Nauseously Nauseated by the Whole Shebang

The more I read about grammar and punctuation, the more I learn what I in fact don't know (that I thought I knew), the more a sense of nausea wafts through my innards. This nauseating, nauseousness, of nauseativity, really has me confused. Does that mean I'm a nauseaholic? I better check my symptoms on Web MD when I'm done blogging.

Here is what I gather:

Nausea is the actual noun of the loathsome sickness to the stomach.
Nauseate is the verb that is the condition of being full of nausea.
Nauseous is the adjective that describes the thing causing the sickness.

Thus:

The smell of cinnamon doused pine cones in every craft store entrance is nauseous.
The smell of cinnamon doused pine cones in every craft store entrance makes me nauseated.

Then again I'm nauseated just thinking about whether I have a handle on this upset stomach thing, and I think I will just go with what my kids call it: pukey. Yes, I am still hopeful the pukey feeling will wan by the end of this course, and I will pass the final with no tummy rumbles.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This grammar and spelling oversights for this week come to you from my daughter's class Power Point for science class. Oops!

The first slide contains the wrong verb form grown; it should be in the present tense as grow.

The second slide refers to Mr. Hooke incorrectly as people instead of person.
The last bullet contains restrictive material essential to the meaning of the sentence. The word that, with no comma, should be used instead of which with the comma. The second bullet contains a comma after the date; however, I'm not certain it is necessary because it is a short sentence. It makes sense without the comma.

Fewer is More...Is That the Write Affect?

Oh how I loved this week’s assignment! There are so many words that we use every day and have no idea that we are using them incorrectly. One example in particular that I had a hard time remembering for the longest time was the use of “less” and “fewer.” At first glance it can be extremely confusing to remember which word to use in a sentence. Most of the time you can read the sentence out loud and the word that sounds right is the correct word. One thing I use to remember the correct word is to remember that “less” is referring to a quantity amount that cannot be counted individually, and “fewer” is a numerical amount that can be counted. 

For example, you can have less sugar in your cookies and fewer cookies on the plate. You can count the number of cookies you have, but you can’t count how much sugar you have in a batch. 

Another really tricky group of words I have trouble remembering is “effect” and “affect.” This is probably one of the most difficult word pairs to remember. I think the easiest way to remember this pair is to think that “effect” can be used as a verb or a noun and “affect” can only be used as a verb. “Effect” is a change in a result or to cause something to happen, while “affect” is to make a difference to or touch feelings of. 

For example, you can be affected by the effect of the earthquake on the city. You feel a certain way due to the cause of the earthquake on the city.

Hopefully that will help you guys extinguish the difference between these word groups.

 

This is an interesting punctuation mistake that I didn't even notice for a long time. "Why pay more?" There should definitely be a question mark at the end of that sentence. I pass this ad everyday on my way to work and didn't notice it until my mom pointed it out!

Grizzly Bears, Gristly Meat, & Grisly Massacres

I had never even considered the different spellings of these three words, most likely because I do not use them often. The three words have different meanings as explained below:

- Grizzly: this refers to the bear.

ex. The grizzly beard felt rough and scratchy.

- Gristly: the refers to tough meat.

ex. That is a gristly steak, you should find a better butcher.

- Grisly: refers to blood, guts, and horror.

ex. The final scene of the horror movie was a grisly one.

Here is how I remember the differences:

Grizzly has two Z's, because bears spend the winter catching "Z's."
Gristly has a T, because meat is "tough" due to "tendons."
Grisly has no T's or Z's, just blood and guts.

The grammar mistake I found this week is actually a meme making fun of a grammar mistake. I find the image is a great way to stress the importance of comma use. I do find it funny that they used an ellipsis incorrectly in the meme. The ellipsis is unnecessary and actually should just be a period.

Blog 6

This week’s homework was very helpful with the vocabulary distinctions it covered.  Some distinctions were a little more tricky than others. The comprise/compose distinction is one I’ll have to focus on because I’ve been using them interchangeably for as long as I can remember.  The tip from the powerpoint that “the whole comprises the parts, The whole is never comprised of the parts” is something you’d do well to commit to memory.

