Basic grammer question

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What's the proper usage of capitalization and placement of punctuation in the following sentences?




#copywriting #basic #grammer #question
  • Did I just walk into a high-school English class by accident?

    --- Ross
    • [1] reply
    • I was absent that day...

      I did Google it first, but I'm apparently still too stoopid to get it.
      • [1] reply
  • I might be able to help...

    Ok here's the thing... there's English Language Grammar and there's Sales Copy Grammar.

    Sales Copy Grammar is literally written the way we talk, and breaks many rules of English Language Grammar.

    It's important to get it right though because it can completely change what's being said.

    For example:

    A Woman without her Man is nothing.

    A Woman, without her Man, is nothing.
    A Woman: Without her, Man is nothing.


    Ya see how cool that is?

    Anyway as for your thing Robert my good man...

    My Legit English Language Rewrite:



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    • Toniy, my good man. Awesome. Thank you.

      It's for an article about the current mobile revolution. This is the intro as to how the iPad blew open the tablet market.

      I guess you can say it's about something new that has come out that everyone laughed at but now kinda want.



      The article is going into a respected and widely read publication, which is why I gave a sh*t enough to ask you kind folks for help on this one.

      You came through smashingly.

      Cheers,
      -Robert
      • [1] reply
  • Forgive me, SP here.

    You put grammer in the title. Not grammar.

    • [2] replies
    • Yeah, I typically run these posts past my 9 year old for proofreading first, but she's not home from school yet.

      -Robert
    • Yeah man that's Sales Copy Spelling, not Legit English Language Spelling... I thought I went through all that :p

  • Sir try this links to help you out.

    HTML Code:
    http://paperrater.com/free_paper_grader
http://spellcheckplus.com/
http://www.whitesmoke.com/free-online-checker
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  • Banned
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  • I don't think "newfound" is a word - it should be "new-found". I'm not sure about the correctness of the sentence in brackets, but then I'm not sure there are any grammatical rules about putting whole sentences in brackets - I wouldn't do it, anyway.
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    • No, no... Newfound is definitely a legitimate word

      And the element of parentheses / brackets on a new line, I know where you're coming from, but it's there more for readability.

      In retrospect, we could probably toss the brackets altogether and use ellipsis (...) instead:

      Some loyal iPhone users seemed pretty excited about this newfound gadget. I seem to recall however, a good deal of indifference and even some chuckles around the water cooler... Remember the pictures of four iPhones taped together?

      Fair play Leon, good point :p
  • Does anyone help me explain the meaning of following sentences? Are all of these correct? Is the meaning the same? How will you rewrite the sentence?

    1. it is difficult to understand what the teacher talks about.

    2. the teacher talks about something that are difficult to understand.

    3. the teacher talks about what is difficult to understand.An honorary professor and part-time lecturer of linguistics at Bangor University in Wales, Crystal has been conducting research in language studies since the early 1960s.
    • [2] replies
    • I wish I didn't love language so much....

      Ok.... let's go



      1. it is difficult to understand what the teacher talks about.

      Meaning: The teacher talks about complicated subjects. Maybe it's the subject that's complicated, maybe the teacher doesn't explain things well enough.

      Rewrite:

      If it's the subject that's complicated: It is difficult to understand what the teacher talks about.

      If it's the teacher explaining things badly: It is difficult to understand what the teacher means.



      2. the teacher talks about something that are difficult to understand.

      Meaning: The subject the teacher is talking about is complicated, or difficult to understand.

      Rewrite: The teacher talks about some things that are difficult to understand. (Plural... 'things' and 'are'... talking about more than one thing)

      or

      The teacher talks about something that is difficult to understand. (Singular... 'something' and 'is'... talking about just one thing)



      3.       the teacher talks about what is difficult to understand.

      An honorary professor and part-time lecturer of linguistics at Bangor University in Wales, Crystal has been conducting research in language studies since the early 1960s.

      (The second bit about 'honorary professor' is perfect, so I'm just looking at the first part...)

      Meaning: This could mean a few things, because they way it's written is quite vague.

      a) The teacher is telling you about things that are 'defined' as being complicated... or rather, things that are generally considered to be complicated, or difficult to understand, by most people.

      b) The teacher is talking about the complicated subject.

      With the extra information about the professor, I would guess that, if the sentence related to the Professor, the sentence meant a).

      Rewrite: Assuming it is a) I would write: The teacher talks about 'what is difficult to understand'.

      The 'quote marks' separates the 'what is difficult to understand' part, and makes it the subject. The same way you could say "The teacher talks about a horse" instead of "the teacher talks about horse".



      There are a lot of subtleties in English... I've had to assume a couple of things but I think that's pretty much what you're looking for Petre

      Hope it helps!

      (Wasn't expecting to ever have this conversation on the Warrior Forum :p)
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    • David Crystal is great. His books on English are fascinating, easy to read and full of 'ooh, I didn't know THAT' moments.

      I studied a few of them whilst doing my degree, and have read many of the others since - highly recommended to anyone who enjoys this crazy language :-)
  • My grammer was no good at spelling but my grampa was..
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  • I thought I'd give a rewrite a go as well since no one has pointed out that parenthesis shouldn't be after the full stop (or period, if you're Britishly challenged).

    ...and you'd never be excited 'for' something - you'd be excited 'about' something.
    ...and never start a sentence with 'but'. The whole point of 'but' is to join elements of sentences/arguments together.

    Rewrite:



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    Basic grammer question

    What's the proper usage of capitalization and placement of punctuation in the following sentences? Some loyal iPhone users seemed pretty excited for this newfound gadget. But I seem to recall a good deal of indifference and even some chuckles around the water cooler. (Remember the pictures of four iPhones taped together?)