Bad Language

in #writing5 years ago

No, no, I'm not referring to profanity or anything like that. I'm writing about the many mistakes I make in the spelling as well as in the grammar of my daily posts. Some of them are regularly returning mistakes I also sometimes see other authors make.


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Image by geralt - source: Pixabay

I'm so sorry for that. I could make a lot of excuses, like I'm always pressed for time, or English is not my native language, but ultimately I should just try harder. Communicating is one of the most important things we humans do and language, words, sentences and paragraphs of written or spoken text, are the best and most efficient tools to exchange ideas and opinions. Not only sending the message, the speaking or the writing, but also the receiving of the information is difficult enough, even with proper use of the words, sentences and paragraphs. What I'm saying is that even even if the sender, the speaker or the writer, makes no mistakes in the message, we can not be sure if the receiver, the listener or reader, will interpret the message in the way it was intended. Add mistakes to that mix, place a comma or apostrophe in the wrong spot, and chances of correctly conveying the intended message become exponentially smaller.

I'm the last person to lecture anyone about their use of language, and that's not what I intend to do here; heck, I'm even sure the single paragraph I produced so far already contains some errors, and I'm not even sure if the semicolon earlier in this sentence is used correctly... Still, I'd like to share with you some of the things I have difficulty with in the English language, or even in Dutch, my native language.

First and foremost, I'm notoriously bad in properly using the comma; many of the sentences I write are far too long, a result I guess of my mind constantly jumping some steps ahead while trying to keep up with the writing by condensing far too many words in one sentence, sort of what I'm doing now... It's not necessarily wrong to write long sentences, as long as you provide your reader with strategically placed pauses. Really, they are important too maintain a pleasant rhythm for the reader, without them having to re-read each sentence to make sure they understood it right. Also, long sentences should be mixed with shorter ones; making each sentence the same length also feels unnatural, something you'll notice when reading stuff out loud.

Not only rhythm and flow, but also the actual meaning of a sentence can change if the comma is placed erroneously, or omitted altogether; "let's eat, kids" is harmless, while "let's eat kids" creates the impression that we're dealing with cannibals. This leads us to the second thing I sometimes struggle with; when to use the apostrophe. When it's a contraction, then we use an apostrophe. In the previous sentence "it's" is a contraction of "it" and "is"; "it is". When something is a possession of something else, then there's just the "s" without the apostrophe: "the car and its engine" or "the kid and its toys". When we combine that apostrophe with possession and multiple persons, we stumble upon the next tricky situation in the English language.


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Image by ArtsyBee - source: Pixabay

There are three ways to spell "there": "there", "their" and "they're". All these words are pronounced the same as far as I'm able to discern and I sometimes mix them up by accident... When talking about a location, to point at something, "there" is used. When a group of people owns something, we use "their", as in "that family lives in their house". The apostrophe comes into play when we actually mean to say "they are", for example: "I hate students when they're drunk".

And then there's "than" and "then"; these always trick me... I know when I should use which, and still it goes wrong so often... "Than" is used when comparing things: "you are smarter than me". When we want to indicate some point in time we use "then", as in "back then, cities were a lot smaller". If it's the result of a conditional statement, then we use "then", like in this very sentence.

Most of the mistakes I make are the result of just working too fast, not reading the text after it's finished, solely relying on the browser's built-in spellchecker, and I apologize for that, dear reader, because you deserve better. And like I said in the beginning; communication is important and getting ideas across to many diverse minds is not something to take too lightly if you want to do it right. I do this for fun, but also because I believe I have something to say, ideas and emotions and opinions to share, or else I wouldn't be here. So I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for reading my ramblings, errors and all. I really appreciate you stopping by my blog, as it is you who motivates me to keep working on this, to try to get better at what I like to do so much. Also, I hope this little insight into the most common mistakes I make will help prevent the same mistakes for others :-)


Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, keep steeming!


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The same thing happens to me, and I think that to many people in Steemit also, it is the result of people from non-English speaking countries learning on the fly.

I think there is not much problem with that as long as we continue to learn and the message is transmitted correctly, which is what matters after all.

Good content by the way. Regards!

I agree completely; being here is a learning process as much as it is a hobby, for me at least. And all nationalities are represented here, so it's to be expected to encounter some "broken" English here and there.

Let me take this opportunity to thank you, dear @vieira, not only for the kind words here, but for your continued support; I can not express how much I appreciate that! 😊

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Hi @zyx066!

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