Google Is Your Friend

My favorite online writing site is “Google,” I know that this is the simplest and cheating answer.  I use “Google” because I can just google my question. Then I can find a site that will give me an answer that I understand.  Sometimes a specific site will give you the information in a way that you don’t understand. So you have to leave the site to find a site that will give you the information in a way you understand.  Sometimes if you use the same resource repeatedly, you aren’t getting new information. 

This is how I am used to finding answers for coding.  You might have to look at multiple sites to piece together the answer or information you need.

I have used the “Purdue OWL” on occasion, but that is because “Google” gave it to me.  It does have good information and has helped me with some questions. 

The editing mistakes I found this week.

Mistake #1

Website: Gizmodo.com
Article: “Argentina Is Using Drones to Hunt Down Tax-Evading Mansions”
Mistake: They have the word “sent” twice.

Mistake #2

From the Dangling Modifiers and Parallelism assignment question 4.
Mistake: She didn’t capitalize “the” in “The Who.”  The bands name is “The Who,” not “Who.”

4. Watching the “Woodstock” movie, Carlos Santa, Jimi Hendrix and the Who impressed her the most.

Overwhelmed

As I read chapters 6 and 7 I found myself feeling more and more stressed out and overwhelmed.  There are so many little rules and phrases.  It seems impossible to memorize them all and keep them sorted out in my mind.  The who/whom rule, the whose/who rule, contractions, prepositions, conjunctions, the list never ends.  After I stressed out for awhile and felt like all hope was lost I remembered something I had read in a previous chapter.  I don't remember the exact words but the idea was that we are already experts in the English language.  We use it every single day.  We read, we write, we speak, and we dream in the English language.  Once I stepped back and thought about it like this I was able to get things into perspective.  As I did the homework I quit worrying about every single little rule and just thought about how I would say something or write something.  It is impossible to be right every time and I still need a lot of practice but I did realize that a large majority of the time I could get it right.  I have read some other blogs on here where they have felt the same way but when you get stressed out remember that you have been practicing the English language for years.  Even the book says that the most important part of what we are learning is getting the ideas down and understanding how to use them, not remembering every single little phrase and rule.  So stay calm and stick with it. 

Editing Mistake

I received this picture in an email the other day.  

 

This lady needs to make English her "offical" language if she is going to protest it.  

Would you believe where I found a typo??

First things first, I really like Chomp Chomp as a resource for help with grammar. Another student has already blogged about this one, but I want to reiterate that it's a great site. The interactive quizzes are really helpful. Especially when it comes to questions dealing with who/whom, it's/its, and so on. I find myself on Chomp Chomp taking the practice quizzes before I complete the "real" quiz assignment for class. You can find an exercise or practice quiz on pretty much any topic that you need. Dangling modifiers, subject verb agreement, parallel structure, punctuation, and so on. Take a few before taking the test this week; it will be really helpful!

And finally, you'll never guess where I found my typo of the week. For another class I have the APA style book. Just as we use the AP style book for editing class, I happen to also have the APA book. Please behold the typo I found near the back of the book...

Reference is misspelled in the header! I feel like I should get a prize for this one!

Chomp Chomp..

One of my favorite websites on grammar is definitely not classified as an OWL.

I like to visit www.chompchomp.com to learn more about grammar and literary terms. I first found this website during my English 1010 class. However, I still reference back to it all the time. I even used it to help understand some of the literary terms for this class! The website contains many definitions for terms and also exercises where you can see them applied in real world scenarios.

The main reason I like this website because it explains things in a way that I understand better. The AP Stylebook is a great tool, but sometimes the examples it provides doesn't help me understand the term. Chompchomp.com gives example that I can wrap my head around and the exercises seal the information in. It might not be the case for everyone, but it's definitely worth a visit to see if you feel the same way.

Also for my mistake this week I found this mistake on my Pinterest. I'm not sure if it's her fault or the artist. 

The Little Blue Book

After doing a lot of research online to find a website that would help not only give me definitions to different parts of speech, but also examples for each one, I discovered The Blue Book.  This website is www.grammarbook.com.  It is based off of The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus.  You can search many different grammar rules and it gives you the rule, examples, and if you want to you can even take a little quiz.  The thing that was most helpful to me was the example for each rule.  She is very thorough in explaining these rules and shows you correct and incorrect sentences. Not only does it have information on grammar, but it also has the punctuation rules, capitalization rules, and other different rules that can be very beneficial for editing. Check it out!  It really is a very helpful website.

      I have found spelling errors like this multiple times.  I am just amazed when creating the sign, this error isn't corrected.

                           When people use the words who, whose or whom I think that they stress about the rules and just guess.  This is a case when "whose" should have been used.

I just had to add this at the end.  I laughed because I am already starting to act like this lady (possibly wife or mother) and correct other's grammar and writing.  I am sure many of you feel the same way.  I guess we must be learning something from this class!

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The Purdue OWL: Grammar Lab

The Purdue OWL website has been my go-to site for help with AP style and citations for quite some time now. However, I just relized that this is also an excellent source for grammar tips.

One thing I love about this website is that it is very user-friendly. The Grammar Lab has links to resources on all grammar topics from spelling to subject/verb agreement. I particularly like the resources they offer on verb tenses. I struggled with the verb assignments last week more than I’d like to admit.

There is a fantastic list of irregular verbs. I really struggle with irregular verbs sometimes, not only in my writing, but in my speaking as well. For some reason the past tense of drink, which is drank, does not seem like a word to me. However, I do know that it is not correct to say “I drunk the whole water bottle.” Still, some irregular verbs don’t sound correct to me. Does anyone else have this same problem?

Here is a link to the Purdue OWL: Grammar Lab https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/1/5/

Here is a fun grammar mistake that I came across this week. See what a difference a comma can make?

What I have learned from the Topical Guide

One lesson I have learned so far from the Topical Guide of our text is the difference in the meaning of the words of anxious and eager and how to appropriately use each word. Though I used the word anxious most of the time to convey a sense of worry I think I occasionally also used it when I should have used the word eager. It’s an easy editing mistake to make, as the two emotions or moods are fairly similar, but when you take a moment to contemplate the differences in meaning it makes sense why the two words are not interchangeable.

A second lesson I have learned from the Topical Guide is discerning when to use “as if” versus “like”. Once again, I think I viewed these two as interchangeable sometimes. Perhaps, this comes from today’s youth and their love of the word like, like you know what I mean. The use of the word like in my previous sentence would be incorrect, as I was using it as a conjunction to introduce a clause, and I should have used “as if” instead.

Finally, a third lesson I have learned from the Topical Guide is discerning when to use the word lay versus the word lie. The key difference in the use of these two words lies in what type of verbs they are and what type of object they introduce. Lay is a transitive verb that introduces a direct object and lie is a intransitive verb that never takes a direct object.

Editing Error

The editing error I found this week actually came from our textbook:

“They are writers who remain committed their audiences.” (Kessler & McDonald 50)

I did a double-take when I first saw this sentence, and wondered why the final phrase had not been written as: “…committed to their audiences."