Does bad grammar make you [sic]? Me, too. To read an editor's post about misused quotation marks, followed by her readers' comments on bad grammar, click here: http://snickollet.blogspot.com/2007/04/im-not-going-to-work-but-im-still.html
After you read that, get yourself a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. The book is hilarious!To teach a class on grammar and punctuation I used a program called "I saw a dollar walking down the street." Don't you just want to ask, "Which way was it going?"
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UPDATE: See my short review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss here.
5 comments:
"I saw a dollar walking down the street": Call me stupid, but I don't 'get' this one. Please explain Bonnie.
Margreet, the phrase "walking down the street" modifies the nearest noun or pronoun. So what "I saw" was "a dollar walking down the street." Dollar bills don't walk. The phrase was misplaced and should have been at the beginning of the sentence, like this: "Walking down the street, I saw a dollar." Now I am the one walking down the street and what I saw was "a dollar." Maybe someone dropped the money, and now I'm a dollar richer. This is about where to place modifiers (and phrases that modify) in the English language.
Ah thanks Bonnie. Now that you explained it to me, all I can say is...DUH! hahahahaha...
I would have said, "While walking down the street, I saw a dollar," but I think I've been slammed for doing similar in my writing! :) Someday, I'll get around to reading "Eats, Shoots and Leaves". It's been on my wish list forever and I still haven't acquired a copy.
Variation: I saw a dollar while walking down the street.
I have to watch closely for this sort of mistake as someone with dyscalculia, I often get the order of words wrong.
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