“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.
“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement.
“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”
“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”
Things I didn’t know
“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”
You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.
Hm. Looks like there are a lot of people who study this stuff for a living who disagree with your assessment that it’s “bad English.” I guess you better get reading … . asshole.
What’s so useful about the study of different ways people refuse to speak proper English? You did not answer that question.
Hm! Well, first, let’s define “proper English.”
Do you mean Queen’s English? American English? Canadian English? What about Indian English, or Kenyan English? Maybe Zimbabwean English? Maybe you meant Jamaican English, or Sierra Leonean English. Are those “proper English”?
Well, let’s assume you mean American English, since this kind of asshole question usually only comes from Americans, in my experience. Do you mean Southern American English, with “y’all” and “all y’all” and people who are “fixing to” do things? What about New Englander American English, where the thing I call a “side yard” is a dooryard? How about American English as spoken along the Arizona/Texas/Mexico border, which tends to have features not present in more northern states? Oh! Or what about New York City American English? Only place I’ve ever been where a grinder is a kind of food rather than a kind of food-maker and a train is underground.
Ah! Or perhaps you mean Texan American English, where “might-could” is a valid construction that means neither “might” nor “could.” Or Californian American English! Yes, that must be what you mean!
I didn’t answer the question, asshole, because it is not a valid question, and because you clearly asked it just to be (falsely) pedantic and superior. Rewording it as “refuse to speak proper English” instead of “better at bad English” doesn’t make it valid, it just shows that you know more than one way to be an asshole.
AAVE is an American English dialect. No different from any of the other dialects I just mentioned, except that it tends to be based along race lines rather than geographic ones. It is a correct American English dialect, it is a recognized American English dialect, and you don’t have to like it but you don’t get to shit on it just because you want to be racist … asshole.
Proper English is exactly like a proper cup of tea. Despite the fact that there are as many ways to make tea as there are people who drink tea, every single person believes that their way is the only right way and will go to the grave defending it.
Some of them, however, just have to be arseholes about it and try to ruin tea for everyone. Don’t be the arsehole. Just drink your tea and let other people have theirs how they like even if they are PHILISTINES who put almond milk or something in there like HEATHENS. It’s their tea, not yours.
Make a Vampire character who’s lived through several waves of the common language’s development and can’t let go if certain gramatical habbits from different time eras.
So like, thou ist a horrid creature, an absolute cur, but go off i guess
… can i use that phrase irl?
Absolutely you can and I encourage more uses of similar phrases that just completely fuck up the chronology of the english langauge. I wanna hear 15th century english mixed with surfer speak mixed with current age internet lingo like all the time.
Like this? Well my dude, seems like a weasel hath not such a deal of splean as you’re toss’d with. Chill already, you’re not valid.
You are an unrighteous, bastardly gullion. Heaven truly
knows that thou art false as hell. When you die, I will face God and walk
backwards into hell just so that I can beat your ass in the afterlife too.
I love the idea of a vampire who’s language travels back in time as they get pissed.
I grieve for thee in these trying times. Alexa play Despacito
I found this thing on Facebook… and I fell down the Humans Are Weird hole yet again. 😂(I first did before I even started my blog – Pinterest is sooo full of these posts! And I keep falling down it from time to time, when I discover something new)
“Gretchen: On the International Space Station, you have astronauts from the US and from other English speaking countries and you have cosmonauts from Russia. And obviously it’s very important to get your communication right if you’re on a tiny metal box circling the Earth or going somewhere. You don’t want to have a miscommunication there because you could end up floating in space in the wrong way. And so one of the things that they do on the ISS – so first of all every astronaut and cosmonaut needs to be bilingual in English and Russian because those are the languages of space. Lauren: Yep. Wait, the language of space are English and Russian? I’m sorry, I just said ‘yep’ and I didn’t really think about it, so that’s a fact is it? Gretchen: I mean, pretty much, yeah, if you go on astronaut training recruitment forums, which I have gone on to research this episode… Lauren: You’re got to have a backup job, Gretchen. Gretchen: I don’t think I’m going to become an astronaut, but I would like to do astronaut linguistics. And one of the things these forums say, is, you need to know stuff about math and engineering and, like, how to fly planes and so on. But they also say, you either have to arrive knowing English and Russian or they put you through an intensive language training course. But then when they’re up in space, one of the things that they do is have the English native speakers speak Russian and the Russian speakers speak English. Because the idea is, if you speak your native language, maybe you’re speaking too fast or maybe you’re not sure if the other person’s really understanding you. Whereas if you both speak the language you’re not as fluent in, then you arrive at a level where both people can be sure that the other person’s understanding. And by now, there’s kind of this hybrid English-Russian language that’s developed. Not a full-fledged language but kind of a- Lauren: Space Creole! Gretchen: Yeah, a Space Pidgin that the astronauts use to speak with each other! I don’t know if anyone’s written a grammar of it, but I really want to see a grammar of Space Pidgin.”
wupacing 