brackets, or braces] ?
Use either "point" or "time" to avoid wordy
redundancy.

If I have used any dubious grammar or syntax here, please "take
me to task"; but comments on my silly formatting are unwelcome.

[Halbruno]

Oh, I have to add than/then! I remember reading one well-known blackjack text in which the writer kept making this mistake. In fact it was loaded with grammatical/usage errors. I emailed the author to offer my proofreading services! I think it was Renzey's book.

Blackjack literature is often full of errors. I wonder if some authors pay anyone to proofread their texts.

BTW, Flash, I notice you over-use the semi-colon when a comma would suffice.

[Tbonz]

While the packaging of the written, as well as spoken word should be important, nothing trumps the substance of the message. Hateful or ignorant speech no matter how eloquently delivered is no less troubling. Just as gaining knowledge or valuable insight should not be looked down upon based on its incorrect delivery.

[Norm]

Read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.

For those not familiar with the meaning of the title:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons."Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"Well, I'm a panda," he says. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."