Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site unc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!duke!mcnc!tim@unc.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: illiterate submitter's to the net
Message-ID: <6453@unc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Dec-83 16:58:56 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.6453
Posted: Wed Dec 21 16:58:56 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Dec-83 03:14:26 EST
References: <3341@tekecs.UUCP>
Organization: CS Dept., U. of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lines: 60

Pursuing my avowed policy of finding every spelling and grammar mistake in
articles which are complain about spelling and grammar, this article is
submitted for the general interest and to discourage further wastes of
everyone's time and disk space.  Herein, I am concerned with a recent
posting to net.columbia called "illiterate submitter's to the net".

	Maybe if we are lucky, it was written by one of the few
	sub-teenager's on the net.

The opening phrase of this sentence does not parse into any acceptable
sentence prefix.  If only "maybe" or "if we are lucky" were used, then there
would be no problem, although the former alternative would require the
deletion of the comma.  The attempted plural form is actually a possessive
form, using an apostrophe; the same error appears in the subject.

	I cannot believe how badly this person has managed to mangle
	the english language.

The word "English" properly begins with a capital "E".

	Misspellings, bad puncuation, no knowledge of capitalization,
	poor sentence construction; it's an english teacher's
	nightmare.

The proper spelling is "punctuation".  The semicolon is to be used only to
separate independent clauses; a colon would be correct where the semicolon
is placed.  (I might add here that all the accusations made are no less true
of the article containing them.)

	I can tolerate a reasonable amount of bad grammer -- after all
	you can't expect everyone to be an english expert, but this
	causes me to almost lose my appetite.

The proper spelling is "grammar".  The dash is not to be used as a separator
for independent clauses.  The existence of three sequential independent
clauses in the same sentence qualifies it as a run-on sentence.  It is
possible that the initial and final clauses were meant to be considered
adjacent, in which case the comma should have been a dash; in this case, it
would be more questionable that the sentence is a run-on sentence, since the
clauses would not be strictly sequential.

	If you can't communicate your thoughts in somewhat of a clear
	manner, how can you command the respect of your peers or the
	members of other professions.

Interrogative sentences must end with a question mark, not a period.  The
adjectival construction "somewhat of a clear" is of questionable legitimacy,
particularly since there are any number of unquestionably legitimate
constructs that convey the desired meaning, such as "a somewhat clear".  I
base my assertion about the questionable legitimacy of the construction on
the assertion that there does not exist any admissible construct such that
the construction parses into that construct, although I do not know of any
name for the error.

Of course, the worst error of the article was posting it to net.columbia,
which is for discussions of the space shuttle program, but this is an error
of etiquette, not of grammar or spelling.
--
Tim Maroney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@csnet-relay (ARPA)