Forums

“--Here, I intended ‘for anything’ to be of special emphasis. This is to emphasise the narrator’s belief that he will not arrive early for anything no matter what, because he doesn’t see the point of it.”
--Fair enough.
“--Must have been confused there. The ‘legacy’ was referring to the wealth, not the experienced players themselves*
--That took a while for me to understand. Anyway, I get it.
““‘I think he is a hacker, he drops twenty millions every week.’”
Two complete phrases should not be joined with a comma. A semi-colon is more appropriate.
--I think I’d use a full-stop in here because the two clauses don’t seem too closely related.”
--That works, too.
“Here you should quote like this: “…never forgot to say, *hi,* through private messages…” Oh, and the comma after messages doesn’t need to be there since it splits up the phrase. I feel a trend.
--Having the comma inside the quotation is a characteristic distinct to American English which I will not adopt in my writing under any circumstances . The comma after it offers the pause.”
--For the quotations thing, I get it. Are quotations with ‘this’ instead of “this” also come from the UK English? I was curious about that the entire time. You seem intelligent enough to know—if you were in my shoes writing in America—that using apostrophe marks as quotation marks is wrong in a verbal conversation. (It still works fine for internal conversation when one is talking to him/herself.) So the UK English grammar does interest me and I would like to know so I can understand the style of writing.
As for the pause, the comma feels weird once again. Maybe a dash mark… I don’t know. A comma doesn’t feel right for that situation. I am never the person who likes seeing abrupt pauses mid-phrase via comma.

10-May-2011 22:49:40

““…pungent buckets of compost and filthy worms came to life and became vivid in my mind, when Farming was mentioned.”
Comma doesn’t need to be there.
--The comma is there to indicate that this sentence worked like Yoda’s grammar.”
--Haha! Love it. That works. You won me over with Yoda, though.
“This sentence doesn’t make sense structurally. “Instructed,” should be in the -ing tense. The -ed tense doesn’t fit well here. Also, commas should be between, “to his dismay,” due to it being a break in the phrase. It’s like the odd one out.
--You’re right about the tense. I left the comma out because I wanted this phrase to flow onto the next.”
--I guess you’re right about the phrase flow. I was thinking over that for quite a long time before putting down what I did.
“The comma after, “chance,” shouldn’t be there because it interrupts a phrase. Also, there should be a comma between, “to Alex’s horror.”
--I’ll rectify the first, but not the second, for the above reason.”
--It doesn’t flow as well this time.
““These few words had banished the universe, the world of darkness in which Alex had known, forever.”
And the comma after, “known.”
--Again, this emphasizes ‘forever’.”
--True, but it feels weird to me having that emphasis with a comma. It may work, but it just doesn’t feel right to me structurally.
“--I think it meant, ‘It was not clear WHEN Kipplin finally found…’. In other words, to the narrator (or even to Kipplin himself) wasn’t sure when exactly Kipplin started to feel this way, or found this purpose in his own life.”
--Maybe it could be rephrased to, “It was not clear to me when Kipplin finally found…” I get it now, but before you brought that point up, it did*’t make much sense.

10-May-2011 22:50:03

10-May-2011 22:50:45

“I feel like I am a David because I have been giving a friend of mine hope—a friend who has went through a few hardships and felt like she couldn’t go on. Also, she is like Kipplin—an outcast. Like I said, I am the side of David that inspired Kipplin, not the side he is when he is with Jenna.”
--Interesting! I hope that went well! Some readers tell me that David isn’t actually a ‘villain’ – he’s simply out there enjoying his life like an ordinary bloke, and Kipplin brought this on himself. One reader even said the quotes from the beginning fit into the story because in the book C.S. Lewis talked about the destructive power of love, and it was love that destroyed Kipplin, not David. Of course, that’s his take on it, not mine. But yes, I am glad that you’re able to see a little of yourself in one of my characters. After all, we’re humans – I assume.

“For the quotations thing, I get it. Are quotations with ‘this’ instead of “this” also come from the UK English? I was curious about that the entire time. You seem intelligent enough to know—if you were in my shoes writing in America—that using apostrophe marks as quotation marks is wrong in a verbal conversation. (It still works fine for internal conversation when one is talking to him/herself.) So the UK English grammar does interest me and I would like to know so I can understand the style of writing.”
--There is a book called ’Writing tools’ or something by Roy Peter Clark, I think. In that book, he talked about how his British colleagues always keep the commas outside of quotation marks, while his punctuations go inside the quotation marks – like this:
American: He wanted to go out and ‘meet the guys,’ as it were.
British: He wanted to go out and ‘meet the guys’, as it were.

11-May-2011 12:44:43 - Last edited on 11-May-2011 12:45:54 by Englishkid62

As for dialogues punctuations, I began with using ‘ ‘ which I saw in the books I’ve read, then when I first started out on the Stories Forum, I got corrected by Taunter and switched to “ “ and then when I showed my stories to my English teacher, she told me that was wrong and I should use ‘ ‘. Since then, I've been extremely critical of the feedback I receive from anywhere. Not long after, I decided to check this out and found they are grammatically both correct. No grammatical sources I found seemed to suggest either is wrong. However, in all the books I’ve read published locally in the UK, ‘ ‘ is used. And in the imported American books, I always find “ “. I’m not saying which this is definitely UK English and this is definitely US English because I do not have the evidence for that. I simply have this observation of different tendencies. For the record I also use the En-dash, which is space, dash, space. You seem to use Em-dash, which is no space, long dash, no space. Both grammatically correct, but like I observed, it seemed one is used in a country but not the other.
Note: We use “ “ inside dialogues if they were quotes, much like you’d use ‘ ‘ inside dialogues. Either case, it is kind of strange to see an American wanting to know about British grammar instead of calling it stupid and show complete disregard. We also spell some words differently, and use some words differently.
It should be I who thank you for your time here, not the other way round . Thank you once again for reviewing this story.

11-May-2011 12:44:54 - Last edited on 11-May-2011 12:47:07 by Englishkid62

14-May-2011 15:37:18

16-May-2011 02:11:41

23-May-2011 05:08:54

I'm now happy because I survived the rapture

23-May-2011 10:07:35

23-May-2011 15:49:58