Another helpful tip was the omission of the of when saying “off of.”  It makes sense that the double preposition should be grammatically illegal, but if in conversation someone said “get off of my bumper” I would, before this class, never noticed the mistake.   A lot of these distinctions can seem pretty minor individually, but when you learn to commit to all these little rules of grammar collectively your writing and speaking will improve become more streamlined.

While camping the other weekend I caught my friend say something pretty funny.  He was referring to a park job when he said it was “misskewed.”  I then asked him how someone could mess up in the skewing something, and that the word he just made up is redundant.  It reminded me of the time George W. Bush said in a speech that “they misunderestimated me.”  Seems that adding a mis to a word that can’t technically receive the prefix has the potential to create a comical situation.

Dessert because I always want more

Before doing the readings and homework this week I hadn’t realized how many words can be easily confused. While I recognized many confusing pairs on the quiz, there were just as many that I had to look up. Here are a few tricks I use when determining which word I should use.

-        Dessert vs desert: There are two “S” in dessert because I am always going back for more and one “S” in desert because (even though we live in one) I picture the desert being a lonely and desolate place.

-        Compliment vs complement: This one might be a bit negative, but it gets the job done. When I think of someone offering a compliment, I wonder if they are telling the truth or lying. Keeping this in mind, comp-li(e)-ment reminds me that compliment is the correct use when offering praise and complement would work in other situations.

-        Farther vs further: This one is more of a stretch, but after repeating it a few times it made enough sense to stick in my mind. Farther has an “A” in it, similar to air. Because farther measures distance I think of the air or space that farther is used to describe. If I am not describing a distance, I know farther is an inappropriate word.

Editing mistake of the week:

I took this string of mistakes from a friend’s facebook page.

To fix it, I would have written something like: I wont the ticket lottery to Matilda! I would try to explain everything I felt while watching it, but I am overwhelmed. I want people to feel it, the show is a work of art. 

In his defense, he's from Spain and just learning english. Between this class and talking with my international friends, I am really starting to realize how confusing the english language can be. 

My Pallet / Palate Is Buring!

So while doing this weeks assignment I got to the question with the words: pallet, palate and palette.  I had to look these up.  I know what a pallet is, I use them all day at work.  The other two, palate and palette, were ones I had to look up.  I have seen them before, but I couldn’t remember which one was which.  So this is how I will now remember them.

Pallet: is a crude bed or portable platform which can be moved, stacked and stored.
How I Remember: I think of it as a wooden or plastic platform that goods are shipped and moved on.

Palate: is the roof of the mouth.
How I Remember: I think of it as “pal ate,” referring to food and eating.

Palette: a thin board that artists use to mix and lay colors.
How I Remember: I don’t have anything clever to remember this one, but the longer word is more fancy or artistic.

My editing mistake came from an article that I was reading about family guy on “HuffingtonPost.”

 The writer forgot to put an “in” between “controversy” and “an.”

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/30/mila-kunis-meg-griffin_n_5909672.html?utm_hp_ref=family-guy

Lay, Lie, Laid...Which Is It?! (Blog #6)

This one still confuses the heck out of me. I've read over this section a few times and I don't feel like I still understand the differences of the two. It becomes even more confusing when I try to figure the the present and past tense forms of each verb. Eek! So maybe in writing this post I can figure it out. Especially since it may be on the test this week. Let me try to break this down a little bit. Also, if you have any advice for distinguishing the two verbs, I am all ears!

Lay: always requires a direct object (transitive verb)*
Example: I lay the pencil on the table.

Past tense--laid
Past tense example: Yesterday I laid the pencil on the table.


Lie: never takes a direct object (intransitive verb)*
Example: I need to go lie down.

Past tense--lay (this is why it is so confusing!)
Past tense Example: Yesterday, I lay in bed all day.

*transitive verbs: transfers actions to an object in a sentence
intransitive: do not require a direct object

Got it? Me either. I suppose it will just take some more practice.

For my editing mistake of the week, I received a funny email at work. When I read it I knew I would share it on this blog because it made me laugh. I won't share the whole email, but my coworker was being facetious and saying that she was sad about something that happened at work.

"I am so sad, so for the rest of the week I will be in morning."

She spelled mourning wrong, so it made me laugh. It was all just a joke anyways, but the fact that she spelled it wrong made it even funnier to me.